‘How touchingly sentimental that sounds,’ Izzy said.
For a couple of seconds he didn’t say anything. Then: ‘You think me incapable of sentiment, Izzy? You think I am not able to feel real emotion?’ His tone was accusing, and the vehemence behind his words baffled her.
When she didn’t answer, he turned away from her and said, ‘Well, no matter. You would not be the first to jump to such a conclusion.’
He seemed so strangely introverted that she decided it was time to get her apology over and done with before she caused any more antagonism between them. ‘Before I offend you further,’ she said, ‘I’ve got something I’d like to say.’
He returned his gaze to her, and stared at her keenly, his head slightly tilted. His attentiveness made it all the more difficult for her to get the words out.
‘Um ... I was very rude to you last night,’ she pressed on, ‘and ... and I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t anything to do with you. It was me. I was in a terrible mood and I took it out on you. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to know that.’
He came towards her, visibly lightened by what she had said. The gap between them suddenly seemed dangerously small and the atmosphere dangerously intoxicating with the potent fragrance of the flowers as the sunlight filtered through the trees.
‘We have only known one another for a short time,’ he said, ‘but it seems to me that on several occasions I have annoyed and offended you. So I, too, would like to say that I am sorry. I think also that you have an opinion of me that, if I am honest, is one I have stupidly encouraged. But I would very much like to be given the opportunity to change that perception, if it isn’t too late. What do you say? Do you think we could be friends?’
She smiled.
He took another step towards her. ‘Is that a yes?’
‘Um ... a cautious yes.’
He reached for her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it, while all the time keeping his dark eyes on hers. ‘There,’ he said, lowering her hand and flashing a smile, ‘that was not so bad, was it?’
Despite the presence of Modern Woman tapping her foot and warning that if she wasn’t careful she’d be right back where she’d started, Izzy agreed that it wasn’t.
Chapter Twenty-One
Laura poured bottled water into the kettle and plugged it in. She put the empty plastic container in the bin and made a mental note to check how much they had left. What with her mother’s insatiable desire for tea, they were getting through an inordinate amount of water. Last year she had made the mistake of using water straight from the tap, and while it was perfectly safe to do so, the brackish aftertaste was far from appetising or refreshing.
The tea made, she took it outside and was about to settle down with her book, which she still hadn’t finished, when she heard footsteps behind her.
It was Francesca, looking as slothful and bleary-eyed as she herself felt. She dipped her head and kissed Laura’s cheek. ‘Morning, Mum.’
‘It’s a little early for you, isn’t it? Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘Sally’s snoring like an volcano.’
‘Oh dear. Not a lot we can do about that. Do you want a cup of tea? I’ve just made a pot.’
‘Nah, I’ll make some coffee in a moment, when I’ve got myself together.’ She yawned and stretched out on the sun-lounger beside Laura, her slim, lithe body already dressed for action in a fluorescent pink bikini. Since it was her first real opportunity to talk to her daughter on her own since she had arrived, Laura broached the subject of the recently departed boyfriend. She wanted to be sure that Francesca’s apparent easy-come-easy-go attitude wasn’t just a brave front. Regrets were seldom of any use and, as Max would be the first to say, the boy simply wasn’t worth the trouble.
‘Glad you came?’ she asked. ‘The change doing you good?’
Francesca turned her head. There were smudgy signs of eye makeup that hadn’t been cleaned off from last night, and with her henna-dyed hair still loosely plaited and sticking out at either side of her ears, she reminded Laura of Pippy Longstocking from the books she used to read to her when she was little. ‘Are we venturing into heart-to-heart territory?’ Francesca asked.
‘Only if you want to go there.’
‘Cool it, Mum, you should know me better than that. For once I agree with Dad. Carl was a pillock and I’m not going to lose any sleep over him. Anyway, it looks as if Sally and I have got something better to interest us right here.’
‘Some local colour?’
‘No, home-grown is safer. Less risk of being misunderstood. We got chatting to them last night in Kassiópi.’
