The Greek Escape

by Karen Swan

  ‘They?’ She gave him a knowing look. ‘You don’t include yourself in that group?’

  He gestured to the tiny taverna. ‘Does this look high-maintenance to you?’

  ‘But we came here by private jet. On the turn of a sixpence. That’s high-maintenance; it isn’t normal.’

  ‘Define “normal”,’ he said, tearing off a hunk of stillwarm bread and dipping it in the olive oil.

  ‘For people like me?’

  He shrugged as he popped the bread in his mouth, and looked at her, waiting. He had put his t-shirt back on as they’d come into the taverna, which she personally thought was a shame.

  ‘Okay then. Well, I guess I’d say, for most people, normal is eating the same thing for breakfast every morning; it’s having to choose between affording a festival or a holiday. It’s only ever buying second-hand cars and living to a budget. It’s having to go without more times than with. It’s working till you’re sixty-five.’

  ‘You make it sound so fun,’ he quipped.

  ‘Don’t mock! You asked and I’m telling you – that’s what normal is.’

  ‘And I agree,’ he shrugged.

  ‘. . . You do?’ The scepticism rang out in her voice.

  He looked at her interestedly. ‘Of course. But if you ask me, normal isn’t as mundane as you’re making out; some of us might say it’s a luxury – getting to live in a house that’s a home and not an asset; climbing into bed next to your wife every night instead of having to get on a plane. It’s having home-cooked food that someone who loves you has made for you, not the latest star chef. Pets. Kids. The school run. Weekly shopping trips. The whole caboodle.’

  She stared at him. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She frowned, losing the thread of his argument – which side of ‘normal’ was he on? This was supposed to be a debate, not an agreement. ‘But that’s not real for you. That’s not your reality.’

  ‘I guess we’ve all got to have something to aspire to,’ he shrugged, reaching for an olive.

  She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not. Was he being for real? His sense of humour was so dry, so spare, sometimes she couldn’t quite tell. Sometimes she even felt like they switched roles and she was the client, the one who was indulged, pampered, spoilt . . .

  The waitress brought over their meals – grilled sea bass, roasted tomatoes, sautéed potatoes, wilted spinach.

  ‘I feel so virtuous,’ she said, looking at it.

  ‘That’s a shame.’ And when she looked up at him in surprise. ‘Joke!’ he said, quickly holding his hands up in surrender. ‘. . . It was too good to miss.’

  She chuckled. The boundaries between them had begun to shift, as she had known they would. It simply wasn’t possible to be in the exclusive company of someone else, twenty-four-seven, and not begin to drop her guard.

  She checked her phone for messages again but the signal was patchy, to put it mildly. ‘Well, the plane landed in Athens an hour ago, on schedule. So the boat should be almost loaded and they’ll be en route here shor—’ she said, spearing a tomato. Hot juice squirted out of it, straight onto her white vest. ‘Oh my God!’ she moaned, dabbing at it frantically with her napkin, but the damage was already done. ‘I can’t believe that just happened!’

  She looked up to find Joe grinning. He had a particular way of smiling more with his eyes than his mouth. ‘I can.’

  ‘I look like a bloody toddler,’ she complained, dunking the corner of the napkin into her water glass and trying again to remove the mark. But she only succeeded in making it look more noticeable as the water stain bled through the fabric. ‘Oh great. And now I look like I’ve been shot too!’ She sat back in the chair, her arms falling forlornly to her sides.

  ‘Take it off,’ he shrugged, resuming eating.

  She looked horrified. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’ He glanced behind her. ‘Everyone else is in their swimwear.’

  She turned around and looked at the other diners. Several of the other women were in just their bikinis, the paper napkins spread beneath their legs to stop them from sticking to the chairs.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t have any,’ she murmured. No way was she sitting here in her bra.

  He sighed. ‘Chloe, it’s a beach. A bikini is simply waterproof underwear. It doesn’t matter. Nobody cares.’

  Nobody? Well, when he put it like that . . . And it was true her taste veered to the sportier styles. It wasn’t like she’d be sitting here in a lace balconette.

