The Honey Farm on the Hill: Escape to sunny Greece in this perfect summer read!

by Jo Thomas

  I look from side to side and then step forward. He couldn’t be waiting for me, could he? A sinking feeling creeps over me as I take hold of the paper and look at it.

  ‘Oh God! Yes! I mean nai!’ I try and breathe despite my tight chest, my nerves made worse by this man barking at me, leaving me hot, tongue-tied and blushing. ‘WWOOFer . . . yes, I’m a WWOOFer,’ I finally manage.

  He nods, grunts, nods again and then leans over to open the passenger door with a shove, the hinges creaking loudly. ‘Ela! Come! I’ll take you,’ he says.

  My mouth is dry and a knot tightens in my stomach. My fickle friend, the warm, welcoming scent of wild mountain thyme, has deserted me, no doubt gone to meet other returning guests, and in its place is the stink of engine fumes and some kind of other smell that could be animal-related. I hold the back of my hand to my nose as I drag my case round the back of the truck and wrestle it into the cab. As soon as I get in after it and shut the door, the truck shoots off, a plume of yellow dust billowing in through the open window as we career out of the airport and slew round the first roundabout.

  Clutching my case, a barrier between me and the driver, I glance across at him. His eyes are fixed on the road ahead. His hands grip the wheel, making the veins on his dark forearms stand out. He has a scar down the side of his cheek that I can just see under the brim of his hat and above the scarf.

  Suddenly I realise that he is watching me in the mirror, emerald-green eyes with golden flecks whipping between me and the road ahead. When he looks at me, they narrow like a sniper’s, as if he’s suddenly spotted his prey and is keeping a watchful eye on it. The scenery whisks past as we head away from the airport towards the coast road, and all my resolve leaves me.

  I’m in a truck with a man I don’t know, travelling at speed. I have no idea where I’m going or who I’m staying with, and clearly this driver doesn’t do small talk. Suddenly the excitement that filled me when I first arrived is turning to mild concern, possibly with a hint of panic in there too. What have I let myself in for?

  I grab the dusty handle and wind the window right down to let out the smell of . . . well, I’m not really sure what, and let the scent of the wild thyme in. I stick my head out and breathe in deeply, trying to relax the knot of nerves in my stomach and focus on the mountaintops in the distance.

  Shifting uncomfortably in my seat, I catch another glimpse of the driver’s piercing eyes snatching a glance at me, as if sizing me up. I have a strange sense of foreboding and familiarity as we leave the graffiti-sprayed concrete walls of Heraklion. The last time I was here . . . well, let’s just say I didn’t think I’d ever come back. I tried to keep this place locked away in a secret box in my head while I focused on bringing up Demi, working, paying the bills, but now it feels like the fire at the factory has blown the lid off that Pandora’s box.

  We head out along the coast road, dust spraying up from the wheels. It’s stiflingly hot. I look back to check the dog is still safe in the back of the truck. He looks in his element, leaning his front paws on the side, holding his head up to the wind, letting the air fill his lungs. I look out of the window and do the same. The feeling of familiarity pushes aside the sadness I felt when I left here last time, with my broken heart and the secret I was carrying, and happy memories begin to surface.

  Foamy white waves crash against the rocky coastline following the brilliant blue sea to my right. On my left, high cliff faces lead up to the mountains and their towering peaks beyond. Flanking the roadside is a series of bamboo-covered stalls, little huts made of odd bits of wood nailed randomly together, some smart, some barely standing, all selling football-sized oranges. This seems to be a job for the older generation; ancient men and women, mahogany brown, with lined faces, sitting in the shade waiting for passing trade to stop. I wonder how many of them were doing this when I was last here; how much has changed.

  My driver still doesn’t speak, and I’m struggling to work out how to strike up a dialogue with him. His face is completely shut down, not inviting any conversation at all. I don’t even know who he is. Is he just an employee, taking me to where I’ll be spending my placement, or – God forbid – is this the man I’m going to be working for and living with for the next two months? I really wish Angelica had come with me. She would have asked all the questions I’m dying to hear the answers to but am too shy to ask. She just shoots and thinks later.

