by Mike Gayle
We left the restaurant after an hour, having shared everything from home-made tatziki to fried Mako shark and made our way back to the car hand in hand. The silence had a different quality now. Less gloomy and more hopeful – as if we’d stopped speaking because there were too many things to say rather than too few.
‘Last night and this afternoon have been really special,’ Donna said, as we reached the car. ‘I don’t know the last time I spent this much time in someone else’s company . . . not since . . . well you know. Anyway, I just want to say thanks.’ She reached up towards me, wrapped her arms around my neck and then placed her lips on top of my own. We kissed the sort of long slow kiss that had the ability to transport me right back to the night before.
‘I think it might be time to go,’ said Donna, once the kiss had ended.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’
I’ve forgotten my sunglasses
Our time was over. The day had come to an end. And Donna was heading home. But the big question, in my mind at least, was had I succeeded in making Donna want to commit to seeing me again? As we pulled into the car park at Heraklion airport and I looked across at her I couldn’t help but feel like the answer to the question was a resounding yes. Surely, I told myself, she had to be feeling what I was feeling?
Still, as we climbed out of the car into the still-baking heat and unloaded Donna’s luggage on to the tarmac, I made up my mind that if all really was fair in love and war, then now would be the right time to pitch one last all-out assault. Timing, I reasoned, was everything and fortunately for me I had been dealt the perfect hand: a ‘departure gate goodbye’. I prepared the speech in my head: stuff about her being ‘special’, our need to ‘overcome obstacles’ and ‘how we could make it work if we really wanted to’. It was all made for this moment. Victory was assured.
‘I’ve forgotten my sunglasses,’ said Donna, when we were only a few metres away from the entrance to the departure lounge. ‘I must have left them in the car.’
‘Carry on and check in,’ I replied, ‘I’ll go back and get them.’
‘I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ said Donna. ‘You’ve done enough already. I’ll go myself.’
‘No problem,’ I replied, handing her the keys to the car. ‘I’ll just wait here for you.’
Sitting on the kerb outside the entrance to the airport with her suitcase and bags by my side, I watched her until she disappeared behind a row of cars. She was gone longer than I expected but soon returned wearing her beloved Jackie O sunglasses.
As we entered the airport we went in search of Nina and her friends amongst the hundreds of British holidaymakers who were heading back home. Each one of them, standing in line at the various check-in desks, was dressed as though they thought that the warm weather of Crete would stay with them forever. My mind flicked back to the tanned and T-shirted hordes I’d seen arriving at Gatwick in the rain – people stuck so solidly in their holiday state of mind that they had forgotten that any climate existed other than the one they had left behind.
‘Won’t you be a bit cold when you reach England?’ I asked, as we studied the departure board to find her check-in desk.
‘I put a warmish jumper in Nina’s bag before I left,’ said Donna who herself was wearing a long skirt, a sleeveless top and flip-flops. ‘She’ll have it with her now.’
‘Right now I wish I was wearing a jacket so I could do the gentlemanly thing and give it to you.’
Donna opened her mouth to reply when a voice yelled her name from across the hall. We both turned round to see Nina waving at us frantically from the front of the furthest check-in desk from where we were standing. Dragging her suitcase behind her Donna rushed over to join them. Nina and her friends all huddled around her immediately, while some threw a bemused glance in my direction. Once the girls were all checked in they collected themselves together at the side of the queue while Donna made her way back to me.
‘Everything okay?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, fine,’ said Donna. ‘Nina and the girls are going to meet me on the other side of passport control in a minute or two but I’m just going to the loo first.’
There was something about her face when she spoke to me that didn’t seem right. I let it go, reasoning that perhaps this was a good sign: that she was finding it as difficult to leave me as I was finding it to accept that she was going. At this rate, I told myself, our departure gate goodbye could be nothing short of a resounding success.
