by Mandy Baggot
‘Well?’ Gavin asked immediately, before Lucie had even had a chance to sit down.
‘Well,’ Lucie said. ‘Here’s your sausage roll and your coffee. And, Sharon, one hot chocolate with more cream than an Elmlea factory.’
‘Ta,’ Sharon answered, grabbing the mug.
‘Is that it?’ Gavin wanted to know. ‘Because you were talking for forever and Simon went red.’
‘Well, I have good news for you,’ Lucie said. ‘That’s all you need to know.’ She plumped down onto a seat and smiled at her best friend. ‘We’re going on holiday. And you can even choose the location.’
Lucie watched Gavin’s whole face light up in excitement. She was an excellent best friend. And Gavin was right, they did deserve a time-out after all they had been through. She just needed to trust that breaking her routines for once couldn’t really kick off a tsunami.
‘Really?!’ Gavin exclaimed. ‘You really mean it?!’
‘I really mean it,’ Lucie told him, nodding. ‘I’m in.’
The bad news about Simon was going to be much better delivered with a cooling cocktail in her hand while Gavin coated himself in coconut oil under a tattoo-searing hot sun.
Five
Andino Butcher’s, Sortilas, Corfu, Greece
‘In how many pieces would you like me to cut the rabbit?’
‘I do not know. How many pieces do you usually cut a rabbit into?’
Michalis looked up from where he was stacking his father’s jars of homemade spiced sauce in the window display of the family butcher’s shop and surveyed his sister, Nyx, and the customer he did not recognise from the village. The man did not look like a tourist, here only briefly for a holiday. He had the look of a Greek. He was perhaps mid-sixties, wearing dark trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt, open at the neck, glasses on his face, and his dark hair was slightly greying at the temples. Andino’s was known as the best butcher’s in the north-east of Corfu, perhaps while Michalis had been away their fame had spread further down the island.
‘What are you making with it?’ Nyx demanded to know, her cleaver raised high in the air and seemingly staying there for the time being.
‘Dinner,’ the customer answered, his confusion seeming to gain momentum as this conversation continued.
‘I know that! I am not an idiot!’ Nyx growled, and then swung the cleaver down onto the chopping block with a hideous thud.
‘Nyx,’ Michalis said, making his way around the counter to stand next to her.
‘What?’ Nyx asked, pulling a pop-eyed face as she turned to face him. She looked six years old when she did that. You could just see the edge of the two doughnut rings of plaits she pinned to her head and covered with her white cap. Her apron was splattered with so much blood she might be confused for someone in the middle of a murder scene or an operating theatre. He recalled a time when she had looked similar, coated in strawberry juice when he had helped her make a strawberry yoghurt cake. Little Nyx standing on a chair to enable her to mix the ingredients together, somehow covering herself more than the inside of the baking tray.
‘Please excuse my sister,’ Michalis addressed the customer. ‘She suffers from a rare condition where she is overcome with rage for no particular reason.’
‘Really?’ the man asked, shuffling backwards a little in the small shop.
‘Yes,’ Michalis said. ‘It is known as… so-angry-itis.’
‘Micha!’ Nyx yelled. ‘Do not make excuses for me or I will cut you into more pieces than the rabbit!’
Mee-sha. She had called him that as soon as she could speak. ‘Michalis’ had been too complicated for an eighteen-month-old and even as she grew, the nickname stuck.
Michalis leaned over the counter and whispered to the man. ‘She does not mean it.’
The man swallowed then, dropping his eyes to the piece of paper in his hand that looked like a shopping list. ‘I am not sure if…’
‘Please,’ Michalis said calmly. ‘What dish are you making with the rabbit?’
‘That is what I asked!’ Nyx exclaimed, thumping the rabbit down on the block.
‘Stifado,’ he replied, sounding harried.
‘At last!’ Nyx declared and began thwacking the rabbit with the cleaver, dicing it expertly into bits.
Michalis tried to draw the customer’s attention away from his sister’s dissection of the animal and, instead, to him. ‘Cook the rabbit for as long as possible. All day if you are able. My sister will prepare the animal, so you have the very least to do. Bite-sized chunks are best, but be sure to include some of the belly and the kidneys when you prepare. These can be the most succulent of surprises.’
