The Getaway: A holiday romance for 2021 - perfect summer escapism!

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘Funny. No, he’s not even here. I kind of broke in. Well, I don’t know if it counts as breaking and entering if a boat doesn’t have any doors, but anyway, I’m here, and he’s not.’

  ‘Maybe it’s called floating and entering?’ she suggested.

  ‘Very good,’ drawled Kate.

  ‘I know, right – and it’s, what? Oh, bloody hell, it’s only just gone seven. Why are you calling me at such an ungodly hour on a Sunday?’

  ‘I told you,’ Kate reminded her. ‘An emergency.’

  ‘Emergency means fire, theft or falling into bed with a fit man, so unless you’re planning to set that boat alight, steal it and sail off into the blue, or wait there until Alex returns and then seduce him, I don’t see how I can help you.’

  The idea of a seduction routine involving herself and Alex was so ludicrous that Kate began to laugh, then found she couldn’t stop.

  ‘I’m glad you find this whole scenario so amusing,’ said Robyn. ‘Definitely worth waking me up for so early on my only day off. That’s right,’ she added, as Kate made a small noise of apology, ‘my only day off. Hear it and weep, Nimble-com-poop.’

  ‘Oi!’ Kate stopped laughing. ‘We agreed you were never going to use that nickname again.’

  ‘You agreed. I said nothing of the sort. It’s just been a while since you have done anything that warranted being called a compoop, but today you have. I would go so far as to say that you have outdone yourself on the compoop scale.’

  ‘I’ll let you go back to sleep in a minute,’ Kate promised. ‘I just want someone to tell me that what I’m doing is a nice thing.’

  ‘Right,’ said Robyn, sighing as Kate continued to rabbit on about owing Alex a favour. ‘But you do realise that you haven’t actually told me what it is that you are doing yet?’

  Kate explained how she had dissed the boat the first time she set eyes on it, and how Alex was far too busy to spruce it up himself.

  ‘So, correct me if this is wrong,’ Robyn said slowly. ‘You want to spend the day cleaning Alex’s boat for him, basically because you’re a weird Mary Poppins-alike who requires things to be neat and tidy at all times, but you’re worried you might be overstepping?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that’s all you’re going to do – clean it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Kate, who had already begun to concoct a use for Alex’s battered collection of watering cans. ‘I thought I might add a few extra touches here and there. Some plants, maybe, a chair of some sort if I can find one. The thing is, I think he lives on this thing a lot of the time and it’s just not very . . . homely. It could be so much cosier with just a few additions.’

  ‘It sounds to me,’ said Robyn, yawning loudly, ‘that you’ve already made your mind up.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’ Kate prompted eagerly, smiling as she heard her friend’s small groan of reply.

  ‘You hardly need me to tell you what to do – or anyone for that matter.’

  ‘I know that, but do you think it’s a good thing? Do you think he’ll be annoyed?’

  Robyn sighed. ‘I’m sure he won’t be. You wouldn’t be there if you had any doubts. It’s time you learnt to trust that gut of yours – it’s your biggest ally.’

  ‘But my gut has been wrong before,’ Kate argued. ‘What about the proposal?’

  At this, Robyn fell silent. Kate imagined that she could almost hear the cogs whirring in her friend’s mind as she searched for the right words.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, pre-empting whatever it was that Robyn was preparing to say. ‘You must be so bored of me and my histrionics.’

  ‘Nah.’ Robyn was careful to keep her tone light. ‘You are a lot of things, Kate Nimble – but boring is definitely not one of them. Now get off the phone and let me go back to sleep.’

  Kate rang off, cheered by her friend’s words and confident, at last, that she was making the right decision.

  She was going to transform this boat, and Alex was going to love it.

  Chapter 24

  ‘It certainly looks . . . different.’

  Toby folded his arms and put his head on one side.

  ‘Different good?’ asked Kate hopefully. ‘Or different bad?’

  ‘Can’t we just settle on different?’

  Kate stole a glance at her brother. He never had been any good at hiding how he felt, and the bemusement she could see on his face now may as well be a flashing illuminated sign.

