Lie With Me (29 page)

I stilled every muscle. I remember the taste of my hand at my mouth: salt, coffee grains, dust. A motorbike approaching from the other direction, pulling in closer to where I crouched. And then the sound of feet, more voices, getting closer.

I spun round wildly, and ran deeper into the grove, to where the black netting was folded at its thickest, threw myself to the ground, rolling round, getting my foot tangled, wrapping what I could grab over my torso, burying my face in the earth.

I lay there, trying not to make a sound, feeling sick. Footsteps on the road, and voices – Gavras’s and another man’s, and Alice’s. The crackle of a walkie-talkie. Gavras: ‘Please return to the house, Mrs Mackenzie. Leave this in my hands. We will find him and bring him back. I know where he will be headed.’ And Alice, tearful, saying: ‘Find him, please.’ Their voices dwindling, disappearing. Vehicles returning. Another voice, deeper, speaking in Greek. I heard the word: ‘Trigaki.’

It was hard to breathe. My chest felt tight, as if I’d inhaled soil.
We will find him and bring him back.
Tiny stones dug into my chest and arms. I lifted my head a fraction, my eyes focusing on a heap of dead flowers, and what looked like maggots. No, white candle-ends. A damp smell of soil and rotting vegetation. I became aware of tiny movements near my ear, the vibration of a million insects – spiders? Beetles? A tickle across my face. My muscles shrieked. I forced myself not to move.

Time passed. The light changed, shadows shifted. The slight breeze now dropped and the heat intensified. More vehicles passed. Chickens fussed somewhere nearby. An elderly woman walked within a few feet of me. An hour passed, maybe two.
Find him, please.
Had there been love in that plea? I didn’t know. It was too late to find out.

It was more of a physical surrender than a mental one. I lost the feeling in my right foot. It became a solid object, dead flesh. I imagined myself in my own grave. The discarded flowers, the redundant candle nibs – they began to make sense: rejects from the shrine at the corner of the road. They’d outlived their purpose, been left to decay. My own rotten shrine.

When I stood up, it took a while for my limbs to move, for the blood to circulate. My foot was a useless club. I had to stamp several times to get the feeling back. I unpeeled olive stones, which had been so tightly pressed into my upper arms they were lodged like bullets, and crept quietly forward to the edge of the grove.

I looked up and down the road. It was deserted. ‘Trigaki,’ Gavras had said. That’s where he thought I’d gone. Who in their right minds would have come this way? Once you were in Stefanos there was no way out. By road, anyway. But by water? I thought about the little jetties, and the fishing boats, and the party boats, the boats for hire. It was risky, but I could be down there in ten minutes. I could possibly be away in five more, watching Agios Stefanos disappear behind me. I would take the back route I’d discovered on the first day; plenty of alleyways to hide in, and I could come out at the harbour not by the supermarkets, but at the far end, opposite the main pontoon.

I set off at a steady jog, conserving my energy. When I reached the white house on the corner, the old lady was sitting on her plastic picnic chair, the white chickens pecking in their ratty little yard. I took the passage to the right, stumbling up and then down the uneven steps, out of breath too quickly for my own good. I almost tripped twice, once on the tendrils of a plant that sprouted in a crack in the stones, and then again on a sleeping cat. I passed several abandoned buildings with broken bars across the windows. I smelt oranges and fresh bread and piss. Must stay calm, must stay calm. I repeated it like a mantra, kept sane by a voice at the back of my brain:
you’ve done nothing wrong
.

A bolt of water through a crack between buildings – soft velvet, draped around the boats at mooring. The odd strain of music. A few voices. Mid afternoon – not a busy time. I reached the corner, where the passage widened, and leant against a wall. Should I skulk here or head down to the harbour? Or was this pointless? Was I trapped? I felt all confidence drain. Was it too late to go back?
Find him, please
– surely there’d been concern in her voice? My forehead began to throb. I slunk down to the ground with my back to the wall, and then, on the air, I caught the strains of music, distorted, bending upwards. The tavernas played Euro-pop. This was the bouzouki, starting slow, speeding up: ‘Zorba the Greek’. It was coming from the water. A horn sounded. This was what I’d failed to respond to ten years before. Saffron had been demanding I make decisions about ‘when we got back’, talking about how it was ‘time I settled down’. I’d missed the boat on purpose.

