by Jenny Oliver
‘That’s disgusting.’ Ella said with a sneer.
‘It’s his dinner.’ Dimitri raised a condescending brow as he looked back at her.
The diver then held the octopus by its tentacles and thwacked it hard on the wooden post to kill it.
‘Oh Jesus Christ.’ Ella covered her eyes.
Dimitri laughed as he held onto the rope of his boat and jumped on, ‘You need to get out of the city more.’
‘What, so I can watch more animal massacres?’ She grimaced, hands on her hips.
‘Get on the boat.’ he said, shaking his head as he jogged across the hull and started to loosen the anchor.
‘Aren’t you going to help me?’ she asked, looking dubiously down at the bobbing bow, unsure how she was meant to make the jump on her own, especially considering her wedge mules.
‘No.’ he said with a quick shake of his shaggy hair and stayed where he was, watching her, his hand shielding his eyes from the late morning rays.
Slipping her phone into her pocket, Ella took one shoe off and then the next, chucked them forward so they landed in the boat with a bounce, and then lowered herself down tentatively so she was perched on the edge of the jetty, her feet still a foot above the prow of the boat. Still gripping onto the wood she slid herself down until one toe touched solid ground and then the other. Half suspended however, the pressure of her feet started to push the boat away and she found herself caught, hands still holding on, feet moving away underneath her.
‘Let go.’ Dimitri called.
‘No.’ She shook her head. If she let go there was a chance she’d just fall on her bum into the water. Flashbacks of her youthful tumble made her close her eyes. Please not again.
‘Just push yourself forward with your hands and let go. It’s bloody cold in there this time of year so you don’t want to fall. Push yourself off! Now, Ella.’
‘No. Why can’t you help me?’
‘Because you don’t need my help.’
‘I do.’
‘You don’t. Just do it.’ he called as he started tapping another cigarette from the pack.
‘You’re having a bloody cigarette while I’m possibly dying?’
Against his will, Dimitri gave a snort of laughter.
‘Help me you bastard!’ she shouted in the end as the boat was drifting further from the jetty and she was almost diagonal.
Tucking the fag behind his ear, Dimitri loped over and stood looking up at her, while she struggled to stay upright. ‘All you had to do was say please.’
‘Piss off.’
He shrugged and started to turn away.
‘Ok, fine. Please. Please help me.’ she huffed, and he bent down and scooped her up with both arms, depositing her with an ungainly thud on the red leather passenger seat.
‘There you go, Princess,’ he laughed, walking back to pull up the anchor while he leant forward to turn the key and start the engine. As two hundred horsepower roared violently to life, Dimitri turned and winked proudly at her. Ella looked away, pulling out her phone, as if it was all beneath her.
Five minutes later, while Dimitri was jumping about like an exuberant dog – untying ropes and pushing the boat off from the mooring, kicking away other boats from either side, wiping sweat off his forehead, Ella started replying to all her emails. She’d put out some petty work fires and sent some off-the-top-of-her-head thoughts about the mobile phone campaign, when she heard Dimitri cough, seemingly to get her attention.
‘What?’ she said, glancing up.
‘Have you seen the view?’ he asked somewhat bemused.
‘Where?’ she asked.
He pointed out along the coastline to where the olive groves ended and into the distance rows and rows of lemon trees took their place; each varnished leaf shiny and glistening in the sunlight.
‘Oh yes, very nice.’ she nodded.
‘Jesus. You and that phone.’ He jumped down to the end of the boat and fiddled with some of the switches and leads. Ella crossed her legs and looked around, wondering if she should help at all. When he didn’t say anything more she refreshed her emails again – there’d been nothing more from Amanda’s husband. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved.
‘What can be that important?’ Dimitri shouted over the sound of the engine.
Ella didn’t look up. ‘Work. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘You’re missing the view.’ Dimitri said as he jogged back up to the steering wheel. When she looked up at him to roll her eyes he was pointing towards the rows of little villas nestled into the olive groves on the hillside. Occasionally a car mirror or motorbike picked up the sun and shot back a beam from between the trees like a satellite.
