The Greek Escape

by Karen Swan

  ‘I can’t. I need to catch the first ferry back to Athens.’ She wouldn’t look at him; she might give herself away, the anger and the fear intermingling in her blood and worn on her skin like a pox. She busied herself instead with fiddling with the buttons of her Swiss-dot blouse.

  ‘Chloe.’

  The way he said her name . . . It was both a command and a plea. Her fingers stopped moving as a shiver ran up her spine. She closed her eyes for a second, feeling confused by the way her instincts reacted to him. He thrilled her, he intimidated her, he delighted her, he frightened her. She managed to throw a non-committal half-smile over her shoulder, not making eye contact. ‘I’m sorry. I really do have to go.’

  She walked over to the chest of drawers and pulled her tiny capsule wardrobe from it, keeping her back to him as she rolled the pieces down and pushed them into her handbag; she could buy a travel bag at the airport.

  ‘Do you though?’ She heard the first trace of suspicion in his voice.

  ‘I told you last night. My flight is first thing.’

  ‘So why am I getting the distinct vibes you’re running? Do you think this was a mistake?’

  She closed her eyes again, grateful she could hide her reactions. Now he wanted to play hurt? The victim? ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Look at me.’

  She threw another half-glance his way; he was sitting up in bed, the sheet fallen down to his hips and revealing the dark hair on his chest, that incredible physique. He had an animal physicality that was almost compelling to watch. She looked away again. It was more than enough, far too much.

  ‘I mean properly. Look at me.’

  She turned with a sigh, rolling her bag in her hands as she forced herself to make eye contact with him at last. In spite of everything, regardless of what games he was playing here, why did he have to look like that? Why couldn’t he have just stayed asleep? She’d been so quiet; it had taken her twenty minutes just to get her first foot on the floor, sliding out as silently as she could from beneath the sheet.

  ‘What’s really going on? Why are you running? And don’t say you’ve got a flight to catch.’

  She steeled her nerve, knowing she could do this. ‘Joe, you’re my client.’

  ‘I realize that.’

  ‘So this . . . this is wrong. It should never have happened.’

  His eyes narrowed, not believing her, refusing to accept her account. ‘Why not? People meet through their work all the time. Clearly it’s not an ideal scenario; I get that this makes things tricky, for you particularly, but if it’s not an issue for me, why should it be for you? This is between us. Two consenting adults. It has nothing to do with the company you work for.’

  ‘They wouldn’t see it like that.’ Tom. He definitely wouldn’t. ‘It was completely unprofessional of me. I can’t believe—’ She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling the emotions close in on her. What had she done? How could she have done this?

  ‘Chloe—’ He moved forward in the bed, coming towards her.

  ‘No!’ Her tone stopped him dead in his tracks. ‘This was a mistake.’ She enunciated every word with crystal clarity; she didn’t want to be misunderstood. ‘When I get back to New York, I’ll transfer you to my colleague – her name is Serena Witney.’

  ‘I don’t want Serena. I want you.’ She heard the petulance in his voice then; the arrogance of a man used to having everything – and everyone – he ever wanted. There was no ‘no’ in his world. But then he’d said exactly the same about Poppy too; he’d wanted her and only her in the beginning, and now look at him.

  He saw her expression, the determination in her eyes. He sat back again. ‘Okay then, fine – put me on to Serena. You’re right – it will simplify things; technically I won’t be your client.’

  And . . . ? Did he think that ‘solved’ the problem? She stared at him, open-mouthed. He thought this was a negotiation? She knew exactly how he wanted this to play out – an easy affair; she would be the ‘other woman’ all over again and history would just keep on repeating itself.

  Yanking her gaze from his, she looked into her bag. Her passport was still there. She could go. She looked back at him. ‘Joe, we won’t see each other again. Last night was . . . what it was. Nothing more.’

  It was his turn to look stunned now as he saw she was really doing this; she was leaving him high and dry in her own bed. She bet he couldn’t believe it; she bet no woman had ever done this to him before and, for a fleeting moment, as their eyes locked, she felt gripped by uncertainty – memories of yesterday, of last night, propelling her back to him. But then she remembered his whispers in the early hours. The plan. Some deal he had going on? She didn’t even care. She had come to Greece to escape the lies, to be rid of men like him and Tom.