  Reluctantly, she peeled off the wet vest. She could feel his eyes gallantly staying resolutely glued to his plate as she arranged it over the railing to dry in the sun, and they ate in silence for several minutes.

  ‘So, you were saying – the boat’s leaving Athens imminently; what’s the time frame?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, because there’s so much cargo, we couldn’t get one of the high-speed craft, so they’ve said it’s a sailing time of three and a half hours to here. Then of course they’ve got to unload it all and get it over to the house.’

  ‘You’ve booked the donkeys?’ he asked, reaching for his beer.

  ‘I’ve booked pretty much every donkey on the island,’ she said.

  He looked pleased. ‘So we’re talking, what – six o’clock tonight? Thereabouts?’

  ‘Pretty much. The head donkey guy’s going to text me.’

  ‘So what shall we do for the rest of the day, then?’ he mused, looking out to sea.

  Please no more walking. ‘Lie on the beach? Sleep? Sleep sounds good to me.’

  ‘Yeah, we could,’ he said, his eyes on the water. ‘Or we could get a boat.’

  ‘Boat? What kind of a boat?’ Oh God, what now?

  ‘I saw a yacht for hire in the harbour earlier.’

  ‘Oh did you?’ she asked. She had seen it too. A stunning glossy navy-blue hulled schooner with blonde-wood decks and a mast that seemed to reach to the top of the encircling hill.

  ‘Yeah, in fact, I made a point of getting the number,’ he said, rummaging in his shorts pocket and pushing it across the table to her. ‘Shall we hire it for the afternoon? They could bring it round here to pick us up.’

  ‘Well I guess that’s one way of avoiding the walk back,’ she quipped and he cracked a smile at her flippancy as he continued to eat. ‘As I was saying,’ she murmured, beginning to dial. ‘Not normal.’

  The yacht, Olympia, all forty metres of her, prompted a crowd on its feet as she nosed round the headland. Chloe heard the murmurs of delight as the other beachgoers sat up on their towels, turned round on their lilos and stood in the shallows as it became clear she was dropping anchor.

  ‘There she is,’ Joe said, just a few metres higher than her. ‘God, she’s a beauty.’

  It was another few moments before Chloe had scrambled up the rocks to be able to see for herself (given that she was now stripped down to just her underwear, she was insisting he went ahead). This was Joe’s idea of ‘taking it easy’ until Olympia arrived – climbing on the rocks like they were children. It was a fun, if unexpected, pursuit for a multimillionaire engineer. But then, he seemed to defy convention and expectation at every turn. She couldn’t get a clear handle on him. Some moments, he seemed so utterly normal – eating in street food markets and little tavernas, wearing jeans and t-shirts like the masses; the next he was dropping money-bombs, chartering jets and yachts like they were pedalos.

  ‘Oh wow,’ she breathed, taking in Olympia’s sinuous curves and sleek lines. Joe had looked her up online as Chloe had made the booking: she had fifteen-metre overhangs, two deckhouses and two cockpits, with one of each reserved for the client.

  They sat on the rocks and watched along with the rest of the beach as the boat turned in a stately glide, her prow facing out to sea.

  ‘We should probably get back to the beach, then,’ she said, glancing across at their pile of clothes still sitting on the sand; naturally they hadn’t packed towels. Joe had said he wanted to
dive off the rocks; she was planning a much more gentle jump in, holding her nose – losing her knickers was not on the agenda. ‘They’ll send in a crew with the tender in a moment and it wouldn’t do for us not to be there.’

  ‘Yeah. Or we could swim out to her ourselves.’

  She looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Why not? We wanted a swim anyway and she’s not that far out.’

  ‘Define “not that far”.’ It was going to be like the ‘normal’ conversation all over again.

  He glanced across at her, grinning. His teeth seemed extra white against his dark beard, his golden skin. God, he was—

  ‘What about our clothes, though?’ she asked, pulling herself back. ‘We can’t leave them on the beach!’