‘OK,’ the man said, visibly brightening.
‘You are making this for a special occasion?’ Michalis asked, smiling.
The man nodded then. ‘Yes… it is an anniversary.’
‘Well, congratulations! How many years?’
‘Too many,’ he responded with a sigh.
‘Well, you cook your wife rabbit like my brother tells you,’ Nyx called. ‘And she will love you forever.’ She sniffed, then pointed the cleaver at him. ‘That is a warning.’
The door of the butcher’s shop opened then, the brass bell sounding as Melina Hatzi, the village president, swirled in like a tornado. With her lacquered black hair, pinstriped skirt and matching jacket, Michalis almost didn’t recognise her. This was the woman who had always been in charge of village life, yet even though she had held this position for as long as he had been alive, her business was her allotment, her chickens and making sure everyone attended church. None of those things would usually involve a smart suit.
‘Michalis! How are you? Come here! How long do you stay? Are you married?’
Before Michalis could offer any greeting whatsoever, he had been bundled into a hug that constricted his rib cage to the point of actual pain. He extricated himself as soon as he could and smiled at Melina.
‘I am very well,’ he answered. ‘And no.’
He had no answer to the question of how long he was staying. As long as it took to feel better was his only estimate, and he was keeping that to himself. He had been as vague as he could get away with with friends, colleagues and his landlord in Thessaloniki. He didn’t want the attention, even if the enquiries as to how he was were all well-meaning.
Melina gave a whistle through the gap in her front teeth and shook her head. ‘You need to have children soon. There are a few candidates in Sortilas who have perfect health scores. Ideal to breed with a doctor.’
Perfect health scores. Michalis simply smiled while the customer waiting for his rabbit looked like he wished he had done his shopping in nearby Acharavi.
‘The window for breeding is getting longer, Mrs Hatzi. People have young into their fifties and sixties now,’ Nyx offered, bringing her cleaver down onto the rabbit’s leg and separating it cleanly. ‘I read that one woman in China had a baby at sixty-seven years old.’
‘Not in my village,’ Melina said forcefully. ‘At that age, the only young that people should be taking care of is their grandchildren.’
‘Or their kids,’ Nyx suggested.
‘That is what I said,’ Melina replied.
‘I meant their baby goats,’ Nyx said, frowning.
‘Can I help you?’ Michalis asked. ‘You would like some meat? Or some of my father’s special sauces?’
‘No,’ Melina answered. ‘I would like to leave these leaflets. And a poster for the window.’
There seemed to be no asking if it was acceptable to have the poster displayed, just the order. Michalis took the papers the president was offering.
‘What is this?’ Michalis asked.
‘It is what it says.’
Michalis turned his attention back to the poster in his hand. ‘Day of the Not Dead,’ he read aloud. Without even looking up he saw the customer’s shoulders flinch a little.
‘Is it not the best idea?’ Melina asked, seemingly not expecting any contradiction.
‘Do we get to dress up like zombies?’ Nyx asked. Michalis watched his sister roll her eyes into the back of her head, arms stretched out like she was acting, steps faltering and off balance, knife still in her hand.
‘The rabbit?’ the customer asked, pointing a finger to the glass behind which his purchase was on its way to being isolated in sections.
‘OK! OK!’ Nyx said, frustrated. ‘Do not aggravate my so-angry-itis.’
‘It is a new festival,’ Melina announced. ‘If anyone from your family had attended the last village meeting you would know everything about it.’
The village meetings. Michalis recalled those in graphic detail. They lasted for hours and discussed matters such as a rota system for communal parking spaces and the colour they were all going to repaint their houses. These meetings were meant to be attended even more regularly than church services if you wanted to remain in favour with the president. Although, it was unusual for their father not to be involved. His dad wasn’t quite himself at the moment and apart from Michalis recharging and re-evaluating while he was back on Corfu, he wanted to get to the bottom of what that was all about. Nyx seemed clueless there was even something amiss about their father. But Michalis saw it and, since he had been back, he had felt it too. Dimitri was distant, distracted, there but somehow, also, not.
