Those Summer Nights (Corfu, Greek Island Romance)

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘Which means they have hundreds of tavernas. We could do something different. Fish and chips… or tapas.’ He nodded at Imogen. ‘You know how to do tapas, don’t you?’

  ‘I usually open a packet from Tesco.’ She shook her head. ‘And you can’t just go over to Greece and start stamping the Union Jack over everything, Harry.’

  In truth her mouth was watering over the thought of Greek food. There was a lovely place not far from her house that was as authentic as you could get in England. Greek scenes in oils on the walls, candlelight, pretty tablecloths and dish after dish of treats – the salty sourness of the feta cheese on hot, fresh bread, the smooth, creamy texture of the taramasalata, the succulent aubergine in the moussaka and the tangy, sweet lemon of the drizzle cake for pudding. She could almost taste it.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t take this seriously,’ Harry said, his tone cross.

  ‘I am. Really, you have no idea how serious I think this is.’

  Harry reached over the table and took her hand in his. ‘Just picture the scene, Immy. You and me, our own business, in Greece. The sun, the sea, the Soltan Once for my fair skin.’ He laughed. ‘A new start for the both of us.’ He paused. ‘I just know Corfu could make us both happy.’

  The excitement and hope in his voice stabbed at Imogen’s heart. As much as she wanted to grab him and shake him to his senses she couldn’t crush this dream to death today. She would just have to hope another grand, ridiculous plan was going to come along before Harry booked the plane tickets. Did she know anyone, anyone at all, who was selling a boat?

  She smiled and patted Harry’s hand. ‘We’ll see.’

  Harry grinned. ‘That’s as good as a yes, then.’

  3

  Rethymnon, Crete, Greece

  Panos Dimitriou couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He held the telephone away from his ear and moved his eyes to the scene outside his balcony windows. It was a beautiful summer day, a light, warm breeze shifting the translucent gauze hanging over the ajar French doors. There was the Greek coastline, a cruise ship moving sedately across the water, sun glinting from the caps of latent waves. He took a breath, hoping it would extinguish the burning fire pit in his belly.

  ‘Pano, you cannot be angry about this,’ his grandmother, Elpida spoke down the phone line.

  Oh, he could be angry. No, angry didn’t cover it at all, he was furious. How had this happened? The last time he’d visited his grandmother she hadn’t said anything about selling the family restaurant. He knew she had been struggling, had employed a manager but this… this had come right out of the blue. And where was her family loyalty? As that last thought rode through his bones it jarred a little. He adjusted his position in his leather chair and pressed the phone closer to his ear.

  ‘It’s over a year since I’ve seen you,’ Elpida continued.

  Panos let out a snort of disagreement. ‘It’s not a year.’

  ‘It was Easter, last year.’ She sighed. ‘We had such a wonderful time. Throwing pots from the top of the house like we did when you were small.’

  Was it a year ago? Something stabbed his conscience like a mosquito needling its victim. He had been extraordinarily busy. The past six months had been full on. He’d clinched deal after deal, travelling all over Greece, sprinkling much needed employment everywhere he could… and making a small fortune. He looked at the gold watch on his wrist. He was no longer the son of the man who lost everything. He was the man with everything. And that was how it would stay.

  ‘… and we made baklava and you ate so much you were sick.’

  He shook his head. ‘You made baklava, yiayia.’ Sentimentality quickly killed. How could she talk about tradition and missing him when she had sold the family business?

  ‘So, when are you coming to visit?’ Elpida asked with all the finesse of someone who was used to being in charge.

  ‘As soon as you tell me I can take over the restaurant.’ There was little point beating around the bush. The thought someone else was going to make a fortune on a project that should be his was scratching his innards.

  ‘You never had any intention of taking it over,’ she snapped in response. ‘If I thought you had I would not have sold this.’

  ‘Yiayia…’

  ‘Pfft! Don’t yiayia me, Pano. I know what you would do to the restaurant.’ She puffed out a breath. ‘You’d bring a bulldozer onto the beach and knock it down, along with every other business around it.’ She breathed in. ‘And then you’d cover it in steel and mirrors and let people hardly more than children drink so much ouzo they take off all their clothes in public.’

