Wish You Were Here

by Mike Gayle

  Without replying I got up, walked over to the chest of drawers, put my sunglasses back inside their case and began sorting out my suitcase.

  Realising I was ignoring him, Andy sighed in my direction as though he was really disappointed in me. ‘How long are you two going to be like this?’ he asked.

  ‘Like what?’ I replied.

  ‘Like you’re my dad,’ he said. ‘Do you know what? Nina didn’t want me to leave her and come here.’

  ‘So why did you?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I hadn’t seen you guys all day.’

  Tom laughed. ‘And are we supposed to feel flattered?’

  ‘You’re not supposed to feel anything,’ replied Andy. ‘Look, I—’ He stopped suddenly, rolled his eyes in frustration and tried a different approach to the problem. ‘Hey, Charlie,’ he began. ‘Did that girl you were supposed to meet last night ever turn up?’ he asked. ‘You know, the one in the cowboy hat?’

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘Bad luck, mate.’

  ‘It was no big loss.’

  ‘Still, you shouldn’t give up yet. How about this? Why don’t you come out with me tonight and meet Nina’s mates? We’re going to Flares. Do you remember it from last time? It’s that seventies bar we used to go to sometimes where they played that Match of the Day theme tune and then everyone would do that dance – do you remember?’

  ‘It’s not Match of the Day,’ corrected Tom. ‘It’s Ski Sunday.’

  ‘Same difference.’

  ‘No,’ replied Tom. ‘I think you’ll find that one is dedicated to the sport of football and the other skiing.’

  I wanted to laugh but I could see that Andy was running out of patience. ‘Come on, guys,’ he said adding a hint of joviality to his plea, ‘both of you come out tonight. I guarantee you we’ll have a laugh. Nina’s mates are good fun.’

  ‘What about her sister?’ I asked, hoping that Andy wouldn’t make a big deal about it. ‘Tom and I met her last night after you left Pandemonium: shortish, dark-hair, nice-looking, dry sense of humour. More our sort of age than most girls in Malia.’

  ‘That sounds like Donna all right.’ Andy grinned. ‘You don’t fancy her do you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I lied, making a mental note of her name. ‘She just seemed nice, that’s all.’

  ‘I haven’t had much to do with her,’ said Andy. ‘But since I’m currently in with her sister I’m sure a word from me could put you in good stead.’

  ‘No thanks,’ I replied. ‘I’m good.’

  ‘You’re nowhere near good,’ said Andy, ‘Look, mate, unlike some people . . .’ he paused and looked pointedly at Tom, ‘. . . I haven’t forgotten what this holiday is all about – it’s about you moving on. And the best way of doing that would be for you to come out with me tonight. Forget Sarah. Forget the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat. And forget Nina’s sister too. Because I’ve spent all day telling Nina’s mates about how wonderful “my mate, Charlie” is. Mate, I guarantee they’re practically gagging for you. I’ve built you up so much they already think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. All of which means at least one of them has got to be a dead cert.’

  ‘A “dead cert”?’ I repeated disdainfully at the thought of Andy’s selling me to Nina’s friends as though I was a sack of potatoes past their sell-by date.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Andy stubbornly refusing to pick up on my sarcasm. ‘A “dead cert”.’

  ‘Well, much as I’d like to be the beneficiary of your charitable efforts to get me sex,’ I replied, ‘I’m going to have to say no this time.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Andy.

  ‘Because Tom and I have already got plans.’

  Andy looked confused. ‘What plans?’

  At this point it would have been perfect if the plans Tom and I had in mind had been the type that involved excessive drinking, lap-dancing clubs and the possibility of rubbing shoulders with a female celebrity or two.

  ‘We’re going to a village up in the hills that Tom’s Rough Guide recommends,’ I explained feebly. ‘It’s got a church . . . and some shops . . . and a taverna. You can come if you want.’

  ‘Let me get this right,’ said Andy his eyes straining with incredulity. ‘You’re turning down a night out with hot girls for a trip to a village with a Christian?’