  ‘Goodbye, Joe.’

  ‘Chloe—’

  She slipped from the room without a backward glance, emerging moments later onto the street, her footsteps on the cobbles the only sound to be heard as even the donkeys slept on.

  New York

  She stood on the corner of Madison and East 86th and stared into the traffic as the cab pulled away, her body feeling physically assaulted by the wall of noise as the sharp staccatos of hydraulic drills mixed with car horns and shouts, squealing brakes and whirling sirens. She felt tiny, insignificant; steel tower blocks thrusting skywards all around her, dissecting the sky into small blue parcels. It was all so different to the quietly billowing, tented sky of Hydra in which birds soared – gulls chasing the fishing boats, pigeons crossing from red roof to red roof, sparrows flitting greedily around the cafes and market.

  It was another beautiful day, the temperature in the high eighties, but the heat was as different here as the sky – more intense, oven-like. Her clothes didn’t stand out in the same way as her Manhattan outfit had in Hydra though; a girl in blue shorts and a white dot blouse? She could be on her way back from lunch with friends, or en route to a creative media meeting downtown, shopping at Bergdorf’s or heading for the Jitney, ready for her weekend decampment to the Hamptons. Let the weekend commence! Certainly nothing indicated she had come straight off a plane; even the ruck-sack over her shoulder, barely filled with her feather-light holiday wardrobe, gave no sign that she was freshly returned to the city that had become her asylum.

  She had intended to go into the office for a couple of hours; with just a few hours left of the working week, it was the very least she could do – offer to pick up the slack. But she couldn’t seem to make her feet move.

  She didn’t particularly care about whether she still had a job to come back to – she certainly didn’t care whether Alexander’s client had got his perfect picture of the Taj Mahal, or if the medic for Hawaii had signed the non-disclosure agreement, or if Rosaria had found a head to roll. Right now, she couldn’t seem to care about much. It wasn’t that her heart was broken; Joe, with all his sexy charm and money, couldn’t do that, simply because he couldn’t break something that was already smashed – Tom had got there first and seen to that. But she did feel changed. Empty somehow, as though she’d been bled of trust. Hope.

  She sent a text to Elle. ‘Back! See you tonight?’

  Less than a minute later, her friend replied in emojis: dancing woman and cocktail glass.

  It made her smile. It made her feet move. She could always rely on her girlfriends. Poppy would have rallied round her too . . . if she could.

  Poppy.

  She began to walk, but not towards the office. It was twenty blocks to the Mount Sinai hospital from here and as she walked through the doors, she felt an odd sense of dislocation. Had it really only been five days since she had sat here with Poppy’s mother? Three since Poppy had woken up? It felt like a month ago to her. She had been in a different time zone, living a different life, with a different man—

  She shunted him from her thoughts with a cold determination. No. No brooding. No obsessing. She was done.

  Knowing exactly where to go, she travelled up in the ele
vators, feeling conspicuously empty-handed amongst the other visitors laden with flowers and gifts . . . She got out on the eighth floor and walked towards the Intensive Care Unit.

  ‘I’ve come to see Poppy Langham,’ she said quietly at the desk, peering down at the banks of paperwork spread on the counters.

  A plump, dark-haired, dark-eyed nurse looked up at her. ‘I’m afraid it’s family only.’

  She didn’t even hesitate. She was done with this too. ‘Yes, I know. I’m her cousin.’

  ‘And visiting hours have just ended.’

  ‘Please, I’ve come straight from the airport. I’ve flown in from London. Even if it’s just five minutes. Then I can come back later?’ She swallowed, lying fluently. ‘We’re really close. I know it would lift her to see me.’

  The nurse gave her a quick once-over: similar ages; English accent; the airline tag on her bag . . . ‘Fine, but just for five minutes. She’s in Room 822. I’ll take you there myself; as you know, she’s still under protection.’

  ‘Yes.’ The thought of it made her feel sick that Poppy was still a target. How could anybody want to hurt her?