Her phone buzzed with an email. [email protected]. Her heart thumped like it might break through her ribs. Her fingers hovered over the open button. Was it another pleading request to trust him or was he about to admit the truth? She shocked herself by thinking she barely knew which she’d prefer, which would offer the most relief.
But just as she was about to open it up, before she could answer her own question, long, tanned fingers plucked the Blackberry out of hers and hurled it overboard.
‘What the hell!’
‘Look at the god damn view.’
‘That was my phone.’
He held his arms wide in a shrug that said he didn’t care. Ella scuttled to the edge of the boat and stared down into the sheet of blue beneath them. ‘Go and get it.’
‘Get real.’ He made a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh and took the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it.
Ella leaned right over, scanning from side to side to see if she could make out the shape of her Blackberry as it sank. ‘That was my phone.’
‘So you’ve said.’ He cut the engine and sauntered back to drop the anchor where they bobbed, fifty metres or so out from the shore, smirking to himself as he tied the knot.
When he turned around she was glaring at him, hands on hips, expression thunderous. He shrugged. ‘It is something to hide behind.’
‘Don’t give me that crap. You don’t even know me.’ Ella sneered and stalked away from him, flopping down cross-legged and angry as far towards the prow of the boat and as far away from him as she could get, the icy spray hitting her face like pinpricks.
She sat there fuming. She could hear Dimitri pottering about but she didn’t turn around. She felt the wind begin to pick up, lapping the water into tiny waves. She thought about her phone lying amongst the seaweed, the email from Max unread.
Just as she was thinking of taking her frustration out in another tirade against Dimitri, a fishing line whipped over her head with a crack making her jolt back with surprise. Then – as the bait bobbed in the water – hairy, tanned legs squatted down next to her. ‘I’m sorry I threw your phone in the water.’
Ella didn’t say anything.
Dimitri looked back at the sea. ‘This is where you say, it doesn’t matter, it’s only a phone. I’m sorry I am sulking and ruining the trip on the boat.’
She tipped her nose up and glared at him. He cocked his head to one side and smiled, ‘My mother used to say that the wind would change and I would stay like that.’
‘Looks like it did.’ She scowled.
‘Ooh Ella. That’s cruel. My poor heart.’ He clutched his chest.
She rolled her eyes. He leaned over and bashed her shoulder with his and then settled down next to her, his legs dangling over the edge of the boat as he leant against the metal guard rail. They stared out at the sea, watching the fishing boats as they bobbed and dipped with the waves.
‘Do you want to tell me about your husband?’ Dimitri asked after a while, his fingers teasing the fishing line as the waves pulled the float back and forth.
‘No.’
An insolent smile spread across Dimitri’s face, making Ella’s defences rise. ‘Why?’ she snapped, ‘Do you want to tell me about your wife?’ As she said it she immediately regretted soundi
ng so shrill.
‘She died.’
Ella reared back. ‘No? She didn’t? Oh god I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me? I’m sorry. God you must have been devastated.’ She thought back to the wedding photograph on Facebook. Her envy at that look.
Dimitri shrugged a shoulder as he tied the fishing line to the metal rail and then turned and smiled at her, perfect white teeth on a dirty tanned face. ‘I was with someone else when I met her – Anya. She came into the bar. She walked in and I knew that I would be with her, just like that.’ He clicked fingers wet with sea water and engine grease. ‘I left my partner, which hurt her very much, but–’ he shrugged, ‘It’s nature. You have to go with your instincts, don’t you?’ He grinned, ‘Like the lion.’
Ella rolled her eyes.
‘We married up at the church on the hill, see it… just up there.’ He pointed behind them and Ella twisted round to see the top of a castellated white bell tower, the big brass bell glinting in the sun. She didn’t want to tell him that she had analysed his wedding photographs like some sort of CSI, that she knew exactly where he got married and when.
