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Lucy’s side of the story…
CHLOË RAYBAN
with grateful thanks to Nick Price for his help with the windsurfing
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Keep Reading
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
‘Mu-um! Have you read this?’
My mother looked up from her reading with one of her intentionally vague expressions.
‘Umm – guide book, yes – no… Not sure. Think so.’
‘You can’t have. It sounds ghastly. Listen to this…’
I put on my official travel guide voice and read:
‘The island’s relative fertility can seem scraggy and unkempt when compared with its neighbours. These characteristics, plus the lack of spectacularly good beaches, meant that until the late 1980s very few visitors discovered Lexos. The tiny airport which cannot accommodate jets still means that the island is relatively unspoilt. Not that the island particularly encourages tourism – it’s a sleepy peaceful place populated mainly by local fishermen.
‘Unusually for a small island, Lexos has abundant ground water, channelled into a system of small lakes. These make for an active mosquito population…’
Mum cut in. ‘Well, it sounds fabulous in this – listen. “Lexos – undiscovered paradise of the Aegean.” Smashing picture too.’
I leaned over her shoulder. She was leafing through a glossy tourist brochure. She thrust the cover under my nose.
‘It’s only a pot of geraniums and a bit of blue sea. It could be anywhere.’
‘Well, I’m intending to enjoy this holiday Lucy – whatever.’
I sat back in the airline seat and put my Walkman on. ‘Undiscovered’ – typical. I reckon she’d done this on purpose.
Neither of us had actually said anything, but we both knew it was going to be our last holiday together. By all rights I would have gone inter-railing with Migs and Louisa – three girls off round Europe together, what a laugh. That’s what I’d intended to do. But just when we’d got all the arguments over our itinerary sorted out, Mum had this phone call…
Dad was getting married again.
I don’t know why it got to her so much, they’d been divorced for years – five years at least. Everything had settled down. She’d seemed perfectly happy. But after the call she got this sort of thin-lipped look on her face, like I remembered from way back, when they separated.
‘You know what you need – a really good holiday,’ I said.
“Yes, you’re right. I do. I know I do. Why don’t we go somewhere right away from it all?’ she said.
‘We’. I hadn’t actually fixed anything with Migs and Louisa. I mean, we hadn’t booked the tickets yet.
She looked at me, all kind of bright-eyed and expectant. So I nodded and left it at that. I hoped she’d forget about it. But then, a day or so later, she came up with this plan. She wanted us both to go to the Greek islands just around the time Dad was due to get married. I had no intention of going to the wedding anyway. I didn’t like Sue, Dad’s ‘partner’ much. And Mum seemed so set on the idea, so I hadn’t the heart to refuse.
But I didn’t expect it to be this far away from it all.
Lexos was really off the beaten track. We flew to a larger island first – Kos. And then we had to travel on by ferry. Dad said I’d love Greece. It was the furthest I’d ever been from England. He said it was the first place where you actually felt the influence of the East. Dad was really into the East. He’d gone overland all the way to India and back when he was young, and he’d kept a ratty kind of embroidered Afghan coat in the loft. I used to dress up in it when I was little. It smelt like a dead goat.
But he was right about Greece. It did have a sense of the East. As soon as I got off the plane I could feel it in the warm dry heat of the sun, soaking into me.
We hired a taxi to take us from the airport to the ferry port, and the driver played this kind of clattering Eastern music on his radio. We drove past little whitewashed churches with strange round domes, and all the old women were dressed like witches in long fluttering black dresses. They held scarves up to their faces to keep out the dust. And the air smelt different. Hot and perfumed with herbs and pine and something sweet and kind of musky. And now and then there was just the odd whiff of dead goat smell. Maybe that was what made it feel Eastern to me – by association with the coat.
The boat trip took hours. We had to queue to board with all these backpackers who looked as if they’d been in Greece all their lives. I couldn’t help noticing that some of the guys were gorgeous. Their skins were a deep bronze and their hair and clothes bleached as if they’d been left out in the sun for months. I felt really self-conscious with my white skin and my brand new jeans and T-shirt – and I was with my mother too. Pretty humiliating.
