by Mandy Baggot
Alex let Milo go and concentrated fully on his mother. ‘My father wanted to leave Corfu?’
‘He left, didn’t he?’
‘But he wanted to leave with us?’
‘Not really.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Your father said a lot of things. Always talking. Always making big plans.’
‘There isn’t anything wrong with having big plans and dreams,’ Alex said. ‘It’s something to work towards. Goals to achieve. Like… when we first got the animals. We had half-a-dozen chickens and two goats. Now we have more of these and sheep too. We have one of the largest smallholdings in Almyros,’ Alex reminded her.
‘In Almyros,’ Margalo said, her shoulders sagging. ‘On Corfu.’
‘Yes,’ Alex said softly.
‘Not in Ibiza.’
He nodded. ‘No.’ The wind blew the stalks of the pale green grass of the field as if knowing neither felt ready to restart the conversation. Alex knew it was up to him, if he wanted clarity on the situation.
‘You said you wanted me to manage Uncle Fotis’s new garage.’
Margalo sighed. It was almost a defeated sound or, perhaps, the noise someone might make if they were all out of energy.
‘Mama, I think you have the wrong perception about my music and also, about me.’
‘I know no one I know has made a living from playing records.’
‘And why do I have to travel a well-worn path?’ he asked. ‘The world is not made up of people all doing the same thing. It is made up of people all doing different things.’
‘Your uncle’s business is the family business he took over when our father died.’
‘And my grandfather’s garage did not manage to keep him loyal to his wife.’ Alex bit his lip. Perhaps that comment was a step too far. He didn’t say anything else, just watched his mother’s stature shrink a little, like a plant being blanched by the sun.
‘That is true enough,’ Margalo admitted. ‘But my brother is not like his father. He is a good man. Governed by his wife… but still a good man.’
‘And I am a good man, Mama,’ Alex told her.
‘I know,’ Margalo said, her voice cracking. ‘I know that, Aleko.’
‘Then why do you not have faith in me?’
This conversation was as deep as things got, as deep as they had ever been. Their whole lives together had been about the day-to-day, working to live and living to work, there was usually no time for contemplation.
‘I am your mother,’ Margalo told him. ‘I only want what is best for you.’
‘No, Mama,’ Alex said, shaking his head. ‘You only want what you think is best for me.’
Margalo sniffed, a little sadly. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Well,’ Alex began. ‘You need to know that I am going to perform at the club tomorrow night.’
Margalo nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Then, please, Mama, tell me right now, this one thing.’ He swallowed, bracing himself. ‘Did my father cheat on you?’
‘I was never going to be enough for him.’
‘That was not what I asked,’ Alex said.
‘No!’ Margalo exclaimed suddenly, her voice rich with tears. ‘No, OK, but he would have. I knew that. So I sent him away.’ Quickly, she got to her feet and before Alex could do, or say, anything else, she was hobbling across the field, back towards the house.
Forty-Four
Nikolas Taverna, Agni Bay
‘This really is a gorgeous little place, is it not?’
The temperature had dropped a little and Beth, Heidi and Charles had worked their way through a meze of Greek delights and polished off the wine. Charles had ordered a fresh fish and the simply grilled, giant red snapper had arrived like a bit-part from a banquet in The Crown. Dressed with nothing but olive oil and a little lemon juice, it had impressed the head of Mountbatten Global and Charles had declared it the best and freshest fish he had ever eaten… apart from that one time in Malaysia… with the kelah.
‘Most of Corfu is lovely,’ Heidi remarked. ‘That’s why we came back here.’
Beth sat up a little straighter in her seat. She mustn’t let the wine affect her like it seemed to be affecting Heidi. She had only mentioned Corfu once to Charles, and there had been tipsy tears and the need for black coffee after a hospital charity event.
‘Of course,’ Charles said. ‘You have both been to Greece before, haven’t you?’
‘We certainly have,’ Heidi said, winding a tendril of her blonde hair round her finger, legs crossed lazily over each other, soaking up a tan. ‘2009. What a holiday.’
