Staying Out for the Summer

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘My mum,’ she began. ‘Died from a drug overdose.’

  There. It was said. Out loud. The words were in the room, big, fat, grey and packing a trunk. Did she feel better about it or worse? Would it change the dynamic between them? Suddenly it was her who felt like the injured one…

  Michalis turned his body closer and she flinched, worried for her implements and the stitches she was still knitting together. ‘Michalis,’ she breathed. ‘You have to keep still.’

  He shook his head, reaching out a hand to gently cup her face. ‘No, Lucie. You have to be still.’

  Somehow she knew exactly what he meant. She hadn’t settled with her mum’s death at all. It wasn’t a case of coming to terms with it, it was still a case of barely acknowledging it had happened. At two years old, how could you be expected to get over anything except fear of having to start using a potty?

  ‘I didn’t know her,’ Lucie whispered. ‘I still don’t know her now.’

  ‘It is OK to not feel OK about it,’ he told her.

  The driver and tweezers still in her hands, she closed her eyes and let herself be comforted by the way Michalis was stroking her scalp so tenderly. She had spent so long being strong, keeping things together for the sake of harmony for a family who had been through so much. Externally she had given off all the right noises about coping, getting on with life, but in reality she had buried her loss like she was unaffected by it. And it had been harder to hide going through 2020 as a nurse surrounded by people losing their fight for life, family a Zoom call away shedding desperate painful tears. Lucie had cried too. So many times. For everyone she couldn’t save and a little bit for her mum who would never know who she had grown to be…

  ‘To lose someone in those circumstances… I cannot imagine,’ Michalis whispered. ‘Did she… was it…’

  Lucie opened her eyes then. He didn’t seem to be able to finish his sentence and she wasn’t quite sure what he had been going to say to conclude.

  ‘Did she… do it to herself?’ Michalis asked.

  ‘What?’ What exactly was he saying? Her mind started to whirl and think back to all the times she had tried to force Meg to give her more information about her mum’s death.

  ‘I mean… was it an accident or did she… mean to die?’

  Michalis elaborating on the question sent her whole self into a spiral. Did he mean… suicide? Suddenly Lucie felt sick, her stomach rising up into her throat, full of raw acidity and heartache. The implements in her hands turned to leaden weights and she struggled to keep them still, fingers trembling. She had never thought that before. Never. Never? Had she thought it and blotted it out of her mind along with everything else that didn’t fit the vague wild-child-off-the-rails-let’s-only-remember-the-good-stuff memories Meg and her grandparents had always sold her?

  ‘Lucie,’ Michalis said, quietly but firmly. ‘Give me the tweezers.’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘I can stitch this myself.’

  ‘No.’

  Her voice didn’t sound familiar at all. It was all out-of-sorts and she didn’t want to be out-of-sorts. It meant there were more unanswered questions and now they were staring her in the face, uncovered and bare. A shaft of sunlight trickled through the open studio window, falling on them, calling to Lucie that this was an opening in time she needed to step through.

  Michalis put his hands over hers, warm, steady, calming, and she felt her bottom lip turn to jelly.

  ‘I am stupid,’ Michalis told her, the proximity of him forcing her to look up into his eyes.

  ‘No… you’re not,’ Lucie whispered.

  ‘I do not know the circumstances,’ he carried on.

  ‘Neither do I,’ she replied. ‘And that’s most of the problem.’

  ‘Please forget what I said,’ Michalis said, his hands still in hers, the medical equipment almost insignificant apart from the fact it was still attached to him.

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t want to forget it. I need to face it. I need to ask things I haven’t ever asked. Things I should have asked ten, fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Lucie,’ Michalis said, finally moving his hands from hers but laying them on her shoulders, soft yet supportive.

  Lucie forced a smile. ‘I know you want to say all the right things and… I appreciate it. But this is something I need to sort out on my own.’ She firmed up her grip on the tools of her trade. ‘But, first of all, I need to show you exactly how good my stitching really is and get this wound sealed. So… stop moving and… no more of that ouzo.’

