After the Honeymoon

by Fraser, Janey

  Please go away, he wanted to say. ‘It’s a pleasure,’ he heard himself saying instead.

  ‘My son tells me that you work out every morning.’ He could feel her looking at the screen while he scrolled down. ‘A bit of a hobby, is it?’

  Was she having him on or was it a genuine question? Perhaps she honestly didn’t know that he was the Winston King. After all, he wasn’t on Greek television, as far as he knew. ‘Sort of.’

  Surely any fool could tell he didn’t want company, but she wouldn’t take the hint. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Winston’s eye was drawn to the words on the Globe site. His skin began to crawl as he started to read.

  EXCLUSIVE SERIES, STARTING AT THE WEEKEND

  TWENTY THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT WINSTON KING!

  THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT BRITAIN’S FAVOURITE FITNESS GURU!

  HOW WINSTON WOOED MY WIFE, BY HER FORMER HUSBAND.

  WHAT WINSTON’S LIFE WAS REALLY LIKE IN THE MARINES.

  WHY I’M HANDING IN MY NOTICE – BY POPPY, WINSTON’S RIGHT-HAND WOMAN

  DON’T MISS THE NEWS THAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT!

  TRUE HONEYMOON STORY

  ‘Our honeymoon loo didn’t have a lock on it. At eighteen I found that really humiliating.’

  Sandra, now married for sixty-three years

  Chapter Eighteen

  ROSIE

  Rosie had long ago made it a rule not to tune in to guests’ conversations. The Villa Rosa, Cara used to tell her, needed to be a place where people could relax. But even so, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from glancing at the iPad screen that Winston was reading so intently, with that worried crease on his forehead: ‘Twenty Things You Didn’t Know About Winston King!’

  The sentence might have an exclamation mark, but in Rosie’s head, it was a very big question. Could one of those twenty things have anything to do with her? she wondered with a shiver.

  She’d already glimpsed the first at the top of the ‘teaser’, which gave a flavour of what was to come.

  Winston’s real name is Charles, but his agent persuaded him to use his middle name because it was more distinctive – and because ‘Winston’s Workout’ had a better ring to it!

  So that explained it. She could hardly criticise him. After all, hadn’t she been a Rosemary at school? It wasn’t until she had left home and her pregnancy had begun to show that she’d decided to become Mrs Rosie Harrison (the surname had been her mother’s maiden name). It was a new start. How ironic that Winston had done the same.

  Uncertainly, Rosie had glanced again at the screen, but it was difficult to see more without looking obviously nosy. Trembling, she headed back into the kitchen on pretence of checking the new cook had got everything under control. But her mind was not so much on Yannis (a rather good-looking man with a handsome aquiline nose who reminded her of Greco), as on the letter she had sent Winston all those years ago.

  ‘Write to him,’ Gemma had urged when the second test – just to make sure – was positive. Her sweet face had shone with the conviction that the rest of the world was as decent as she was. ‘I’m sure that if you did, he’d come back and marry you.’

  Marry her! The idea of getting married at seventeen had seemed unreal, yet at the same time, what else could she do? She was pregnant, and she loved Charlie with an ache that was like a transparent hole in her chest. Rosie felt sick and excited and terrified all at the same time.

  So she did write. In fact, she could remember the words as clearly as if they were in front of her right now on the scrubbed pine kitchen table in Greece.

  Dear Charlie,

  I’ve got something really difficult to tell you. I’d much rather talk face to face, but I don’t know where you’ve gone, so I’m hoping that if I send this to your base, you will get it before too long. There’s no easy way of saying this …

  Her pen had trembled here, but dear Gemma, with a comforting squeeze of the hand, had helped her find the next paragraph.

  I’m pregnant. And I’m scared. I need you here with your strong arms around me, telling me it’s going to be all right. Dad is going to go absolutely mad when he finds out. He wants me to go to university and I want to go too. But I can’t get rid of your baby, Charlie. I just can’t.