  ‘Well, if you’d given us a bit more notice . . . like this morning . . . or even this afternoon we might have been able to come,’ I replied. ‘But the fact is we’ve made plans, mate. It’s just the way it is.’

  ‘Fine,’ snapped Andy, ‘you stick to your village people plans and I’ll stick to mine.’

  There was a long uncomfortable silence while we all sort of stared at each other.

  ‘Anyway,’ I began softly in a bid to appease Andy. ‘I’d be rubbish company for girls tonight anyway. I’d just end up cramping your style.’ I paused and, a diversionary tactic I’d cultivated over the many years I’d known Andy, I decided to flatter his ego. ‘Nina’s a bit spectacular,’ I said raising my eyebrows suggestively. ‘Tell us about her.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Andy, making a token effort to resist my flattery.

  ‘Like what does she do?’

  ‘She works in TV.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘She’s a production secretary.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘When’s her birthday?’

  ‘November the—’ Andy stopped suddenly and began laughing. ‘All right, Mansell, you’ve had your fun. Let’s move on with the questions.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Tom, ‘I’ve got one I’d like to ask.’

  ‘Go on then,’ said Andy.

  ‘I know I said I wasn’t going to get involved but I’m curious to find out how long you’re going to carry this on?’

  Andy turned to face Tom but neither man spoke for several moments.

  ‘I’m not in the mood for this, Tom,’ said Andy coolly. ‘So for your benefit and the benefit of Charlie I’ll say it once: this is just a holiday thing. It’s not going to last forever so there’s no need to tell anyone anything. I know you two think that you’re somehow morally superior to me but this is something I’ve got to do, okay? And none of it is any of your business—’ Andy stopped abruptly and pulled out his mobile from his back pocket. ‘It’s Lisa,’ he said looking at the screen. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Tom and I exchanged wary glances as Andy left the room to take the call on the balcony.

  ‘I think we’re being too hard on him,’ I whispered to Tom as Andy slid back the patio doors. ‘After all, none of this is our business.’

  ‘Look,’ said Tom, ‘if you want to go to the club with Andy then you should go. But whether you come or not my plans for this evening involve going to Mohos.’

  ‘I’m still coming to the village,’ I replied. ‘Nothing has changed there. All I’m saying is I think this night out Andy has planned is his way of saying sorry for being away all day. I think he really wants us to come out tonight.’

  ‘Maybe he does,’ said Tom. ‘But do you know what, Charlie? I don’t think I could put up with his nonsense tonight even if I wanted to.’ Tom smiled mischievously. ‘But you should go, mate, if you really want to.’

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ I asked.

  ‘You, and your big speech about Andy wanting us to go with him. You just want to see Nina’s sister again, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah right,’ I replied. ‘I only met her for about five seconds.’

  ‘There’s no need to be defensive, mate. She seemed really nice. I can see why you’d be into her.’

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘She’s just your type.’

  ‘And my type would be?’

  ‘Oh come on,’ protested Tom. ‘You’ve always had a type. Even back in college. They were always pretty but not too pretty. Usually dark haired. Good dress sense. Look like they might be able to hold their own in a conversation about
the meaning of life until the early hours . . . you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I grinned. ‘You’re right. I have got a type and Nina’s sister did pretty much fit the bill. But I’m not going out with Andy tonight and that’s final. Tonight it’s just you, me and a village—’ I stopped as Andy opened the patio doors and returned to the room, yawning.

  ‘Everything okay with Lisa?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ replied Andy. ‘She was just ringing for a chat. I kept it short though. Told her we were going out in a minute.’

  ‘So what did you tell her?’

  ‘I said we’d spent the day hanging out by the hotel pool and then—’

  ‘You said what?’ I spluttered.

  Andy looked confused at my concern. ‘I told her we’d spent all afternoon by the hotel pool,’ he repeated. ‘Which it so happens is actually what me and Nina did when we weren’t—’

  ‘But why did you tell her we’d been by the pool?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I have?’ replied Andy. ‘It’s not like she’s going to know any different is—’ Andy stopped abruptly and looked at me. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

  It was a good question. There were a million things that I wasn’t telling him. But at this moment everything would be a lot easier if I kept it down to just the things he needed to know.