  ‘I mean,’ he began, ‘I like the colour scheme you’ve gone for, the blue, red and white – very Croatian.’

  ‘It was so difficult to paint the front part,’ she said. ‘I tried standing in the dinghy, but it was impossible to get a steady footing, so I had to hang upside down over the side.’

  ‘Did you give it a name?’ he asked. ‘Boats are supposed to have names, aren’t they?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ she said aghast. ‘It’s Alex’s boat remember, not mine.’

  ‘Yet despite that, you went ahead and repainted it, sanded and stained the deck, made plant pots out of old watering cans and nailed those up, tossed out all his old tins and put curtains in the windows and oh – somehow fixed a deckchair to the cabin roof.’

  ‘I thought it would be nice for him to sit up there,’ she said in a small voice. ‘The deckchair didn’t fit on the deck – which is ridiculous really, given its name – and it had to go somewhere.’

  ‘You didn’t just want to fold it and stow it out of the way?’

  ‘No,’ said Kate, who had not thought of that. ‘It looks great up there. And now Alex will know which boat is his from miles away – everyone will.’

  ‘I’m amazed you didn’t hoist up a Jolly Roger, too,’ said Toby, who still had his arms folded.

  ‘A flag is what you expect to find on a boat,’ she countered. ‘Interior design is all about adding the little things that you don’t expect to find.’

  ‘Nothing little about that chair,’ he muttered, and Kate groaned.

  In the time she and Toby had been talking, a small crowd had started to form around them on the road, as beachgoers and passing locals stopped to see what they were staring at. Kate, who had worked on the boat solidly for two days and was exhausted to the point of collapse, glanced around, smiling nervously when a tall blond man lifted his large camera and began taking photos of her handiwork.

  ‘Did you do this?’ he asked, gesturing towards Alex’s boat. From his accent, Kate guessed him to be German, or perhaps Dutch. He was so absurdly handsome that she found herself blushing, and stuttered that yes, she had, as he continued to take pictures.

  ‘I think that you must be a natural artist.’

  Kate went to protest, but Toby got in first.

  ‘She is,’ he said proudly. ‘I hired her to do the interior of my new hostel – if you like this, you should come and take a look at that.’

  The blond man accepted Toby’s proffered business card gladly, slipping it into a wallet that he’d extracted smoothly from his back pocket.

  ‘I’m on Instagram,’ Kate said hurriedly, turning an even deeper shade of red than the painted stripe along the bow of Alex’s boat. ‘There are pictures on there,’ she added stupidly, as the man dazzled her with another megawatt smile.

  ‘Danke,’ he said, when Kate had typed it into his phone. ‘And do keep doing what you are doing – you have a gift.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Nims,’ whispered Toby, after the man – Finn_@_Freunde, according to his Instagram account – strode away. ‘You could write a sermon on the beauty of that German – talk about illegally blond.’

  ‘Shhh,’ hissed Kate. ‘He might hear you.’

  ‘Straight as a church spire, that one,’ he drawled sadly. ‘But perfect rebound fun for you. Why don’t you invite him over for a drink?’

  ‘I’m not on the rebound,’ she said indignantly, stepping aside as a tourist bustled forward to take photos of the boat. ‘James and I are on a break – it’s a hiatus, that’s all.’

/>   ‘Do you think if the two of you had babies, you and the German, they would be strawberry blond?’ Toby went on. ‘He has to be a better option than bald-patch James.’

  ‘Pot kettle,’ she fired back in irritation.

  Fortunately, they were both distracted by the arrival of Filippo, who had a disgruntled-looking Siva in his arms.

  ‘Oh my god,’ said Kate, taking in the livid scratches across his throat and chest. ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘Siva does not like her new harness and lead,’ Filippo explained, more meekly than she had ever heard him sound. ‘It was . . . We had a struggle to get them on.’

  ‘Why bring her at all, you silly man?’ asked Toby, who was licking his finger and dabbing delicately at the cuts.

  ‘She was upset – crying at the window.’ Filippo nuzzled his head against Siva’s face. ‘I think she is missing Alex,’ he explained, somehow still sympathetic to the plight of the small, grey monster that had attacked him. ‘I asked him to meet us here with the jeep.’