  He shook his head. She had never understood what he did. Even after all his father had put the family through, Elpida still didn’t know why he had to be a success.

  ‘Your father… he would not have done this.’

  It was a low blow to the gut. ‘My father literally threw his life away.’ He tightened his grip on the receiver. ‘And I do not wish to discuss it.’

  ‘Have you called your mother? Your stepfather was nominated for an award.’

  Panos knew that. His stepfather John’s nomination for a prestigious English business award had been all over the financial news. And he hated it. It was almost as if his mother, Sophia, had picked a second husband who came with a guarantee of success after being burned the first time. Each reminder of John’s brilliant business endeavours was like salt being rubbed into sore wounds. And no matter how hard he fought it, he always felt like he was proving himself to cancel out his father’s bad deeds. And sometimes more than that. Sometimes, usually alone – frequently with a bottle of Metaxa brandy – it felt like he had to be the man his father had wanted but failed to be – the man John was.

  ‘Did you tell her you had sold the restaurant?’ he bit back.

  There was another intake of breath before a pause. ‘She was the one who suggested this.’

  He clamped his eyes shut as visions of his mother fought their way into his mind. Her long, red hair, the warm smile.

  ‘I am not getting any younger, Pano,’ Elpida continued.

  He opened his eyes. ‘Which is why you should have sold the restaurant to me.’

  ‘Pfft! And let it become one of those bars you build? In Acharavi?’ She blew out a breath. ‘Never.’ A spate of coughing ensued.

  ‘You are still smoking!’ Panos exclaimed. ‘I knew it!’ He thumped his free hand on the desk and got to his feet.

  ‘What do you care? I never hear from you. I never see you. What do you care if I smoke? What do you care if I collapse right now and never breathe again?’

  ‘Yiayia, that is not true.’ He walked toward the balcony doors, pausing at the threshold as the warmth began to prickle through the sleeves of his cotton shirt.

  ‘What is true is that I am glad to be rid of the restaurant. There was nothing there for me anymore. It wasn’t the place I remember. The people are all gone and the memories went with them. I have no care for dwelling in the past. I only have time for those willing to share some time with me.’ She paused. ‘Who knows how long I have left?’

  He pushed outside, stepping into the Cretan sun, making for the stone wall of the balcony overlooking the town. He raised his face to the sky, letting the heat hit his olive-skinned cheeks as he tried to think of what to say. He loved his grandmother, but he still didn’t understand why she had done this. If she didn’t want to remember the past why was she so opposed to embracing the future and his reinvention business? And why had she sold out to someone else? Surely whoever had bought it was going to have the same idea as him. It couldn’t be profitable as a little local restaurant in these times. It needed to be flashy, something special to attract hordes of tourists rather than just a few couples or families still craving quaint and rustic. Redevelopment was the only sensible option.

  ‘I’m coming home,’ he stated.

  The words almost choked him. That wasn’t what he’d planned to say. Did he really need to go back to Corfu? There were
plenty of other projects requiring his attention. He didn’t want the family business. Maybe he should just let it go. Lose out. Miss opportunity. He gritted his teeth. No, he couldn’t let it lie. And he was damned if he was going to let someone walk in and steal it from him.

  ‘I’ll make up the spare room,’ Elpida answered. ‘Your cousin Risto will be so pleased to see you.’

  He could tell she was smiling.

  4

  Botley Lane, Southampton, England

  Imogen had been forced to cook today. Mary had called in sick, so after the breakfast rush Imogen had raided the store cupboard and got to work on something a little different for the lunchtime crowd. The goat’s cheese and caramelised onion tart and mixed red berry pie hadn’t outsold the jacket potatoes but she’d received plenty of compliments. Luckily no one had seemed to notice the pastry wasn’t homemade. Pastry was her nemesis.

  Juggling the leftovers, Imogen pressed the doorbell of her mum’s home. She was hoping Harry had already left to take Tristan to Scouts. She wanted her mum to herself to tell her all about this restaurant in Corfu.

  The door opened a crack and one blue eye appeared just above the gold-coloured security chain.

  ‘Mum, it’s me,’ Imogen announced. ‘I forgot my key.’

