He pulled out a small torch from his back pocket, switched it on, held it against his face, and let out a hollow, ghoulish laugh. ‘You have nothing to fear, my dear. Take my hand and step into the madness of the world I inhabit.’
She laughed and allowed herself to be pulled across the garden towards the gate that led to the hillside path. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re quite mad?’
‘That’s really not the kind of thing you should say to a madman, especially if he’s the one in charge of the torch.’ He flicked it off and for a moment they were plunged into darkness.
When their eyes had adjusted, Izzy said, ‘Look, over there.’ She pointed through a gap in the cypress trees, down to the sea, where moonlight danced on the softly rippling surface and a man in a small fishing-boat with a lantern was casting his nets. ‘Isn’t that the most magical sight? See the way the light from his lantern is falling across the still water. It’s almost phosphorescent. And those shadows, the way they glisten on the water.’ She turned and faced him, her expression as eager and delighted as a child on Christmas morning. ‘You’re not looking,’ she frowned.
‘I was. I just got sidetracked by somebody getting overexcited with a perfect Kodak moment.’
She gave him a playful swipe on the arm. ‘Like most men, you have no soul.’
‘Oh, I sold that to the devil a long time ago.’
‘Don’t tell me, he returned it as faulty.’
‘Why you little — ’ But he got no further as, laughing, she hared off into the darkness. He chased after her but she was lighter on her feet than he was and was soon nowhere to be seen. Then, suddenly, he heard a cry. Switching on the torch, he quickened his pace. When he found her, she was on the ground rubbing her ankle. He crouched beside her. ‘You okay?’
‘I think I’ve twisted it.’
‘Can you wriggle your toes?’
She did as he said. ‘Does that mean I haven’t broken anything?’ she asked, when all five toes seemed to be in working order.
‘Sorry, haven’t a clue.’
‘Fat lot of use you are in an emergency.’
‘Hey, easy there, time for a reality check. If I’m about to carry you up the rest of this hill you’d better be nice to me. What do you fancy, fireman’s lift or Heathcliff carrying Cathy in his arms across the moors?’
‘Oh, definitely the Heathcliff mode of transport.’
‘Now, how did I know you’d go for that option?’
They made slow going, and despite the pain in her ankle, Izzy started to laugh.
‘No,’ he said, stumbling over some loose stones and staggering, ‘no laughing, it’s not allowed. If you laugh, I swear I’ll drop you and watch you bounce all the way down to the beach.’
‘No, you won’t, you’re enjoying yourself too much playing at being a super-hero.’
‘I am? Hell, why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘If I’m not allowed to laugh, can I sing?’
‘Go ahead,’ he puffed, his arms feeling like lead, ‘whatever does it for you, Izzy Jordan.’
‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water ...’
He groaned. ‘Beneath that pretty benign exterior, you enjoy living dangerously, don’t you? How much further is it? Tell me there’ll be oxygen when we reach the top.’
‘We’re on the final ascent now.’
He paused to catch his breath. ‘Any chance of you radioing for assistance? I’m dying on my feet here.’
‘Are you saying I’m overweight?’
‘For a weakling like me, excessively so.’
They eventually made it to the top, and hearing their voices, Max and Corky, who were still up, came to investigate. Izzy introduced Mark and explained what had happened.
‘I’m sorry I’m being such a nuisance,’ she said after she had been helped to a sun-lounger and Max had despatched Corky to fetch an ice-pack from the freezer in the kitchen.
‘Didn’t I warn you no good would come of an evening out with Theo?’ Max smiled.
‘What bothers me most,’ said Mark, kneeling on the ground to inspect Izzy’s ankle, ‘is that he trusted me to get Izzy home safely. I’ll never hear the last of this.’
‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault but my own. I shouldn’t have been running away from you. Thanks for carrying me, it was very kind of you.’
He stood up. ‘Stop right there. I’m no good with schmaltzy words of thanks. They bring me out in a nasty rash of embarrassment.’
‘Can’t suggest anything to help with a rash,’ said Corky, appearing from behind, ‘but this should help with the ankle.’ He handed an ice-pack to Izzy along with a tea-towel. ‘Thought that would do to strap it on with.’ He also fished an elegant silver hip flask out of his trouser pocket. ‘A snifter or two should help as well. What do you say?’
