Staying Out for the Summer

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘OK,’ he began. ‘I am going to touch in certain places and you tell me if it hurts.’

  ‘It will hurt,’ Lucie said, her voice a little muffled from where her face was pressed into the sunbed. ‘I’ve twisted something or pulled something somehow.’

  He put his hands to her shoulders and closed his eyes, feeling his way over her skin and, in his mind, referring to the parts of the body – particular muscles, tendons and bones. ‘Do you have pain in your back all the time? Or is this the first time?’

  ‘I… do suffer from back pain every now and then.’

  ‘Every now and then?’

  ‘Well… a lot of the time I suppose.’

  ‘You have seen the doctor in England?’

  ‘It’s been a difficult year. I don’t like to make a fuss. Not when… oww… other people… oww… are a lot worse off than me. Oww!’

  ‘It hurts there?’ Michalis asked. He strengthened the pinching of his fingers in the area on her shoulders where his examination had stopped and opened his eyes.

  ‘Yes, it hurts there! Don’t touch it! Oww!’

  ‘How about if I do this?’ He pinched again, this time a little deeper into the tissue of the muscles between neck and shoulder.

  ‘Yes! Stop! Stop!’

  He watched her wriggle her body, attempting to rise from the lounger. He lay a flat hand on her back and encouraged her to stop moving. ‘Hold still for only one moment.’

  ‘Don’t touch there again!’

  He was definitely going to touch there. He was going to touch exactly there. It was a move taught to him not by any training he had received as a doctor, but by his mother. This was a classic case of displacement. Something had got swiftly misaligned and it simply needed to be quickly put back where it was meant to be. Exactly like Mrs Baros falling out of the olive tree and onto her pet sheep…

  ‘Tell me… what did you have for lunch three days ago?’

  ‘What? I… have no idea… I don’t even… what day was it three days ago? Was I here? Or in the UK?’ I don’t—’

  While Lucie and her brain were distracted with trying to locate a meaningless memory it had pushed to the very back of its filing cabinet, Michalis acted. Putting his hand to the bunch of muscle, engaging with everything he remembered about that incident when he was boy, he gave it a hard twist and then a flick.

  ‘Argh! For-godding-bloody-hell-ness!’ Lucie shrieked.

  Had it worked? Or had he got it wrong and made things worse? Maybe it had been a flick first and then a twist…

  ‘Oh,’ Lucie said, beginning to stir with a lot less anger in her voice and a great deal more movement in her body. ‘Oh… wow… I can move.’

  Michalis smiled, watching as Lucie got up from lying down, sat on the edge of the lounger then rolled upwards, sandals meeting the stones, appearing rejuvenated.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Lucie asked him, eyes wide and shining almost as brightly as the stars in the sky above them. ‘The pain, it’s gone.’ She shrugged her shoulders up and down like she was expecting the agony to arrive again at any minute. ‘I mean, it still feels a little bit tense but nothing like it was and—’

  She stopped talking suddenly and looked him straight in the eye. And straight away those feelings started returning to him, and fast. Her short dark hair and petite features, the plump blush of her lips, her strong energy yet gentle manner…

  ‘Who exactly are you, Dr Michalis?’ she questioned.

  And then an uneasiness marched in and the feelings that had been building inside him began to crumble like a Greek ruin.

  ‘I… do not understand,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, when I first met you, you were a butcher. Then you were a doctor and now…’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Well, now, after curing my neck pain, I’m thinking you’re a magician.’ She smiled. ‘Or… a shaman. There’s something I can’t quite put my finger on about you.’

  He shook his head. ‘I am not someone who performs magic.’

  ‘But you are the poster boy for the Day of the Not Dead. Why is that?’

  ‘I believe that none of the cast of The Avengers were available.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Lucie said. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Listen,’ Michalis began. ‘If the pain in your neck returns, you really should take something anti-inflammatory.’

  ‘You’re changing the subject. Definitely mysterious.’

  He smiled. ‘I could prescribe some medication for you.’

