The Reluctant Baker (The Greek Village Collection Book 10) (10 page)

Ellie takes her leave into the olive grove and looks back once to see Sarah refreshing her lipstick.

The olive leaves are a green-blue on one side, with a silvery sheen to them on the reverse. The slightest of breezes, smelling of salt and sea, drifts through, rattling them and making them flutter, showing first one side then the other. In comparison, their twisted trunks are dark. Studying them as she walks, she decides that one or two of them at least have started as many thin trunks that have grown and twisted together with age, creating holes and knots that she has never seen in other tree trunks. Everything seems magical in the warmth.
 

But she hasn’t fallen in love. She has only seen him for seconds. She knows nothing about him. It’s just that she can relate, with him being only a couple of years older than her, maybe. His age also makes a change from Marcus, not that she wishes a change exactly, just that she is a little tired of slippers by the fire, one drink at the Shepherd’s Arms on a Saturday tea time, and all that time he spends with Brian, who, in her opinion, is just plain dull. But Brian teaches history at Marcus’ new school, and it is probably good for Marcus to find a friend. She wishes she had. She knows no one where they live now.

Coming out from the shade of the trees, the sun chases away all negative thoughts. Her shoulders are truly burning now. She hurries across the lawn from the edge of the trees to reception.

The courtyard where she had breakfast is cool even in the heat of the day. All the umbrellas have been put up, one over each of the tables. What intimidated her this morning, the fear of being stared at, being alone, now is not even a memory. The same family that was there at breakfast is there again, one of the children sitting scowling, arms crossed. But the other diners are strangers. There is a couple sitting very close to one another drinking wine and an old man and woman eating whilst thumbing through a guide book and pointing at the pages. The old lady’s hand is on the old man’s leg.

Lunch is a cold buffet of local produce: ham and chicken, feta, yoghurt, boiled eggs, grapes, cheeses, and slices of amazing filo pastry pies.

After lunch, it is a toss-up between indulging herself in a short nap or going down to the beach, maybe having a drink.

The beach wins.

Going out of the front door to go round seems too long-winded, her patio doors mean stepping through flower beds so, instead, she heads deeper into the hotel. There is bound to be a second door at the side.

The corridor is silent, her steps muffled by the thick carpet and the air is conditioned and lifeless. A door marked
Emergency Exit
is not completely shut and it is going in the right direction. It opens onto a short, uncarpeted utility corridor with an open door at the far end, the path to the sea in sight.

Passing closed doors to her left and right, Ellie hurries to the light. It doesn’t exactly feel forbidden to be here, but it is clearly not intended for guests. Just as she reaches the way out, the door to her left opens and Loukas steps out, carrying a crate of beer bottles. He looks up and his jaw drops open. The expanding of his pupils cannot be mistaken. She freezes on the spot. He puts down the crate.

‘Oh I am sorry,’ Ellie stammers, now quite sure that she should not be here. Loukas reaches out his hand as if to touch her face, but retracts it again. She steps towards the open door, leans to push it wider open for her. Her arm touches his chest. She is on him. Nose in his neck, lips on his skin, rising to meet his mouth. Hugging him tight so they touch in every possible place. She wants to consume him. Drink in everything that is not Marcus. Absorb his youth so it brings hers back to the surface, possess every inch of his tanned, smooth skin to coat herself with his beauty, soak in his dignity, his charm, his cool, and wear it like a trophy to show that it is not only the Penny Craigs and the Rebecca Slaters of this world that can be part of such gorgeousness. Her breath comes fast; she is lost to the moment.

Loukas cannot help himself. She is alive. His hands explore the curve of her waist, the arch of her back. Through the t-shirt dress, he can feel dimples, one either side of her spine at the base. She is moving faster than he is, her hands grabbing, hysterical, demanding. He cannot give her back what she is asking fast enough. Her lips are on his ears, warmer than the air; he cannot catch his breath. Every part of him is responding. If he lets this continue, he will be lost and he will take her with him, absorbing her, possessing her. For the briefest of seconds, he imagines them in the aftermath, exhausted, sweating on the floor amongst empty beer crates and rat traps. He grabs both her arms and pins them to her side in a bear hug. She struggles just once and then stops abruptly and looks into his eyes. He can see the fear of rejection ready to play its role. He won’t allow that.

Slowly, very slowly, he moves his mouth towards her. When she rushes to meet him, he pulls back and begins again until she waits for him. The kiss is all and more than he expected. She is calm now. She, too, is immersed in the kiss and he is transported, out of his life, out of his loneliness that until this moment he had not recognised. Out of reality, they soar and sail in the endless blues of the Mediterranean sky and until they naturally part—mostly to breathe.

He is happy to just look now. Look into her eyes, see if everything he is feeling is returned. It is all there: the willing, the wishing, the promising, and the possibilities as she smiles.

