by Jenny Oliver
‘But they didn’t.’ Maddy said, unable to hold back the sulky tone to her voice. She leaned against the table top and traced the pattern of the old wood with her fingertip.
‘But they could have.’ Sophie said, exasperated, slamming the rolling pin down on the stainless steel surface of the island unit in the middle of the room where she worked. ‘They could have, Maddy.’
‘But they didn’t.’ she said again. ‘You can’t live with “could haves” all the time.’
Her mum didn’t reply and after a pause said, ‘Can you get me the bowl of feta from the fridge?’
Maddy sloped out into the storeroom at the back of the kitchen that was piled high with vegetables, tins of beans and jars packed with lentils, flours, rices and rows and rows of herbs and spices. Along the back wall were three fridges, glowing fluorescent with see-through doors. Maddy loved the fridges, she loved that you could see inside and stare at the bowls of cucumber flecked tzatziki, pale pink taramasalata, tubs of tiny anchovies and plates of garlic covered prawns. See all the new creations her mum had made and the great trays of moussaka and pastitsio that they would have a wedge out of for dinner. As she opened the door and pulled out the big glass bowl of feta, she saw on the bottom shelf the rows of tiny mince pies that her mum had started to make for Christmas and closed her eyes for a second. Annoyingly she could picture herself eating them, standing with everyone on Christmas morning and popping a couple into her mouth – no longer London bound for the holiday season. No longer the possibility of her family toasting a picture of her with their champagne and wishing she was with them. Who knew that mince pies could depress her so completely?
‘Maddy – the feta!’ her mum called.
Back in the kitchen she slid the bowl over to her mum and looked up to see that Dimitri had sauntered in along with her grandparents and her mum’s friend Agatha who waited tables when they were packed but was so moody with the customers her mum always tried to play down their busyness.
‘So how much is it going to cost you, Maddy?’ Dimitri asked as he picked a handful of carrot sticks off the countertop and popped them one by one into his mouth.
‘I just chopped those.’ Maddy’s mum leant over and slapped his hand when he went for some more.
‘Sorry Sophie.’ He winked.
‘I’ll bet you are.’ She shook her head, attempted unsuccessfully to hold back a smile, and then pushing her hair behind her ear with the back of her flour-covered hand, said, ‘So yes, Maddy, how much is it going to cost? I can’t pay for it, you know that don’t you?’
They may have been seeing a massive spike in business at the taverna because of the unseasonably high temperatures, but the flip side was the wild thunderstorms that had swept part of the back roof off and flooded the outhouses – costing her mum pretty much the entire summer’s profit.
Dimitri leant up against the island unit, twisting the top off the beer he’d obviously grabbed from the fridge outside on his way into the kitchen, and said, ‘Is it as much as, say, a plane ticket to London?’ His expression dancing with mischief.
Maddy narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Yes Dimitri, yes it is that much, perhaps a little bit more.’
He sucked in his breath.
‘Who’s going to London?’ her granddad asked as he lowered himself into the ratty old armchair in the corner of the room.
After the divorce, when her mum had moved permanently to the island that they’d holidayed on every year, buying the taverna that sprawled out into the bay, gradually Maddy’s grandparents stopped going back to England. If anyone ever commented on how odd it was that they’d changed allegiance, relocating to move near their ex-daughter-in-law, they always said it was because they couldn’t bear to be so far away from her cooking. But really it was just because they loved her, and at the time, not so much now, she struggled to manage without them. They downsized to a pied-a-terre in Nettleton, the village both her mum and dad had grown up in, and shipped all their furniture from their big country house over to Greece where the majority of it didn’t fit in the little villa they’d bought. Now it was dotted about in various places – Maddy, for example, had their Chippendale writing desk and Dimitri had inherited a glass 1950s cocktail cabinet that sat next to the fruit machine in his bar. Her granddad’s armchair sat in the taverna kitchen, an incongruous addition to the rustic industrial chic look that her mum had going on.