  ‘Here?’ said Kate, who was becoming increasingly edgy. The pride she had felt when the German man had admired the boat was rapidly being replaced with a very real fear that Alex would hate it.

  ‘He’s going to see it sooner or later,’ Toby said, frowning as Siva let out a low, mewling growl. ‘And you can be quiet, Missy. You have caused enough trouble for one day.’

  ‘I haven’t had time to get changed or even wash,’ Kate went on. The shorts she was wearing were doused in paint and there were smears of the wood stain she’d used for the deck across her vest and bare legs. Having stuffed all her hair underneath a baseball cap for two days, it now resembled a haystack after a particularly savage gale.

  ‘You and the boat are fabulous, bambina,’ Filippo said loyally. ‘Look at all these people.’

  The small group of onlookers had swelled now to a moderate crowd, many of whom were asking Kate if they could go aboard and pose for a photo in the deckchair. She had taken a fair number of pictures herself, both before, during and after she had completed her modest project, but had yet to post any online. She wanted to get Alex’s approval first.

  Opening Instagram, she discovered that her new account, which after much mulling she had named @Unexpected_Items, had gained another few hundred followers and a flood of comments and likes. While Kate appreciated that it was crass of her to seek validation in such a transparent way, she also couldn’t deny that when kind people said complimentary things about her work, it made her happy. Her @Unexpected_Items account had become the one place on the Internet into which she could disappear for an hour a day without feeling as if she was being ridiculed or criticised. There was nothing lurking ready to bite; it was a safe space. Kate had spent more time scrolling through interior design feeds than she had on James’s social media accounts this week, and that alone felt like a victory.

  Taking a few steps away from the others, she stared out across the sea, blinking as the dancing sunlight reflected off the surface of the water, blinding her momentarily. Another boat had pulled up alongside Alex’s now, its occupants lined up along one side to get a better look, and once again she felt an uneasy tug of concern.

  Would Alex be angry when he saw what she’d done?

  ‘I might go back to the hostel,’ she told Toby and Filippo, overwhelmed suddenly by an urge to be anywhere but here. But as she turned to go, Kate saw the jeep pull up on the opposite side of the road and froze. Instead of getting out, Alex merely opened the driver’s door and hoisted himself up so he could see over the heads of those that were gathered. Kate tried in vain to read his expression – as far as she could tell, he looked completely impassive.

  ‘Hey,’ she said cautiously, making her slow way towards him.

  Alex’s pale-blue gaze moved from his boat down to her.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, his fingers drumming on the soft roof of the jeep.

  ‘Surprise,’ she said lamely, bringing up her hands in lacklustre celebration.

  Alex pulled at his beard. He seemed to be chewing over his words and Kate braced herself for a telling-off.

  ‘You hate it, don’t you? Shit. I’m so sorry, Alex. I thought that I would – that it would be nice if I—’

  ‘Trespassed and defaced?’ he suggested, his tone so flat that she could not decipher whether he was joking or not.

  ‘The plan was simply to clean it,’ she told him, dropping her gaze to the dust that coated the jeep bonnet. ‘But then I thought, why not use up some of the leftover paint and add a few extra touches to make the place more homely?’

  ‘Homely?’ he repeated.

  ‘I can take the plants down,’ she hurried out. ‘And paint it all white, if that’s what you prefer? I was honestly trying to do a nice thing. You’ve been so kind to me, and I wanted to repay the favour.’

  ‘Right.’ Alex sighed. ‘Listen, it’s all right. I’m fine with it. It’s only that I prefer it if—’

  He rubbed at his eyes in agitation. ‘I know you meant well.’

  ‘You hate it.’ Kate could not hide her dismay. ‘God, Alex – I’m so sorry.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it’s fine. You caught me on a bad day, that’s all.’

  ‘Is everything OK?’ she asked, her voice softening. ‘Has something happened?’

  Alex squinted as he looked at her, his expression still unreadable.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing you need to worry yourself with anyway. Here,’ he added, clambering down and pressing Filippo’s keys into her hand. ‘Can you pass these on with my thanks?’