After about five minutes or so with no sign of Donna’s return I became uneasy, so I headed towards the ladies’ toilets in search of her. When she failed to emerge after a further five minutes I began to be convinced that something was wrong. Aware that I was once again possibly going too far I approached a couple of English girls on a flight bound for Manchester and asked if they could check the toilets for any sign of Donna. When they emerged a minute later without her, a real panic set in and I searched the whole of the airport frantically, even briefly considering contacting the airport’s security. In the end I decided that the best thing to do would be to return to the spot where we had parted and wait. And there I remained for over an hour before I finally accepted that she had gone.
With Donna still occupying my every thought, I made my way back to my hire car. As I opened the car door a folded sheet of paper on the driver’s seat fluttered down into the footwell. I reached down and opened it up:
I know you’ll think this was the coward’s way out and you’re probably right. And I know you probably hate me right now. But the truth is I just can’t think of any other way of saying goodbye that won’t make things more complicated than they are (and believe me they are complicated enough already). I’m sorry for everything, Charlie. I really am.
Donna xxx
With my heart still racing, I started up the car and wound down the window. A warm gust of night air caused Donna’s letter to flutter on the dashboard. I read it one last time, as though saying a final goodbye to both her and the notion that there was any fairness in the world. Nice guys did finish last. Sarah had taught me that and now Donna had rammed the point home.
I told myself that I was tired of being a doormat to the world at large. From now on I was going to switch off my brain and act on instinct. I wasn’t going to agonise over every decision or wallow in the past. In short I was going to take a leaf out of Andy’s book and start putting myself first.
And so as I tore up Donna’s letter into a fistful of confetti, dropped the pieces out of the window and watched them flutter to the ground, there was no doubt in my mind that it was the right thing to do.
DAY FIVE:
FRIDAY
Why break the habit of the holiday?
I cracked open my eyes. The bedroom was still shrouded in darkness although chinks of light coming through the curtains indicated that morning had broken. I sat up in bed and two things happened: first, the covers slipped down my body resulting in legions of tiny goosebumps springing to life as my skin came in contact with the arctic air. Secondly I was temporarily overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of biliousness that had me racing to the bathroom. I wasn’t sick but I wished I had been because then at least the nausea currently gripping me might have gone away. Instead it stayed with me, clinging tightly to the pit of my stomach with a fist of iron.
As I left the bathroom I looked over at Andy’s bed. Although it was empty it had clearly been slept in. I carefully opened the kitchen door. Tom’s bed was empty too. I opened the fridge, pulled out a bottle of water and attempted to rehydrate myself. It was just after midday.
I threw on some clean clothes and then looked around the room for inspiration as to what to do next. I spotted The Da Vinci Code on my bedside table and decided to read for a while. Picking up the book along with my sunglasses I drew back the curtains over the patio doors to reveal Tom lounging in one of the white plastic chairs with his feet up on the balcony. In one hand was his beloved Rough Guide and in the other a cigarette. What was strange a
bout this scene was that Tom didn’t smoke and never had done.
‘All right?’ I said as I opened the patio doors and stepped out into the midday sun. I stared pointedly at Tom’s cigarette. ‘Anything you’d like to tell me?’
‘I’m experimenting.’ He paused and inhaled heavily, then slowly expelled the smoke from between his lips. ‘I found them on the table,’ he said, holding up a pack of Andy’s Benson and Hedges. ‘I was sitting here looking at them and I thought to myself: if I have actually got cancer then at least the cells that are screwing me up will be too busy attacking my bladder to worry about my lungs.’
‘And what if it’s something else?’ I asked.
‘Well, if it is and I’ve gone through all this for nothing,’ Tom plucked the cigarette from his lips, ‘then I think the very least I deserve is a cigarette.’
I sat down next to Tom, slipped on my sunglasses and squinted at the sky. ‘So – fledgling cigarette habits notwithstanding – how are you this bright and sunny afternoon?’
‘I feel like crap,’ said Tom. ‘Which is I’m guessing how you must feel too.’