  The eye seemed to refocus like a darts player staring out the bullseye before finally a hand reached up and unlatched the chain. The door opened and there was her mum, wavy blonde hair not brushed, wearing a Marks and Spencer dressing gown and poodle-head slippers on her feet.

  ‘What time is it?’ Grace asked.

  ‘It’s half past six, Mum. Aren’t you feeling very well?’ Imogen asked as she entered the hallway.

  ‘I’m fine. Why?’ Grace snapped.

  ‘No reason. I just… You’re wearing your dressing gown already,’ Imogen said.

  ‘So? I haven’t been out today. It isn’t a crime, you know, to wear comfortable clothes. It’s not like I’ve got a garden party at Buckingham Palace to go to or… anywhere to go to with April.’

  At the mention of her much-loved neighbour and best friend a sob escaped Grace’s lips. And that was where the problem lay, with the lack of hair brushing and getting dressed. April had filled the gap Glen’s death had left. Grace and April had been two widows together, taking trips to the garden centre, coach tours to the bulb fields of Holland and the war graves of France. Inseparable bosom buddies, until cancer had claimed April just last month. Now it was like Grace had been widowed all over again.

  Imogen put the food down on the wooden console table that held the digital analogue-style phone, the flip-up address book and a wooden ashtray Harry had made in Year 9.

  ‘Oh, Mum, come here,’ Imogen said, gathering her mum into an embrace. ‘What would April say if she could see you like this?’

  Grace sniffed hard. ‘She’d tell me off. She always hated this dressing gown.’

  ‘So you know that staying cooped up in here isn’t doing you any good.’

  ‘I don’t want it to do me good,’ Grace retorted.

  ‘Don’t say that, Mum. I mean, I know how much you loved April but you’ve got me and Harry… and Janie and the children,’ Imogen said.

  ‘Who I never see any more because Janie won’t come over.’

  Imogen swallowed. She did have a point. Harry and Janie’s separation had changed things for all of them. Before the couple’s split there had been Sunday lunches, all around the table like when her dad had been alive. April had been part of that too. They’d all eaten their own bodyweight in chicken and taken it in turns to urge Tristan to eat his carrots. Since April had passed Grace had refused to leave the house, even for bingo.

  ‘Listen,’ Imogen began, letting her mum go and turning to the small table. ‘I’ve got a tart and some pie here. Why don’t I warm it up and make some tea and we can have a chat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Grace answered, folding her arms across her chest.

  ‘It’s goat’s cheese and caramelised onion,’ Imogen tempted, holding the cling film-wrapped parcel closer to her mum’s face.

  Grace closed her eyes in defiance.

  ‘It will go to waste if you don’t eat it. You know how April felt about waste. She’d rather have stuffed herself sick with roast potatoes than see one go in the bin.’

  Grace’s eyes slowly opened, then dropped down to the platter. ‘Just a very small piece.’

  * * *

  Imogen poured tea from a pot her dad had brought back from Singapore. The house was still full of so many memories of him. Harry had had their parents’ wedding photo blown up into a sixteen inch by twelve canvas for Grace’s sixtieth birthday and it sat over the wooden mantle above the fireplace. Across the shelves were ornaments and reminders of Glen’s life and travels: a miniature barrel of whisky from a trip to Edinburgh, a silver piskie on a rock from Cornwall, ornate Portuguese plates.

  She turned her attention back to her mum.

  ‘So, Mum, has Harry said anything to you about Corfu?’ she asked.

  ‘Corfu?’ Grace said between chomps. ‘Corfu in Greece?’

  ‘Yes,’ Imogen said. ‘Corfu in Greece.’

  ‘No. Why? Should he have?’

  Imogen steeled herself as her mother stopped eating and set those blue eyes on her.

  ‘What’s going on, Imogen?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Imogen sighed. ‘But… Harry says he’s bought a restaurant in Corfu.’

  She met Grace’s eyes as the ticking of the clock on the wall – an original cuckoo piece Dad had brought back from Switzerland – overrode everything else.

  Grace seemed to grow out of the dressing gown, her untamed hair widening as she straightened her back. ‘What!’

  Caught between being concerned about what Grace was going to say next and being pleased her mum was showing an emotion other than despondency, Imogen opted for spearing a piece of tart with her fork.

