For all the beauty of the view, the mood was fractious. Family life: my idea of hell. Wasn’t that what Ann had said? She might have had a point. There was an edge to the proceedings. We were under attack from insects – tiny black ants moving in formation on every crumb, larger red ants creeping up chair legs, and wasps. Who knew Greece was home to so many wasps? The teenage girls were sulky, ‘not hungry’, either fiddling with their phones or leaping hysterically from the table (‘it’s a fucking hornet!’). The two younger boys, Frank and Archie, both pale and etiolated in their colourful board shorts, all pointy bones and pent-up energy, ticked off for throwing olives, kept asking what we were doing that afternoon: ‘Could we go to the beach? Could we go windsurfing? Could we go to the water park at Elconda?’
‘For goodness’ sake just enjoy this,’ Tina snapped eventually. ‘Don’t keep going on about the next thing.’
It was Louis, though, who cast the biggest cloud. He had bulked out recently; in one of those sudden growth spurts that seem to affect children, his jaw had jutted forward, and his brow had become heavier. He sat at the end opposite Andrew, shovelling food into his mouth, his fork in his left hand. He was wearing black tracksuit bottoms and a black hoodie, which he was refusing to take off. I knew Alice worried about him – he had been in trouble for bullying at school. Perhaps I should have been paying more attention. Perhaps I should have been doing something to help.
‘Why can’t I have a beer?’ he grunted. ‘He’s on his third.’
Alice laughed. ‘Paul’s an adult,’ she said. ‘You can have one this evening. I’m not having you drinking at lunch.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘It’s just stupid,’ he said. ‘You have these insane rules. It’s just irrational. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t talk to your mother like that.’
Andrew‘s tone of voice was pompous. Louis glared at him, eyes dark, and then threw back his chair and walked into the house.
‘Do you want me to get him?’ Andrew said.
‘I don’t know.’ Alice looked unsure, both defensive and apologetic.
‘He’s on the Xbox again.’
‘I know. Oh dear.’ She looked over her shoulder, twisted her face from Andrew. ‘He’s very . . . I know he’s rude.’
‘It’s a difficult age,’ I said. ‘Everyone always goes on about your school days being the happiest time of your life, but it’s hard being sixteen.’
‘Thank you,’ Alice said softly, turning back.
Of course I thought Louis was a little fucker, but I was happy to stand up for him if it meant putting Andrew back in his box. ‘Don’t you remember,’ I said, turning to address him with a sanctimonious smile, ‘how angry you feel at that age? How frustrated. All those hormones surging round your body and nowhere to put them.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
‘It gets so much easier,’ I added, ‘when you find an outlet.’
‘An outlet?’
‘When you start having sex. That’s what Louis needs. Sooner the better.’
Alice went to our room for a rest after lunch. I planned to join her but I helped Tina with the washing-up first and then had a quick cigarette at the far end of the terrace on an Indian day bed. It was peaceful. I watched a group of swallows swooping in and out of a nest in the eaves, a multitude of small white butterflies bother a geranium, a line of ants leading to half a dead beetle. I felt oddly anxious. At lunch I had said some of the right things, but also some of the wrong things. It was all much harder than I’d anticipated. I cared more too. It was disconcerting. It made me feel out of sorts, not quite myself.
Alice was lying on the bed, reading The Great Gatsby, when I went to find her. The main shutters were still closed, but she had opened the smaller window on the side of the house and a triangle of sunlight slanted on to her pillow. It was hot and sultry in there; the air thick with itself, with the scent of jasmine and quince. Alice’s bare limbs were pale against the silky grey bedcover.
She was stroking her neck absent-mindedly.
‘Oh, don’t,’ she groaned, as I slipped under the mosquito net and pulled her towards me. ‘It’s too hot. Isn’t it? I mean. Don’t you think?’
‘It’s never too hot.’ I ran my hands under her kaftan, felt the warmth of her stomach, the damp of her bikini. I buried my face in her neck, toying at the drawstring with my teeth. ‘You’re too hot.’
