Being Shirley

by Michelle Vernal

  “Who was that?” Carl’s eyes narrowed as he sat gingerly down next to her in the space where a moment earlier Kristofr had sat.

  “Oh, no one.” Annie looked wistfully at Kristofr’s white-shirted back as he bent down to study the notes of the student who had called him back. She felt a stab of resentment towards the scraggly-headed youth.

  “Well, for someone who is a no one, you have a pretty daft look on your face.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly.” She wasn’t going there; that wasn’t what this journey was about. Besides, it was too soon after Tony to think about anyone else. “How are you feeling? You made it in time, I take it?” Annie diverted Carl from pursuing the topic.

  “Only just. It was touch and go.” He shook his head and the look of serious consternation on his face made her smile.

  “We’ll be laughing about this in a few days, you’ll see—it’ll become one of our travel stories.” And when she turned back to look at Kristofr, he and his group of students had gone.

  “Pass me the iPod, would you? I want to listen to it.” Carl held his hand out for it. “Was it how you thought it would be?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Did you feel her here with you?”

  “Not really. It was more like I was finally getting to say a proper goodbye to her.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “The family can’t wait to meet you both but be prepared—they can be a bit, uh, how you would say…loud?” Kassia took her eyes off the road for a moment to grin over at Annie.

  Annie was too swept up in the fact that she actually sat in her old friend’s company to pay much attention to what she said. Two whole wonderful weeks had whizzed by since she and Carl had landed in Athens and now here she was in the front passenger seat of Eleni’s courtesy van, next to Kas and on their way to Elounda. She was tempted to pinch herself to make sure it was all real. It had been such a long time coming, she thought with a sideways glance at Kas.

  Black Jackie O style shades were perched on top of her head, which pulled her dark hair back from her face to reveal a few wanton streaks of grey at her temples. The remains of her last perm blew in a halo-like frizz on the breeze that came in through the open window as they drove away from the city along a wide, open road. Her skin was unlined with the olive hue to it that Annie, with her own pale skin, always envied. Dark eyes were framed by eyelashes that had no need of mascara and eyebrows that had never met a pair of tweezers. She wore lipstick but that was the only make-up she had bothered with, having the aura of a woman who was far too busy to spend her time in front of a mirror. It was her Roman nose that she had always proclaimed to hate, along with her clear-cut jawline, that hinted at the strength of character lurking below the surface, though, Annie decided, her surreptitious study done.

  Their ferry had been on time despite the Greek passenger line’s notoriety and Kassia waited for them at the terminal as she’d promised. Annie’s tummy had fluttered with anticipatory nerves and she hardly noticed the harbour’s impressive Venetian fortress as she and Carl made their way towards the waving, larger-than-life vision of their friend. Planes screamed above them, chock-a-block with package holiday-makers and the mishmash of buildings across the road from the waterfront provided, if not what one could call exactly a pretty, then a bustling backdrop. There would be plenty of time to explore the port city of Heraklion later, though. In the meantime, Annie drank in her friend’s appearance as they made their way towards her. She looked exactly as she did in her photos. The camera had not lied. Dressed in a loosely fitted white T-shirt tucked into navy shorts with flat, white sandals, she was a medium build bordering ever so slightly on cuddly.

  “Annie! Carl!” Startling white teeth flashed in contrast to her tan skin as her face broke into a welcoming grin. She flung her arms wide. Annie shoved her backpack at Carl and ran into them; she threw her arms around Kassia’s neck as she forgot her nerves. Even her smell was familiar, she thought, as she inhaled the lemony essence of her as she hugged her back tightly, even though she knew that was impossible. Carl hung back as the two women, still holding onto each other, leaned back to study the other for a moment. Both grinned inanely as they simultaneously burst into tears.

  “These are because I am happy,” Kassia stated. “You are beautiful, Annie, even more beautiful than your photos—all that glorious hair! Oh, what I would give for such curls. The money I have paid to try to get such curls—and the colour, it is like fire!” She stroked Annie’s hair and watched the sun play on the streaks of gold that ran through it. “I bet the Greek men have been making a fuss of you, yes?”