‘No one’s going to London, Granddad.’ Maddy went over to the kettle and flicked it on to make him a cup of tea before he could say that no one took care of him properly.
She could feel her mum watching her. ‘Why are you talking about London?’ she asked.
‘I’m not. Dimitri was.’ Maddy said, too quickly, as she reached up to get the tea bags from the shelf.
‘You don’t want to go to London, do you Maddy?’ her mum said, slight panic in her voice as she went on, ‘Why would you want to go to London? It’s Christmas. You can’t go to London.’
‘Are you going to London, Madeline?’ Her grandmother looked up from where she was helping her mum spoon feta into the cheese pies. ‘If you are could you pick me up some chocolate digestives?’
Maddy had to exhale slowly to calm herself down as she made the cup of Earl Grey. ‘For god’s sake. No one is going to London.’ she said through gritted teeth as she walked over to her granddad and slammed the tea down on the doily that covered his little side table.
‘You’re a little angel.’ Her granddad smiled, then looked at the cup and added, ‘One of your mum’s lemon biscuits would really go down a treat.’
Maddy rolled her eyes and went back to the shelf to grab the biscuit tin. When her granddad reached in and took a couple he said, ‘Are you singing this week Maddy?’
‘Friday, at the bar.’
‘I hate the bar.’ He scowled
Dimitri shouted over, ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘You make it so I hate it, Dimitri. It’s not for people like me.’
‘Rubbish.’ Maddy laughed, the atmosphere lightening, ‘You could come to the bar. You’re not that old.’
Her granddad scoffed. ‘Maybe. Maybe just to hear you sing, then I’ll leave.’
‘Maybe I won’t let you in, Mr Davenport.’ Dimitri said with one brow raised.
Her granddad laughed. ‘I was in the war, kiddo, I could fight my way in.’
‘You weren’t in the war,’ her grandmother scoffed. ‘You were behind a desk filing papers.’
‘That was still the war.’ he said crossly and sat back in a sulk with his cup of tea. ‘Madeline…’ he added, ‘if you went to London you could see your father.’ His bruised ego deliberately trying to stir up trouble.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Michael.’ Maddy’s grandmother slapped him on the arm.
Her mum sucked in a breath. Maddy closed her eyes for a second and then scowled at Dimitri who made a face of laughing apology and sloped out the door with his beer.
‘That’s it.’ she said, ‘I’m going to work.’
Maddy grabbed her bag from the hat stand in the corner of the room – another of her grandparents’ antiques – and her mum wiped her hands on her apron and came over to where she was pulling on her trainers by the back door. ‘You’ll be back to help with the evening shift?’ she said, reaching forward to tuck Maddy’s long fringe behind her ear where it had slipped in her hurry to get her shoes on and go.
‘Yes,’ she snapped, but then paused when she saw her mum smile and said more softly, ‘Yes, I’ll be back. I need the money,’ she added with a laugh.
‘I’m sorry you lost your savings, Maddy,’ her mum added, taking her glasses off her head and putting them on so she could look at Maddy properly – straighten out her jumper so it didn’t hang off her shoulder and fix one of the pulls in the wool. ‘You’re so pretty, and you look so scruffy.’
‘Who’s gonna see me, Mum?’
Her mum paused, smoothing the fabric of Maddy’s jumper back into place, then she took her glasses off and sai
d with a sigh, ‘London’s not that great you know. I know it seems so. And I know your sister makes it look like it is, but it’s just a place, Maddy.’
Maddy looked down at her dirty trainers. ‘I know.’ she said, rolling her lips together and thinking about all the money she’d had to hand over for the giant dent she’d put in the yacht. ‘But it’s just a place I wanted to go.’
‘Well if it’s any consolation, I’m glad you’re staying. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without you.’
‘Yeah. Me too.’ Maddy lied, and then dashed out the back door to work.
