Here Come the Girls (35 page)

As she walked down the cool stone tunnel and her eyes touched on the first sight of the impossibly blue lake, Olive was instantly transported back to the intensity of that afternoon.

‘Oh God, look at the colour of that water!’ gasped Roz. The Lake of Melissani was in a cave, but a small portion of the roof above had fallen in many years ago. Now, at midday, the sun was overhead, pouring into the roof and lending the water its light.

‘Wait until you get on the boat and then look down,’ advised Olive.

Soon they had climbed into one of the small rowing boats and set off across the lake. The water was turquoise, clear and deep, half-salt half-sweet, fed from water from the other side of the island that magically found its way through the rock.

‘I want to dive in,’ said Roz, mesmerised.

‘It’s colder than it looks,’ Olive warned her. She and Atho had made love in the boat under the eye of the sunshine and then slid into the water to taste it upon their skin. Olive trailed her hand in the lake. It was named after the nymph Melissanthi who had loved the God Pan, but when she found out he did not feel the same way, she threw herself in the water and drowned.

Love was such a precious fragile thing, to be treasured – yet people didn’t and were fools for it – herself the biggest one of all. She’d felt the force of Atho’s love and had run from it. Here in this cave he had told her what he felt about her, how much he wanted her – body and soul. His emotion was raw, his passion for her honest and wild, yet his love-making had been gentle and selfless. She had been in five-sense heaven that day.

David didn’t love her, she had learned the truth of that since she had come on this cruise. She was essential to the smooth running of his life and if she ever left him that’s what he would miss – not her, not Olive. That was the biggest difference between the men. Atho had loved Olive with all his heart, but David could have married anyone and been satisfied. And yet which one had she picked to spend her life with?

When the boat moored at the side, Olive suddenly knew she had to go to Tanos.

‘I’ll find my own way back to the ship,’ she announced to the others at the cave entrance, heading quickly for one of two taxis which were waiting by the buses. As she climbed into it, she heard a chorus of three voices behind her saying:

‘About flaming time an’ all!’

Chapter 53

In the hallway were two suitcases with everything that Doreen was going to take to her new home. A few clothes, photos, toiletries – that was all. She was waiting for Vernon and his Rolls-Royce and driver to pick her up.

An added bonus for David was that Kevin had announced he was moving back in with Wicked Wendy. Apparently she couldn’t do without her ‘sausage love’ he announced that morning, just as David was about to bite into a Walls skinless pork. So that meant that David and Olive were going to have a house to themselves – at last.

‘I’m sorry if this has all been a bit too much for you to take in so quickly,’ said Doreen, as she sat on the chair in the hallway. There was a gentleness to her voice as she went on to talk about the man who had brought him up. ‘Herbert was a good man, you know. I liked him a lot. Of course he was a lot older than me, but it was a nice marriage all the same.’

David felt a bit choked up, remembering his ‘dad’. He’d been a kind man, totally under the thumb – but he seemed to like it that way. He wasn’t exactly Mr Workaholic, but they’d lived happily without any fancy stuff or posh holidays. He would take young David fishing in the school holidays and they’d make a load of egg-and-cress sandwiches and big flasks of tea to sustain them through the day – and sometimes the night. David could never remember his mum and dad arguing, but then again, he couldn’t remember them talking to each other much either. Doreen went to bingo a lot, his father spent a lot of time in his shed. They co-existed, ‘rubbed along nicely’ some might have said – like he and Olive did. At least, he presumed she was content enough in their marriage; she didn’t moan about her lot, anyway.

But since Vernon Turbot had swept into their house two days ago, his mother had flowered like a long-dried seed that had suddenly found some water and a one-in-a-million chance to sprout at last. She had softened and blossomed and seemed to have dropped twenty years of her age. There was air under her feet when she walked across the room, and an uncreasing of the frownlines that had given her a grim look for longer than he cared to remember. Vernon Turbot was walking Botox for her.

‘I’m not leaving because I don’t love you,’ Doreen said suddenly. ‘I do, you know. I love you and Kevin very much, but especially you – because you’re my lad.’

Whoof
. David’s eyes suddenly flooded and he coughed hard, trying to stamp firmly down on the rush of emotion.