  ‘That’s fine. They can send the crew in to get those.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He had an answer for everything, she knew. There would be no getting out of this. She looked out at the yacht again. It had to be a good three hundred metres away.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, rising to a stand, his muscles flexed as he found his balance on the rock and looked down, checking his entry. And then, without a second thought, he pinned his arms above his head and soared through the air. It was like watching an eagle go into a stoop, everything perfectly pitched, taut, braced. He entered with minimal splash, surfacing a second later and throwing his head back, droplets flying through the air like a crystal rainbow. ‘Come in!’ he yelled up, looking like a god. ‘The water’s lovely.’

  ‘Chloe?’

  ‘Hi!’ She felt a rush of relief to hear Alexander’s voice, that he’d been able to catch her. She had cleared her phone of Tom’s messages as quickly as she’d been able to yesterday, but she had still been niggled by the fear that she had missed a call from him and that he hadn’t been able to get through; he didn’t usually go more than a couple of days without ringing in and it had been four now since they’d spoken last. Not to mention, after what Xan had told her yesterday morning, she had concerns that Serena might have tried to muscle in on Poppy’s patch and poach her star client. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Where are you? The ring tone is different.’ His tone was brusque.

  ‘I’m in Greece.’

  ‘On holiday?’ He sounded stressed.

  She looked across at Joe. He was stretched out on his stomach on the sundeck, reading a Robert Harris thriller and wearing a new pair of khaki swimming shorts with a neon rainbow stitched across the bum.

  She got up from her shaded spot on the sunken sofa and walked across to the handrails, looking down into the dappled waters. Sunlight flitted off the refracted surface like electric fairies, tiny silver fish whipping past in tight shoals. A shallow ripple of foam looked like lace against the hull as Olympia cut through the sea like a knife through hot butter. She extended a leg and dipped a bare toe into the sunlight. ‘No, helping a client, but I’m still absolutely here for you too. What’s up?’

  ‘I’m in India.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ve brought a client – one of the investors I was telling you about; he wants to see the Taj Mahal but the idiot concierge in the hotel here has just told me it is covered in scaffolding.’

  In the background, she could hear a man’s voice: ‘But it is being cleaned, sir. An eighteen-month programme.’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Alexander demanded. ‘Eighteen months! I can’t wait eighteen months! I told my client I’d show him the Taj Mahal.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Chloe agreed calmly. ‘It’s a preposterous suggestion.’

  ‘Prewhat?’ he snapped.

  ‘Nothing. Listen, I’m on it. Can you stay there another night? I know it’s inconvenient but I’ll have it all down for you by tomorrow.’ She pinched her temples with one hand; what was she saying?

  ‘Fine.’ He still sounded grumpy. ‘But tell them the poles must be moved out of sight. I don’t want them on the ground, making the place look messy.’ His accent was in full colours today.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll call you back in an hour to confirm.’

  He hung up and she let out an exasperated groan. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she muttered under her breath.

  Or so she thought.

  ‘I heard that.’

  She looked up to find Joe padding across the deck to her, an utterly amused look on his face. ‘Somebody being unreasonable?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. Too quickly.

  He smirked, clearly not believing her, making his way over to the bar. ‘Want to tell me what it is?’

  She watched him go. It was fast becoming normal to see him half-naked. ‘I can’t. Client confidentiality.’

  ‘Ah. You take that seriously, do you?’ He opened a bottle of Watenshi gin, flashing a glance her way.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, almost insulted that her professional integrity should be questioned.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment and she watched as he poured the gin over crushed ice in two tumblers, then some tonic, before tossing in a piece of pink grapefruit. It was their third of the day – not to mention their beers at lunch – and it was only just gone three o’clock. Currently, they were off the coast of Poros.

  ‘Good,’ he said finally, bringing the drinks over and handing one to her, his gaze seeming to snag upon her momentarily before he made his way back to the deck and his book.

  She cast a quick look down at herself in the olive-green bikini; her swimwear – like his new, dry shorts – had come with the yacht, a whole drawerful of it in fact: Melissa Odabash, Heidi Klein, Manuel Canovas, Princesse Tam Tam . . . all brand new and tagged.

  She glanced back at Joe, startled to find him already looking over at her, his gaze inscrutable behind his sunglasses as he took a sip of his drink. Without a word, he went back to his book.