‘This year we will begin the biggest celebrations of our health status,’ Melina announced. ‘You have seen the golden plaque on the church?’
Michalis nodded. ‘I have seen it.’ There was no chance of missing it. It stood out like a clown at a funeral. The beautiful muted yellow paint of the old church building – all crumbling arches and a historic bell tower – and then this sign and a bright golden effigy of a tortoise.
‘We are the only village to have received world gold status from the Worldwide Good Health Federation. This year, with special measures, we should be able to receive a record number of tourists wanting some of our vigour and vitality!’
‘And virility!’ Nyx added, making a fist and punching the air.
Melina studied Nyx suddenly, her gaze intensifying until his sister seemed to grow self-conscious under the scrutiny and she turned back towards the battered rabbit.
‘You are eighteen now,’ Melina said to Nyx. ‘You will soon need to look for a husband. I can—’
The end of Melina’s sentence was deftly cut off by Nyx delivering another blow to the animal carcass.
‘Should I come back for the rabbit?’ the customer questioned softly.
‘Be patient!’ Nyx ordered him. ‘If you cannot wait a few moments for the animal to be ready, how are you going to wait all day for the stifado to be perfect?’
‘I will put up the poster,’ Michalis told Melina.
‘And the leaflets. Left on the counter. And to be given to everyone who comes in. Not just those who make a purchase.’
It was craziness to even think of objecting. ‘Of course,’ Michalis answered.
Melina nodded. ‘Very good.’
‘Was there anything else?’ Michalis asked.
Melina seemed to muse for a moment and then she held a finger in the air. ‘You will be the star of the festival! I do not know why I did not think of it before.’
‘What?’ Michalis gasped. He could think of nothing he wanted less… except perhaps Coronavirus.
‘You are the hero of the village! Our doctor!’ Melina continued. ‘Early in 2020 you helped us be prepared for what was to come. When the world was under attack and no one knew what to do, you showed calm and you made decisions for the good of our community. Sortilas will never forget that.’
‘Mrs Hatzi,’ Michalis began. ‘Really, I do not think that—’
‘We could make balloons with Micha’s face on them,’ Nyx suggested, drawing a balloon shape in the air with one of her bloodied fingers. ‘And he should be carried. On a throne. From here, to the village square, where there will be another throne. I can make a large staff out of the rib cage of cows.’
Michalis looked at Melina and said a silent prayer that this was going only one way. But then the woman smiled at Nyx and Michalis’s heart dropped, until…
‘You are crazy!’ Melina stated. ‘There will be no balloons or sticks made of cows! But maybe the throne. I will talk to my festival committee.’
‘Micha should be on the festival committee,’ Nyx offered.
Now Michalis wanted to lock his sister in the cold store for a few hours until her doughnut hair turned to ice. He had to get himself out of this, and fast.
‘I am very busy,’ he said. ‘I will not have time.’
‘Busy?!’ Nyx countered. ‘You are on holiday!’
‘I am… working here with you and I am… considering opening a… practice in the village.’ What was he saying? This wasn’t what he wanted! The very last thing on his mind was opening a surgery! This was a sabbatical, not a busman’s holiday!
‘That is wonderful,’ Melina said, beaming. ‘Some of the villagers are struggling with the new doctor in Acharavi. A fever. He prescribe antibiotics. A stomach-ache. Antibiotics. Pregnant…’
‘Condoms!’ Nyx shouted.
It was a tumbleweed moment that Michalis should have used to extricate himself from the idea that he was going to start seeing patients in the village.
‘Have you found a premises?’ Melina asked him.
‘No. I…’ Had only come up with the whole idea two seconds ago and was deeply regretting the oversharing.
‘I will find you somewhere. Leave it to me.’
And with that parting statement made, Melina swept from the shop as quickly as she had entered and was gone.
‘Is my rabbit…’ the customer began.
‘Take it!’ Nyx screamed, deftly wrapping limbs, body and head with plastic, then paper, then thrusting it all in a carrier bag and literally chucking it at the man.
‘And… a leaflet,’ Michalis said, offering one of the advertisements to him.