Doreen went on, ‘You see, there are two kinds of people in this world, son: those who can live quite happily without passion and those who were never meant to. I’m one of those people who need to feel their heart beat faster for someone, and so is Vernon. Now Herbert, he didn’t. He was happy enough with his shed and his allotment and his fishing rod. My mum and dad were the same; she had her knitting, he had his spaniels. I think you must take after them.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know which I’d have picked, given the choice. It would have been so much easier, had I been able to settle for a life where the limit of my excitement was a new set of cable needles. But I’ve been thirsty for too long and now I’m going to drink my fill from Vernon’s pool.’

Another lewd image flashed into David’s mind which he shook away before it became an ingrained memory. Listening to his mum, David was half-glad he took after his easily pleased grandparents. Who the hell wanted to have the complications of all those feelings and dormant passions? Thank goodness he and Olive could do without that sort of rubbish cluttering things up.

‘You were a love-child in every sense of the word,’ Doreen smiled. ‘Not like these things on
Jeremy Kyle
where the mothers can’t remember who they took their drawers off for. You were born from our love. Herbert couldn’t have kids. He always knew you weren’t his, especially because you’re the image of Vernon as a young man, but it never stopped him loving you as his son. He never made mention of anyone else being your dad.’

‘Mam, stop,’ said David with a croak in his throat. Then he looked at her and noticed the tears glistening on her powdered cheeks. And big as he was, he went straight over to her and put his arms around her ample body. They squeezed each other affectionately, which segued into a slightly embarrassed patting on the back as they recovered their composure.

‘Anyway,’ sniffed Doreen, ‘we’ll see you tomorrow if Vernon is taking you around the shops. No doubt he’ll be bringing you up to the house with a parcel of fish and chips to share with me. He was always the best at making them. That Harry Ramsden looks like a nowt, compared to him.’

‘Aye, Mam, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said David, nodding, barely able to speak. ‘That’ll be nice.’

A puppyishly excited car horn sounded outside the front door.

‘Well, here we go,’ smiled Doreen, her eyes shining like jewels as she picked up her handbag. Turning to her son, she said, ‘One more thing – I haven’t been the best mother-in-law to Olive either. I’ve taken a lot of my frustration and boredom out on her, more than I have you. Tell her I’m sorry, will you? She’s a good girl. Anyway, now you’ve some money you can take her off on a holiday and buy her some nice things. Treat her like a woman should be treated.’

‘Yes, Mam, I will,’ said David. And he meant it. He had plans forming in his brain for them both. Big plans.

Chapter 54

It was less than a ten-minute taxi ride to Tanos and yet it felt like for ever. Olive asked to be dropped by the first farmhouse on the Tanos road. It was still delicately shabby and white with orange shutters on the windows – in fact, it hadn’t changed at all. It was just as if she had been transported back twenty years. Even the old sign pointing to the hamlet was still hanging off at an angle from the pole.

The taxi drove off and Olive had a moment of panic about the crazy thing she was about to do. Her legs were jelly by the time she rounded the corner. Two more steps and she would see the Lemon Tree. She took the steps – and there it was.

The sign had been repainted, that was the only difference she could spot. The outside tables were still square and wooden, the chairs rattan-backed. She could see, through the café window, that the juice-machine blades were stirring through lemonade on the counter. A few holidaymakers were drinking coffee and reading newspapers, and a young waitress was busying around clearing tables. Atho always kept the café immaculately clean, but he never chased away the tourist-friendly animals who came to try their luck. The old stray dog who had adopted the café had obviously long gone, but there was a contented scruffy grey cat lounging on a stool which seemed to have been positioned under the shade of an olive tree especially for him or her.

Olive’s heart flooded with fondness for the place. Once upon a time she was that waitress flitting around customers, delivering the generous plates of dolmades and moussaka which Atho insisted should be a portion and a half of what other cafés were serving. He was a generous man in all aspects of his life.

Then she saw him. He was there, in the shadows of the café interior. Atho Petrakis. He hadn’t become squat and bald and middle-aged, he was just as she remembered him – thick, black hair, straight-backed, his tanned strong arms pulling a coffee from a huge machine.