  “I have been unusually popular, actually.” It was true; the brilliant red of her hair was a crowd-pleaser and at first Annie had found the stares a tad unnerving. She had been forever patting around her backside to make sure her skirt wasn’t caught up in her knickers and upon finding no evidence of that, followed it up with a request for Carl to check that her nose was clean and that there was no food stuck in her teeth. Eventually, Carl had tired of constantly looking at her backside, up her nose and inspecting her teeth, and had told her to enjoy the novelty of being the centre of attention. She’d decided to take his advice and had found that the admiring glances that came her way were beginning to make up for all those years of carrot top teasing.

  Kassia laughed a rich, deep belly laugh. “I can’t believe you are here! At long last, you are here. I have dreamed of this moment.” She reached out to hug Carl, who had dropped the bags to wrap her in a bear hug, his own eyes suspiciously bright. She linked arms with them both a moment later and led them over to the white van marked with Eleni’s contact details. Carl slid the door open and tossed their packs in the back before he clambered in and told Annie to hop in the front so she and Kas could catch up on the drive to Elounda. Given his propensity to car sickness, it was a selfless gesture on his part and Annie flashed him a grateful grin.

  As she turned the key in the ignition and headed away from the hustle of Heraklion, Kassia chatted nonstop about the guesthouse and how Alexandros was up to his usual tricks. His Irish friend was long gone but he had moved onto a young English guest whose breasts most definitely were not real. As they wound their way along the open road, hills loomed on either side of them and occasionally gave way to a valley and allowed them a long-distance peek at the villages nestled in them. Annie noted that there was always a church taking centre stage, no matter how small the village.

  “Yes, I saw him tiptoeing out of her room first thing this morning and it is lucky for him it was me who caught him and not his mama, or he would have gotten a slap.”

  Annie laughed; life was never dull where the Bikakis family were concerned.

  Kassia pointed out a monastery over to their right with a cluster of curious holiday-maker’s cars parked outside its massive stone gates before she inclined her head over to the left. “That’s the turnoff to Malia, which is a big resort area. Lots of sunburnt, overweight tourists who like to drink too much and do the karaoke down there.” She shuddered before she glanced in the rearview mirror. “How was your birthday?” She met Carl’s eyes. “Did you do lots of drinking and the karaoke?” It was said tongue-in-cheek.

  “Kassia, my dear, as the lyrics to a song from our generation went, I partied like it was 1999. I’ll say no more.”

  Annie snorted. “Honestly, Kas, you should have seen him. I think we hit every nightspot in Mykonos. He broke out every dance move known to mankind and he was the biggest flirt ever.”

  “You’re only forty once,” Carl protested.

  “Thank goodness! I couldn’t cope with another hangover like the one I woke up to the morning after in this lifetime ever again.”

  Kassia laughed. “I think I have heard that before, yes?”

  Annie looked sheepish and then they drifted into a companionable silence until it was broken by a groan from the back seat. Kassia glanced into the rearview mirror again. A frown of consternation settled between her thick brows.

&
nbsp; “Are you alright, Carl? You look a little green.”

  Carl groaned again. Annie opened her bag and after a quick feel around, produced some tablets and a bottle of water. “He doesn’t travel well.” She swivelled round in her seat to hand them to him. She decided not to mention the unfortunate incident in the back of the cab on Santorini that had prompted the purchase of the pills in the first place. “Chew on one of these—it will help.” So would letting him sit in the front seat but she was reluctant to give up her pew next to Kas. A not so selfless gesture on her part.

  Carl nodded meekly, broke the foil pack, popped one of the chalky tablets in his mouth and chewed frantically.

  “Oh, I know all about this. Every time Mateo is in the car for longer than half an hour, he is sick. The last time I took him with me into Heraklion, I had to wash him off in the sea before I could do my shopping because he was covered in vomit.”