Mum said we should go up on the outer deck in case it got rough. By the time we got up there, there were no seats left, so we had to sit on the deck and lean on our suitcases. But she was right. It did get pretty rough.
Apparently, there’d been this massive storm the night before. The wind had died down but the sea was still recovering from its effects. After about an hour of being tossed around I started to feel really sick and my head ached. I must have looked sick too, because this old Greek lady leant over and handed me half a lemon. I didn’t know what I was meant to do with it. But she held it to her nose and sniffed and nodded. And I did the same and I felt a bit better. Mum said it was a traditional Greek cure for sea-sickness. So I nodded and sniffed and smiled at the old woman and she laughed and nodded back. We kept up this nodding and sniffing and smiling routine for the rest of the trip.
I’ll never forget my first view of Lexos. Some paradise! But, quite frankly, in the state I was in – any bit of dry land was as good as any other. As we drew nearer, the truly dire condition of the port came into focus. Boy, was it run-down. The buildings were mostly rough squareish boxes of concrete and grey breeze block. Most of them had odd bent ribs of rusty iron sticking out from their flat roofs as if they’d meant to build another storey on top and changed their minds. I think my first impression must’ve registered on my face because Mum was desperately trying to stay positive.
‘Oh look Lucy, there’s a palm tree,’ she said, as her eye lit on the sole acceptable item in the panorama. I was beyond a reply.
I wasn’t actually sick until I got on shore. And then I was, dramatically, behind a cactus. Cheers! Welcome to Lexos, I thought to myself as I took sips from the bottle of water Mum sympathetically handed to me.
After we’d sat at a café for a while and I’d drunk a lemonade, I started to feel a bit better.
‘Well, I hope you don’t think we’re going to stay here,’ I said as I recovered the faculty of speech.
‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ said Mum, looking fixedly in the direction of the palm tree.
‘Mum – it’s ghastly and you know it.’
‘Let’s get back on the boat then,’ she threatened, pointing to where the last boxes of freight were being loaded into the hold. ‘It’ll be leaving in a minute.’
‘Ha ha, very funny,’ I said. ‘I’d have to be anaesthetized before you’d get me back on that.’
‘Feeling any better?’
‘Mmm… the lemonade helped.’
‘Well, if you’re up to it, I reckon we ought to find the Tourist Office and see if they can suggest somewhere to stay.’
We trekked miles in search of it. Mum kept spotting all these little signs with Ts for Information on them which seemed designed to take us on a scenic tour of the town. I’d never been anywhere so Third World. The roads were cracked and pot-holed and smelt of donkeys, and the few bars or restaurants we came across just had men sitting outside who stared at us. The whole place felt vaguely threatening.
‘I don’t like it here,’ I said.
‘Oh don’t be silly, Lucy. Ports are always like this. It’ll be fine when we get out into the country – you’ll see.’
We must have been walking round in circles because when we eventually found the Tourist Office, it was located more or less where we’d disembarked from the ferry. It was in a forbidding grey concrete block next door to the Customs Office. It had bars over the windows and looked like a prison. But there was a sign outside with the same jolly tourist picture showing the pot of geraniums that we’d seen on the front of Mum’s brochure. I cracked up when I spotted the slogan written underneath: You’ll learn to love Lexos.
‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Mum. I think she was losing her cool by this time.
But when she caught sight of the poster she started giggling as well. ‘Do you think they give indoctrination sessions?’
‘Vee haf vays of making you luf us…’ I said.
The people in the Tourist Office brought out a plastic folder full of pictures of hotels and guest houses. I could see Mum getting hot and bothered trying to calculate how much the prices quoted in drachmas worked out at. She was never any good with noughts. I helped her with the maths and made a few acid comments about the pictures.