  Lucie shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘But if the pain comes back then…’

  ‘I don’t need tablets.’ The words came out in an angry rush and her expression had clouded over.

  ‘Well,’ he began again. ‘I believe you should consider—’

  ‘Really, Doctor, I appreciate what you’ve done but I can take it from here.’

  What had happened? What had he said to cause the change in her humour? One moment she was teasing him about his dual job and depiction on posters all over town and the next she was dismissive and withdrawn. All he knew was he wanted to find out…

  ‘Lucie, I—’

  ‘There you are!’

  It was Gavin. Arriving on the scene before Michalis could say any more. His chance to ask anything else had disappeared.

  ‘And the doctor’s in the house. Well, the sand! Prescribing good times I hope?’ Gavin said with a smile.

  ‘We should get back to the bar,’ Lucie said, linking her arm with Gavin’s. ‘The barman told me there’s a whole Cher section they play before midnight.’

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ Gavin squealed. ‘Come on, Michalis, you have to join us!’

  ‘I… am here with someone,’ he answered, his eyes going over to the outside table where Nyx was head down looking at her phone.

  ‘Well bring them too! I’ve ordered snacks!’ Gavin exclaimed, slapping an arm around Michalis’s shoulders.

  It didn’t seem like he was going to be able to say no.

  Twenty-Seven

  ‘You are like my brother!’ Nyx shouted, thumping Gavin on the shoulder and laughing louder than the pumping disco track funnelling through the bar. ‘I am thinking the two of you were switched at birth and you are the Greek one.’

  ‘I have to admit,’ Gavin replied. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been compared to a Greek.’ He turned his face to side profile. ‘Some say I have a look of George Michael.’

  Lucie was trying her best not to feel awkward but there was no denying it, she did feel awkward. Michalis had cured her back pain and not only had she not said ‘thank you’ she had snipped at him because he had mentioned taking pills.

  When they had first been introduced to Nyx, apart from thinking she was the kind of naturally stunning that naturally stunning people seemed oblivious to, Lucie thought this was Michalis’s girlfriend. And her heart had sunk to the floor of the bar. She only hoped, after the sibling connection had been explained, that her relief hadn’t been physically noticeable.

  ‘George was sooo cute, wasn’t he? I miss him,’ Nyx said, bottom lip poking out and her expression set like the singer had been a close family friend.

  Gavin let out a yelp as the music changed and the track ‘Amazing’ began to pound out. ‘It’s a sign! From George himself! And we must heed his instructions!’ He stuck a hand out to Nyx. ‘Come and dance!’

  ‘You might not be my brother,’ Nyx announced, scraping back her chair and standing up. ‘But you are my new best friend.’

  They were going. Leaving Lucie alone with Michalis. It was either about to get even more uncomfortable, or she could take the initiative and smooth things over. Because with his surgery a few steps across from the front door of Villa Psomi, they would definitely be in each other’s orbit while she was on Corfu.

  ‘Michalis,’ Lucie began, sitting forward in her chair. ‘I’m sorry if I was a bit… abrupt earlier.’ What did she say next? Would this apology do? Or should she try to
explain? How did she even begin with that? Because, if she was going to be fully truthful, it had to start with the story of what had happened to her mum. And she didn’t want to see the pity in Michalis’s beautiful eyes once that knowledge was out there between them.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Michalis answered, leaning forward too.

  ‘Oh,’ Lucie said. ‘No, really, you don’t have anything to be sorry about. I—’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Michalis spoke a little louder. ‘Because I cannot hear you.’ He put his hand to his ear.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Shall we go outside?’ He indicated the glass doors that led back out to the beach.

  A quick glance over to Gavin and Nyx throwing shapes in the centre of the room and not caring for anything but the music made Lucie’s decision. ‘OK,’ she nodded, picking up her cocktail glass.