  Carl made a guttural sound at the visual and chomped down another tablet for good measure.

  “Now I leave him with his Yaya; it is much easier and she, of course, loves to have him all to herself.”

  “I can’t wait to meet Mama Bikakis.”

  Kassia grinned. “Yes, you will love her, and she will love you, especially if you tell her the moussaka she plans to make for dinner is the best you have ever eaten!”

  “I can’t wait to try it. It’s like a lasagne, only with eggplant, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is one of Mama’s specialties.”

  “So far we have eaten an awful lot of souvlaki to make the budget stretch further.” The street food was cheap and tasty but she was getting a little over it. And the French fries that were always stuffed in the pita pockets along with the meat and salad weren’t doing her figure any good either. Of course, she could always pick them out but somehow it went against her most basic of instincts to chuck a French fry away.

  “If you look now, when we get round this corner, you will see Agios Nikolaos. It was once a fishing village but now it is the closest town for us.” Kassia had one hand on the steering wheel; the other gesticulated to the panoramic vista that greeted them as they rounded the bend. Annie gasped at the sight of the rolling golden hills and aquamarine waters. A harbour dotted with boats and a pretty town with a river winding its way through it panned out before them. The view was undeniably breathtaking, she thought, determined to ignore the sheer drop on the other side of the road and the banged-up array of cars that hurtled towards them. She was almost but not quite used to the take-your-life-in-your-hands feeling every time she was a passenger in a Greek car, thanks to some hairy taxi rides over the course of the last few weeks.

  “We are nearly there,” Kassia announced as Carl muttered something along the lines of thank God for that from the back seat while Annie’s excitement at shortly meeting the rest of a family she already felt she knew so well grew.

  They drove past a couple of palatial homes that sprawled up the cliffside, built to grant them the best panorama of the bays possible. They were holiday houses, Kassia informed them. Elounda had attracted more than its fair share of celebrities in the last couple of years. It was the boutique, laid-back feel of the place that brought them here. Tourism had made a big jandal-like footprint up the road in Malia and other coastal towns; Elounda, however, due to its tucked away positioning, wore a much smaller flip-flop. She was fairly sure, too, that she’d spotted Leonardo DiCaprio whizzing past her on a Jet Ski earlier in the season.

  With the mental picture of Leonardo on a Jet Ski painted, they wound their way downward and soon the cliffs levelled out and the road narrowed as signs of village life appeared. The main town of Elounda was a little farther on down by the harbour, Kassia divulged, as a smattering of deserted tavernas on the left popped into view. On their right was the requisite green pharmacy cross, along with a smallish supermarket, a stand full of cheap sunglasses outside its open-plan frontage. Annie was too busy staring at a peculiar shop with baskets full of sea sponges and all sorts of fish skeletons rattling on the breeze to brace for the sharp turn ahead and her shoulder hit the window.

  “Sorry.” Kassia grinned. Unable to make the right angle turn in one go and as her two passengers righted themselves, she executed a swift three-point turn, and narrowly missed the coach that had appeared out of nowhere behind them. With the car pointed in the direction she wanted it to go, they coasted down a steep incline and past a sprawling restaurant whose signage suggested it held nightclub aspirations too. At the bottom was a stretch of narrow road bordered on its rocky edge to the left by the sea.

  “Oh, wow, it’s beautiful—look, Carl!” Annie wound her window down and pointed out at the gentle lapis water, which was in startling contrast to the burnt umber hills that surrounded it. Faced with a flat stretch of road and armed with the knowledge that they were less than a minute away from their final destination, Carl felt he could afford to muster enthusiasm, so he joined in with her excited exclamations.