  As Michalis repositioned himself slightly, giving her a better access to his injury, Lucie refocussed. The person she really needed to speak to was Meg.

  Forty-Four

  Andino Butcher’s, Sortilas

  ‘I need to borrow your moped,’ Michalis stated the evening of the following day as he walked into the shop from the apartment upstairs.

  ‘Oh, please, do not interrupt me! I am in the centre of a difficult procedure with the tongue of a sheep.’

  Nyx had plastic glasses over her eyes that seemed to have a microscopic attachment set inside them. They were almost exactly like something a surgeon would wear for an operation. The mid-sixties male customer who had been in for rabbit and steak mince was watching his sister intently as she made incisions.

  ‘What are you doing to it?’ Michalis wanted to know.

  The customer looked to him. ‘She tells me that the most minute cuts in certain places of the tongue will ensure a fuller flavour and more tender tasting experience.’

  ‘My sister is a craftsman when it comes to dead animals,’ Michalis confirmed with a nod.

  ‘This I no longer doubt,’ he agreed. ‘Despite the condition of so-angry-itis.’

  Michalis gave him a smile. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Do not make fun of me while I am doing the most delicate type of Greek butchery,’ Nyx warned.

  ‘The keys to your moped?’ Michalis asked.

  ‘Where are you taking it?’ Nyx wanted to know. ‘You know that only one boulder has been removed from the road. It is still impassable to anything more than—’

  ‘A moped,’ Michalis agreed with a nod.

  Suddenly the door of the butcher’s burst open and Dimitri swept in, Melina hot on his heels. Both were looking panicked.

  ‘The news, it is all over the village! You were skewered by a tree! Yesterday! You need the hospital!’ Dimitri exclaimed, rushing behind the counter and pulling at the hem of Michalis’s shirt.

  ‘No… Papa… stop.’ He backed away, swatting at his father’s attempts to inspect him.

  ‘People need to know if you are able to keep their appointments this week and we need to start rehearsals for the Day of the Not Dead festival. The guest of honour has to not be dead for it to be a success,’ Melina announced, looking like she very much wanted to lift his shirt too. ‘I tell the workers to not have breaks for cigarettes and get the blockage moved as quickly as they can. If days turn to weeks then it will impact on everything! Our new tourists will not be able to get here, and we might have to keep the old ones for longer and they will want free accommodation until they can leave and—’

  A mallet was slammed down on the wooden butcher’s block and Nyx faced them all. ‘Shut up!’ she directed at the president. Then she turned to her brother. ‘Michalis! What is going on? Did you fall from Bambis yesterday?! I said that animal was not to be trusted!’

  Michalis just wanted to escape now. But he could clearly see he wasn’t going to be able to get out of the shop without giving them all reassurance that he was OK. It wasn’t unlike the last time he had been injured and Chico had found him on the sofa pressing arnica to his wounds.

  He lifted up his shirt, displaying the rather neat knit of stitches Lucie had delivered on his side. ‘I am fine.’

  Everyone gasped, including the customer waiting for his tongue.

  ‘Micha!’ Nyx exclaimed, microscope glasses facing the wound like she needed to
know the intricacies of it. ‘It looks like someone has tried to carve a steak from you!’

  ‘Son, we need to take you to the hospital!’

  ‘This is not the picture of health we need for the festival!’ Melina declared.

  ‘Melina, this is my son. He is a person, not an advertisement!’

  ‘Enough!’ Michalis roared, dropping his shirt down again and spreading his arms wide. ‘Please, stop this. Remember who the doctor in Sortilas is.’

  Nobody said anything.

  ‘I have been assessed, by myself. I have been repaired, by a fully qualified nurse. I am rehydrated, I took things easy last night and I am feeling almost back to normal. And Bambis is happy in his field breathing rage at the goats.’ He looked directly at Dimitri then. ‘I also need your moped and please, let the answer only be yes.’

  ‘You cannot drive two mopeds together,’ Nyx stated. ‘Not even a stubborn doctor can manage that.’

  ‘One is to be ridden by someone else.’