  Heart pounding a little harder than she would have liked in such a revealing bikini, she took her phone back into the salon; unlike him, she was here to work, not play. She had some phone calls to make.

  He had fallen asleep when she came back out forty-five minutes later, his Wayfarers dropped onto his book, his left cheek pressed against his hands. He looked different when he slept, that guarded reserve that he wore most of the time shed like a snake’s skin. She took in the long stroke of his eyelashes, the small parting between his pinkish-brown lips, the crease between his shoulder blades as the muscles there nudged against each other . . . he had somehow managed to clip back the beard so that it was more of a stubble again. He was a stunning-looking man. Elle had had the right idea wanting his number and that was without even knowing the package that came with him too – that plane, this boat, money no object, a lifestyle where nothing was out of reach . . . It was a crying shame he was her client, she thought to herself, settling herself down on her tummy on the white, navy-piped towelling cushions too and feeling the heat on her skin, closing her eyes for just a minute . . .

  She opened her eyes and, for a moment, didn’t know what she was seeing. Another eye, up close, doesn’t look as it does from a distance and she could see the pupil shrink and bloom, making the cocoa-coloured iris seem to sway and dance. He was watching her now, his hands still folded under his cheeks as though they were lovers in bed, eye to eye, legs interlinked . . .

  She felt the colour creep up her cheeks.

  ‘The jet lag,’ she murmured as though it was an explanation, an apology, pulling herself away and up onto her elbows and breaking the eyelock.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Have you been awake for long?’ She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer to that.

  ‘A while.’ He shifted position, rolling onto his side slightly, resting his head in his left hand. ‘Who’s Tom?’

  ‘What?’ The word snapped out of her as though on a catapult.

  He watched her. ‘You said the name when you were asleep.’

  ‘I did?’ He nodded. ‘Oh . . . He’s no one.’

  He arched an eyebrow, watching her as she moved
herself up to a sitting position and made a point of looking at the craggy parched coastline off the starboard side. ‘Does he wear a bow tie?’

  She ignored the question; it was none of his business and he knew it. Those drinks had gone to both their heads and he was overstepping the mark – watching her sleep, pressing her about her ex; what did he think he was doing? Did he think she came with the membership fee? ‘What time is it?’

  There was a pause. ‘Almost four.’

  She saw that they were no longer cruising but had dropped anchor in a small bay, pale rocky cliffs encircling them, the sun a white blaze that bleached the sky; the water here was dappled green and blue, domed rocks far below them sprouting grassy seaweed. It looked so tempting, enticing. She wanted to dive in. They both needed to cool down.

  He watched her, reading her mind. ‘Another swim?’

  ‘Oh, I should probably check my messages,’ she said, pulling back. She needed to be sure everything was being followed to the letter in India, that her order for Pelham’s gift was being delivered in Seattle; and she couldn’t afford to miss any more calls. ‘It’s so busy at the moment; I don’t want to let anyone down.’

  ‘Well you’ll let me down if you don’t,’ he said as she grabbed her phone and began to scroll.

  ‘I do have other clients, you know,’ she said, shooting him a look from under her lashes.

  ‘But I’m the most important.’

  She laughed, a mocking smile on her lips. He was so cocky. If he only knew who her other clients were: nobody but nobody could eclipse the might of Alexander Subocheva. ‘Oh, you think so?’ she scoffed lightly.

  ‘I know so.’ And taking the phone from her hand, he tossed it onto the nearby sofa, out of reach.

  ‘Joe!’ She scrambled up to get it but he caught her by the wrist.

  ‘Come on. In!’ he said, tugging her over to the side of the boat.

  ‘Joe, no!’ she laughed, pulling back into a squat. ‘It would be lovely, really, but I have other clients; I have to work.’

  ‘This is work,’ he said, shocking her with a sudden wink – and then jumping overboard.

  She screamed as she was pulled over too, the drop in her stomach as she fell instantly extinguished by the cool embrace of the water. She surfaced, spluttering, pushing her hair back from her face, to find him grinning.