  ‘He’s bought a restaurant!’ Grace exclaimed. ‘In Greece?! Oh, Imogen, is this like the sandwich van?’

  Imogen swallowed. The restaurant wasn’t Harry’s first venture into catering. He’d bought a van, filled it with sandwiches and taken it around building sites and offices. By the time he’d hit the heat of midday in August and the refrigeration unit had packed up, the tuna and chicken were well past their best. When everyone fell ill and it made the local paper it was Imogen who had to dispose of the evidence and sell the van on Gumtree.

  ‘Or is it depression again?’ Grace asked, hands going to her mouth, looking like shock was about to set in. ‘It’s that, isn’t it? It’s the side of it that makes him feel he can conquer the world. The bit before he comes crashing back down to Earth and rocks in a corner.’

  Imogen swallowed, remembering a particularly bad episode when Harry had forgotten to pick the children up from school. It was a couple of months after the accident at work and everyone thought he was slowly recovering. Physically he was getting better, mentally it had stirred a lot of things up.

  ‘I don’t know. I thought that too but—’

  ‘But, why would someone thinking straight, someone who used to be an aircraft engineer, buy a restaurant in another country?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he’s done it to try and win Janie back.’ She sighed. ‘It’s been months now and I think he thinks he needs a bold move, something big, to get her attention and… to prove himself.’

  ‘Whatever happened to buying flowers or chocolates and saying you’re sorry?’ Grace tutted, shaking her head. ‘You need to sort this out, Imogen. He listens to you.’

  ‘I’m not sure he does.’

  ‘And you need to speak to Janie,’ Grace went on, shifting in her chair and reaching for the belt of her dressing gown to tighten the fastening. ‘They may not be together at the moment but buying restaurants and moving to the other side of Europe isn’t the route to go down if he wants a chance of making things right again. Surely you can see that.’

  All Imogen saw was that her brother was
Red Bull happy. Seduced by the chance of a new life in another country, battling for his family, wanting her to help him… and here in front of her was her mother – worried and still in her dressing gown from the night before.

  ‘April would say “you need to take him in hand, Grace”.’

  Imogen reached across the table and placed her hand over her mum’s. ‘Mum, don’t get upset. I’ll talk to him and I’ll talk to Janie. I promise.’

  She squeezed Grace’s hand and said a silent prayer that this restaurant transaction was somehow reversible.

  5

  Forsyth Road, Southampton, England

  Imogen sat in her silver Fiesta outside the red-bricked, semi-detached home, torn between looking at the property details in her hand and the lights on behind the net curtains.

  The restaurant became more dilapidated with each glance. It was taunting her now; the broken windows looked more broken and she was sure the weeds had grown in height since that morning. At the very corner of the photo, only just visible if she squinted, was the shape of a small creature she’d convinced herself was a rat. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was nothing that couldn’t be fixed. She would help steady the ship, steer Harry down the right path. Things could be a lot worse. She was in control here and, any day, maybe, if they didn’t have many other applicants, or if all the other emails went into spam, she could get a response about her dream job. A little frisson sparked through her.

  Imogen stepped out of the car. It was a warm July evening and in the dusky sky the sun was just beginning its descent. She walked up the path and stood facing the forest-green front door of her brother’s home. The home he hadn’t been living in for months. Imogen hadn’t visited for a couple of weeks now and guilt rumbled through her. When the separation had first happened – after she had had Harry sleeping in her spare room and drowning his sorrows in banana Nesquik – she was torn between making contact and not. It was Harry and Janie’s relationship not hers. She didn’t want to appear to be interfering but didn’t want to look disinterested either. She also didn’t want to lose touch with the children. She loved Olivia and Tristan so much. Caught between a rock and a hard place she’d called Janie as soon as Harry had decamped to Grace’s. She’d had Janie and the children over for dinner – herby lamb burgers with a beetroot mayo she’d made herself and Häagen Dazs for pudding – and Janie had appeared almost as sad as Harry. But Imogen hadn’t given her opinion, or advice, she’d just been there. And, no matter what, she was going to carry on being there for the sister-in-law she loved. They just needed to tackle Situation Corfu first.