  She’d stopped here for a little cry against Gemma’s shoulder. Both girls had discussed this endlessly and reached the same conclusion. Gemma had said she couldn’t have had an abortion either; not when it came to it.

  If I don’t hear anything back from you, I’ll presume you don’t want anything to do with me. But I know you’re not like that. I know you’ll do the decent thing.

  She’d crossed that last line out. It had seemed, as she’d explained to Gemma, too forceful. If Charlie was the decent man she’d thought, he wouldn’t need any prompting.

  And if he wasn’t, she didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Six weeks later, there was still no sign of a letter in reply. There was nothing else for it. Even now, Rosie could hardly bear to remember the details: only the stark facts. Eventually, she’d had to summon up courage and tell Dad. There had been a furious argument and, despite Gemma’s tears, Rosie had packed her bags and left.

  The rest was history.

  ‘Mum! I prepared the vine leaves exactly as Yannis told me but he’s having a go at me for not doing it right.’

  Jack’s newly gruff, almost-grown-up voice brought Rosie sharply back to the present. She glanced at the rows of plates with the vine leaves and the tomato salad carefully placed in the middle, ready to be rolled up into the Villa Rosa’s signature starter dish.

  They seemed quite passable to her. Yet when Jack had pleaded to work at the villa and get paid for it, she’d decided he had to take his place in the pecking order. As the kitchen assistant-cum-general run-around boy, he had to take criticism – even when it wasn’t fair.

  ‘Yannis is in charge of the kitchen, Jack. I’m sorry but that’s how it is. You can learn from him. He’s good.’

  He was, too. He also happened to be Greco’s cousin, but then again, wasn’t everyone related around here? Including one of the guests and her own son …

  Rosie shivered. Supposing Jack found out? This was her worst nightmare. Back in the early days, it had seemed easier to pretend she was a young widow. This, of course, had led to several sympathetic but inquisitive questions and before she knew it, Rosie had found herself spinning a story about a tragic motorbike accident in the UK, when she was only two months pregnant.

  Over the years, the tale had become so vivid and real in her head that when Jack had become old enough to ride a bike himself, she had been quite distressed.

  ‘I don’t want to lose you in the same way as your father,’ she’d declared, realising, as she did so, how some people got their lives in a real old muddle thanks to lying.

  ‘I’ll be careful, Mum,’ he’d insisted. ‘But I can’t be the odd one out.’

  She could see that. All the kids had these little mopeds which didn’t, after all, go that fast.

  Now, looking across the kitchen at Jack and Yannis working side by side, rolling up the vine leaves (they seemed to have resolved their differences), Rosie couldn’t help wondering what her life and her son’s would have been like if Charlie, or Winston as she should probably think of him now, had bothered to respond to her letter.

  Her son certainly wouldn’t be living a life on a Greek island with mopeds, working in a kitchen to earn pocket money. He’d have been at a good school, like the one where Gemma and her husband taught, perhaps, near London. She would be married to Charlie/Winston and they’d have had at least another child. Maybe two.

  The image was so real that Rosie almost had to grab the edge of the table to steady herself. She’d always wanted a daughter, but another son would have been just as wonderful. At times, her heart ached for Jack as an only child. Hadn’t she sworn as a teenager that her own children would have the brother or sister that she herself had alway
s craved?

  Grabbing one of the kitchen knives from the block, Rosie sliced through a watermelon with an anger that wasn’t like her at all. Both Yannis and Jack stared as she proceeded to chop it up furiously in the way that Cara had taught her.

  ‘What’s got into you, Mum?’ asked Jack, raising his right eyebrow. Rosie started. Her son had always done that all his life: raise his right eyebrow without lifting the other. It was something she’d never been able to do herself. But in the last couple of days, she’d seen someone else do exactly the same thing.

  Winston.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said crisply, arranging the slices into a fan shape. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Blast. The phone. Normally she’d have left it to the receptionist, but she’d given Anna extended time off to visit her sick mother on the mainland, insisting that Jack could help during the school holidays.

  ‘I’ll go,’ offered her son, clearly eager to do something that didn’t involve vine leaves or melon.