If it was summer, going to work was no hardship. Maddy worked on the boats, jumping from one to the other in a bikini top and frayed shorts, feet roughened from running on pebbles and over hot tarmac, face golden, hair thick with salt and bleached at the tips, laughing and shouting, oil streaking her arms, smelling of sun cream and swimming in the sea till sundown. But in the winter she worked in Spiros’ garage – a shabby white building with green doors that were cracked and broken at the bottom – sanding, re-painting, fixing engines that tourists had given a beating during the holiday season. She had to listen to Greek folk music as it blasted out of a paint splattered radio and every day shake her head when Spiros asked her why she wasn’t married yet and had no babies.
Spiros was on the mainland today though, delivering an engine, so Maddy was on her own. She put her own music on and flung open the windows that Spiros kept closed because the sun made the place too hot. But Maddy could cope with the heat if it meant having the view – probably one of the best on the island, out over the Mediterranean, a sheer drop down on the cliff edge and, at this time of year, accompanied by the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.
As she leant on the window sill, looking down at the navy water, she pulled a letter out of her pocket. The headed paper said Manhattans, the double t shaped like the Empire State building. The job offer made it clear that the backing work was only for Christmas and that while there might be occasions where she was required to perform solo there was no guarantee of this, they reserved the right to replace her at any point. The address was in Soho. 15 Greek Street. She’d thought it was fate when she’d written back to accept.
This was her dream – of big cities and men in suits, of money and bright neon lights, of martinis in Soho House and cocktails at the Ritz.
Her sister had emailed seemingly just to brag that they were celebrating their anniversary at Claridge’s. Maddy had Googled the restaurant, Fera, and picked what she would have ordered on the menu. The ‘dry-aged Herdwick hogget, sweetbread, cucumber, yoghurt and blackberry’ purely because she didn’t know what hogget was and presumed that her sister would know. She wanted clothes from Topshop that she didn’t have to order online and to go to Selfridges and see a whole floor devoted to shoes. She wanted to see the Carnaby Street Christmas lights for real, not just on her sister’s Instagram.
But most of all she wanted to sing somewhere that wasn’t her mum’s taverna or her friend’s bar. Somewhere where she had been picked to go on stage because someone thought she had talent, not just because they were related to her. She wanted someone to verify what she hoped, that she was a bit better than average, and whoever that was going to be, she wasn’t going to find them in a tiny bar on a Greek island in winter.
This letter was the first rung on her ladder.
It was possibility.
It was bits of paper falling from the window down into the sea.
CHAPTER 5
ELLA
The stewardess was wearing a Santa hat. The captain wished them a Merry Christmas after he hit the runway a little too fast. And everyone was handed a Quality Street as they exited the plane. Ella waved a hand in refusal, then paused as she stood at the top of the metal stairs. It wasn’t hot like mid-summer hot but it was certainly warm enough to make her wish she wasn’t wearing 100 denier tights. She breathed in through her nose, pushed her sunglasses up on her greasy hair and had to steady herself on the banister for a moment. The smell of airline fuel, the hiss of the bus brakes, a great wide sky – the type you don’t get in England. The type that stretches on and on and up into infinite possibility. A wisp of cloud like chalk on a blackboard.
She hadn’t been to Greece without Max for over a decade. And suddenly he seemed like a beautiful shield reflecting the attention and keeping her at a nice, safe distance. She felt like she’d left her armour at the Pimlico flat and was standing there naked.
‘Can you keep moving please, don’t stop on the stairs,’ the stewardess called out.
But Ella didn’t move forward, she apologised but stepped slightly to the side so that people could squeeze past her and covered her face with her hands and breathed in again. She took a massive breath and made herself run through some recent job successes, pictured her lovely flat, conjured an image of her and Max curled up on the sofa together watching Gogglebox – him stroking her hair and snorting away with delight as the commentators had the same opinion as him about The Voice while she checked Max’s accounts, looking up occasionally when he really guffawed. She forced herself to remember that Max had probably left her a hundred voicemails while her phone had been on flight mode. She took her hands away and looked again at the view and this time felt much less naked.
In Arrivals her Blackberry buzzed like a starving baby bird. A hundred messages from Adrian about the Obeille mobile phone account. No one could do it but her. They were floundering. They were going to lose it. He knew she was on holiday but could she possibly…
Nothing from Max.