I ran down the last flight of broken steps, to the service road behind Club 19, and peered down the alley to the harbour. Voices and laughter were louder here. Several fishing vessels were moored on the jetty and at the end a large galleon, with lights strung along its empty rigging. A group of girls in headbands and long neon shirts was walking towards it; several sunburnt lads followed, swinging bags of beer. And then around the corner came four older men, in their late thirties – a stag break or a university reunion – with short sensible hair, socks with trainers. I counted to three and then ambled down the alley, and into the open. A moment of exposure, in which the hairs prickled on the back of my neck, but then three more strides and I was on the pontoon. Water gleamed in the gaps in the boards; the ground swayed slightly. I could feel the vibrations of someone behind me, but I kept walking at the same pace, ignoring the shiver up my spine, the desire to turn and run, to
scream
, until I reached the boat.

The queue had thinned and the last two men ahead of me were climbing on to the gangplank. It was a full-on fake pirate ship, shiny with orange varnish, a huge pronged steering wheel, a packed top deck, and a large lower area with seats in a circle around the rim. ‘Captain Jolly’, a sign said. Most of the seats were taken now; people hung over the side on the upper level, shouts of laughter, drunken shrieks, the clinking of bottles.

I waited, staring ahead, until it was my turn to board. I felt a firm hand on my elbow. I jumped, nerve ends on fire. It was the captain – ‘The Boss’ read his T-shirt.

‘Ticket?’ he said.

‘I haven’t got one.’

I got ahead of him, on to the boat, body rocking, water smacking against the wood beneath my feet; I could feel the relief of it. The smell of fish and wine. ‘Zorba the Greek’ clattering and whistling loud in our ears. The engine already shaking. ‘But I can pay. I’ve got money.’

I opened my wallet and drew out Louis’s ten-euro note. The man who had held my arm – tiny shorts, black beard, red face – was shaking his head. ‘You buy ticket in Elconda,’ he said.

‘I can pay more money,’ I said again. ‘When we get there.’ It wasn’t strictly true, but at least I’d have time before then to think. ‘A credit card!’

He shook his head.

‘How much do I need?’ I looked around. ‘Can someone lend me some money?’

The couple making their way to a seat along the side turned. They looked at me and gazed over their shoulders, at the water.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Someone?’ I raised my voice. ‘Someone? I’ll sort the loan out with interest, as soon as we get down the coast. I just need to get away from Agios Stefanos.’

If my dirty clothes and dishevelled demeanour hadn’t alienated me from the crowd, this did. One of the lads, with a bottle of beer in his hand, got to his feet, legs apart to keep his balance. ‘Off you go, mate,’ he said. ‘Do what the nice man said and fuck off.’

The captain had his hand around my elbow, and hauled me up out of the boat. ‘This boat is ticket only,’ he was saying. ‘Ticket only. You buy ticket in Elconda next time. Return trip.’

‘Please,’ I said. But he had untied the rope now, leapt back into the boat, brought in the plank. The engine rumbled, throttled, the water swirled, a gap grew between the vessel and the pontoon. Shouts from the cabin. The Boss shouted back. A rope slapped, the boat’s engine churned the water and it was gone.

The strength drained from my legs and I sat down on the edge of the pontoon. I could still feel the bastard’s thumb on my lower arm. My nostrils were filled with the stench of diesel and dead fish. I watched the oil in the roiling water spread. I should get out of sight again, keep listening for another boat. But for the moment I couldn’t move. The
Captain Jolly
had reversed out into the harbour and, with several revs of its engine, was turning, the lights on the rigging flapping. I sat and watched as it motored towards the headland, past Serena’s fucking rock, and disappeared.

I stood, bent to shake the dirty water from my trousers, and turned.

A figure was standing at the other end of the jetty, one hand tucked in his back pocket. I could see the caverns in his face, the shadows beneath his eyes and, as he smiled, the gap between his teeth.

He took a step forward. Andrew: the person I realised I was most afraid of.

Chapter Twenty

He put me in the back seat of the car – that stung – and drove along the harbour road and through the village. ‘I knew you’d be there,’ he said conversationally. ‘Gavras, everyone else, they were all convinced you’d be heading towards Trigaki, that you’d hitch a lift to the airport. But don’t you remember, you told me.’