‘I feel like I’m dead from the neck downwards,’ I groaned. ‘Any chance you could take me through the details of last night because some of them are more than a bit foggy?’
‘I think it started when you came back to the apartment after your evening with Donna and didn’t speak for ages,’ began Tom. ‘I asked you what was wrong and you said that you didn’t want to talk about it. So then I suggested that we go for a drink because I was sick of thinking about this cancer thing and you said, “Good idea let’s do it.” Nine bars, roughly six hours and many, many, many drinks later we crashed out here.’
‘Was Andy with us? I don’t seem to remember much about him last night at all.’
‘Bizarrely, he chose to stay in,’ said Tom. ‘Something about wanting to catch up on his sleep.’
‘So where is he now?’
Tom shrugged and lit another one of Andy’s cigarettes. ‘When I was in bed this morning I heard the door open. I assumed it was Andy either coming in or going out but I don’t know any more than that.’ Tom stubbed out his cigarette. ‘That’s me done with smoking for now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Maybe I’ll see what other vices I can succumb to before the holiday’s out.’ He stood up and picked up his book. ‘Hungry?’
‘Starving.’
‘Stars and Bars?’
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Why break the habit of the holiday?’
The substance of things hoped for
‘So,’ said Tom, as the waiter brought our ‘killer’ breakfast and lager combo, ‘I think we’ve now skirted round enough diverse topics for me to ask the billion dollar question.’
‘Me and Donna?’ I replied. ‘It was a disaster. A near-perfect disaster.’
‘You told her how you felt and she turned you down?’
‘Worse than that,’ I replied. ‘Much worse. I hired a car, took her out for dinner and then to the airport, only to have her do a runner when my back was turned.’
‘You’re kidding me,’ said Tom looking gratifyingly outraged.
‘I wish I was,’ I replied. ‘Now come on, what she did was a bit harsh wasn’t it? Women always talk about how men hate confrontation and will do anything to avoid it . . . but if what Donna did wasn’t avoiding confrontation I don’t know what is.’
‘Obviously I’m not taking her side or anything,’ said Tom cautiously, ‘but I can’t imagine that she did it for a laugh. It must have been hard for her. It’s not like it’s that long since her kid’s dad left her is it? Maybe she’s a bit gun shy.’
‘Gun shy?’ I replied. ‘I’ll tell you who should be gun shy – me. I found out the night before last that Sarah’s pregnant.’
Tom was stunned. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘There’s nothing to say,’ I replied, ‘other than that I know for a fact that it’s not mine.’ Suddenly I didn’t feel quite so hungry any more and so I pushed my breakfast plate away to one side. ‘I really loved her you know.’
‘I know you did,’ replied Tom quietly.
‘So how could she do this to me after being together so long? A whole decade, Tom. Surely that has to count for something?’
Tom looked on blankly.
‘Right now,’ I continued, ‘I feel like the only thing that has any real substance is the moment you’re in right now. That’s what Andy thinks, doesn’t he? He lives in the moment and that’s all he believes in.’
‘And look where that’s got him,’ said Tom. ‘He’s no happier because of it. He just spends his life chasing something that he’s never going to get. I know it’s difficult for you right now but you can’t always think the worst will happen. Sometimes you’ve got to have a bit of faith that everything will work out in the end.’
‘Faith?’
‘The substance of things hoped for.’
‘How can I have faith when everyone always lets me down?’ I replied. ‘How can I have faith in anyone when I haven’t got any in myself?’
‘Maybe believing in yourself is the best place to start,’ said Tom.
‘Maybe,’ I replied, glancing over at my plate in the hope that my appetite might return sometime soon. ‘Then again, maybe not.’ My appetite was nowhere to be seen, so instead I took a long sip of my lager and changed the topic of conversation. ‘What do you think Andy’s up to then?’ I asked. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling that he’s up to something.’