  Following Michalis, she stepped out of the bar leaving the music and the chatter of patrons behind for the gentle sea sounds and light breeze. He pulled out a chair for her and she sat down at the table. There were less people here outside now. Restaurants were clearing more tables than seating tourists at them and the sky was a rich expanse of dark. Lucie breathed in that soft salty aroma coming off the water… and then remembered she was meant to be apologising.

  ‘I wanted to say sorry,’ she began. ‘For being short with you earlier.’

  ‘Short?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘You were trying to help me. Help my back. And I was a bit rude and…’

  He was looking at her so intently, like he really cared about what she was saying and wanted to know what was going to come next.

  ‘You do not have to say any more,’ Michalis said, his fingers wrapped around his bottle of Fix beer.

  ‘Oh.’ He had given her an out. Was that because she had really annoyed him? Or because she hadn’t? So much for thinking she might confide…

  ‘Now I am the one who is sorry,’ Michalis followed up. ‘Forgive me. It is simply… I do not know… sometimes in life we are made to feel we must explain everything in the smallest of details and share this with everyone.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘My sister,’ he began, ‘would tell you the colour of her underwear if you asked her.’ He smiled, shaking his head. ‘She would most probably show you also.’

  Lucie laughed then. ‘She’s nice. And Gavin already adores her.’

  ‘I adore her,’ Michalis admitted with a nod. ‘She has that fire, you know. The kind of spirit that people have when they have not had the goodness sucked out of them.’

  Gosh. That was a statement right there. Lucie stilled, watching Michalis put his beer to his lips and sip some back. What was his story? This gorgeous clever man, who everyone seemed to respect and want to worship at a ceremonial festival, definitely held some secrets underneath that taut olive skin…

  ‘Sorry! Here I am talking about the lack of need for sharing small details and—’

  ‘No,’ Lucie said immediately. ‘I understand what you mean.’

  ‘I know you understand what I mean,’ he answered. ‘Because from the moment you tell me that you are a nurse, I know that you have been through something similar to me this past year.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was horrific, right?’

  She shuddered involuntarily as the sounds came back to her more vividly than any of the visions. The machinery working hard to keep people alive, the desperate rasping breaths, the sobbing from her colleagues in those bleakest, darkest times…

  ‘It was… something no one was prepared for. No one.’ She took a breath, gaze finding the mid-distance. ‘I remember not even really acknowledging it when I first heard it on the news. A virus in China, I mean, it was so far away, it was awful, but it was happening somewhere else. And then it got worse so quickly. It seemed as if one minute we were getting our first case and the next everything was closing up around us, masks were everywhere, death was everywhere and we were being embodied by drawings of rainbows.’

  ‘Greece had hard lockdowns,’ Michalis said. ‘At the worst time we had to send an SMS if we needed to go out for shopping or exercise or other necessary things.’

  ‘Well, in England, for the people that weren’t dealing with the loss of a loved one, it was the differing rules that upset them the most.’ She sighed. ‘If you were in tier three you could only see some of your extended family outside in a public place, and if you were in tier one all the pubs were still open. The inequality of it all just shattered the idea that we were all in this together.’ She sighed again. ‘It was almost better when we started the third lockdown. We were all in the same storm again and vaccines were being rolled out.’

  ‘How were you for tests and equipment?’

  ‘Never enough,’ Lucie answered. ‘Of anything.’

  ‘I would always ask, all the time, and it was like you had to fight and those in power were blind to what was going on around them. And I cannot think about it now without getting angry all over again.’ He leaned forward then, putting his bottle on the table. ‘Why did this happen? Can we make sure that it never happens again?’

  ‘That is where we’re different,’ Lucie replied, dipping a finger into her cocktail then sucking the liquid from the end. ‘It’s probably why you’re a doctor and I’m a nurse.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that I could only deal with things, think about things, on a day-to-day level… well, sometimes it was on an hour-by-hour basis.’ She sighed. ‘If I stopped and thought about the bigger picture, the whole world and all those millions of people, I don’t think I would have been able to go on. I think the terrifying vastness of it would have made me question how much effect I was truly having. Not whether it was all worth it, because of course it was, it is. But I focussed on one ward full of patients on one day, those families that day… I couldn’t dare to think deeper than that.’