  Rosie nodded, glad to be left with her thoughts. Winston’s arrival had shaken her to the core, and now she had to put up with him mooning over that tall, dark, pretty woman who was so hopeless at dealing with her own kids. As if on cue, the girl – Alice, wasn’t it? – walked past, looking through the kitchen window, clearly searching for Jack.

  Rosie felt a tremor of apprehension. This girl might only be thirteen but she acted much older. Maybe she ought to have a word with Jack and tell him to be careful. Girls nowadays could be so forward.

  Then she stopped, appalled at the irony. Was that what Winston had thought? Had he considered her forward because she had so foolishly given herself to him? Was that why he hadn’t respected her enough to come back and do the decent thing?

  Reaching for the corkscrew, Rosie opened a bottle of red and took a deep slug. Yannis was watching but she didn’t care. Normally she never had a drink until the guests were settled with a meal in front of them. But the events of the last few days had knocked her rules for six.

  Jack was coming back through the door now. He had a bounce in his step, she noticed, and a slightly awkward air about him. ‘Everything all right?’ she enquired.

  He nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Who was on the phone?’

  Jack looked as though he’d forgotten that he’d gone out to get it in the first place. ‘Someone for Winston.’

  The headline from the Globe leaped into her head. ‘Who?’

  ‘Didn’t say.’ Jack was buttoning up his shirt, which seemed to have come undone during his brief absence. ‘Just wanted to speak to him.’

  Rosie experienced a pang of alarm. ‘And what did you say?’

  Jack flushed. ‘Alice was in reception and she said Winston had gone back to the room with her mother. So the woman at the other end said she’d ring back.’

  Alice had found Jack then, which explained why he was looking so red and flustered. ‘I’ve told you before. You can’t give out details about guests without their permission.’

  Jack’s face was shining with indignation. ‘That’s not fair. I didn’t tell them anything.’

  Rosie began to slice another watermelon even though it wasn’t needed. ‘Yes, you did. You confirmed he was here.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Apparently he’s some keep-fit star in the UK.’

  Jack shrugged. ‘I know, Alice told me, but so what? He might be a bigwig over there, but he’s hardly royalty. These people don’t know what it’s like to live real lives, like us, do they?’

  At times, her son astounded her. He really was an old soul, as Cara used to say. Rosie would give anything for Cara to be with her right now. How she missed her wise advice. Still, that was the wonderful thing about this part of the world. Instead of ending up in an old people’s home, as so many did in the UK, your own family looked after you out here. Cara was being treated like a queen, according to her letters, by her extended family just outside Athens.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said slowly, laying down the watermelon knife. There was no point, she added to herself, in complicating things by telling Jack the truth. He would be hurt by Winston’s betrayal and he’d be upset by her lies as a teenager. Kids could be so judgmental.

  As for the phone call, if it was a journalist – and something made her think it might be – then there was nothing she could do about it. That was Winston’s problem. Not hers.

  Rosie began to lay the tables outside on the terrace, ready for dinner. Perhaps, she thought, placing the pretty green and pink salad bowls out on the crisp cream tablecloth, it was time for Winston to get his comeuppance. Indeed, the thought of her old flame getting his just deserts was surprisingly agreeable.

  Just as long as it didn’t affect her and Jack.

  Dinner went well that night, mainly thanks to Emma. Rosie loved it when her guests began to visibly relax after a few days. Cara used to say it was part of the villa’s magic, and she was right. Her heart was really beginning to warm to this pretty, unpretentious, plump blonde who had had just a bit too much to drink and was making them all roar with laughter.

  ‘So there we were in WH Smith and Gawain – he’s my four-year-old who never keeps still, bless him – was rushing round and I was trying to keep up with him as usual.’

  There was an ‘I remember those days’ murmur from Melissa who was sitting, Rosie observed with a pang, on her husband’s knee. That had been her place, sixteen years ago …

  Emma took another slug of wine and giggled. ‘Then I called out after him. I said “Will you hold my hand?” in a bit of a cross voice because, to be honest, I’d had enough.’