‘I shouldn’t really, I’ve already had plenty to drink.’
‘Purely medicinal, my dear. Good for the shock.’
‘What’s good for what shock?’
Everybody turned to see Francesca coming across the terrace. She wasn’t alone. Beside her was a tall, good-looking young man whom Izzy recognised as one of the Patterson boys.
‘What on earth have you been up to, Izzy?’ she asked, when she drew level and saw the ice-pack. ‘A night out with Theo and you’re an invalid.’
‘I fell and did something painful to my ankle, and rather embarrassingly everyone’s making too much fuss over me.’
‘So where’s Mum? Not like her to miss out on a good fussing session.’
‘She’s in bed,’ said Max, ‘as is your grandmother. So if you could keep your voice down to a dull roar we won’t disturb them. Ahem, who’s your friend?’
With an airy wave of her hand, Francesca introduced Harry. ‘Everyone, this is Harry. And, Harry, this is my father. You can’t miss him — he’s the one sizing you up as a potential son-in-law. You’re just the respectable sort of young man he’d choose for me. Do you fancy something to eat? I do. How about the rest of you?’
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next morning, Theo drove Izzy to the doctor’s surgery in Kassiópi. After a thorough inspection, Dr Katerina Tsipa strapped up Izzy’s impressively swollen ankle and declared it badly twisted. She prescribed some tablets to ease the swelling and complete rest. Her English was sufficient to get this across without too much difficulty, but Izzy was grateful that Theo was there to help her fill in the necessary forms and translate anything she didn’t understand. Arrangements were made for a pair of crutches to be brought to the villa, which, when they arrived, gave Francesca and Sally hours of fun as they took it in turns to race up and down the veranda on them while shrieking at the top of their voices, ‘Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of ouzo,’ and ‘Out of my way, Jim lad, or I’ll be scraping the barnacles off your bum!’
For the following week, while Max and Laura took Corky and Olivia sightseeing, Izzy spent her days reading - she had finished
Culling The Good
and had moved on to
When Darkness Falls,
another of Mark’s books. It was just as spine-tingling as
Culling The Good
but with an even higher body-count. The level of violence portrayed was far greater than she was used to reading, and the same was true of the language. She had never seen the F word so liberally employed and once or twice she found herself blushing at the extremes to which Mark had gone in expressing himself. The more she read, the harder it was for her to equate the author of these novels with the man she knew; the man who had carried her up the hill and displayed such a dry, ready wit. But there was no humour in what Mark wrote, only a grim portrayal of human nature at its worst. It struck her that he walked a fine line of creating stories that were essentially moralistic but without preaching.
When she needed a breather from all this carnage and drama, she caught up with news from home. If it could be classed as news.
It was definitely the silly season and the papers that Max brought back with him from his daily walk into Kassiópi were full of sensationalist trivia. In the absence of any newsworthy story, they were relying on the old standbys of royal cock-ups: the Duke of Edinburgh had, once again, insulted a minority group, and a lesser-known royal, one of those so far down the pecking order you could never remember their name, had apparently been caught speeding. But the one story that seemed set to run and run, and which had truly caught the public’s imagination, was the tale of the mother of two and her schoolboy lover, who were still missing. ‘At the rate they’re going,’ Laura had said, ‘the boy will be old enough to marry her by the time anyone finds them.’
There were reports of the infamous pair — Christine and Mikey, the world and his wife were on first-name terms with them now — having been seen all over Europe. Most sightings had taken place in the Costas, though Ibiza was also mentioned, and a hotel in Reykjavik was claiming to have had the runaway lovers there for an overnight stay. ‘They looked very much in love,’ the manager was quoted as saying ‘They were no trouble at all. Very quiet. Very clean. I do not know what the problem is. You British, you always have such a closed mind when it comes to sex.’
One of the papers had even set up a hotline. ‘If you’ve seen this couple, phone this number,’ the caption read, above a picture that made Christine look like a cross between Lily Savage and Myra Hindley. There was one of Mikey dressed in his school uniform, which had probably been taken when he was about eleven.
As soap operas went, it was up there with the best of them, riveting stuff.