  ‘I questioned everything,’ Michalis admitted. ‘I still question everything. I really wanted to make a difference.’

  ‘You will have made a difference,’ Lucie told him. ‘How could you not? But, I always thought it was a bit like… ants.’

  ‘Ants?’

  She nodded. ‘You think you’ve got rid of all of them, that everything’s OK again, and then one comes back… and then another and another and soon you have more than you had in the beginning and you have to start all over again. That’s what it felt like. Always waiting for it to come back.’

  ‘I cannot relax the way I want to,’ he admitted.

  ‘I was almost too scared to come on holiday,’ Lucie said before she thought too much about it.

  ‘Too scared?’ Michalis queried.

  ‘That routine. The hospital. Everyone staying at home. The first time Gavin said about getting away I thought he was mad. The idea that we could get on a plane and actually leave the country and travel and experience a holiday like people used to. I mean, I know tourism was open a bit last year but in the UK the second wave was much much worse. I didn’t know how it would be with any restrictions or, even without the restrictions, how I would feel about being away.’ She sighed. ‘Millions of people have died. Most of them died suddenly, unexpectedly, never thinking for a moment that they might not have long left in this world.’ She shook her head. ‘And we’ve all spent so long staying at home, reducing our social contacts, sanitising our hands almost every time we even touched outside air… shielding our vulnerable… I thought about, what if I travelled on a plane and picked up the virus and then passed it on to my aunt before she’d had her second shot from AstraZeneca. I mean, nothing’s guaranteed with these new variants, is it?’

  ‘And how do you feel now you have made the decision and you are here in Greece?’ Michalis asked her.

  Lucie inhaled, feeling the complete sense of relaxation and joy bopping around like her insides were the dance space for all her emotions. ‘I’ve never been anywhere that makes me feel so chilled. I mean, elements of it are crazy. Goat we
e. Wedding dress making. Fruit vans. A go-kart car hybrid. A tortoise living in the house—’

  ‘And a doctor moving in across the terrace,’ Michalis added.

  ‘Yes! That is very mad!’ Lucie answered with a smile. ‘But…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I think it’s all exactly what I needed.’

  ‘Lucie,’ Michalis said softly.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  ‘Would you…’

  She was holding her breath, waiting for him to say more. What was he going to say? What did she want him to say?

  ‘Would you… like another drink?’

  He stood up, motioning to her glass and her heart sank more than it really had a right to. She forced a smile and nodded. ‘Yes, please, that would be nice.’

  She watched him move towards the glass doors that led from the decked terrace area they were sitting on to the party going on inside. That divinely-shaped body presenting those jeans and T-shirt in perfect order. His dark hair, not too long or too short… and the way he thought so deeply, with such feeling.

  And then he turned around and it was all Lucie could do to stop the train of her thoughts and change her expression from ‘full-on leering’ to ‘resting affable’. He was coming back to the table. He’d probably forgotten what she was drinking. It was apparently called ‘The Flirt’ and Nyx had insisted they all try them…

  ‘Lucie,’ Michalis said, pressing his palms flat to the table and angling his body to hers.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, trying not to fixate on his toned forearms or imagine him doing press-ups.

  ‘The waiters… they come over if you want another drink,’ he told her. ‘So that was not what I really wanted to ask you.’

  Suddenly she realised he looked a little nervous. ‘No?’ She was holding her breath again and pressing her back teeth together.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I wanted to ask you. If you would like to… go on a date. With me.’ He let out a nervous sigh. ‘Go on a date with me.’

  It felt like her heart valves had opened like the Hoover Dam and now blood was flooding her whole body and all the platelets and cells were dancing like it was carnival time in Notting Hill. Her body was telling her there was only one answer. Even Meg might not suggest exercising caution in this scenario. But… but… were there any buts?