It was the middle of the afternoon when they entered a tiny square surrounded by pretty white houses with shutters and doors open to the sunshine. In the far right corner were four workmen who were cutting lengths of wood, their sleeves rolled up. As soon as Alice and Stella entered the square, they downed tools and just stood staring. At first, Stella smiled. She always assumed that all male attention was directed at her but, as Alice walked ahead, it became obvious whom they were looking at.
‘Oh my God!’ Stella exclaimed. ‘They’re looking at you!’
‘What?’ Alice turned around.
‘Those men – they’re all staring at you! What are you doing?’
‘What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m just walking.’
‘Well, you must be doing something!’ Stella grabbed her by the shoulders and stared at her face before scanning her up and down.
‘Stella – I’m not doing anything!’
‘Greek men are weird! They must go for dowdy women or something,’ Stella shouted after her as she walked away.
They left the little square and walked up a flight of steps which wound their way up a hill, finally coming out at a walkway which overlooked the whole of Kethos Town.
Alice put the shopping bags down at her feet and gazed out at the view before them. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
Stella gave a great yawn.
‘You look tired,’ Alice said, trying not to look at her watch.
‘I’m exhausted!’ Stella said. ‘You know, I think we should get back to the villa and catch a few rays before evening.’
Alice nodded. ‘Good idea.’
‘Come on, then.’
‘Oh, I thought you meant you.’
‘Who else is going to carry my bags? I can’t manage on my own,’ Stella said, her face suddenly very long and pitiful.
‘Of course you can,’ Alice said. ‘Anyway, I want to stay in town a bit longer.’
Stella didn’t look happy. ‘There’s something wrong with you, Alice.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you’re not right. You’re up to something and I don’t like it.’
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ Alice said. ‘I’m not up to anything. Now, stop worrying and go home.’ She picked up the two carrier bags she’d been in charge of and handed them to a shocked Stella. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Her sister made a huge show of struggling with her three bags and Alice shook her head, waiting until she was completely out of sight with no possibility of her returning. She then ran all the way back to the little boutique and bought the violet dress that she’d tried on that morning. She also bought a dress in cream, threaded with gold and even treated herself to a new handbag that was dainty and pretty and then she ran towards the bus stop.
She couldn’t remember what time the last bus left but, when she got to the stop, she saw that she was too late. The last bus had gone and wouldn’t have got her to the Villa Argenti in time anyway so Alice ran to the one place in town where she knew she could find a taxi.
The driver was absurdly careful on the mountain roads and Alice was desperate to tell him to take a few more chances and put his foot down. He also spent more time staring at her in the rear-view mirror than he did looking at the road, which was most unnerving.
She kept looking at her watch. They weren’t going to make it, were they? She’d told Milo she’d be there and she hadn’t shown up. What was he going to think of her?
Finally, they took the turn to the villa but, when they reached the end of the long driveway, Alice saw that the gates were closed. Milo had gone home for the day and she didn’t even know where that home was.
Chapter 14
Milo had started the day with a spring in his step. He’d dropped Tiana off at school and kissed her smartly on the forehead even though he knew she hated such displays in front of all her friends but, this morning, he couldn’t help himself and she didn’t seem to mind.
‘You’re going to see her again today, aren’t you?’ Tiana asked.
‘I might,’ he told her.
Tiana had laughed and he’d definitely seen a little spring in her step too as she’d walked into the playground.
He’d driven to work that morning like a little comet tearing around the mountain roads, startling the local goats, the image of Alice constantly before him. He’d never been so excited in his life. What was happening? Why was she so different? He’d had plenty of girlfriends in the past but he’d never felt like this before.
He’d maintained his sense of excitement and anticipation for a number of hours too, rushing through his jobs around the garden with unusual alacrity. He normally took his time over things – luxuriating in each little task that brought him into contact with his beloved plants and flowers but his mind was in a different place today.
What was he going to say to her when she arrived? He’d been so calm and confident with her on the beach yesterday but, with each passing hour, he was becoming a nervous wreck. What if he became tongue-tied and ruined his chances? He shook his head.
‘Stop worrying!’ he said to the middle of a large geranium. ‘You’ll be fine.’
But the spring in his step had soon turned into a heavy plod and he felt as if his boots were great boulders upon his feet as the day dragged on with no sight of Alice. That’s when his imagination had started to torment him. Maybe she was with somebody else today – skinny-dipping on another beach with another man. Or she’d taken a boat trip with one of the millionaires who occasionally moored their yachts in the harbour and preyed on pretty tourists.
Milo had never checked his watch so much in his life. He didn’t need to, of course, because he could tell the time accurately from the position of the sun and the shadows in the garden, but he couldn’t relax. He didn’t dare leave the main paths around the garden for fear of Alice missing him if she did show up and he kept stopping what he was doing so he could look out for her, finding endless reasons to walk to the entrance gate whenever the bus from Kethos Town was due.
Finally, he stopped. She wasn’t coming, was she? What he’d thought had happened on the beach the day before and what had actually happened weren’t the same thing at all. He’d thought there’d been something between them but perhaps there hadn’t been anything more than a little light flirtation.