When she embarked upon these conversations Laura knew she was treading a difficult path: she wanted her daughter to confide in her, but at the same time she didn’t want to acknowledge just how much of an adult Francesca was. She said, ‘Would I be right in thinking it’s the two lads from the pink villa?’
‘You’re remarkably well informed. Or has Dad been spying on me?’
Laura laughed. ‘Are their parents with them?’ She was wondering if she dared invite them for a drink so that she and Max could carry out a thorough inspection of the boys. After all, they had Sally’s welfare to consider: while she was staying with them she was their responsibility whether she liked it or not.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Francesca, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. ‘So no worries about a shagathon taking place.’
‘A shagathon,’ repeated a voice from behind them. ‘What a delightful expression. In our day we called it an orgy.’
It was Olivia. She patted the top of her granddaughter’s head affectionately and pulled up a chair. ‘Is that fresh tea?’
‘Yes, it is. Francesca, would you fetch your grandmother a cup, please?’
In the brief space of time that they were alone, Laura said, ‘You could at least pretend to be shocked.’
‘But why?’
‘I bet you wouldn’t have let Max get away with anything half so outrageous. A shagathon indeed!’
Olivia smiled. ‘But that’s what’s so good about the age we live in. Grandparents are allowed to behave as disgracefully as their grandchildren. It’s the middle years when we’re expected to conform. Take it from me, Corky and I have much more fun, these days.’
Laura groaned. ‘I knew it would happen sooner or later -
Grans Behaving Badly!’
Francesca returned with a cup for Corky, and the foresight to bring a few extras. ‘For everyone else when they surface,’ she said, plonking them on the table. ‘I’m off for a swim. See you later.’
The first thing Harry saw when he pushed back the shutters, was a blurred outline of blue, white and green. He slipped on his glasses, and the blue became sky and sea, the white, sand, and the green, the verdant hillside. He stepped outside and leaned against the wrought-iron rail that separated his cramped bedroom terrace from the more spacious terrace below, where they congregated as a family for indigestible meals of combat and tension. He pushed his hands through his sleep-tousled hair and took in the splendour of the morning. It was then that he saw somebody swimming.
Squinting, he saw that it was Francesca, the more attractive of the two girls they had got talking to last night. And, naturally, because she was the most attractive, Nick had stepped in straight away and staked out the boundaries. They had been sitting in one of the bars in Kassiópi; he had been watching
Saving Private Ryan
on a large screen above the bar while his brother had been eyeing up the potential. The two girls had seen them the minute they had walked in but, in the way all girls did, they had pretended not to see them. ‘Hold tight,’ Nick had said, out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Chick alert. I’ll give them a few minutes to settle in, then I’ll make a move on them. You can have the tall one. Mine’s the one with the sticky-out plaits. Cute or what?’
‘What if you’re not her type?’ Harry had said.
Nick had given him a look of mocking disbelief. ‘Drink up, and I’ll get us another round in.’
He had watched Nick saunter over to the bar and wondered why girls were always drawn to his brother. Even when he had been at junior school he could pull a crowd of them around him. But whatever cheesy line he had given these two, it had had the desired effect: they had followed him back to the table and introduced themselves. The tall one was called Sally, and the one his brother had labelled as cute was Francesca. It turned out that they were the same age as his brother, a few months short of twenty. Being older by two years he had felt alienated from them as a group, and had found his attention wandering from the conversation, letting it settle on Tom Hanks and his platoon. As a consequence they had probably written him off as boring. Well, so be it. What did it matter?
But as he watched Francesca diving from the raft opposite her parents’ villa, he realised that it did matter. Just for once, he wanted people to think that he was as interesting as his brother.
With a rueful shake of his head, he went back into his room. What would be the point? Faced with the choice between him — Mr Dullsville — and his brother - Mr Hip-Hop-Goin’ -With-The-Groove - who seemed to possess all the magnetic pull of a crushed-velvet Austin Powers, he wouldn’t get a look in.
Smirking quietly to himself, Mark was impressed at the show Theo was putting on for Izzy’s benefit. It was a top performance of carefully measured moves that he obviously thought would put her at ease. It had been Mark’s intention to leave Theo and Izzy to eat their breakfast alone, but Theo had sought him out in the kitchen and said, ‘Please, you must stay with me. I sense that she will be more relaxed with you acting as a chaperon.’