‘I thought she was beautiful, Ella. Absolutely beautiful. And do you know her best trait?’ Dimitri didn’t pause for an answer. ‘She could pull me out of a really bad mood.’ he said, smirking to himself.
Ella was starting to feel envious and hating herself for it. He had lost something so precious. Yet he had had it in the first place.
Had she had that with Max? Would she be able to tell a similar story? What would she say? He was the best looking boy on campus, she had helped him with his English essays, and that even though she’d lost weight, had learnt how to be a little bit cooler and was actually quite funny at times, he had always looked straight through her. But then she had spent a month with her dad and Veronica in Paris and when she’d asked for help, Veronica had helped her. She had shown her how to be who she wanted to be. To take her out of the shadows. She had whisked her to Galeries Lafayette and paid for a make-over – watched as they slicked on foundation, lined her lashes with brown – not black, never black, far too harsh – tinted cheekbones she never knew she had with liquid rouge, plucked her eyebrows into pencil thin lines, pierced her ears, curled her hair, died it from mousy to chestnut dark, shaped her ratty nails into perfect ovals and lacquered them with Chanel Rouge. And then they had shopped. My god they had shopped. Veronica had skimmed through rails laconically holding designer outfits up against her with a scowl or the occasional smile. And Ella had been kitted out from top to bottom. Her feet had been slipped into Louis Vuitton ballet pumps while the sales assistants had unfolded jumpers in the softest angora and jeans that stopped mid-calf like Audrey Hepburn.
‘Et voila…’ Veronica had smiled. ‘Ella she has come of age, finally.’ When she smiled, her bright red lips spread right across her face and her eyes sparkled, showing exactly why her modelling days had been so successful. ‘I look at you and I think she is like my own daughter. And I am glad that I can help you.’
Veronica had stepped forward, draped her arm around Ella’s shoulders and pulled her close into her side. Ella, who rarely let anyone touch her – a leftover hang-up from her crippling self-consciousness, haunted by the memory of Dimitri’s hand grasping the soft folds of her tummy – had stood rigid to begin with, uncomfortable. But as the image of them side by side was reflected in one of the full-length mirrors she saw in herself finally someone she was happy with, happy to be. And she allowed her arm to lift, wrapping it around Veronica’s waist and gradually leaned in until her head rested against her shoulder.
‘You are a lovely girl, Ella.’ Veronica whispered into Ella’s hair, ‘You are lovely even without these things, remember that, oui? These are just…’ she paused, ‘I do not know the word. In French it is glacage.’
Ella pulled back from the hug and shook her head, she didn’t know what it meant. Veronica turned to one of the sales assistants and asked her what it meant in English.
The girl shrugged.
Veronica huffed out a breath. ‘The cake, it is the top of the cake. Oui?’
‘The icing?’ Ella asked, unsure.
‘Ah, yes, that is it. The icing.’
Dimitri ran his hand through his hair, smearing a line of grease across his forehead. Ella pointed to it but when he tried to wipe it away he missed so she leant forward and swiped it off with her thumb. His skin felt softer than she had expected. And she berated herself for the inappropriate rush of feeling that touching him had provoked.
He rubbed his forehead again, as if making sure the mark had gone, then looking back out to sea said, ‘Do you know, we had three of the most brilliant years of my life. Then she got cancer and she died very quickly. Just like that she arrived and just like that she went.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘But–’ he turned to look at Ella, ‘I loved her very much and I would not swap it for the world.’
Ella rubbed her temple. She wanted Dimitri’s story to go away. She wanted not to have been told it. She wanted it not to shine so clearly on her own relationship and see the many flaws reflected back.