‘Loukas?’ It is Stella’s voice coming from somewhere outside. They jerk apart. Ellie blushes.

Loukas picks up the crate of beer, ‘
Edo
,’ he calls and, with a last look back at her and a smile that chisels out the dimple in his cheek, he is gone.

‘Oh my God, what am I doing?’ Ellie’s heart is beating so strongly, she can feel it in her ears, against her ribs, and her hands are shaking as she leans against the wall and relives some of the moments that have just passed. Marcus tries to invade her thoughts, soaking her emotions in guilt, trying to drown her in remorse, but she pushes him to one side. At least it is not a storage cupboard in the art room of a secondary school in a cold and grey country. She mocks herself with her congratulations of going up in the world. But she knows her humour is a celebration—and a condemnation—of the wonderful thing that just happened.

Her liberation brings previously undreamt of thoughts. The first stings her sense of decency. To hell with Marcus and the marriage, a darker side of her wants to shout. The whole thing was all for his benefit anyway, to stop him being sacked. But he was sacked after all, so what was the point? To save face? They have no face in the one-street village they are in now. To stop the scandal about the baby? Well, there was no baby.

It is a dry laugh that escapes her. Her father will probably never speak to her again if she divorces. ‘What will my congregation say?’ He will cry. Well, sod him. Ellie pushes the outside door open with such force it swings back and bangs against the wall.

Stella is organising the beach bar with him. He cannot stop smiling. His cheeks are starting to ache.

‘I didn’t think working here would make you this happy,’ Stella remarks. Loukas knows she is not a fool. He can hear the question. It occurs to him that he needs to be guarded, maybe not with Stella, but the village is small. Rumours of a casual fling with a tourist could have unbearable repercussions with the old man and old woman. But then maybe his future is not what it was? His stomach flips over at this thought. He decides to enter the conversation at an angle. She will understand.

‘Your clients seem very pleasant.’

Stella glances at him, light in her eyes, a smile twitching at her lips, telling him that she has understood already. She plays along.

‘Yes, the Internet is a marvellous tool. I am finding my feet marketing the hotel. It’s not easy, but I am meeting some wonderful people, like the lovely girl, Ellie, who you met this morning.’ Stella puts down the glass she is polishing and looks out to sea, her eyes creasing at the corners, uncharacteristically showing her age. ‘But I sense that everything is not quite right for her. Maybe she is unhappy about something. She reminds me how I felt when I was trapped with Stavros.’

Loukas stops unloading the beer crates at the mention of Stella’s first husband’s name. He was a pig. But is Stella trying to tell him something more? He waits for her to continue.

‘Someone so young should not be unhappy. If I had had children, I would have spent all my life making sure that they were not unhappy.’ She continues to look out over the water, her face losing shape as her muscles sag.

Switching back to her normal self, she picks up another glass to polish and puts on a smile.

Loukas is sad that Stella never had children. He knows he is the right age to be her son and he knows that in some ways, he stands in their stead. Maybe Ellie is also filling a role for Stella in some way. Maybe that is some of the sadness she is talking about, something to do with Ellie’s parents, perhaps, or maybe it is all her own sadness reflected.

Stella’s situation is regrettable perhaps, but by helping others, she does all she can to help herself. She wants no pity.

‘So you like the look of her, yes?’ There is something he cannot pin down in the way Stella says it. A caution? But the question brings a heat from his neck, rising to his cheeks, so he continues to take the beers from the crates and put them in the fridge.

‘What do you know about her?’ He avoids directly answering her question.

‘Nothing really. We exchanged a few emails. I am just guessing, really.’ Stella is vague, but it is her discretion he counts on, too, so he has no objections.

‘She did mention that she moved to a new town about a year ago and maybe that makes her lonely.’ Stella has finished polishing the glasses and she wipes the bar top although it is already polished and clean. She looks him in the eye. It feels like a warning and he wonders what it is that she does not tell him. Is she worried about the old woman and old man’s reactions if he becomes entangled? Is it about him or about Ellie or herself? Something is not clear.

Loukas nods. He knows Stella well enough to know that if she has not said something, she will not be induced to say it. If he wants to find any more about Ellie, he must ask her himself.

Ellie is bound to come down to the beach later. Linger at the bar. Sit with him a while.

He can find out all about her then.

The door bangs back against the wall and swings closed again.

Ellie has not moved. She shivers in the air conditioning. It was fantastic, it was wonderful, it was all she ever dreamed it could be and it was completely out of order!

Does she never learn? What is she planning to do? Jump from one store cupboard to the next and each time give no thought to the consequences, using other people as a quick fix to improve her life? As the thoughts come, they dry her mouth and bring moisture to her eyes. The bright sunlight streaming through the door equals her epiphany, but clashes with her sorrow.