What was he going to tell Tiana? She would be poised for news of his day and what did he have to tell her? That her big brother was a loser when it came to love?
Then, to make the day even worse, Sabine turned up. She had climbed a tree and hopped over a wall, scraping her knee on the way down and expecting him to clean her up.
‘You’re not a child any more,’ he told her, as he cleaned the dirt away with dampened cotton wool.
‘But you always treat me like a child,’ she told him.
He’d walked into that one, hadn’t he? ‘You shouldn’t be climbing over walls at your age,’ he went on. ‘It’s not proper. It’s not ladylike. Besides, the main gate is open.’
‘But I wanted to fly over the wall like Romeo in Romeo and Juliet,’ she said with a romantic sigh.
Milo rolled his eyes.
‘You weren’t here yesterday, were you?’ Sabine went on.
‘No, I wasn’t,’ Milo said bluntly.
‘Where were you?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
Sabine pouted. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’
Milo sighed. What was it with all these questions? First Tiana and now Sabine. Couldn’t a man enjoy a little privacy when it came to his love life?
Love life! He scoffed at the thought. He was getting a bit ahead of himself imagining that he had a love life to look forward to with Alice. One date had obviously been more than enough as far as she was concerned.
But what if it had all been some terrible misunderstanding? Or what if something had happened to Alice to prevent her from coming to the villa that day? Wha
t if she’d had some terrible accident, and here he was thinking the very worst of her when she was, in fact, lying in a hospital bed somewhere. He had to find out. He had to know the truth even if the truth was that she just didn’t like him.
He had to find Alice before she left Kethos.
Alice knew that she had to get to the Villa Argenti as quickly as possible the next day and try to explain to Milo what had happened. What must he be thinking of her? She felt awful that she hadn’t been able to keep her word. What if he thought she just didn’t want to come? Perhaps he had forgotten her already and moved on to the next pretty young tourist to enter the garden.
She’d got up early the next morning with every intention of leaving for the first bus out of Kethos Town but Stella had soon put a stop to that. Alice had gone into her bedroom to let her know she was going out and had been met with the loudest of groans.
‘I don’t feel well,’ Stella’s voice complained.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve got a headache.’
Alice grimaced. Stella had found a bottle of ouzo in one of the kitchen cupboards and had enjoyed rather a lot of it the night before with only a cereal bar to accompany it. She was obviously paying the price for it now.
‘Take some aspirin and have something to eat,’ Alice told her.
‘Will you get some for me?’
‘Don’t you have any?’
Stella shook her head and winced at the movement. ‘I thought you’d bring some.’
‘Well, I don’t have any.’
‘Get me some!’ the voice begged.
‘That’ll mean a trip into town.’
Alice’s shoulders slumped in resignation, leaving the villa, and practically running into town. She was going to miss the first bus to the Villa Argenti, that was for sure, and she’d probably be a dishevelled mess by the time she walked into town for the second time but that couldn’t be helped.
Alice found some aspirin at a little chemist and bought two packets and then headed straight back to the villa. She didn’t see the boy on the bicycle with the neck-breaking double take this time but she walked by an old man who stared at her so hard that Alice actually stopped.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
He said something to her in Greek, his eyes misty with emotion, and then he shook his head and went on his way. Alice watched him go for a moment, wondering what he’d said. Maybe he didn’t like tourists.
When she arrived back at the villa, she noticed that the French doors had been left open and she could hear voices out beside the pool.
‘Stella?’ she called. She could hear her sister laughing and she obviously had company.
‘I’m by the pool with a friend of yours!’ Stella called back.
‘Milo?’ Alice said as she walked out onto the terrace and saw him sitting on the edge of a sun lounger next to her sister.
‘Alice – you are a sly one!’ Stella said, springing up from her sun lounger. Her tone was mocking but Alice could see that she was fuming inside. ‘You didn’t tell me you’d made friends with a handsome local.’
‘I thought you had a headache,’ Alice said.
‘Oh, that’s gone!’ Stella said, waving the proffered aspirins away in irritation. ‘Now, I’ve just been getting to know the gorgeous Milo here and he said you two spent a whole day together and you didn’t go to any boring museum at all. Isn’t that funny?’
‘Hilarious,’ Alice said.
‘Yes,’ Stella continued. ‘He said you spent the whole day on a beach and it wasn’t a stony beach and the water wasn’t cold either.’
‘Er – look!’ Milo said, standing up. ‘I didn’t mean to get Alice into trouble. There’s been some misunderstanding, that’s all. Perhaps I should leave.’
‘No – don’t go!’ the two sisters said in unison.
Milo halted and Alice walked up to him and placed a hand on his arm. ‘I was coming to see you.’
‘You were?’
‘Of course I was!’ she said. ‘Look, shall we go somewhere we can talk?’
Milo glanced across at Stella who was standing with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face.
‘Yes,’ Milo said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Where are you going?’ Stella cried.
‘Maybe back to the beach,’ Milo said with a little grin.