  ‘Sure.’ she said, ‘but aren’t you going to come and say hello? See the boat properly?’

  Alex stared down at his feet. ‘Not now. I have to be somewhere. In town. I’m meeting Joe, you know, my old friend with the kayaks. I’m late, as it happens. I’ll catch up with you later, right?’

  ‘But I—?’

  Alex had already turned to go, and he did not look back. Not at the boat, not at the crowd of people with cameras and not at her. She had tried to do something nice and it had backfired. Worse than that, it had annoyed someone she liked, someone who had been nothing but sweet to her, had accepted and helped her.

  In trying to get closer to Alex, all she had managed to do was push him away.

  Chapter 25

  Kate barely left the hostel over the next few days in case Alex came back. But he didn’t. Nor was there any sign of his boat in its usual spot when she ventured down to the cove early one morning, hoping to catch him before he went off for the day.

  Having convinced herself that she was solely to blame for this disappearing act, Kate fretted so often and so intently that the usually unflappable Toby ended up snapping at her.

  ‘You’re more annoying than a daddy longlegs trapped in a shower cubicle,’ he grumbled, shooing her out from behind reception. ‘Go and sunbathe or something.’

  ‘But what if he never comes back?’ agonised Kate, nodding hello to Nika as the hostel’s office manager strolled in through the open front door. As always, she looked impeccable in a crisp white shirt and pencil skirt, her long dark hair pulled back into a neat plait.

  ‘Is there anything I can help with?’ she asked her hopefully. ‘Any cleaning to do?’

  ‘Ana and Roko will be here at eleven to do the rooms,’ Toby interrupted. ‘As you well know.’

  Kate scrunched her toes in frustration.

  ‘Have you been to the Fortica yet?’ asked Nika, whose excellent English made Kate’s pathetic attempts to speak Croatian all the more embarrassing. ‘The view from up on the battlements is beautiful.’

  ‘I haven’t actually,’ said Kate, brightening a fraction. ‘I suppose I could head over there. But only if you’re sure I can’t help out here?’

  ‘Go,’ urged Toby. ‘Please. I love you, sis, but you are doing my head in today.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But if Alex happens to come back then—’

  ‘I’ll tie him to a chair and call you. Now sc
ram.’

  There was bound to be a backstreet route that would get Kate to Hvar’s vast fortress far more quickly than the more obvious path that began down in the main square, but she was not in any hurry. It was too hot to walk at anything other than the most leisurely pace and the nape of her neck felt damp before she had reached the end of the first road.

  Now that June had arrived, the temperature on the island was reaching a scorching peak, while the nights were becoming thick and muggy. Kate dithered as she walked, stopping to inhale the scent of baked earth, flowers and fresh herbs that wafted out from every garden she passed. As she drew closer to the harbour, she found neatly manicured trees hunched in pots alongside vast containers of basil, the rich green leaves making her yearn for a fresh platter of tomato and mozzarella, doused in pepper and slippery with olive oil.

  The hub of the town was well populated, yet remained quiet, and Kate suspected this was due in part to the tall buildings that lined the narrow lanes. Sound floated upwards to be immediately muffled by thick stone; an echo made mute before it gained momentum. There was also a sense that people here had time; they weren’t all in a rush, tripping over each other in their haste to reach work, attend a meeting or hurry home. Nobody stood on your foot in their haste to push in front of you or elbowed you out of their way; there was no tutting in cramped spaces, no passive aggression or barely concealed anger. Hvar was serene in that way, holding its visitors in an open palm rather than a fist curled tightly shut. Not for the first time, Kate wondered how much of a struggle she would find it to acclimatise once back in London.

  When she reached St Stephen’s Square, she weaved through the separate groups of people at speed, her well-practised feet finding easy purchase on the marble cobbles. The fortress was perched grandly atop the hillside above her, its outer walls splayed down like stony roots into the town. Kate had assumed it would take the best part of an hour to climb all the way up, so she was pleasantly surprised to find herself at the entrance to the outer grounds less than fifteen minutes later.