‘Maybe he went out last night after all and hooked up with some new girl,’ suggested Tom. ‘You never really know with Andy do you?’ Tom paused and looked at me. ‘Anyway, why all the curiosity about Andy?’
‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged, ‘I guess I’m tired of being annoyed at him.’
Tom smiled. ‘Do you remember that time the two of you fell out after you had a go at him for bouncing a cheque on you for his share of the rent for the third time in a row? He didn’t talk to you for days.’
‘How could I forget it? I was the one out of pocket and yet he was the one who went around slamming doors like it had just gone out of fashion.’ I contemplated my drink absent-mindedly. ‘You don’t really think Andy’s with another girl do you?’
‘Like I said, with Andy anything’s possible, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t ask me why but I kind of get the feeling that he’s not going to do it again. I mean, why would he? This thing with him and Nina was about proving to himself that he’d still got it. There wouldn’t be anything to be gained by doing it again.’
‘I’d agree with you,’ replied Tom, ‘if Andy was a subscriber to regular logic. But he isn’t, is he? He just makes this stuff up as he goes along. Who knows how his mind works? Maybe he wants to get caught out? Maybe he thinks it’ll be easier if Lisa dumps him than the other way round. All I know is that there’s always been something in Andy that just seems . . . I don’t know . . . unhappy. You must have noticed it too.’
‘It’d be hard to miss,’ I replied.
‘Do you think he’ll ever get over whatever it is he’s got to get over?’
‘I hope so for his sake,’ I replied. ‘I really do.’
Tom finished his breakfast and I ordered another beer. Leaving Stars and Bars just after one-thirty, we headed back to the Apollo stopping off at a mini-market to stock up on bottled water, beer and assorted crisps and confectionery. As we reached the lobby we noticed that there were about half a dozen guys scattered around the sofas by the pool table watching the highlights of a football match on the widescreen TV and we joined them for five minutes or so and bonded briefly over a discussion of England’s performance in a friendly match earlier in the week. Eventually we left our new friends to their football highlights and made our way up the stairs to our apartment where we were surprised to discover that the door was open – either our room was being cleaned or Andy was back. My gut instinct told me to go with the Andy option.
I still hadn’t quite managed to work out how I was
going to behave with Andy following our argument the day before. Part of me wanted to continue being annoyed at him because he deserved it, but the rest of me knew that maintaining any kind of frostiness would end up being too much like hard work in the face of his constant effervescence. In the end I decided that I would go with the first emotion that sprang to mind.
Tom and I unloaded our bags on to the kitchen table and then made our way through to the bedroom. When I saw Andy, the first emotion that registered on my internal radar was complete and utter shock and surprise. My mind shot back to Tom’s comment that ‘with Andy anything’s possible’ and I suddenly realised just how was right he was, because standing next to Andy in a vest, a denim skirt and flip-flops – looking for all the world as though she was on her way out to the beach for the day – was Lisa.
Could you just rub some on my back, babe?
Andy couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself if he’d won the national lottery. ‘All right, boys?’ he announced cheerfully as we looked on slack-jawed. ‘Don’t just stand there staring like a pair of idiots. What sort of welcome is that to give a lady?’
‘Oh, Andy,’ said Lisa, as the penny dropped. ‘How could you not tell them I was coming?’
‘What fun would there be in that?’
‘But you promised me you’d clear it with them first. No wonder they’re looking at me like I’m some kind of freak. I’m really sorry about this, guys. I’d understand completely if you wanted me to stay somewhere else.’
‘We’re absolutely fine with you staying here,’ I said finally getting my mouth into gear. ‘It’s just that . . . well . . . we’re a bit surprised to see you that’s all. Don’t take this the wrong way but . . . what are you doing here?’
‘Yesterday morning Andy called me up out of the blue and told me he was missing me so much that he’d bought me a cheap flight to Crete over the internet,’ explained Lisa, still glowering at Andy. ‘One call into work faking food poisoning and an early morning trip into Gatwick and here I am.’