‘So, Charles,’ Beth said, quickly filling a glass with water and passing it over to Heidi. ‘Have you thought about where you and Kendra might go on holiday this year? You had a weekend in Brussels, didn’t you?’
‘That,’ Charles said, with a degree of disdain, ‘was some chocolate-tasting experience she booked with a company called… what was it now? Ah, yes, Travelzoo. I mean, who books anything with a company named after an animal hotel?’
‘Didn’t you have fun?’ Heidi asked.
‘I have a very discerning palate,’ Charles said, observing the wine in his glass, then sniffing like he was detecting a bouquet. ‘The chocolate was cheap – like the package deal – and we had to move hotel rooms because the room they had put us in overlooked some awful statue of a dog peeing on a bollard.’
‘God!’ Heidi exclaimed. ‘How awful! A crime.’ Now her tone was pure sarcasm. Beth needed to end this meal and get them back to the villa.
‘Anyhow,’ Charles continued, moving his chair a little closer to Beth’s. ‘You know I always struggle a little with taking a break, and Kendra… well, she does not struggle with taking a break and…’
‘But you know what they say opposites attract,’ Beth said.
‘We attracted for one reason only,’ Charles said, his eyes on Beth. ‘She likes my money and prestige and… I was lonely.’
OK, now Beth was thinking Charles had had a little too much of the wine as well. This was not a route she wanted to go down here. Much better in the sanctuary of his hillside villa, not in this restaurant, everyone around happy and holidaying on the perfect sunshine atmosphere.
‘Fuck! Beth!’ Heidi shouted, chair scraping back as she rose up, a little unsteady on her feet. ‘It’s Elektra! She’s texted me!’
‘Who is Elektra?’ Charles queried, like it was his business to know.
‘She’s the hottest…’ Heidi began, eyes going anime.
Beth interrupted. ‘Elektra is someone Heidi met while she’s here and is enjoying getting to know.’
‘Oh,’ Charles replied. ‘I rather thought you might get together with Tilly.’
‘What?’ Beth stated. ‘Tilly isn’t gay… is she?’
‘Isn’t she?’ Charles asked. ‘I always assumed…’
‘Elektra wants me to come to a beach party in Roda… like now,’ Heidi said, hands getting all wavy and flustered.
‘Well, that’s brilliant,’ Beth said, excited for her friend.
‘It would be,’ Heidi agreed. ‘If we were back in Almyros and I hadn’t drunk so much wine. I can’t possibly drive.’
‘That’s easily solved,’ Beth told her. ‘I’ll drive you.’
‘No, Beth,’ Charles stated boldly. ‘You have been drinking too.’
‘I’ve had one glass of wine with lunch.’
‘Only one,’ Heidi sighed. ‘No wonder I feel as pissed as I do.’
‘Text Elektra back,’ Beth urged. ‘Tell her you’ll meet her at the beach party and I’ll take you.’
‘I could drive you,’ Charles offered quickly.
‘If Beth drank one glass of wine and I feel this merry then that means you drank the rest of it,’ Heidi reminded him. ‘I really, really need to get changed first though.’
‘Well, we’ve finished lunch. We’ll pay the bill and walk back to the villa,’ Beth said.
‘I will pay the bill,’ Charles said,
getting to his feet.
‘No, Charles,’ Beth insisted. ‘You’re already putting us up until the cottage is fixed, we are going to pay for lunch.’
‘I insist,’ Charles said, raising a hand to flag down a waiter.
‘No,’ Beth said. ‘I insist. Really insist.’ She made her voice no-nonsense. Charles had to see she was a different woman to the one he married. Not the person he thought he wanted.
‘Well,’ Charles said, dropping to his seat again. ‘Perhaps, once you have taken Heidi to her party, you and I could share another bottle of wine on the terrace at the villa. I could pick up some cheese and olives from the little shop we passed.’
She didn’t want to be alone with him like that. That was one of the reasons she had jumped on the opportunity to take Heidi to Roda. She needed something else if her third wheel was leaving her for the night. She knew that she had to talk to Charles, honestly and frankly, to dispel the myth that their relationship was salvageable but a whole, long evening at a luxury villa with no idea when or even if Heidi would return seemed a hike too far. Tomorrow. She would tackle Charles tomorrow, in the daylight, not when the sun was setting and colouring the sky a romantic pink and purple…
‘Elektra says you must come too,’ Heidi piped up, shaking her phone like it was evidence. ‘She says you’re funny.’ Heidi laughed. ‘That’s because she saw you chucked off Barbaro and into the dung heap when we got back to the riding school.’