They all looked incredibly dreary. I’d wanted to go somewhere like Corfu or Skiathos, somewhere with a bit of life. Clubs maybe. The places they had on offer looked as if they were all in the back of beyond – and I couldn’t make out any guests under the age of about fifty in the photos.
I kept giving Mum meaningful glances and turning the page.
‘Well, if you’re going to be like this, Lucy,’ whispered Mum, ‘we’ll never find anywhere to stay.’
I felt hot and my head ached.
‘How can you possibly tell what a place is like from a photo in a book?’ I whispered crossly. ‘Think of what that poster does for this island.’
Mum glanced at the poster with a sigh and then turned to the girl behind the desk, saying apologetically: ‘I’m sorry. I think we’d better come back later.’ She raised an eyebrow in my direction. I loathed it when she did that.
We trailed back to the café where I’d had the lemonade and Mum ordered two more.
‘Look,’ she said when we’d both cooled down. ‘Let’s hire a taxi and get away from the port. Ports are always dreary. I bet we’ll find a gorgeous beach with a taverna just along the coast. All we’ve got to do is look around a bit, that’s what Dad and I used to do when we came to the islands in the seventies…’
She paused for a moment, and just a shadow of that thin-lipped look came back on her face. I remembered photos in our album of Mum and Dad, young and tanned and carefree on hired mopeds, bumming round the islands. Mum in a ridiculous daisy-printed mini dress and Dad with long hair and John Lennon sunglasses, both totally relaxed and happy together. Looking at the pictures, you’d think that feeling would last forever. Weird how things can change like that.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said, picking up my backpack before she could get all emotional and embarrassing. I suddenly felt guilty about being such a pain.
‘I know I’m right,’ said Mum, sounding more like her old self.
‘You’re always right,’ I teased.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s make a move then. We’re bound to find somewhere you’ll love.’
We bought cheese pies and honey cakes from the bakery for our lunch, and once I’d eaten I felt loads better. Then we tracked down what seemed to be the one and only taxi on the island.
I think Manos, the driver, must have come from a very large family. At any rate, he had an awful lot of cousins, and we must have visited most of them that afternoon. We started at a five-star hotel. It was a great big pink stone barracks of a place which smelt like a hospital. It did have a pool… but it was empty. Mum turned that down with the excuse that it was too expensive. So Manos must’ve come to the conclusion that we were flat broke, and he took us to his poorer cousins. One had a flat to let that reeked of calor gas and drains. Another had a room with a large decaying double bed and a fridge standing in the middle of the bedroom. And worse still, when Mum said we wanted a place on our own, he took us to what he called ‘a bungalow’ which was a kind of prefab with a compost heap for a garden and a goat tethered outside.
As the sun dipped towards the horizon I was fast losing faith. I hadn’t seen a single decent beach yet.
‘What we really want is a taverna,’ said Mum. ‘A nice, clean, cheap taverna, near a beach.’
‘Oh, taverna!’ said Manos – and he sucked through his teeth as if the very concept of a taverna, was new to him. Then he swung back into the driving seat and shifted noisily into gear. ‘OK, if you want taverna, I take you.’
It was a long drive along a winding cliff road to the other side of the island to find this taverna. I don’t think Manos was in a very good mood. He obviously didn’t have a cousin who owned a taverna, so he wasn’t going to get his cut, or free drinks, or whatever it was he usually received as commission.
Mum had her eyes closed for most of the journey which was a waste because she was on the cliff-side and the views must have been staggering. The sun was going down and it was the most magical sunset. All gold and blue and mauve with puffy little clouds turning candy-floss pink.
It was almost dark when we crunched to a halt in a cobbled square. We climbed out of the taxi. Manos beckoned to us and led us up over a rise.
We were on top of a headland, looking out over the most amazing view of the sea, which had turned a livid copper colour in the low sunlight. We could see for miles, right over to the misty shapes of the neighbouring islands.
Some kind of building was outlined against the sky. It had a corrugated iron roof which looked on the point of caving in and a battered sign surrounded by coloured light-bulbs, most of which didn’t work, which read: TAVERNA PARADISOS.