  ‘It is still dangerous to pass out of the village,’ Melina told him. ‘This is why I order a lockdown. This is why I have the men working with floodlights tonight. If things do not open up soon everyone will be raiding Ajax’s supplies for the apocalypse he has predicted.’

  ‘Mrs Hatzi,’ Michalis said. ‘I know you wish to keep the village as safe as possible, but you cannot lock people down for no reason. It is an inconvenience, larger vehicles cannot get in and out, yes, but—’

  ‘There could be another quake at any moment, or the rain will come and cause another land slip or—’

  ‘Remember what I told you last year?’ Michalis asked her.

  Melina nodded a little soberly. ‘You told me that if the villagers all took the elixir you made then…’

  ‘Not that,’ Michalis said hurriedly. ‘The most important things.’

  ‘Taking precautions. Being vigilant. Looking after one another,’ Melina parroted like it was a holy mantra.

  ‘I will take precautions with the mopeds. We will drive slowly and we will wear helmets… on our heads.’ He looked to his father and his sister. ‘I know that you both wear them around your arm for the purposes of appeasing the police and do not think about the consequences should you fall off.’

  ‘It does not fit my hair,’ Nyx moaned.

  ‘It makes what hair I have look thinner,’ Dimitri added.

  ‘You must not die,’ Melina told him, pointing a finger. ‘It would be a very bad look for the first Day of the Not Dead.’

  ‘I promise,’ Michalis said. ‘I will try not to die.’

  Dimitri reached into the pocket of his trousers, produced his keys, and plonked them into Michalis’s palm.

  ‘Do not ride my moped any way like you ride that horse,’ Nyx ordered. She offered forward the pocket of her apron. ‘They are in there.’

  Michalis slipped his hand inside and hoped to find only the keys, not a mousetrap, as she had once caught him with when they were younger. He drew out the keyring and smiled at his sister. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the customer called to them all. ‘I know you must think I come here for the family drama but… I really do come here for the meat.’

  ‘And,’ Nyx said, turning to her customer, ‘my prices do not reflect the putting up with the impatience of my patrons!’

  ‘Michalis,’ Dimitri said, as Michalis made for the door.

  He stopped and turned back to his father.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Be careful,’ Dimitri said firmly, but the words were coated with as much love as anything he had ever said to him before.

  Michalis nodded. ‘I will.’

  ‘And,’ Melina said, pointing again, ‘no more injuries. Your costume is going to be made entirely of wood and feathers and there is only so much magic I can do with make-up.’

  He couldn’t listen to any more.

  Forty-Five

  Villa Psomi, Sortilas

  ‘I’m not sure what I’m more excited about… the road being passable – just – or karaoke with Meg.’

  While Lucie was sitting, Gavin was sashaying around the upper lounge in a silk robe he had found in one of the wardrobes, dust motes floating into the air as he moved around and over the ancient cypress wood floorboards you could see right the way through to downstairs. The city of Sarandë was visible across the water in Albania from the large windows. Lucie could even make out the shapes of buildings, grey/white structures en masse, contrasting with the undulating mountainous landscape amid the rest of the scene. Michalis had asked her out on another date and she had accepted somewhen between the outpouring of emotion about her mother and the finishing of his stitching procedure. Thankfully, despite all the warnings of no one being able to fix the road for weeks at best, some village men, together with a digger that looked like it was older than Ariana and Mary put together, had managed to safely shift one of the stones barring the road. Motorcycles, mountain bikes and walkers could now access Perithia and the other towns below. If they had only waited a day, none of them would have had to be caught up in the donkey drama. Whether or not Michalis would still have been out on the horse, well, Lucie would have to ask him. Except it was Meg she really wanted to be asking things of now. And she probably would be if Gavin hadn’t arranged a karaoke date as soon as he found out lively bars were again accessible.

  ‘What’s her favourite croon?’ Gavin asked. ‘Is she a “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” kind of girl or more an Elvis fan?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Lucie admitted, shrugging. She didn’t even know if her aunt really knew what karaoke was all about. And therein lay the problem. She had always thought that she and Meg shared this unbreakable bond, that she knew everything about her. But she was beginning to realise she only knew the person who had been the stoic, controlled and in some ways, controlling, mother figure. That person was nothing like this total free spirit that seemed to be lying beneath.