  She followed the nurse, glancing through the slatted blinds at every window, at the patients motionless in their beds, hooked up to IV lines and monitors, charts on hooks detailing their progress and prognosis.

  . . . 820 . . . 821 . . .

  A black-uniformed police officer sitting in a chair beside the door stood up at their approach.

  ‘Hey, Charlie,’ the nurse said to him. ‘This is Poppy’s cousin from England. I’ve said she can have five minutes.’

  The police officer looked across at her. ‘Name?’

  ‘Chloe Marston.’

  He made a note of it and nodded. ‘I’ll be watching from out here.’

  She swallowed. Did he really think that she might do something? Was everybody under suspicion? ‘Of course.’

  ‘Five minutes,’ the nurse said, before walking off.

  Charlie opened the door for her and Chloe felt her heart miss a beat at what she saw. It was one thing to know what had happened; even to hear the details of it from Jack, via Xan. But actually seeing Poppy lying there . . .

  She shuffled in, already regretting her decision to come, lying her way in. She had wanted to see her friend, to talk, to confide, to unload, as though she’d expected to find Poppy propped up with pillows, surrounded by flowers and chocolates, daytime TV on and a pair of Jermyn Street pyjamas, ready for a girlie gossip. Instead, she was inert, almost invisible on the semi-recumbent bed. She had been wafer thin to start with but now her bones – her knees, her hips – could be seen poking through the sheets; her blue eyes seemed three times the size in her face, her shrunken frame distorted further by the grotesquely oversized casts on her left arm and leg. And her head was wrapped, top and bottom, in bandages so that only her mouth, nose, cheeks and eyes were visible.

  A small sound escaped Chloe before she even knew it was coming and Poppy’s eyes opened to slits. Then properly. She moved her head up to vertical as Chloe pigeon-stepped into the room. Did Poppy even want her here?

  But her good arm rose up, outstretched towards her and with a gasp of relief, Chloe rushed over. ‘Oh, Pops,’ she whispered, her eyes flying over her frantically, as though trying to absorb the trauma in one sweep, to get it over and done with. Seen. Understood.

  Poppy gave one long blink in reply, squeezing her hand weakly.

  Carefully, she looked for somewhere to perch on the edge of the bed, terrified of hurting her or catching on the equipment. ‘God it’s so good to see you. I’ve been desperate to come but they wouldn’t let us in.’

  Poppy nodded and it was then that Chloe saw the wire around her lower face.

  ‘I lied,’ Chloe whispered, pulling an aghast face, trying to joke. ‘I told them I was your cousin . . . That’s okay, isn’t it?’

  To her delight, Poppy managed a sort of wink and smile.

  ‘How . . . how are you feeling now?’ It was a ridiculous question, she knew that. How did she suppose Poppy was feeling after being mown down by a car, left for dead, enduring brain surgery and now lying around with broken bones and a wired jaw? ‘Are you in pain?’

  A slight shrug.

  ‘Do you want me to call a nurse?’

  Fractional shake of the head.

  ‘Are you tired? Do you need to sleep? Should I go?’ Perhaps this was a mistake; maybe she shouldn’t have come. Now she understood why access had been so severely restricted. This wasn’t a game.

  Another fractional shake of the head and she felt a squeeze of her hand. Then Poppy swivelled her head, looking towards a small white board with a black pen on it.

  ‘You want that?’ Chloe asked, reaching for it.

  She had to hold it for her; one of Poppy’s legs was in a cast and the other . . . well, she was no doubt too weak to bend it herself. She waited, holding it, as Poppy wrote something, the effort visible on her face.

  When she had finished, Chloe turned the board towards herself and read it; the words were spidery and weak, barely legible. Suntan? Tell.

  ‘Oh.’ Chloe felt the positivity drain from her. What could she say? She couldn’t burden Poppy with her disastrous fling with a client, the client Poppy herself had lined up – and now she had sabotaged it. She felt Poppy squeeze her hand, watching her, wanting to hear. ‘I just went to Greece for a few days; that new client of yours wanted a holiday home on one of the islands so I was helping him scope out the options and get it set up.’