‘Perfect,’ said Mum.
Chapter Two
A fat man with a sagging belly, who I took to be the owner, was lounging on the terrace, wearing a dirty vest and boxer shorts. He had a bottle and a glass beside him, and I reckoned he had been indulging in the contents for some time.
I shot Mum a warning glance, but before it registered, she was already asking if he had a room free.
He leapt to his feet with remarkable agility for a man his size.
‘You want room? I have good room. How long?’
‘Oh I don’t know – a week? Ten days maybe?’
‘Best room! Best price! Private facilities,’ he said.
‘Oh, that’s nice. Can we take a look?’
He ushered us across the terrace as if he was showing us around the Ritz.
I followed. Mum had really lost it this time. The place was awful. It wasn’t what I had in mind at all. It didn’t have a pool or anything, and by the look of it we were the only guests he’d had this side of Christmas.
He was already unlocking a door with a big metal key. The floor was plain concrete. It didn’t have a carpet or lino. All there was by the way of furniture were two narrow beds, a three-legged table on the point of collapse and a fly paper hanging from the bare lightbulb. It even had dead flies on it – that was so gross.
‘We can’t stay here,’ I whispered to Mum.
She frowned at me. ‘We can’t keep searching all night. It’ll be dark soon,’ she hissed back.
‘You no like?’ asked the taverna owner, looking sulky.
‘How much is the room?’ asked Mum.
He came out with a figure that was way below anything we’d seen that day. I could see Mum working out the sum in her head and for once – would you believe it? – she must’ve actually come up with the right answer. She raised an eyebrow at me.
‘No, it’s fine, we’ll take it,’ she said.
I shot her another furious glare.
The taverna owner walked out with a satisfied look on his face, leaving us alone together.
‘I can’t believe you said that.’
‘Oh honestly Lucy, what do you want to stay in? One of those ghastly air-conditioned tower blocks full of people on package tours?’
‘Well maybe I would. At least we’d get MTV – this place hasn’t even got a room phone.’
‘Dear, dear, how on earth are we going to order room service?’ said Mum breezily, plonking her suitcase down on a bed.
I sat down on the other bed. It was hard as a board.
‘Come on Lucy, don’t look like that. It’s incredible value. It’ll look lovely with the sun on it in the morning – you’ll see.’
‘Huh!’
‘Well, I’m going to pay the taxi driver and order us some nice cold drinks. We can have them on the terrace and watch the last of the sunset.’
Big deal! I thought as Mum went off with a determined look and her purse in her hand.
The taverna owner served the drinks. He seemed to do everything around the place – show the rooms, check the passports. He even swabbed down the table, brushing the crumbs right into my lap.
When we’d finished our drinks. Mum asked him about dinner.
‘No eat here tonight. No food. Restaurant down in the village.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the cliff-side.
We were both dead tired after the journey. We’d been up at five that morning in order to catch the plane. Mum took one glance at the unlit and perilous-looking steps that led down to the harbour below and said:
‘We don’t want much. Just an omelette will do.’
So he served us reluctantly. We sat at a table with a greasy oilcloth on it. The oilcloth was grudgingly covered by a paper tablecloth which was held in place by a long stretch of what looked like knicker elastic. He wasn’t up to much as a waiter – he just slammed the plates down on the table and refused to cook me chips although they were on offer, chalked up on the board which served as a menu. I wondered if he was always in such a bad mood.
When we’d finished our meal I was still hungry.
‘Ask him if he’s got a yogurt or something,’ suggested Mum.
So I went to the kitchen to ask. When he opened the fridge, I saw it was jam-packed. He had plenty of food. He just couldn’t be bothered to cook it. That’s when Mum called him ‘the Old Rogue’. And the name kind of stuck.
There wasn’t a lot to choose from by way of entertainment after dinner. Not even enough light to read by. We had the choice of either sitting and looking at the view on the left of the terrace or the view on the right. Both were equally dark. So we went to bed. Outside, I could hear the thumps and clatter of the tables being cleared. And then the lights went out on the terrace and silence descended on the place – total silence. God this place was bo-ring!