She laughed, pulled gently away. ‘I can’t believe you said that thing about Louis having sex.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Was it awful?’
‘Just a bit off colour, maybe – in front of the younger boys.’
‘Oh God. I’m crap. Sorry.’
‘I forgive you.’ She groaned. ‘I don’t know what to do with him. I’ve tried jollying him along. I’ve tried being cross. I’m running out of ideas. He’s obviously driving Andrew mad. He doesn’t get him. Archie is such a different sort of boy . . .’
‘And younger,’ I said, working out what she wanted me to say. ‘And a bit goody two-shoes if we’re honest – a bit lacking in character?’
She laughed, and then bit her lip as if she shouldn’t have. ‘I think Louis misses his father, or misses having one. Andrew means well, but . . .’
‘I’m sure it will be fine. Maybe you just need to stop worrying and think about your own needs for a bit.’
‘Do you think?’ she murmured, closing her eyes.
‘Yes. Beginning now.’
I lowered my head again, taking her closed eyes as encouragement, kissing her neck and working down. She moved her hips, bringing her pelvis to meet mine, and for the next half an hour, as far as I was aware, neither of us thought about Andrew or Louis while we concentrated on our own needs. Or certainly on mine.
Alice slept afterwards. I tried for a while, but failed. She was snoring very quietly and I was restless, in need of further stimulation, as one often is at the start of a holiday, so I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and went down to the pool.
Tina was painting on a stool in the shade, the skirt of her tent pulled low over her knees. Daisy and Phoebe were on sunbeds, apparently asleep, and Frank and Archie were huddled in the barbecue area, heads together over an iPhone. No sign of Louis. Or Andrew.
I lay on my stomach, my eye on the girls, drawing comparisons for my own pleasure. Phoebe was more voluptuous than Daisy, but too plucked and dyed for my taste. She didn’t like me: I’d worked that out. Daisy, with her hazel eyes and olive skin, had a sort of gamine grace. (Did I stand a chance there? An idle, but enjoyable question.) Mostly they both lay supine in the sun, though they roused themselves now and again to cool themselves in the pool, stepping past me, tiny bent shadows dancing at their feet, and on their return, re-anointed themselves with sun cream. It fascinated me, their relationship with their own bodies, the way they studied their limbs as they rubbed in the lotion, an intense look on their faces that conveyed either love or disgust, or perhaps both, combined with a potent curiosity as if they were noticing every inch of themselves for the first time.
Alice joined us after an hour or so. She lay down on an empty bed next to me. ‘Hello, you,’ she said under her breath. And then, more loudly, ‘Construction hasn’t started again, then?’ to no one in particular.
‘Siesta,’ Tina answered. She held her paintbrush out to judge a distance. ‘Maybe still too hot.’
Nobody was in the mood for talking, too languid and somnolent. I dipped into the pool once or twice, when the heat overcame me, rescued a giant bee I found drowning in the shallow end, read a few chapters of In Cold Blood, and at about 5p.m., volunteered to climb up to the house to fetch some drinks.
Andrew was sitting on the terrace with his glasses on, poring over some papers, tapping on a calculator. ‘All right, old chap?’ he said as I passed him. ‘Hot, isn’t it?’
He didn’t seem to need an answer. I found beer and cans of Diet Coke in the fridge and a tray and carried it p
ast him down to the pool, where I made a show of hand-delivering each drink to each person, with a small obsequious bow.
When I reached Phoebe, she didn’t bother to raise her head so I laid the cold can carefully in the scoop of her naked back. She jack-knifed with a squeal and jumped to her feet. ‘You fucker, Paul.’
The can rolled to the ground and she picked it up and shook it. I leapt backwards and darted away. Daisy and the boys were laughing. Frank shouted, ‘Push him in, Dais!’
‘Oh, leave him alone,’ called Tina.
‘Poor Paul,’ Alice cried.
Phoebe was grappling with me now, arm-to-arm combat, her right leg twisted around one of mine. I was so much stronger, I had to tense up in order not to flip her over and throw her in.