On the ferry journey she ignored the view of the endless blanket of blue, unable to see where the sky met the sea, the birds swooping as they caught the breeze like kites, the olive covered mountains that crept up the horizon as the boat chugged, and kept reaching into her bag and flicking her home screen to life just to make sure that she hadn’t missed a call.
The ferry port was a tiny white building and a snaking queue of taxis. Ella strutted fast past the meandering tourists to make sure she was at the front. As she tapped her foot waiting for the two drivers at the front of the line to stop arguing she could feel a trickle of sweat down her back and glanced up at the unseasonable sunshine. She looked over the road at the familiar line of palm trees combing the air as a welcome breeze picked up, the weatherbeaten coffee stall where people stood at the counter and drank thick coffee from tiny glasses rimmed with gold, the scratch of grass where a group of men played backgammon in the shade of the palm, and thought how usually there was a driver holding a sign with Max’s name on it. Why, she wondered, was she on frenetic London time, impatiently chivvying the taxi drivers along, when really she was in no hurry to reach her destination.
When Ella was finally in the car, the driver chatted away almost to himself as she stared out the window watching the landmarks whizz by; a strip of beach lined with a couple of tourist bars, most closed for the season, the school on the bend that she’d been so jealous of Maddy going to while Ella was sitting scholarship exams for a boarding school where she was forced to play lacrosse in the snow and eat liver the colour of petrol.
She was still looking out at other little shops and cafes along the drive she recognised when the driver turned up the road to her mum’s village. Ella had to look back to check the sign was right, it seemed too soon. The road was rutted and the drive bouncy. She felt a bit sick as they jumped along, the lush vegetation gleaming in the bright sunshine. As they turned the corner into the main square, she saw Christmas lights hanging from one street lamp to the next and bunting flickered in the breeze around the square. Out in the bay three great statues of boats sat ready to light up at dusk as part of the Christmas decorations. Ella paid the cab and wandered out past a row of shabby white houses on her right draped with the odd sprig of parched brown bougainvillea. Bypassing the church on her left and the shuttered-up tourist shop, she was being pulled to the view ahead of her like the grubby looking dog that limped past, its nose sniffing alo
ng the ground leaving a line like a snake track in the red dust.
A half moon bay curved like a sleeping cat below her. Frothy white horses glistened in the late afternoon sunlight as if flecked with diamonds and rolled over plump, pale pebbles that rattled like bones as the water pushed them, chattering, up the beach. Little fishing boats, the colours you’d paint them in primary school, bobbed on their moorings, just a couple of them like knitting grannies, nodding up and down as the waves gently tumbled. It was impossible to see where the sky met the sea.
She realised that she had never been here in winter before. She was used to two weeks of bubbling sun, flocks of tourists and the roaring hum of cicadas. But as she looked out over the horizon, flecked with prickly pears and plants like aliens, fronds jutting out at crazy angles and precariously perched on the side of the rocks, she realised how silent it was. How quiet. How exposed. How perhaps this was a terrible mistake.
‘Ella?’ A familiar voice said.
She turned to look in the direction of a dirty big garage, the green doors padlocked and the neon sign flickering. Her younger sister was walking towards her, looking as cool and calm as she always did. Hair pulled into a messy bun, long tanned limbs hanging weightlessly, freckles over her nose, gap between her front teeth that she could slide a penny into. Young, gangly, immature, beautiful Maddy.
‘Hi.’ Ella said, feeling suddenly sweaty and awkward in her now crumpled shirt and pencil skirt that she’d been wearing at the office. Her feet pinched in her Louboutins, the polished leather dirty with dust. ‘I just arrived.’
‘No kidding.’ Maddy raised a brow. ‘Does Mum know you’re coming?’
Ella felt instantly defensive. ‘No. I wanted it to be a surprise.’
Maddy gave her a look that Ella interpreted as both mocking and bemused. ‘She’ll be surprised all right. Isn’t it your anniversary? Is Max here?’