‘What?’

‘That you’d find a boat, escape by sea.’

He caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and tapped his forehead with his finger.

When we reached Circe’s House, he got out of the car and stretched out his back muscles – showing me how free he was, how powerful – and then he let me out of the car, led me by the arm around the house and pushed me into his bedroom. He left, locking me in.

I banged on the glass door to the terrace.

‘Tina!’ I shouted. ‘Alice.’ I tried to lighten my voice, to suppress the panic. ‘Help. Save me!’ For ages nobody came. I sat on the edge of the bed. The room was meticulously tidy – even Tina’s jewellery was hanging neatly over the mirror. Finally there came a tap at the internal door – the one that opened on to the lounge, and Alice opened it. She came in, leaving the door unlocked behind her.

‘Paul,’ she said. ‘What’s the hell’s going on?’

She was wearing a silky dress that clung to her breasts, her hair in a ponytail. I put my arms out. ‘Andrew’s keeping me a fucking prisoner,’ I said. ‘He’s behaving as if I’m dangerous, as if I might kill someone or something. Though I’m so angry I might kill him.’

She drew back.

‘I’m stupid,’ I said, trying to sound calmer. ‘I know I am. I shouldn’t have run. It was madness.’

Her brow creased. ‘Yes. It was. Now everyone’s behaving as if you’re guilty of . . . I don’t know. But what did you think you were doing? Why did you run away?’

What should I have said? That I thought Andrew, or Gavras, or both were setting me up? That I’d been looking for her? Or the real truth – that running away was just what I did? It was what I’d done to Florrie, and to Saffron, and to every woman since. That it was why I lived in someone else’s flat, on someone else’s time, skipping from job to job, from relationship to relationship, in the belief that if you keep moving nothing is ever your fault?

I sat down again on the edge of the bed, and looked down at my hands. ‘I don’t know. I’m scared of Andrew. He said some weird things earlier about the rape, as if he thought I might have something to do with it. Now I think I was right – the way he chased me round the village, bringing me back here, locking me up like a criminal . . .’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to be scared of. No one’s going to frame you, or make things up.’

‘Andrew hates me because of Florrie. He was shouting at me, saying I killed her.’ I put my hand on my heart, and looked across at her. ‘I didn’t know she was so vulnerable; of course I regret my behaviour. I wouldn’t have treated her the way I did if I’d known. But she didn’t kill herself because of me.’

Alice half smiled. She picked up a necklace that was hanging on the mirror and trailed it between her fingers. She wasn’t looking at me. I said, ‘You don’t think that, do you? It’s not true, is it?’

She balled the necklace in her hand and said casually, ‘What do you want from me? Do you want me to lie?’

‘No, I want the truth.’

‘Well then, yes. I do blame you for Florrie’s death.’

‘Alice . . .’

She threw the necklace on to the chest of drawers and turned back to me. ‘You did know she was vulnerable. I told you. At her birthday party. I warned you then, when she was
insane
for you. Do you not remember? In the garden. I found you at the bar and railed at you. I begged you to look after her or to leave her alone. I looked you in the eye. I said I would kill you if you hurt her.’

‘What were you wearing?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Paul. How can you ask that? I don’t know. A black dress. I was fatter then, and spottier. I probably wasn’t flashing any cleavage. That’s why you don’t remember – I didn’t register for you sexually. Christ, if only I had: perhaps you’d have got off with me, and abandoned her then, rather than two weeks later when it was too late, when you’d slept with her and left her feeling worthless.’

And now I did begin to remember. A short fat girl at the bar, ranting at me. But Florrie, a sure thing, waiting for her drink, and mates laughing in the corner as I wriggled away. If I’d known it was Alice, if I’d known what I knew now. But I hadn’t; that girl was nothing like the woman standing here.

I put my arms out again, desperate for her to come close. ‘I’m sorry, Alice. I really am. If I could reverse the time . . . I was young. I was so immature. I did a lot of damage – I know that. But it’s no reason to treat me like a criminal.’

Alice hesitated and then sat down next to me. Her voice flattened. ‘That night in Giorgio’s ten years ago – you said terrible things. I think that’s why Andrew is so angry. Being here has probably brought it all back.’