  “Those are self-catering apartments.” Kassia pointed over to the right at the white square three-storey blocks. The upper levels all had small balconies, over which colourful beach towels were draped. Next to the apartments was a taverna strung with fairy lights; vibrant cushions adorned the outdoor seating. Annie tried to visualise it lit up at night with the sound of the sea just across the road as it lapped at the rock wall. It would be gorgeous and oh-so romantic. She felt momentarily lost as it hit her that she wouldn’t be experiencing any romance in the foreseeable future. This was despite Carl’s best efforts at setting her up with anything straight and under sixty on Mykonos. She’d given him a serious talking to the next day as she rubbed at her temples to ease the throbbing inside her head over his having left her at the bar with Tom. Carl had hit the dance floor to strut his stuff with some Italian Stallion while she’d had to fend off the fifty-one-year-old divorcee with an appalling toupee and bad breath from the UK.

  Nope, she had informed Carl in no uncertain terms that she was single and that’s the way it would be staying, thank you very much. She wanted to be by herself. Carl had shaken his head; he hated being by himself. It was taking awhile to get used to her new single status, though, and she wondered how Tony was faring. She shook his image away; she refused to dwell on the past, not today of all days. Her gaze strayed to the vacant lot next door to the taverna with its withered blades of grass baking under the sun as they poked wearily up between the rock-strewn soil. A haven for skinks. She grimaced. How some people felt about mice was how Annie felt about the tiny lizards and she had had several close encounters with them since she’d set foot on Greek soil. The lot was overlooked by another low-rise apartment block but this one had an inviting kidney-shaped pool with a few bodies lounging around it out the front. Several people propped up the bar area set up by the pool.

  “An English couple manage those apartments. They are lovely people, although they are a bit too fond of the karaoke nights if you ask me. And she—Wendy—cannot sing, although she always insists on doing a number by that woman—you know?”

  It was a bit of a vague description and Annie looked at her blankly as Kassia waved her hand impatiently. “You know, that woman with all the curly black hair, lucky woman, who likes to wear the skimpy outfits and has a fondness for the plastic surgery?”

  “Cher?” Carl piped up from the back seat and Annie laughed as Kassia nodded.

  “Trust you to guess right.”

  “Yes, Cher, but thank goodness Wendy does not dress up like her. She is a big girl, you know; it would not be a good look.”

  Annie and Carl both grinned at the mental image Kassia had conjured up of a plump English Cher who couldn’t sing to save herself.

  An airy bar kitted out in white and chrome that was obviously a place to be seen while sipping on a cold beer came into view next. Carl pressed his nose to the window and decided he would plop his bottom down on one of those stools and look out its open frontage to the sea in the very near future.

  Without warni
ng, Kassia swerved the van away from the water onto the other side of the road to park facing the wrong way. Sounding the horn before she switched the engine off, she twisted round in her seat to grin at them both. “Welcome to Eleni’s. We are home.”

  Annie saw a stone, three-storey house. Its yellow paint flaked but, with wrought-iron balconies stuffed full of brilliant red geraniums and the mammoth climbing purple bougainvillea that wound its way up the side of the building, it oozed charm. The blue front door burst open and a short woman clad head to toe in black bustled out, and wiped her hands on her apron before she called something over her shoulder. She had a tiny tot hanging off her hip and Annie’s heart leaped at the sight of little Nikolos.

  As she got out of the car, a stocky and rather swarthy looking man rounded the corner of the house. He wielded a hoe and Annie watched as he paused for a moment to wipe his brow with a hanky. She hazarded a guess that he was Kas’s Spiros. A mini-me who barely reached his knees trailed along behind him—Mateo!

  Mama Bikakis turned back towards the house and called out again. This time an Adonis apparition appeared in the doorway. His face broke into a wide, welcoming grin that even from this distance Annie could see showcased a top and bottom set of perfect white teeth. His hair had the casually ruffled look that takes time and effort to achieve. This had to be Alexandros. Next to her, she heard Carl’s sharp intake of breath. She elbowed him swiftly and hissed out of the corner of her mouth, “Forget it.”

  All of a sudden, it seemed to Annie that the pebbled courtyard in front of the house was filled to overflowing and she, suddenly shy, hung back on the pavement for a moment longer, Carl glued to her side.

  Kassia was having none of it, though, and gave them both a gentle shove in the back as she herded them forward.