  ‘Lisa sent me a text message this afternoon.’

  Andy looked confused. ‘Why’s she sending you text messages?’

  ‘It was something to do with Sarah,’ I lied. ‘But you’re sort of missing the point. In my reply to her message I told her that we’d spent the day at the beach.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well you’ve just told her we spent the whole day by the pool.’

  ‘So I mixed up swimming pool and beaches, so what?’ said Andy. ‘I do that kind of thing all the time. Honestly, Charlie, you nearly gave me a heart attack acting like that.’

  ‘But aren’t you even a little bit worried that she knows what’s going on?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Andy sighing with relief. ‘I guarantee you, my friend, that she does not suspect a thing.’

  Useful phrases

  Andy had long since gone back to Nina’s when Tom and I finally left the apartment just after nine. As we waited for a taxi by the roadside I noted that as usual the streets of Malia were buzzing with young Brits on their way up to the strip. As they passed by I found myself scanning them in what I considered a detached academic manner, as though I were a TV documentary maker scouting locations for a reality TV series called ‘Malia Uncovered’. This pseudo-anthropological stance was, of course, simply a cover for me to stare at attractive girls in short skirts in the hope that one of them might be the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat.

  I’d been wondering on and off all day why she hadn’t turned up when it had been she who had made the initial contact. My more cynical side presumed that it was all part of some elaborate joke but my more optimistic side was willing her to have been run over. I guessed that the truth would be somewhere in the middle.

  A white Mercedes with a taxi sign on the roof came by after a ten-minute wait and we jumped in the rear seats and asked the driver – a grim-faced local in his late fifties – to take us to Mohos. He did a sort of comedy double-take. As he pulled away from the pavement he checked several times that Mohos was definitely our destination and even tried to put us off making the journey. ‘No nightlife in Mohos,’ he said brusquely. Once we’d reassured him that we weren’t expecting dancing girls and wild parties from a village in the hills he just shrugged and turned on his car radio.

  Because there were so many revellers on the streets we had to drive through the strip at a snail’s pace on our way to the motorway. I wondered briefly whether the taxi driver had taken this route deliberately as if tempting us to stay where we belonged. If so, the implied message of our detour was: ‘This is what you’ll be missing out on tonight: tall girls, short girls, fat girls, thin girls, girls with dark hair, girls with light hair, girls with short skirts, girls with long skirts . . . in fact every kind of girl you can think of.’ And I’ll admit for a moment there I was tempted to yell out, ‘Stop the car. You’ve made your point and it’s a good one.’ I didn’t, of course, even though I was well aware a night out in the hills would inevitably mean one fewer opportunity for me to meet someone. Sighing inwardly, I kept my mouth shut until we’d left the deafening music and neon haze of Malia long behind and replaced it with the comforting xenon glare of motorway streetlights and the gentle purr of Goodyear radial on bone-dry tarmac.

  Slowly negotiating a long narrow residential street, the taxi finally emerged into a small village square. Though I tended not to have much of an opinion on matters aesthetic when it came to village squares, even I appreciated that this one was indeed pretty. Everything about it from the trees glinting with decorative fairy lights to the quaint old church was picture postcard perfect. In fact, had the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat and I ever made it to a second date, this would’ve been the perfect place to take her.

  As Tom dug around in his pockets for money to pay our taxi driver, he attempted to engage him in some Greek banter culled from the ‘useful phrases’ section of his Rough Guide. To say that the taxi driver wasn’t interested would be something of an understatement. In fact he seemed to be bordering on the outskirts of outrage, as though the very act of Tom attempting to speak Greek was somehow permanently soiling his mother tongue.