‘You’re a fucking fucker,’ Phoebe said in my ear.
I let her gain her advantage, my hands slipping down along her arms. I felt my balance begin to go and released a war-cry, vanquished, defeated, but as I did so I tightened my grip, hooked my feet through hers. She toppled after me, powerless, and we met the surface together. As the water rushed and surged, seething and gurgling in my ears, as I was brushed and kicked by her legs and hands and face, I felt a swell of pure happiness.
When I surfaced, Alice – rich, glorious, fuckable Alice – was at the edge of the pool, ready to pull me out.
It was all right after all. I was on a roll, unbeatable. No one here was going to get the better of me.
Chapter Nine
The plan was to eat out – as they had the night before. (Neither family was wary of spending money.)
Alice had a call to make and, as I was ready, I waited in the front yard by the car. It was close; the air stuck to your skin. A wood pigeon cooed in a dark copse of trees. A strange transparent lizard darted across the wall of the house, reached the rafters and hung there, motionless. I was watching it, to see if it would move, when I heard a noise, a small clatter and a rustle behind me. I turned and saw a man emerge from the shed with the corrugated roof. It was the blond man with the pale eyes whom I had seen earlier. He crossed the yard and walked past, not looking at me, with slow regular strides, adjusting a bag across his shoulders.
Tina came round the side of the house.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as he disappeared down the drive.
‘That’s Artan,’ she said. ‘The gardener-cum-handyman. Looks after the house during the year.’
‘He’s not very friendly.’
‘He doesn’t speak much English. He’s Albanian. He’s worked for Alice for years. We first met him in the port the night Jasmine went missing. He had only just arrived, but he was unbelievably kind and helpful, spent days searching the hillsides. Alice gave him a job out of gratitude, and also pity. Someone told us his wife and child had died in a fire.’
‘Oh dear. I feel guilty now.’
‘So you should.’
The car was one of those van-like vehicles, silver in this case, with seven seats and sliding doors down the side. It would have been a squeeze even without me, but Andrew said pointedly: ‘We’ll have to squash up. We’re nine, with Paul.’ I offered to walk, but Alice wouldn’t hear of it. ‘No, no: we’ll make it work. Come on, Louis, hop in the back. It’s not far. Make life easy.’
‘I don’t want to go in the back. Why can’t Paul go in the back?’
‘Don’t argue with your mother,’ Andrew said.
If I’d been Louis I’d have found it grating, the way Andrew kept saying, ‘your mother’, as if her children needed him to remind them of their relationship.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Alice muttered. ‘Leave it.’
At the bend in the lane, by the gate to the building site, the car scraped over a rock. Tina peered out of a rear window and called: ‘I think we’re all right. No smoke!’ Alice twisted round from the passenger seat and said: ‘For once in our lives we’ve got a genuine mechanic on board.’
‘A genuine mechanic?’ Andrew said.
‘Yes. Paul’s good with cars.’ She smiled at me. ‘Aren’t you, Paul?’ She twisted back. ‘He’s going to have a look at Hermes. If he gets the truck going pronto, we can all bomb around in that – ride shotgun.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, realising what she was talking about. ‘Of course.’
‘Go Paul,’ said Phoebe.
‘Do you think you’d be able to put your hand on the key after all this time?’ I asked.
‘It’s stuck in the ignition. Has been for years.’
‘Great stuff.’ I did a miniature drum roll on my knee with my index fingers.
Andrew parked in a small lay-by close to the centre of Agios Stefanos and we tumbled out. It was dusky and warm. Bats darted and dived from roof to roof in the darkness above our heads. Tiny insects flickered in the glow from the street-lights. Wine and good food lay ahead of me. I felt another surge of optimism, of confidence and hope: the sort of things you feel when a holiday stretches out before you like a naked woman waiting to be explored.