  I weigh up my options and finally come up with: ‘It’s hot.’ I’m stating the absolute obvious and tut to myself. What I really want to ask is whether the Zeus’s Vista holiday resort is still there, and has he heard of the Papadakis family. Does he know a man called Stelios, and if so, what’s his life like? Is he married? Is he happy? Does he ever mention a girl he once met . . . ?

  The driver grunts and nods, his eyes sliding towards me again, then back to the road. He’s chewing the end of a small stick, rolling it around his mouth. What would Angelica have said? She’d have made him clean out the cab before we got in it, that’s for sure, in case her clothes got dusty. Angelica has a way of getting what she wants, just throwing herself into things. That’s why she’s where she is right now, I suppose, running the factory renovation. I imagine her strutting round the site in an oversized fluorescent jacket, hard hat and four-inch stilettos, carrying a clipboard and telling the workmen she has her eye on them.

  Gracie, on the other hand, wouldn’t have cared about the dust. Gracie is very easy-going, but she would never have come with me. She hasn’t left her house, other than to go to work, and bingo at the weekend, since her husband died when I was still in primary school. Since then my nan and I, and then Demi and Angelica, have been all she’s had. We’ve worked together since I started at the factory on fairy-light testing.

  I decide to take a picture on my phone and text it to Angelica and Demi, to break the painful tension in the cab. I snap a photo of the clear aquamarine water and send it to them both; I’m far too self-conscious to take a selfie in front of my travelling companion. I wonder what Demi would think if she could see me now. Sometimes I get the feeling she’s starting to feel the same way about me that I used to feel about my mum, like we’re worlds apart.

  I love Demi with all my heart and I know I should feel happy for her. A new life, with a professional family in London: it’s an amazing opportunity. So why do I feel like a huge black cloud is hanging over me?

  I realise that I’m still in shock. A big part of my life is over. The same week that Demi left home, I lost both my job and my boyfriend. For as long as I can remember I’ve been ‘Demi’s mum’ at the school gates; or ‘Mike’s girlfriend’ down at the pub. That’s who I was. Now . . . well, now I’m just Nell. I’m not even ‘Nell who works in the Christmas decoration factory’. That first evening after the fire, I didn’t have to get tea for anyone or put the washing on. I didn’t have to go looking for my hairdryer in Demi’s room or pick up wet towels from the bathroom floor. I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

  As we whizz down the coast road, I am pulled firmly back into the here and now. I hardly recognise the place. If my driver wasn’t making me feel so tongue-tied, I’d ask if we were going the right way. Instead I watch the road signs until I see one I recall and know that we are indeed heading in the right direction. But it’s nothing like I remember. I actually feel my jaw drop as I look around at the changed landscape.

  Brand-new holiday resorts have sprung up all the way along the coast road since I was here last. Clusters of hotels and restaurants, like newly birthed villages, built into the coves and onto the rocky ridges around them; holidaymakers swimming, inflatables bouncing on the white waves, terraces covered with young people in bikinis and knee-length swimming trunks, eating, drinking and soaking up the sunshine. Angelica would have been in her element. I can just picture her, new bikini on, full face of bright make-up; cocktail in one hand and a waiter hanging on her every word. I wonder how many hol
idaymakers ever actually leave these resorts and head up to the mountains.

  Why does everything have to change? A little wave of anger bubbles up in me. Demi and I were happy, just her and me and her two honorary aunts. Why did she need to go and look for more? Why did Mike want more than I could give him? I hold the door frame and crane my neck, looking at the overcrowded pockets of half-dressed neon-clad tourists. What if everything about the man I’m looking for has changed and is unrecognisable? Him, the town, his family. What if it’s all gone?

  My case starts to slide towards the driver as we swing round a big bend, but he doesn’t flinch as I grab it. We’re passing another bay and another resort, only this one I remember only too well, like the familiar smell of a long-lost lover, bringing back memories as clear as if it were yesterday.