‘Hilarious,’ Beth remarked.
‘Why would Beth want to go to a beach party?’ Charles asked. ‘It sounds…’
‘Fun?’ Heidi suggested. ‘Cool? Amazingly uber-Greek?’
‘I was going to say infantile,’ Charles answered.
‘Charles!’ Beth exclaimed. It seemed his comfort zone was getting narrower not wider, like he had suggested earlier. Perhaps the afternoon hike had affected him internally as well as externally.
‘Will people be drinking straight from cans or bottles?’ Charles continued. ‘Sat on bales of straw?’
‘You’re making it sound even more appealing,’ Heidi said, standing up, putting her bag on her shoulder. ‘Maybe there will be flagons of moonshine too.’ She looked to Beth. ‘I’m just going to the loo and then we’ll walk up, shall we?’
‘Yes,’ Beth agreed. ‘I’ll settle up from the kitty.’ She tapped her bag.
‘A kitty,’ Charles said as Heidi departed.
‘What’s amusing about that?’ Beth asked.
‘I never stopped your platinum card you know,’ Charles told her.
Beth sighed. ‘I know, Charles. But I won’t be using it. I can’t afford to. Not if I want to start my own business.’ OK, that last sentence hadn’t been planned. But saying it was committing to it and she did long to be brave enough to commit to it.
‘Start your own business?’ Charles said like the words were burning his lips. ‘You’ve only just resigned! And… I believe… there is a non-compete clause in your contract so you cannot operate in any London borough for a period of six months so…’
‘Charles,’ Beth said calmly, letting the soft, summery scenery surrounding her fill her up. ‘I won’t be dealing in investments.’
‘You won’t?’ he said. He seemed flabbergasted. ‘But you don’t do anything else.’
She held her resolve. In some ways Charles was right. She hadn’t done anything else apart from work at his company and be his wife for as long as they had been together. She’d been grieving the whole time, disorientated, lost somehow, stuck shopping for imported artisan goods that were in this month’s ‘superfoods’ section of Charles’s copy of GQ.
‘I want to do something else,’ Beth admitted. ‘Which is why you need to accept that I am resigning. I am moving on.’
‘Well,’ Charles said quickly. ‘You know most small businesses are destined to fail.’
Beth thought about Alex and his kumquat idea. She had told him the same thing, without the actual word ‘fail’ she hoped. And the juice was exquisite, he had obviously put a great deal of research into it, but she had a feeling it wasn’t singing to his heart like DJ-ing was. And that’s what she wanted from her business. Something that she could put her heart, soul and everything she had into. Something to feel passionate about again. She was in the luckiest of positions, being mortgage free at her time of life. She really should make the most of that opportunity, turn the sadness of losing her mum into something brighter.
‘I know, Charles,’ Beth said. ‘We tell clients that all the time when considering companies to invest in.’
‘So, you know the risks of giving up a full-time job, ignoring your platinum credit card and throwing everything in for a pipe dream.’
‘Yes,’ Beth said.
‘Well, that is insanity.’
He still hadn’t asked her what it was she was going to do. Because he had never known that part of her. She had been different when they had met. A half-person, a shattered shell. Maybe she had hidden it away from him because she knew he wouldn’t click with that side of her but, then again, he hadn’t exactly delved too deep, nor seemed to want to back then.
‘Thank you,’ Beth answered. ‘For the support.’ She picked up her water and took a swig.
‘Beth, I am here for you. To support you. Like I always have been. Whatever you need. If you want to set up your own business then let me do it for you. I can BACS over the money, look at contracts…’
Charles’s offer of help was so different to the offer Alex had made her earlier. Charles’s help was always financial, not emotional. The emotion she thought he had shown her at the very start of their relationship had simply been about Charles being the man he thought Beth needed, not the man he actually was. And although her money situation would be tight, even if she downsized and took on a premises and bought machines and tools, it thrilled her a lot to be in charge of that. To make this next step entirely hers. She looked at a little rowing boat, white paint bare in places, making its way from the shore out to the wider expanse of blue. That’s what she wanted to be doing, rowing out into the unknown but steering her own vessel.