It is her feeling about his decency, his openness, his sense of responsibility, as well as his looks, that draws her to him. They are the things she is craving. The clean wholesomeness of him. But she cannot grab those in a store cupboard and expect them to survive, let alone put them on as an overcoat to hide all she is not.

The whispers at school ring once again in her ears. Words like ‘tramp’ and ‘dirty’ and ‘whore.’ Her lungs deflate and her head drops. She has just proved them right. Her next breath comes as a sharp intake that snorts its way into a sob. Turning on her heels, she runs to her room, fighting with the lock, almost pulling the curtains from the rail in her desperation to shut out the world, and then she throws herself face down onto the bed.

It’s not fair. Marcus took away her innocence and her honour and made her embarrassed to face the world. Now his existence denies her something that seems so right, so natural.

No, that too is not fair. She cannot blame it all on Marcus. She played her part in the cupboard too, eventually.

But Becky and Penny made it seem so innocent, a joke, all part of growing up.

‘Ohhhh.’ She groans and curls into a ball. She has made such a mess of her life. She isn’t someone who jumps from one man to the other, she just isn’t. Yet events suggest otherwise. Why did she marry Marcus? Crazy, crazy, stupid! To shut her parents up? To shut the school up? Or in hopes for more passion, more of the stock cupboard?

She groans again. It’s so childish. So ridiculously childish. She should have just pointed the finger at Marcus and if there had been a baby, she could have just dealt with it.

No she couldn’t. She couldn’t have done that. She could not have harmed an unborn child. No way.

But there wasn’t a baby, so why didn’t she get the marriage annulled when her period came? It seems so easy now to think like this. But at the time, everything seemed hard, the world against her, the school, her parents, the other kids. She was seeking a safe harbour.

Her breathing is laboured, the tightness in her chest gripping her heart. What if she just never goes back? Stay here, learn the language, get a job and… and what?

Unrealistic. As always, she is being unrealistic. Time to start thinking things through. Face her life. Be more responsible.

But hasn’t that always been the problem, making decisions? What if she gets it wrong again? That’s the fear! All that stuff Father lectures her about; morality, responsibility, consideration, the bands of his words squeezing tighter and tighter as she has got older until she couldn’t move, couldn’t make a decision that would fit all his regulations. So many of them seemed to condemn her, restrict who she felt she was, deny her feelings. Her interests in boys suffocated when she mentioned someone she quite liked at church nearly three years ago now. It seemed the topic was raised at the dinner table nearly every evening since. Mum quietly chaperoned her at church, ensuring that she stayed away from him and guilt made her stay away from any other boys she got on with, too. Stayed away and became the odd one out at school. Stayed away and became lonely. Stayed away until she found a man, not a boy. Then she made her escape. Her escape from the freedom to get it wrong by passing all the decisions to that man in one fantastic, passionate submission.

From then on, she was no longer responsible for the consequences; all the adults’ eyes turned on Marcus. How much easier it is to give over that responsibility to someone else, anyone else, even Marcus.

She wants it back now. That right to choose. Isn’t that why she is here? Isn’t taking this holiday showing Marcus she has her own mind, her own choices, making a stand? Forcing herself to grow up, perhaps?

The tension around her chest releases its steely grasp a little. Thoughts of being responsible, growing up, seem to offer her some relief.

Rolling to sit up, she finds that the dressing table mirror is at the wrong angle and she can see herself: one of the straps of her dress off her shoulder, her lank hair, her eye makeup running. She looks like a tramp.

But what does she need to do to be grown up? The task appears Herculean.

Father’s moral codes are all she has ever been offered as a guide to how to be responsible. Where do those fit here? She is married. That is a fact. To cast that aside is not responsible. She took a vow. There is not only her, there is Marcus. He took the vow too.

But they have so little together now. On the other hand, what about the old woman Sarah talked about? She had an arranged marriage and real love grew. Perhaps her impatience with Marcus is childish, too? Why does no one tell you about these things, how they go, what is normal?

Ellie kicks off her sandals and her feet slap against the tiled floor into the bathroom where she blows her nose and washes her face. Yesterday’s knickers lay by the bath. She ignores them but then turns around and picks them up, finds a plastic bag amongst her things and starts a laundry bag. There! How grown up is that!

But she couldn’t feel sadder. Nor can she stop thinking about Loukas.

‘Okay.’ She addresses the dressing table mirror as she sits on the bed. ‘What happened? A quick kiss and a hug with Loukas, no big deal. It happens. Get over it. Have your holiday. Go home. Work on your marriage. Have some dignity. You are not a tramp.’

There, it is said. She has been told.

The words alone exhaust her. The request is too big; she is so small. She feels drained with it all. Curling up on the bed, she drifts with the heat until she is asleep.