  Melissa nodded enthusiastically. Winston’s smile, Rosie noticed with interest, looked decidedly forced.

  Emma gave another little giggle. It was clear that the punchline was to follow. ‘So this voice said, “Hold your hand? Very well. If you insist!”’ Emma beamed around the table. ‘It was one of the staff. He was pretending that I was talking to him, you see, to make me feel better about yelling at my son! And he even pretended to take my hand!’

  Melissa laughed delightedly but Winston definitely didn’t get it. Rosie could, however. Jack had been a little monkey when he’d learned to walk, always running here and there. The difference was that on the island, there was always someone to look after someone else’s child. No one got upset when a child played up in a shop. It was considered normal behaviour.

  ‘I do not see you as a woman who shouts at her children,’ observed Yannis, who was perched on the edge of the patio, smoking a cigarette.

  Rosie always encouraged her staff to join the guests after cooking. It was something that Cara had taught her. Even so, she’d have to have a word with Yannis about the smoking later on. It was sometimes hard for the locals to understand that the British didn’t always care for the habit at table (or near it), even though dinner had finished.

  ‘I’m not.’ Emma blushed. Her burned pinkness had faded now; in its place, she’d developed a rather lovely sun-kissed look. Her fuller figure seemed more attractive in the floaty blue waistless dress she was wearing. In fact, she looked every inch the lovely bride – except that her husband still wasn’t with her. He’d gone to bed early, Emma had explained, rather too quickly. Still feeling a bit under the weather.

  Did Yannis realise she was married? Rosie felt a catch of alarm in her throat. Her new chef certainly seemed rather interested in her guest, judging from the way his brown almond-shaped eyes were continually fixed on her.

  ‘Sometimes kids make you do things you shouldn’t,’ Emma explained, as Yannis passed her the carafe of rosé. She hesitated. ‘I cut down on my drinking after the kids.’

  Yannis gave a wolfish grin. ‘But they’re not here now.’ He was pouring it for her. ‘Just one more won’t hurt.’

  The new Mrs King had had too much to drink too: you could tell that from the way she was babbling on and from the high colour in her cheeks. ‘The other month, my two were having an awful argument in the car on the way to school so I pulled in to sort
it out. We were all yelling at each other, so much that a man came down his drive to find out what the noise was about.’

  Winston frowned. ‘Really? You were all yelling?’

  He gave his bride a disappointed look and Rosie felt a quiet thrill of satisfaction.

  ‘It’s not easy shtaying calm when you have kids,’ said Emma, who was beginning to slur her words. Oh dear, thought Rosie. Perhaps she ought to have intervened earlier before Emma had had another top-up. Still, her guests were grown-ups; not children …

  ‘By the way, Rosie, I’m loving the art class, I really am. I mean, I’m no good, but it’s so nice to do something for myshelf for a change.’

  Rosie buzzed with the compliment. The art class had been something she’d wanted to get off the ground for a long time. Then an Italian watercolourist had moved into town and Rosie had persuaded her to give some lessons. It all helped to make the Villa Rosa a little different.

  ‘I mean, I mish my kids, I really do. But I’d forgotten whash it’s like to be me again, without them.’

  ‘Isn’t that sweet!’ Melissa was grabbing Emma’s hands in maternal solidarity. ‘I must say, I am rather enjoying having mine here. I hate being away from them, don’t I, Winston? But it won’t be long, Em, until you’re back home with them.’

  Her new husband’s lips tightened. Interesting! It wasn’t the first time Rosie had suspected that he wasn’t that keen on having his stepchildren on honeymoon with them.

  ‘D’you want to see shome pictures of my two from the wedding?’

  Emma was passing round her phone now and there were various ‘ahhs’, even from the French couple, who’d been unable to keep their hands off each other, both below and above the table.

  ‘He’s very cute,’ gushed Melissa, passing the phone over.

  Rosie gazed at Gawain in his pageboy outfit and blond curls. He was, too. In fact, he reminded her of Jack at that age. So winsome. So sweet. So fatherless.