  Still somewhat stunned by his naked contempt for us, we headed first to a small gift shop across the road from the taverna, because it seemed as though it might have the fewest people in it who hated us. We had become aware that we were the only non-locals in the square and the row of elderly men sitting on a bench outside a butcher’s shop blatantly watching our every move as though we were the evening’s entertainment did little to make us feel less self-conscious.

  The gift shop was filled with standard tourist items: Greek lace, a million different kinds of olive oil, little dolls in ‘traditional’ Greek clothing, the lot. As we walked around, Tom voiced his concern that the tendrils of commercialism had extended so deeply into the countryside that there was a real danger of losing any sense of authentic Crete. I didn’t want to argue with Tom because it was hard enough arguing with Andy all the time, but I was sure that his idea of simple peasant people, living simple peasant lives, untainted by the modern world hadn’t existed anywhere other than in the heads of tourists searching out the ‘real’ Crete for some time.

  Still closely observed by the old men on the bench we left the shop and headed over to the church. There appeared to be some sort of service going on so we didn’t go in, but as we turned to leave an old lady standing in the vestibule at the back spotted us and nudged her friends: as one they all turned and stared at us for an uncomfortably long time.

  Bemused by the interest we seemed to be creating we finally made our way to the taverna and sat down at one of the many outdoor tables. Much to our great relief, within seconds of sitting down a friendly middle-aged man came over and took our order. Still keen to try out his phrasebook Greek, Tom relayed our choices from the menu as best he could. And although he struggled greatly with a whole gamut of unfamiliar words and phrases, our waiter seemed to be genuinely pleased that Tom was making the effort.

  The food and drinks arrived quickly and were a definite improvement on anything we had eaten so far. There were spinach and feta pies, meatballs, stuffed vine leaves and a few dishes that we couldn’t match to the menu but tasted great anyway. Just as we ordered a second round of beers to wash down the remains of the meal, a couple of guys carrying acoustic guitars emerged from inside the taverna and began playing a batch of songs that some of the locals spread across the other tables seemed to know well. Within a few moments virtually all the customers were clapping and singing in unison.

  ‘Charlie?’ whispered Tom in my ear as we finally overcame our natural reserve and joined in with the clapp
ing to a particularly upbeat song. ‘If I tell you something, I need you to promise that you won’t make a big deal out of it, okay?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied, still clapping. ‘It’ll be a small deal all the way. What’s on your mind?’

  Tom stopped clapping and I did likewise. ‘You know earlier today you asked me if I was okay?’ I nodded. ‘Well the truth is I’m not.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I replied.

  ‘I mean I’ve had something on my mind for a while that I haven’t told a single soul about and it’s sort of driving me mad.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s like this,’ he began. ‘The day we fly back home I’ve got to make a phone call.’

  ‘What kind of phone call?’

  ‘It’s nothing really it’s just . . .’ his voice faltered. ‘. . . It’s just I’m supposed to call my doctors’ surgery to get some test results.’

  ‘Test results?’ I said a little too quickly. ‘For what?’

  ‘I really don’t know how to say it,’ said Tom fixing his eyes on the guitar players in front of us. ‘I really don’t. I haven’t even dared to say the word aloud even when I’m on my own.’

  ‘This is me you’re talking to,’ I replied. ‘You know you can tell me anything.’

  ‘Cancer,’ said Tom quietly as the song came to a close. ‘I’ve got to phone my doctor to see if I’ve got cancer.’

  DAY THREE:

  WEDNESDAY

  She is a holiday

  Through the dimness of the darkened bedroom I could just about make out the shape of a figure at the bathroom door. I squinted at my watch. It was just after seven in the morning. The good news from my perspective was that for once during this holiday I wasn’t the first person awake. The bad news was that had I not been woken up, I’m sure I would have slept on for hours. Realising that I was unlikely to get back to sleep any time soon I climbed out of bed and, without saying a word, slipped on my shorts, opened my suitcase and pulled out my ‘Death To The Pixies’ T-shirt.

  ‘Morning, mate,’ said Andy, emerging from the bathroom wearing shorts and a T-shirt. His hair was wet and he was frantically rubbing it dry with a towel.