‘I appreciate the gesture,’ Beth responded. ‘But no thank you.’ She took her purse from her handbag and began putting euro notes on the table. ‘I ought to see where Heidi’s got to. I’ll leave enough for all the food and drinks.’
‘I know there is still hope, Beth,’ Charles said softly. ‘Despite what you said on the telephone and in your email. I knew it as soon as I arrived here.’
‘Charles…’ Beth started with a sigh.
‘I know it,’ he began again. ‘Because you’re still wearing my wedding ring.’
Forty-Five
Roda
‘I’m shaking like a cocktail,’ Heidi said, even her lips trembling as she said the words.
Beth had parked their SUV outside a bar called The Drunken Sailor and they were now walking down the road towards Roda’s sandy beach and the strip. The early evening night was balmy rather than oppressive, Beth’s browning skin getting used to the Corfu climate and enjoying everything about the way the place was making her feel. Youthful. Carefree, yet somehow, steady.
‘This is a date, isn’t it?’ Heidi continued. ‘I’m not over-playing it, am I?’
Beth smiled, linking arms with her friend. ‘Didn’t we have this discussion about me and Alex?’
‘And where are we with that?’ Heidi asked. ‘Tell me, distract me from thinking about Elektra.’
‘We’re keeping things fluid,’ Beth said with a satisfied nod.
‘And what does that mean? Because I’m sure, since the urban dictionary was created, everything has a dirty counterpart. Is it dirty?’
Beth laughed. ‘No… not yet.’
‘That’s my girl.’
‘It just means that things are good between us, but everything is loose… adaptable to change and differing circumstances.’
‘Like Charles turning up,’ Heidi said.
‘Yes,’ Beth agreed.
‘Listen, if you want to go back to the villa and eat cheese with him, you’ll get no judgement here,’ Heidi said as they strode along the pavement, one side lined with tavernas, bars and accommodation, the other with the tan sand and the blue water, a gradually dipping sun providing the light, slowly-falling heat. ‘I know that personally I want you to ditch the cheating a-hole but… it’s your choice. Your life. Your decision.’
‘And I still don’t love him,’ Beth reminded. ‘More so since he offered to build my new business for me.’
‘He really is Lord Control,’ Heidi commented. ‘God, I’ve never thought, is Charles Mountbatten an anagram of “I am Lord Voldemort?” No, no “C” or “N” or…’
‘And,’ Beth added, ‘he never even asked what the business would be.’ She sighed. It had been typical Charles, only caring about the financial headlines, not wanting to look under the surface to the more important roots.
‘You should make him a bracelet or something,’ Heidi mused. ‘Get the ugliest piece of sea glass you can find and tell him it’s come from the cave of Aladdin… in Mogadishu or somewhere.’
Beth smiled. ‘He’s probably got something from a cave in Mogadishu already.’
‘Yes,’ Heidi said. ‘It’s probably in your mum’s house.’
‘Well,’ Beth said, ‘it won’t be there for much longer. If Charles doesn’t want any of the contents, then I’ll sell most of it… along with the house.’
‘And that must be the party,’ Heidi said, bringing them to a halt and looking over the sand ahead of them.
There were scores of people gathered round a small DJ booth set up in front of the shoreline, dancing and chatting, wearing bikini tops and shorts or jeans and vests, lights flashing as daytime began to fade into dusk.
‘I should let you do this on your own,’ Beth said suddenly. She didn’t want to be a spare part in Heidi’s time with Elektra. ‘I can hang around in Roda, maybe have a dessert… or some starters, and if you need me to drive you back to Agni later, I will.’ She squeezed her friend’s arm. ‘Or, if things are going well and you don’t need a lift at all, then I can just go back on my own… once I know Charles is in bed and not waiting with a business plan for an idea he knows nothing about.’