  ‘Is Michalis really alright?’ Gavin asked, turning in a circle and wafting the silk robe about. ‘I mean, it was quite the wound he had there. I’m not sure riding a moped is the best form of recovery plan.’

  ‘I did stitch it up. I know what it was like,’ Lucie snipped.

  ‘Whoa! OK! No need to get your Brazilian in a twist. I was only asking.’

  ‘How’s your drone?’ Lucie asked. ‘Seen any more apparitions of men from back home?’

  She closed her lips then. She was sounding like a super-bitch and Gavin hadn’t done anything wrong. This angst was a long time brewing though and she did feel like a bottle of ginger beer ripe for the popping.

  ‘OK,’ Gavin said, sauntering over to the sofa Lucie was sitting on in this magnificently large room with a vaulted beamed ceiling. ‘We are now going to make time to deal with whatever’s going on with you. Because even I know this isn’t about my unmanned aerial vehicle.’ He plumped down next to her, folding the cape around his body. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lucie answered. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘And that’s a great British reflex answer if ever I heard one. Are we talking about the weather next or biscuits?’

  Lucie shook her head and then she made a noise that sounded similar to one that had come from Tonika yesterday. It was a sound of frustration and annoyance. All she wanted to do was relax on this holiday, not think about all the hideous things she had had to deal with last year, but here she was suddenly delving deep into exactly how fragile life was and wanting to know exactly what had happened to her mum all those years ago. It was like her brain was cursing her. No, you can’t switch off. Are you crazy? If you take your eye off the ball things tumble down. So, here’s something else to churn over…

  ‘Is it Michalis?’ Gavin asked. ‘Is he one of those Romeos who seems all wide-dark-eyes and innocence but really he’s a player?’

  Lucie shook her head. At least, she didn’t think so. Not unless he was really really good at pulling the wool over people’s eyes, or if she wasn’t in the best plac
e for making judgements because she was focussed on other things...

  ‘Then what is it?’ Gavin wanted to know. He took a breath and fixed her with a thoughtful expression. ‘Is it… you know… like that time we both locked ourselves in the supplies cupboard and bawled like babies because Mrs Pernice never got to see her grandson? Because…’ Gavin paused before carrying on. ‘Because I still have nightmares about that.’

  She put her arms around her best friend and hugged him tight. Gavin had been her strength at work, always keeping an upbeat attitude no matter what they were faced with, but that day it had been his turn to break down. She had held him close and they had both cried for the loss of an elderly patient who had been trying to hang on until her grandson arrived from Northern Ireland.

  ‘No,’ Lucie breathed, still hugging Gavin tight. ‘It isn’t quite like that.’ But it was about a death. One that should have been avoided. She swallowed. ‘Do you think I should find out more about what happened to my mum?’

  Gavin sat back from their embrace and looked at her. She could instantly read his expression. It was that dark topic again. Almost like a dirty secret that no one wanted to discuss. Except Lucie couldn’t carry on feeling ashamed. For one, it wasn’t her fault. And secondly, she couldn’t feel shame for something she knew none of the details of.

  ‘I just… think… if I knew more about… the situation… it might help change my outlook on life.’ Lucie gave a shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, what do you want to change?’ Gavin asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, all I’m saying is, what’s wrong with your outlook on life right now?’

  ‘Gavin, I risk assess everything,’ Lucie stated. ‘I organise everything. The only thing I haven’t organised lately is this holiday.’

  Gavin gave a soft smile. ‘And I did a fantastic job. You have to admit that.’

  Lucie sighed. ‘Although Meg has taught me to keep safe… she’s also made me look at things through a very narrow lens without really giving me all the reasons why. And… I want things to be… bigger and… fatter and… fuller.’ She shook herself. ‘For one of the first times I really want to… gorge on life like it’s an… overloaded plate of Greek meze. And I don’t think I can properly move forward unless I address the past.’