When she wasn’t reading, Izzy was playing cards with Max’s parents. Just as Laura had predicted, they had seized upon the opportunity to teach her Canasta. The wine had flowed too, despite her protests that perhaps she shouldn’t mix her tablets with alcohol.
‘The odd drop won’t make any difference,’ Corky had said, filling her glass, ‘It’ll help you relax.’
‘It’ll also help her on her way to an almighty hangover,’ Laura had said.
Her greatest frustration at being immobile was that she missed her early-morning sessions on the beach. Negotiating the steep hillside path was out of the question, her ankle just couldn’t take any weight on it yet, and annoyingly she had to make do with tantalising glimpses of the bay from the small balcony off her bedroom or the terrace. To ease her frustration she spent the first couple of hours of each day painting and sketching. With so much free time on her hands, she could see that her technique was improving. So much so that Olivia had raved about some of her watercolours and bought a set from her to take home. Even Sally had picked one for herself.
During the day when everybody was out and the villa was quiet, she took the opportunity to write all the postcards she had been meaning to send ever since she had arrived. While she had been lax over keeping in touch with Ingrid and the other staff at school, her mother was up to date. Duty had forced Izzy to write a letter each week she had been away. And that was a proper letter, a full two-page inconsequential missive. A postcard just wouldn’t do. In her mother’s opinion they were far too informal. ‘A lot of badly written sentences put together with little thought for grammar or punctuation,’ she would say, if one slipped through her draught-proof letter-box. She also didn’t want the postman reading her private mail.
And now, sitting in the shade on the veranda, everyone having gone off for the day in the boat, Izzy was trying to write once again to her mother. It was a tortuous, thankless endeavour.
‘Dear Mother, how are you?’ was all she had written so far.
It was a daft question. Prudence Jordan would, as ever, claim to be not long for this world. It was tempting to sidetrack her attention-seeking hypochondria by taking the radical approach: ‘Hi Mum,’ it would be great to write, ‘I’m having a wonderful time here without you. The weather is as hot as the misguided handsome Greek man who professes to be falling in love with me.’ But, of course, she never would. Any more than she would ever find the courage to stand up to Prudence as Theo had said she should.
That was as likely as her taking Theo seriously.
I think there is a very real danger that I am falling in love with you.
An extraordinary declaration that had been left hanging between them ever since that night. Due to Mark’s appearance on the beach and the phone call Theo had had to take, there had been no time to pursue what Theo had meant by it. Nor had there been time to linger over that kiss. For which she was grateful. A humiliating postmortem — ‘Call that a kiss?
Ha!’
— was not what she needed.
The only time Izzy and Theo had been alone since then was when he had driven her to the doctor. His concern for her as he had helped her in and out of the car had made her laugh. Especially when he had insisted on carrying her into the surgery. ‘No, Theo,’ she had cried, ‘put me down, and give me your arm.’ But he wouldn’t listen.
‘It is all my fault that you have hurt yourself, so it is I who will carry you.’
‘You make it sound like a punishment. You’ll be falling on your sword next.’
When they left the surgery and were driving home, he had stopped the car in the shade of a tree just before they reached Max and Laura’s driveway. ‘Izzy,’ he said, his face as earnest as she had ever seen it, ‘I want you to know that what I said last night, it was not said flippantly. I meant every word.’
She had been worried, as she sat beside him, that he might try to kiss her again, and a tiny knot of panic formed in her stomach. A day-time kiss would really sort out the women from the girls. With no romantic moonlight to fill in the gaps and make up for any inadequacy on her part, she was well and truly on her own.
But the sudden blast of a horn from an approaching Jeep with an inflatable whale rearing up from the back seat resolved the problem for her. Parked in the narrowest stretch of the road, with no room for a car to overtake, Theo had had no alternative but to drive on.
Once Izzy was back at the villa, there was no chance for the two of them to be alone together. She could see from Theo’s frown of frustration as everyone gathered around her to hear what the doctor had said that he knew he had lost his opportunity to have her to himself. She was torn between relief and feeling sorry for him. Though if she were completely honest, relief had the edge. She had just got used to having Theo as a friend when he had nudged their friendship to a level that made her feel uneasy with him again.