Watching the almost reverential manner in which he was treating her, Mark wondered if he had misjudged Theo. Wasn’t it bound to happen, that sooner or later he would find a woman who would mean more to him than a potential bedroom tumble? And who was he to doubt his friend’s ability to love? His past was hardly a glowing account of starry-eyed romance. Perhaps he had allowed his history of disastrous relationships to colour his opinion of what Theo might be capable of feeling for Izzy.
Or was he jealous?
The treachery of this thought appalled him. Was it possible that he was jealous that his friend might find happiness - while he might not?
It was such a disagreeable thought that he quickly manoeuvred it to the back of his mind, to the storehouse of conundrums he had yet to unravel. A writer’s mind was packed with useful and not so useful fragments of information. He had a mental picture of his brain as an old-fashioned ironmonger’s shop, its walls covered in shelves overflowing with bits and bobs. Trouble was, when he wanted to find anything in a hurry, he needed an ancient, efficient employee who could lay his hands instantly on exactly what Mark was looking for. Which was why he had to write things down: if he didn’t he might never retrieve the irreplaceable flashes of inspiration that slipped in and out of his mind.
He had been on the verge of doing exactly this last night when he had been in the harbour. He had thought of something, which, at the time, had seemed earthshatteringly important. But with the appearance of Dolly-Babe and Silent Bob, it had wriggled away. He hated losing ideas. It was like being robbed of something precious, and the perpetrators of this heinous crime had joined him on the bench.
‘Did you get my message?’ Dolly-Babe had asked.
He had decided to play dumb. ‘Message?’
She tutted, giving him the benefit of alcohol-tainted breath. She leaned in close to him, so close he could see his bored face reflected back in her sunglasses — didn’t she ever take them off? It was dark, for pity’s sake. ‘You know, you wanna watch that chauffeur of yours,’ she said. ‘I asked him to tell you that I wanted to invite you over to our villa for a drink.’
‘It must have slipped his memory.’
Another tut.
‘I was going to invite your neighbours as well, the Sinclairs. But I never got round to it. Bob’s been rushed off his size nines. He’s been dashing all over the island. Isn’t that right, Bob?’
But Bob wasn’t listening. He was talking quietly to somebody on his mobile phone.
‘He’s very busy,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘Lots of irons in the fire. He’s found some land for sale that he says is just the job.’ And then, ‘This is no coincidence, you know. Us seeing you this evening.’
‘Really?’
She smiled. ‘I gave Ria, my tarot reader, a call this morning, just to see what was in store for me. For Bob too.’ She lowered her voice again. ‘He’s got some important decisions to make over the coming weeks and I want to be sure he knows what he’s doing. Anyway, I asked her about the tall, fair-haired man who was going to bring me luck, and ...’ She paused, obviously building up the tension to an enthralling dénouement.
‘And?’ he filled in for her, providing the necessary drumroll.
‘And she said we’d meet again.
Soon.’
‘How extraordinary.’
‘There’s no denying the psychic forces that surround us, is there?’ she said. ‘You feel it too, don’t you?’
‘Did she see anything else on your horizon?’ he asked, curious to hear what further madness she could be convinced of.
‘Well, the Eight of Cups showed up.’
His clueless expression invited her to expand. ‘It’s a card that promises new and bigger social horizons,’ she said helpfully. ‘New faces. New places. New experiences. New everything, in fact.’
It sounded a fair description of just about anybody’s annual holiday. It was time for him to make his escape. ‘It’s been great seeing you again,’ he lied, ‘but I ought to be getting back.’
‘We’re off now as well. Where are you parked? Just here in the harbour?’
‘No, I’m on foot.’ Too late he realised his mistake. A lift home was eagerly pressed upon him, as was a firm invitation for him to drop in at Villa Mimosa. ‘Don’t be a stranger, call in for a chat any time,’ she said, as they pulled up outside Theo’s villa. ‘It must be very dull being here all on your lonesome.’