Loukas puts a towel someone has left behind on the sun bed nearest to the bar, claiming it. Ellie can lay there, keep him company. It is a shame he has to work tonight of all nights, but he must. Stella is relying on him now; she cannot be let down again. Tomorrow maybe he can take Ellie out. Go to Saros town nearby and drink coffee in the square, talk, get to know her more. If any villagers see him, well too bad. He cannot stay single the rest of his life.

There’s that guilt again. It comes every time he thinks of doing something that pulls him away from Natasha. But why? Even on her death bed, she made him promise to have a life, find a new love. So why the guilt?

Normally this question goes round and round unanswered, and today he does not expect it to be any different.

He takes the empty crate back to the stockroom, part of him hoping Ellie is still there. Even though the corridor and store room are empty, the feelings of being with her return and with them come some sort of answer. He didn’t marry Natasha, lovely as she was, because he loved her. He married her wishing. Wishing she was someone else, someone like Ellie.

Even this thought stops him in his tracks. A slow exhale releases his disappointment with himself.

His first wish came when Natasha kissed him. He wished it would be electric, uplifting, soul expanding, that his world would move, like it just did with Ellie. But it didn’t. It was sweet and kind and warm and comforting. Her tenderness like a kitten; his rejection would have been like a truck tyre. So they dated for a couple of months. Then they were invited, as a couple, to a university friend’s engagement party, and that ignited the second wish.

His friend raved about how wonderful life was to be engaged. He ranted nonstop until Loukas began to think there was something he was missing. Did the fireworks and dazzle come with commitment? Was that what was needed? He considered and pondered. Then one night when he was half drunk, he proposed. The next day, in the sober light, she linked his arm and took him to a jewellers and he put a ring on her finger. Then he waited for his wish to come true. But there were no fireworks, no storm, nothing but blandness.

That is not to say it wasn’t good between them. It was. It was good and decent and they did love each other. She would say so and he would nod in agreement. At one point, though, he had tried to call it off and he had almost got there, said the words that would have broken her heart but the auditorium filled with noise and the lecture began. By the time the lecture was over, he had lost his nerve and could not repeat himself. He never tried again, too much of a coward to bear the look that would have distorted her face. The look that said she knew she was about to be rejected and hinted at all the pain that would follow. He could see the anguish forming deep inside her and he lost his nerve and settled for cosy.

When they married, he hoped, wished, that their wedding night would bring what he desired. She was so keen and he went through all the motions, but if the temperature is not hot enough, the water will not boil. He tried, eyes open, tender kisses, eyes closed, concentrating on the physical and that is what it became. All physical. Which was alright; it’s better than a loveless marriage, but he still yearned for fireworks and rockets.

She could feel it. He knew she could. She wanted to make him happy, give him his fireworks. That was why, when she had nothing left to give, she made him promise to find someone else after she was gone. Her last desire was that he should have fireworks from her even if someone else stood, or rather laid, in her stead.

So there was his guilt. He cheated her. Cheated her short life of real love, real intimacy, and it seems wrong to move forward with his own happiness now. Was he trying to pay off his guilt by slaving for her mama and baba?

He cannot find any more crates of bottled lager. He is bound to run out tonight, with the whole village and most of Saros buzzing with the idea of the party. Sadness is consuming him.

He turns to leave, hoping again that Ellie will be just outside the door to lift him from all he is feeling, but there is nothing but a fly hurtling itself against the window above the door, the sunlight calling to it, forcing its actions in futile repetition.

He could hurtle himself into the light, too. He could throw himself at Ellie. Bounce against the outrage of his in-laws, rebound from the gossip of the village. He could. It would be easy. But it would not be kind or decent. Ellie promises everything, he can feel it, see it in her eyes. There is no need to hurry. Take it slowly, get to know her, be friends first, that is the foundation. Be respectful. She deserves that. The rest is there for sure.

Pulling at a folded tarpaulin just inside the storeroom door, he finds ten crates of beer neatly stacked. He’ll take two and leave them behind the bar. The rest can stay here for now. At least he now knows where they are.

Outside, the heat is at its height for the day. The bar, with its palm-leaf roof, has an electric fan, but it just ruffles the hot air. There are only a few people on the sunbeds and, all except one who is going lobster red, have their umbrellas up. A mother covers her child in sun cream, the child standing stiff, arms out, trying to be helpful.

Ellie will come soon. She can sit at the counter, too.

He takes a tea towel from behind the bar and puts it on the stool nearest the half door that swings in and out of his new world, claiming that seat for her.

His excitement is growing. A new future is beginning to form inside his head. Maybe even a future in England, or maybe here at the hotel, Ellie by his side. There are no limits. The possibilities are endless. They can do anything.