Olive’s head went woozy and the feeling spread quickly around her, weakening her legs and making her reach for a chair, scraping it back against the ground so she could sit on it before she fell. The waitress heard the noise and called to the man as she saw the woman sink down.

‘Atho,’ she called. And Olive just saw the tall dark man’s shape approaching before she slumped in a faint onto the café table.

Moments later, when Olive opened her eyes, she looked up to see it was not
her
Atho, after all, even if he did look extraordinarily like her old lover from a distance.

‘Lady, are you well?’ the man was asking, and his voice was different from Atho’s too – not as smoky or deep. And the hand that was resting upon her shoulder was lighter. Her Atho had large strong farmer’s hands.

‘I’m so sorry,’ excused Olive. ‘I was looking for Atho Petrakis.’

‘I am Atho Petrakis,’ said the man. ‘Or was it my father you are looking for?’

Yes, thought Olive, this must be his son. Atho has a son.

‘The Atho I’m looking for owned this place twenty years ago.’

‘Yes, that is my father.’

‘Is . . . is he here?’ she asked tentatively. She knew he wouldn’t be. When these things played out in real life, the sought-after person tended to have picked that day to be somewhere far away. Knowing her luck, he had probably gone on holiday to Barnsley.

‘My father is not here any more.’

The words crushed Olive’s heart. He was dead. She’d been a fool to leave, and a bigger fool to come back.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘How long ago?’

The waitress smiled, nudged Atho Junior and said something fast and Greek to him.

‘Oh no, he’s not dead,’ said Atho, waving his hand. ‘He’s retired from the bar. He lives in the house at the back.’

‘Where his parents used to live?’ asked Olive. Her heart couldn’t take this stopping and starting much longer.

‘Yes. He is there now. You must be an old friend of his – yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Olive, her voice quavering.

Atho held out his hand to Olive and, when she took hold of it, he pulled her up from the chair. ‘Come with me, lady. I will take you to him.’

He tucked the tea-towel he was carrying into the waistband of his apron and led Olive down the old familiar path at the side of the Lemon Tree to the house where Maria-Grazia and Theo Petrakis had once lived. Now there were changes to see. The little cottage was no more. In its place was a beautiful new double-fronted, two-storey villa painted pale mimosa. The door was split, the top part open, the bottom half closed.

‘Papa,’ the young man called. ‘I have an old friend for you.’

And there, in the top half of the door, appeared a man. Atho.
Her
Atho. The same strong jaw, the same shock of hair, though flecked with far more white now, the same soft lips and dark, dark eyes. Those eyes were shock-wide now, the mouth drooped in disbelief.

‘Olive?’ he called. ‘No, you can’t be. It is a dream.’

Then Atho Senior threw open the bottom part of the door and lunged down the short path towards his son and the visitor. His big arms enclosed her, then he held her out at arm’s length to look at her, as if he could not believe she was really here, then his arms came around her again and crushed her to him. Behind her, young Atho seemed to be telling his father to be careful and not handle his guest so roughly. If that was the case, Olive hoped her Atho would totally ignore him.

‘This is Olive,’ Atho announced to his son in a soft and tender voice. ‘She is a very old friend of your papa. A dear and beautiful old friend.’

One arm stayed around Olive and he pulled her towards the house.

‘Go, Atti,’ he said to his son. ‘I have a lady to entertain. A lady from England who I have not seen for twenty years.’

And Atho Junior laughed and waved and said, ‘I am going, Papa. I am going back to be your slave in the café.’

‘Come, Olive, come into my house. Are you all right? Atti says I have to be gentle with you.’

‘I’m fine. I just felt a bit faint when I saw him. I thought he was you.’

‘How nice you think I am seventeen,’ said Atho, taking Olive’s hand now and turning to face her. His other hand came upwards as a gentle cup to her cheek and his brown eyes bored deep into her.

‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it is you. Twenty years and you are here. How long are you staying with me? Are you here for ever?’

‘I’m on a cruise. I’m just on the island for a few hours,’ said Olive, unable to stop herself pushing her cheek deeper into his hand. His skin smelled the same – soap-clean with the merest hint of sweet herb. She closed her eyes and the years between now and their last meeting disappeared.