The icing, she thought as she sat there in Maddy’s holey jumper and barely any make-up. She had been warned but she hadn’t listened. Instead she had seen the way Max’s eyes changed when he sat down next to her in the library after she returned from Paris, how when he got up, bored, mid-way through and bought himself a Coke he got her one too. How when one of his gang sauntered over he introduced her, rather than slinging his rucksack over his shoulder and disappearing with a vague wave. How suddenly she was invited to the parties. As long as, it seemed to Ella, her lips stayed glossed with Dior and her clothes remained the envy of the girls who trailed behind Max like he was the Pied Piper, she became someone worthy of his gaze. And under that gaze she had shone. She had become Ella. Striking, poised, award-winning. And he had become Max, no longer a loafer in the city who visited his hateful parents once a month, but someone who sailed at seven in the morning on a Sunday, started his own business, did an MBA. They had made each other more. But, she wondered as she glanced out across the sea, had that come at the expense of being themselves?
‘Your turn.’ Dimitri said with a glint in his eye.
Luckily, before Ella had the chance to think of a reasonable excuse not to tell her story there was a violent movement on the fishing line that had Dimitri jumping up, whooping with excitement. ‘You’re saved.’ he said, glancing back at her as he untied the line and started reeling it towards him, ‘By a bloody great fish.’
CHAPTER 16
MADDY
Maddy had been into every bar and club in the area. Her shoes pinched, her back ached, her eyes were sore from holding back tears and one of her hands was constantly frozen because she’d dropped a glove somewhere between Dean Street and the Choccywoccydoodah shop and she was alternating with the one she had left. After a spate of brusque rejections she’d had to go into Liberty to look at beautiful things while she warmed up. But after circulating the stationery department a number of times she started to get suspect looks as if she was a shoplifter and left, stepping out into Carnaby Street where even the lavish Christmas lights couldn’t cheer her up.
Deciding to cut her losses and go back to Ella’s and open one of the bottles of Bollinger, she started to schlep her way back through the slushy snow. This time she didn’t see the picture-postcard views of snow-capped London but instead noticed the pile of rubbish dusted with white outside the shop where she bought a soggy cheese and tomato sandwich, the half-frozen overflowing manhole of a burst water main, a tramp with a dog shivering from the cold who thanked her with big pale eyes as she handed him half her lunch.
Morose, tired and now hungry, she took a wrong turn and found herself down one of the seedier Soho streets. She hurried past girls standing in doorways, nervous and out of her depth, but then paused because there on the corner was one bar she hadn’t tried.
The name Big Mack’s flickered in neon. Maybe it was
fate, Maddy thought as she looked up at the sign and remembered every New Year’s day her dad bundling her and Ella into the car and taking them to McDonalds. Her mum thought it was a horrendous tradition and refused any part of it, but her dad had a soft spot for a Big Mac, Ella adored filet-o-fish and Maddy would have chicken nuggets and a vanilla milkshake. Only ever at New Year though, his once yearly treat to mop up a raging hangover. They’d eat it in the car, parked so they could look over the river and her dad would put on his White Christmas soundtrack, turn Bing Crosby right up and say ‘Just one more time, and then I’ll admit that Christmas is over.’ And they’d sit eating their McDonalds, watching the swans and the ducks, and sometimes the snow, and listen to the last song of Christmas.
She put her hands on the high window sill and pulled herself up a touch to see inside. From what she could see it was an old American-style piano bar. Maddy pressed her nose against the darkened window and saw amongst the faded posters on the wall and the dark velvet booth seats, a small baby grand and a dilapidated stage.
She jumped down and stood for a minute, contemplating whether to go inside. She watched a businessman head into the massage parlour adjacent to the bar. Saw a group of teenagers huddling round their cigarettes scuffing the snow with their boots. Then a man across the street shouted, ‘What d’you think you’re looking at?’ And startled and a little afraid, Maddy found herself backing into Big Mack’s, the wooden door swinging open much easier than she’d imagined, causing her to stumble and making her entrance much less demure than she’d hoped.
It didn’t matter. She could have skidded inside and done a little dance and no one would have batted an eyelid. As it was there was one guy mopping the floor and a girl wiping down the bottles that sat four deep behind a mirrored wall on the bar and neither glanced up at her arrival.