Was it an earthquake? Was it a landslide? God knows what it was! The shock had woken me and I was sitting bolt upright.
‘What on earth was that?’
Mum was awake and dressed, perched on the bed opposite looking equally stunned.
‘No idea.’
The last of the landslide was followed by a deep, guttural chug-chug-chug which echoed through the room. Mum went out to investigate.
A minute or so later she returned. ‘It’s OK. It’s only a dredger.’
‘A what?’
They must be doing some work on the harbour. Making it deeper or something. It’s a rusty old thing – amazing they’ve kept it going.’
‘Sounds healthy enough to me. How long d’you think it’ll keep that racket up?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you get up? It’s a lovely morning.’
‘In a minute.’
I turned over and tried to get back to sleep on the rock-hard mattress. My pillow felt as if it was made of concrete. My right ear was flattened and sore. I doubted whether it would ever regain its normal shape.
I was just dropping off when it happened again. Another deafening landslip of gravel cancelled out any further attempt at sleep, so I climbed out of bed and stomped over to the bathroom. You could hardly call it a bathroom, it was about the size of an airplane lavatory. I paused in the doorway… Hang on. Where was the shower?
‘Mu-um?’
‘What?’ She was rubbing sunscreen into her legs.
‘I thought the Old Rogue said we had a shower.’
‘We have. The tap’s under the towel thingy.’
I went back into the bathroom. On closer inspection, I discovered that the ‘shower’ was just a rusty sort of sprinkler sticking out of the ceiling. When I turned the tap on, water gushed out all over the loo, all over the basin and then drained away through an evil-looking hole in the floor. And what’s more – the water was stone cold.
‘Yuuukkk!’ I said as I climbed out of the icy flood and found a dry bit of floor to towel myself down on. ‘That was just about the most gruesome experience I’ve had in my entire life.’
‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ said Mum. ‘You find showers like that all over the islands. Labour-saving – it washes down the bathroom too.’
‘I think it’s disgusting.’
‘Oh Lucy, don’t be such a killjoy. It’s lovely outside. He’s laid breakfast on the terrace. What do you want? Tea or coffee?’
‘Tea, I suppose. And orange juice.’ I’d had a Greek coffee at the airport. The cup was half-full of muddy-tasting dregs.
‘See you out there, then.’
When I emerged into the sunlight, Mum was already seated at a table in the shade making the best of the ‘breakfast’. We each had a plate with couple of slices of dry white bread, a sliver of margarine and some red jam. When Mum asked for orange juice, we were each presented with a Fanta.
‘Well I suppose we can’t expect much at the price we’re paying,’ said Mum when the Old Rogue was out of earshot.
‘Now you can see why we’re the only ones staying here,’ I remarked grimly.
Anyway, after the guy had made it clear that breakfast was over by swabbing down the table all around us, we decided to spend the morning exploring. Armed with swimming things and suntan lotion, a book for Mum and my Walkman, we set off in search of a decent beach.
The nearest beach was in the long bay lying to the right of the headland. But the sand was an unwelcoming black colour and you could see by looking down from the terrace that there was a wide band of weed along the shore which you’d have to swim through to get to open water.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said to Mum.
‘But it’s nice and close.’
‘Nice! Imagine what could be lurking in that weed. Crabs or jellyfish or sea urchins.’
At the mention of sea urchins, Mum agreed. I’d trodden on one once and had all these little prickles stuck in my foot which had to be taken out one by one with Mum’s tweezers. It was agony.
‘What about the harbour?’ I suggested.
‘Let’s go down and see.’
So we tried the bay on the left. A flight of rough irregular steps wove its way down through some poor little tumble-down houses. At the bottom there was a pathetic fringe of shingle edged by some rotting fishermen’s shacks. Nets were stretched out on the tarry stones to dry. The air smelt of weed and gently decaying fish.