The man left the money for the animal on the countertop, snatched a leaflet and departed.
‘What a day!’ Nyx exclaimed, wiping her face with the sleeve of her white coat.
Michalis had no energy left to agree or disagree.
Six
Aunt Meg’s house, Southampton
A week later
It was early evening and Lucie parked her little blue Fiat outside the substantial semi-detached home on the outskirts of the city. The house was way too big for a woman on her own, but Lucie knew that downsizing wasn’t yet on her Aunt Meg’s agenda. There were a lot of memories tied up in each and every room of this former family home. Looking to the front garden, flowering bushes in full bloom, burgeoning hanging baskets displaying the reds and pinks of fuchsias and geraniums, Lucie saw Meg in her usual summer sitting position. Folding chair set up by the front door – a little bit on the small lawn, a little bit on the path – adjusted to get the prime view of all the goings-on of the street. Lucie waved a hand and Meg deliberately turned her head away like she hadn’t seen her arrival and wasn’t really watching what her neighbours got up to on a minute-by-minute basis.
Lucie got out of the car, locked up and headed up the path of her aunt’s home. ‘Hey!’
Meg let out a tut of annoyance. ‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word.’ She shook her head. ‘It sounds like you’re asking for something to feed your horse with.’
Lucie grinned. She loved her Aunt Meg with every fibre of her being. Yes, she might have an overprotective nature, but the advice was mostly given with the best of intentions. And this large house Meg was sitting outside of, its bricks creaking with nostalgia, had once been her home too. Ten years ago now, Lucie, Meg and Lucie’s grandparents, David and Sheila, had packed into the three bedrooms and the rest of the home had been filled with books and music (her), baking and cross-stitch (Meg) and porcelain-faced dolls and marrows (her nan and grandad). Lucie had never really known what her mum had filled the house with. She’d only been two years old when Rita passed
away, aged just eighteen.
It was Meg who had always been there – back in the family home after her marriage failed – being both aunt and mother to a little Lucie. And now that her grandparents had both passed, Meg was the only one left.
‘Good evening,’ Lucie began again, sounding all her letters with sarcastic intent as she bent to settle on the grass. ‘How wonderful to see you.’
‘Lucie!’ Meg exclaimed. ‘Don’t sit on the floor. Get a chair. You know where they are.’
‘I’m good.’
‘Ugh. Now you’re using an Americanism.’ Meg rolled her eyes and pulled the super-large straw sun hat she was wearing over her brow. ‘Next you’ll be saying “my bad”. There’s no such thing as a “bad”. You do know that, don’t you?’
Lucie sat unmoved on the grass, legs crossed in front of her, somehow feeling the same way she had at sixteen when she’d wanted Meg’s opinion on asking her crush, Jason, to the leavers’ dance at school. Jason was still around. His plumbing business often advertised on local radio and she’d seen him a few months ago in the newsagent’s. These days though he looked a lot more high-pressure ball valve than he did Zac Efron…
‘Well?’ Meg said, glasses slipping down her nose, eyes beneath direct.
‘Well what?’ Lucie asked.
‘What are you doing here?’ Meg asked. ‘It’s not a usual day for a visit. Is something wrong?’
‘No,’ Lucie said quickly. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘Then you should be out having cautious fun with people your own age.’
Lucie laughed then. ‘All the people my age I know are married with children. Except Gavin and Gavin’s busy trying to grow his eyebrows back tonight.’
‘Well,’ Meg said with a sniff. ‘Perhaps you should be busy trying to grow your lovely hair back so someone will want to marry you. It looks worse now than the photo you sent me.’
Lucie laughed. She knew Meg didn’t really mean that. About marriage, not her hair. Throughout Lucie’s lifetime, Meg had always been the most uncompromising person she knew. She used to say, after her divorce, that it was out with men and in with self-care. One time, when Meg had stumbled across a few too many memes, she had actually said ‘fries before guys’. Lucie smoothed her hand across the crop that was actually getting a tiny bit longer by the day. She was getting used to having short hair. It was quite liberating having nothing to hide behind. Perhaps a whole new her could start with this new haircut. And a holiday…