  In an attempt to cool down, I pull at the ends of my knotted shirt, undoing it and stripping it off, revealing my vest top underneath. I remove the scarf from around my hair, an old bandana of Demi’s, and shake out my curls. My bangles and plastic charity bands jangle to match my nerves. The driver gives me another sideways look. The resort is bigger than it used to be, way bigger, like someone’s gone mad with Lego and built on lots of different new blocks, but this is the place all right. The resort where I spent a summer working. The place I’ve wanted to come back to. This is where I left ‘me’ behind.

  My driver starts to indicate away from the coast and up towards the mountains on the other side of the road. The indicator makes a loud, confident ticking noise. I strain my neck back as we turn off the road to catch a last glimpse of the Zeus’s Vista resort, reluctant to lose sight of it. Because now that I’ve found it again, I want to hold tightly on to the memories it’s bringing back and not let go.

  The higher up the mountain we travel, the tighter and more frequent the bends. I daren’t look down. I hold my breath as we swing round them, nothing between us and the sheer drop down the craggy rock face beside me, where even the trees look to be clinging on for dear life. Along the roadside, every few feet or so, are little model houses, lit on the inside by candles, like doll’s houses. Some are beautifully designed.

  My driver takes his eyes off the road for a moment to look at me, and then at the little houses. ‘For lives lost along the road,’ he says flatly, ‘and for those spared.’

  We pass a small white chapel with a blue bench outside and a bell above the door. I remember that chapel. I remember the first time I saw it. And the smell of pine trees. Once again I’m bombarded with memories. I try to breathe slowly to steady my nerves. This is what I’ve come here for, I remind myself.

  The further we travel, the more I recognise: the tree in the middle of the road with white paint halfway up its trunk; the view down through the mountains to the resort below. I remember the excitement I felt at the prospect of a whole day ahead of us to spend together. And of course the nerves about meeting his family for the first time. As nervous as I feel now, knowing I’m about to retrace the steps of my past.

  Higher and higher we climb until I think we’re going to go right to the top of the mountain and over the other side. Eventually we pass through a high gorge, coming out into the light and the town ahead. Vounoplagia. I recognise it straight away, like a painting coming to life before my eyes. I catch my breath. This is the town I have pulled out of my memory box every now and again and relived in my mind, usually in the depths of darkness at night. My stomach twists into a tight nervous knot as I recall a cocktail of precious memories: his face, his smile, his soft olive skin, the sound of his laugh. I’m actually here. As we drive into the town, perched high on the side of the mountain, passing square cream and terracotta houses on the road leading towards the main street, I remember it all as if it was yesterday.

  This is Stelios’s home town. And I could be about to see him again, at any moment.

  We swing up through the narrow main street, lined with shops decorated with embroidered table runners, cream lace tablecloths and mats hanging above door frames and over big glass windows. I watch it all whizz by, wishing I had time to take everything in. Penknives and corkscrews are displayed on a big wooden board propped up outside a shop door. There is turquoise and deep orange glazed pottery on tabletops on long steps outside another shop. Nothing has changed.

  The road widens to where a mountain stream runs down through the town, with a smart bridge, and a big plane tree shading a little waterfall. In front of us is the square, the whitewashed chapel with a big brass bell overhead. The road bends again: to the left is the old town, the Venetian part that was probably totally separate at one time; to the right, the newer town, with a supermarket built into the hillside, and below that a car park and a small school that looks eerily empty. But then it is the summer holidays, I remind myself.

  I look towards the old town, trying to catch a glimpse of Stelios’s family’s restaurant – an old stone building with big wrought-iron gates into a courtyard, as I recall – but it’s not in sight. Old men sitting in upright chairs on the roadside in flat hats, short-sleeved shirts, long trousers and braces, hands resting on sticks, watch us pass with unabashed fascination. Elderly women in scarves and black dresses gather with shopping baskets. It’s almost as if the town is stuck in time. The only thing that strikes me as different is how quiet the streets are. There are no families, no children, no tourists. The shops are dark and soulless. The café chairs are empty.