Alice was already marching ahead, a small, defiant figure in a clingy T-shirt dress, and a pair of high espadrilles which made her calf muscles bulge. The village had come to life: people and lights, music and cooking smells. Skinny-ribbed ginger and white cats mewled in corners. Children darted between legs. Alice kept stopping to hand out leaflets: a tourist, a shopkeeper having a cigarette, a man touting roasted nuts, a woman selling friendship bracelets. I felt a tug of tenderness, of both admiration and pity.
Tina was walking along beside me. ‘Do you think it makes a difference?’ I asked her. ‘Seriously?’
She made a face, weighing up the options. ‘It doesn’t matter. The brilliant thing about Alice – she won’t give up either way. She does this every year.’
‘Does anybody ever get in touch with information?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Is it ever useful?’
She shook her head. ‘Sightings . . . or . . . but no, nothing concrete, not yet. Alice is so determined. The ten-year anniversary, the fact that it’s the last summer at Circe’s, all the money she’s raised . . . You just have to admire the force of her energy and commitment.’
Andrew had caught up with us. ‘She’s determined to find her,’ he said.
‘If she’s here to be found. I mean, even if she were alive, wouldn’t she be long gone? I mean if I were going to snatch a teenage girl, I’d . . .’
‘What?’ Andrew was looking at me strangely.
‘Come on. We’re in a port.’
‘Yes. So what would you do?’
‘I’d find a boat. If I didn’t already have one. I’d escape by sea,’ I said. ‘It’s not rocket science.’
We ate not at Nico’s (where they had eaten the previous evening), but at Giorgio’s, the taverna next door. A large table was waiting for us on the platform by the water’s edge, and a big fuss made: Tina and Alice received hugs from the elderly owner, the boys had their heads ruffled, the girls their palms kissed, and Andrew’s hand was energetically pumped. I tried to stand back, but Andrew pushed me forwards. ‘This year we are joined by our dear friend Paul Morris. A very famous writer. Remember his name, if you don’t know it already. He’s just sold his latest novel at auction. Six figures! You’re going to be hearing a lot more about him.’
‘A pre-empt,’ I said under my breath. ‘Not an auction.’
The owner, a stooped man with thick black hair and a grey moustache, clamped his arm around my shoulder. ‘Is it your first visit to Agios Stefanos?’
‘Yes,’ I said, without thinking.
‘Don’t forget you’ve been here before,’ Andrew said. ‘Ten years ago.’ He turned to Giorgio. ‘In fact, he came to this very taverna, though I’m not sure he had a chance to sample your delicious fare.’
Fare: it’s one of my least favourite words.
The others had sat down by now, but Andrew made everyone stand up and sit where he wanted them. This time, he placed me at the head of the table. ‘Better view,’ he said – though I h
ad my back to the water. I felt on show, and for a horrible moment wondered if that was what Andrew intended.
A young waiter with a faint moustache swept up. Wine was ordered and beer and Coke and Fanta, numerous starters – taramasalata, calamari, fried cheese, fried courgettes – as well as lamb, and chicken and fish. The casual profligacy astounded me. Both Louis and Frank ordered the steak, double the price of anything else, without seeking their mother’s approval. ‘What about you, Paul?’ asked Tina, noticing I’d been quiet. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, worrying about my share of the bill (would it be split according to what we ate, or according to the number of heads? If the latter, I was in trouble).
‘Oh, go on,’ Tina insisted.
I’d only pretended to study the menu. Now I racked my brain for the cheapest thing I could think of. ‘Some hummus, I think.’
‘Hummus. Oh no, they don’t have that here.’ Andrew let out one of his laughs, three regular short snorts, which didn’t convey much amusement. ‘Oh, Paul. No, you don’t get hummus in Greece.’
‘Yes you do.’ I could visualise the Cyrillic script on the plastic pot in the continental delicatessen on Lamb’s Conduit Street. I added, more pompously than I intended, ‘It’s a Greek speciality.’
Andrew studied me. He’d noticed the pomposity and didn’t like it. Catching the attention of an elderly lady by the till, he called: ‘Sofia – hummus?’ He flapped the menu in the air. ‘I can’t see it anywhere, but for a special customer, our famous author here, do you have hummus?’
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