‘Can’t I come?’
‘No,’ Alice said. ‘I think you should take some aspirin and go back to bed.’
‘There’s only room for two on my bike anyway,’ Milo said kindly. ‘Perhaps another time.’
‘When? When another time?’ Stella asked.
‘Goodbye, Stella,’ Alice said and they left quickly before Stella got it into her head to follow them.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Alice said. ‘She can be a bit full-on sometimes. I hope she didn’t make things awkward for you.’
‘Awkward?’
‘Yes – she’s a bit of a flirt, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Milo said. ‘She was skinny-dipping in the pool before you got back.’
Alice’s face fell. ‘Oh my God!’
Milo laughed. ‘I’m joking!’ he said. ‘It’s only her sister who skinny-dips on a first date.’
Alice blushed.
They reached his moped outside the gate of the villa. ‘You don’t mind me coming here? I had to find you again.’
‘How did you find me?’ Alice asked.
‘Kethos is a small island. I asked a few friends.’ He smiled but his smile soon turned into a frown. ‘You are glad I found you, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am!’ Alice said. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get away to the villa yesterday. Stella insisted that I spent the day with her.’
‘And I can see she can be very—’ he paused, ‘demanding.’
‘Yes, she can.’
He nodded. ‘And you are too good to her. I think she takes advantage of that.’
‘I think you’re right.’
They looked at each other for a moment and then Milo smiled and Stella was instantly banished from Alice’s mind.
‘Today, I want to show you everything, Alice!’ he said excitedly.
‘But shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘Ah!’ He waved a hand in the air as if dismissing the thought. ‘My boss is away and someone is covering for me.’
‘What if he comes back early?’
‘I’ll tell him I had to spend a day with a beautiful girl. I’m sure he’d understand,’ Milo said with a wink. ‘A beautiful day and a beautiful girl – what man could resist?’
Alice laughed and gazed up at the clear blue sky. ‘Well, it’s certainly a beautiful day. Don’t you ever have clouds here?’
‘Clouds?’ Milo said. ‘What are clouds?’
‘In the sky,’ Alice said, pointing. ‘Huge, white or grey fluffy things that block out the sun—’
Milo laughed. ‘I know what clouds are!’ he said. ‘And we do have them, of course, but not as often as you do in England.’
‘We seem to have them all the time,’ Alice said, thinking about the lead-grey sky she’d left behind and how much she was dreading returning.
‘But not here and not today.’
‘So, what are we going to do?’ Alice asked as he handed her a helmet.
‘The question is, what are we not going to do?’
She giggled and got on the back of the bike, placing her hands round his waist.
Chapter 15
My smile couldn’t possibly get any bigger, Alice thought, as they tore around the island roads on Milo’s moped. Sitting on the back of a moped with a handsome man on a glorious island was so un-Alice-like. Something like that was far more likely to happen to Stella. But this is happening to me, she said to herself, clinging on to Milo as they took a sharp bend round a mountain and then descended towards a sea the colour of bluebells.
‘That’s Kintos,’ Milo shouted back a moment later and Alice spo
tted a tiny town, its coloured buildings all jostling together, seemingly tumbling towards the blue water. She was instantly in love. There was a tiny white church with a blue domed roof and the road they followed dipped and curved, passing houses with shutters wide open to drink in the sunshine.
Milo took the bike down into the centre of the town and parked it outside a little row of shops. They were more modest-looking than the ones in Kethos but Alice adored them.
‘This is one of my favourite little towns,’ Milo said. ‘If you can’t bear the bustle of Kethos Town then you come here. Not many tourists make it to this side of the island, which is its blessing and its curse.’
‘Why is it a curse?’ Alice asked.
‘Well, it’s quiet which is nice but the shops struggle to stay open.’
‘I guess it’s hard to make a living on an island.’
Milo nodded. ‘So many people leave each year. It’s a shame when you have to leave a home that you love just to make a living.’
‘Well, let’s make sure that I’m a very well-behaved tourist,’ Alice said.
Milo watched as Alice proceeded to go from shop to shop, buying postcards and guidebooks. She even bought a little stone statue of Aphrodite. Alice had noticed that Aphrodite’s image was everywhere – her beautiful face gracing a thousand postcards and picture frames.
Ever since she’d found out she was going to Kethos, she’d wanted to read all about Aphrodite and the legends that tied her to the island and now she bought as many different trinkets as she could find depicting the goddess of love, from a keyring to a pendant.
Milo laughed at her. ‘You are Aphrodite-crazy!’ he said. ‘I’ll have to take you to see her temple in the south of the island.’
‘I’d love that,’ Alice said.
There was one last shop in the little row which was selling exquisite rugs and blankets.
‘All from the local sheep,’ Milo said. ‘It’s the softest wool in the world.’
Alice smiled. She was sure it was just Milo’s island pride speaking but, when she reached out and touched it, she realised he was right and she soon spotted a beautiful woollen blanket with a great red rose at its centre. Her fingers danced over its softness and she knew she had to have it.
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