  As I look around, heart racing, mouth dry, trying to spot anyone I might recognise, I catch my driver staring at me again. It’s as if he’s measuring me up, and I don’t know if it’s the effect of being back here or his scrutiny that is making me more nervous.

  ‘Is this your first time here?’ It’s the only time he’s spoken since we left the airport.

  I take a deep breath. I had wanted to come back, but I hadn’t expected for so many of the old feelings to flood over me all at once like this.

  ‘No,’ I say carefully, still looking around and drinking in the scenery. ‘But I’ve not been back for a very long time.’

  At first he stays silent, just focuses on the road. Then he says quietly, ‘A lot has changed around here.’

  He appears to have reached the limits of his conversational capacity, and says nothing more. But I notice that the veins on the back of his hand stand out as his fingers tighten around the steering wheel and his foot pushes down on the accelerator.

  To my relief, but also with a strange feeling of disappointment, we carry on out of the town. I want to be somewhere I can breathe the same air, yes, but not actually here. That would be too close for comfort.

  The mountain that rises up behind the town of Vounoplagia, casting a shadow over the roofs of the houses, is covered in little trees and bushes that look like they’ve been embroidered on to its surface. I look up and see big, slow-moving birds circling the peaks amongst the fluffy white clouds. It’s much cooler up here, to my relief.

  More swings and turns and I’m beginning to feel like a child after too much ice cream at the fairground. Then, around another sharp bend in the road, the truck suddenly pulls off on to what looks like a rough track. The ground is rocky and we dip and sway. I bang my head on the window and my case bounces off the driver’s shoulder and back at me as he spins around in a big circle.

  We are right up in the heart of the mountain now, in a large turning area that looks like the sort of place holidaymakers use as a vantage point to park up and take photos. But there are no tourists here. Just a rough No Parking sign, hand-made, with a picture of a car with a big cross through it. Far down at the end of the track that runs away from the turning area and hugs the belly of the mountain, there is a rough stone smallholding.

  The driver completes the circle and pulls back on to the road again, in the direction we’ve just come.

  ‘Hey! We just came this way!’ I say, suddenly feeling anxious. He says nothing, just carries on dr
iving back down the road. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I want you to stop. Let me out!’ I grip the door handle.

  No sooner have the words left my mouth than we career off and hurtle up a wide path, towards a single-storey whitewashed building with deep-blue-painted metal shutters over the windows and doors. A pink bougainvillea tree is in flower, framing the peeling blue paint on the front door, with ceramic pots either side of it. There are newer single-storey buildings to either side of the house, also painted white and joined by a trellis holding up what looks to be a vine, bearing bunches of grapes. In front of the house a small group of people are standing, staring at us with intense interest.

  ‘Just stop the truck!’ I repeat sternly. The man is clearly deranged! Instantly we come to an abrupt halt, as does my racing heart for a second, and the handbrake is yanked on with a jerk and a crunch. I look around.

  ‘Here,’ he says with a raised eyebrow. ‘The turning is too sharp to drive in from the direction of the town.’ He gestures back towards the road. ‘You have to make a turn.’ This is as close to chatty as he’s come. He starts getting out of the truck, and ‘Your hosts,’ he says with a nod towards the people standing in front of the low building. With a flood of relief I realise that this is it, my home for the next two months. I’m not staying with him!

  I look through the dusty windscreen at the people gathered in front of the low building. Standing with his hands clasped in front of him is a short, dark-haired man in his late forties with a thick moustache that curls over his top lip like a yard brush. He is wearing a bright yellow T-shirt, old and worn so it billows in the breeze, and dusty working trousers and boots. He lifts his battered baseball cap with a rough hand and scratches his head, then looks up at the sky briefly and nervously before replacing it and peering back at me. Next to him, a head taller, is a rotund woman about the same age, with dark hair scraped back from her face, wearing a sun-bleached and well-washed apron over her round tummy, which she runs her hands over to smooth. Next to her, much shorter than the other two, is an elderly woman. She is slight, with short grey hair held back with a clip. She is dressed in black and is fumbling in the large pocket of her dress for something.