  Poppy squinted, quizzical.

  ‘You know, that Joe Lincoln guy?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Tallish, athletic-looking, designer beard. Dark-brown hair and eyes. The engineer? You had lined him up as a new client?’

  She waited as Poppy began to write on the board again. Not possessing the strength to wipe it clean, she simply wrote in a corner, the spidery letters overlapping the previous message. Poppy handed it over to her, watching as she read it. No Joe.

  Chloe summoned a faint smile, but fear was what she felt. She knew a level of amnesia was to be expected, having googled the mid- and long-term effects of head injuries. Poppy may have survived the operation and woken from the coma but that didn’t mean she would escape entirely unscathed. There would always be repercussions from such a major trauma and some temporary – or even permanent – memory loss would be the least of it. She easily could have been left with motor function problems, or worse, brain damage.

  Chloe tried not to stare at the wire looping her friend’s head, taking her hand gently instead and squeezing it. She didn’t want to frighten Poppy. ‘Well, anyway, don’t worry, it’s all in hand. And I’m back now – home to reality and keeping everyone else on track. Poor Pelham is still tying himself up in knots trying to win back Clarissa. They’re in Washington State at the moment at a wedding. Who knows – maybe he’ll get on one knee himself after the “I do”s.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘As for Rosaria, honestly, I don’t know how you put up with her; she’s so rude. So, someone put lilies in her dressing room at the Scala this week – in spite of my reminder call beforehand – and now she’s absolutely freaking, saying someone’s head has got to roll. I mean, hello? Why so vindictive?’

  She slumped slightly, running out of steam. It was hard keeping up an entirely one-ended conversation.

  ‘And Alexander’s in India this week – I had to get the scaffolding for the cleaning works around the Taj Mahal taken down so that his investor contact could take a picture, can you believe it? What am I saying? Of course you can.’ She patted Poppy’s hand in solidarity. ‘He’s pretty wound up at the moment now that the One Stop deal’s officially been shot down; he’s getting a new group of investors in, I think, but it wasn’t his preferred choice and he’s been in a pretty filthy mood whenever he’s called,’ she sighed wearily. ‘But, on the plus side, his J Class yacht has arrived in the South of France and he seems happier about that. He’s flying there right now, actually.’

&
nbsp; Poppy gave an interested nod, although the prospect of moving freely, flying halfway across the world just to see a boat, probably seemed a lifetime away from here.

  ‘He was telling me he bought one of the only three original models left in the world and had it completely restored. Did you know?’

  Poppy nodded weakly.

  ‘Of course you do. I bet you found it for him. Anyway, it’s entered for the Saint-Tropez regatta next week so hopefully that’ll chill him out a bit.’

  Poppy took the board, feebly rubbing away the previous message with her gown. She began writing but the door opened and Charlie stood there again with the nurse.

  ‘Time’s up, I’m afraid. Your cousin needs to rest now,’ the nurse said.

  Chloe nodded, turning back to Poppy. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, okay?’ she said quietly. She wished she could kiss her cheek, hug her, but everywhere on her body was broken and fragile; she was like a robin held together with sticky tape. The board had fallen from her grasp as Chloe had turned away and now lay flat on her lap. Chloe lifted it – mol, she read upside down. Huh? Frowning quizzically, she put it down on the side table. ‘Rest now. You can tell me tomorrow.’

  Poppy’s eyes grew bigger and Chloe felt her heart rate quicken at the sight of her, stranded there – everyone coming and going whilst she was immobile and silent.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back tomorrow, I promise.’ She got up and walked across the room; turning at the door, she winked. ‘Bye, cuz.’

  Chloe had barely set foot out of the elevator before Xan had run over and accosted her, diverting her over to the kitchen, in the opposite direction to Tom and Jack’s offices.

  ‘Girl, you are in a whole heap of shit,’ he hissed. ‘Where’ve you been? I thought you were getting back yesterday.’

  ‘I got delayed,’ she shrugged. ‘Joe wanted me to help him move his stuff in so we had to wait for it to come in from France. Why? What’s happened?’