Wish You Were Here (22 page)

‘I know I've been quiet,' said Donna. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Is it me?' I asked dreading the answer. ‘Have I done something wrong?'

‘No.' She touched my hand. ‘It's all me. I've got a lot of things on my mind.'

‘Can we talk about it?'

Donna shook her head. ‘I think it's probably too late for that, but it's no excuse for me being such a misery though. I feel I'm spoiling everything.' She ran her hands over her face as though trying to wake herself up from a dream. ‘Thanks for doing this, Charlie,' she said, turning towards me. ‘I know it's only been a short time but you really have made this holiday special.'

We climbed out of the car, bought a parking ticket and made our way towards the restaurant I'd discovered in Tom's
Rough Guide
. Donna seemed brighter. She was more talkative, and making jokes and seemed much more like the person I'd got to know the night before.

The restaurant was right next to the harbour wall. There were scores of tables set up underneath a canopy and we were shown to one that the waiter assured us had the best view of the harbour. Instead of sitting opposite each other we sat side by side so that we could watch the same sun set that we had seen rise.

We left the restaurant after an hour, having shared everything from home-made tatziki to fried Mako shark and made our way back to the car hand in hand. The silence had a different quality now. Less gloomy and more hopeful – as if we'd stopped speaking because there were too many things to say rather than too few.

‘Last night and this afternoon have been really special,' Donna said, as we reached the car. ‘I don't know the last time I spent this much time in someone else's company . . . not since . . . well you know. Anyway, I just want to say thanks.' She reached up towards me, wrapped her arms around my neck and then placed her lips on top of my own. We kissed the sort of long slow kiss that had the ability to transport me right back to the night before.

‘I think it might be time to go,' said Donna, once the kiss had ended.

‘Yeah, you're probably right.'

Our time was over. The day had come to an end. And Donna was heading home. But the big question, in my mind at least, was had I succeeded in making Donna want to commit to seeing me again? As we pulled into the car park at Heraklion airport and I looked across at her I couldn't help but feel like the answer to the question was a resounding yes. Surely, I told myself, she had to be feeling what I was feeling?

Still, as we climbed out of the car into the still-baking heat and unloaded Donna's luggage on to the tarmac, I made up my mind that if all really was fair in love and war, then now would be the right time to pitch one last all-out assault. Timing, I reasoned, was everything and fortunately for me I had been dealt the perfect hand: a ‘departure gate goodbye'. I prepared the speech in my head: stuff about her being ‘special', our need to ‘overcome obstacles' and ‘how we could make it work if we really wanted to'. It was all made for this moment. Victory was assured.

‘I've forgotten my sunglasses,' said Donna, when we were only a few metres away from the entrance to the departure lounge. ‘I must have left them in the car.'

‘Carry on and check in,' I replied, ‘I'll go back and get them.'

‘I couldn't ask you to do that,' said Donna. ‘You've done enough already. I'll go myself.'

‘No problem,' I replied, handing her the keys to the car. ‘I'll just wait here for you.'

Sitting on the kerb outside the entrance to the airport with her suitcase and bags by my side, I watched her until she disappeared behind a row of cars. She was gone longer than I expected but soon returned wearing her beloved Jackie O sunglasses.

As we entered the airport we went in search of Nina and her friends amongst the hundreds of British holidaymakers who were heading back home. Each one of them, standing in line at the various check-in desks, was dressed as though they thought that the warm weather of Crete would stay with them forever. My mind flicked back to the tanned and T-shirted hordes I'd seen arriving at Gatwick in the rain – people stuck so solidly in their holiday state of mind that they had forgotten that any climate existed other than the one they had left behind.

‘Won't you be a bit cold when you reach England?' I asked, as we studied the departure board to find her check-in desk.

‘I put a warmish jumper in Nina's bag before I left,' said Donna who herself was wearing a long skirt, a sleeveless top and flip-flops. ‘She'll have it with her now.'

‘Right now I wish I was wearing a jacket so I could do the gentlemanly thing and give it to you.'

Donna opened her mouth to reply when a voice yelled her name from across the hall. We both turned round to see Nina waving at us frantically from the front of the furthest check-in desk from where we were standing. Dragging her suitcase behind her Donna rushed over to join them. Nina and her friends all huddled around her immediately, while some threw a bemused glance in my direction. Once the girls were all checked in they collected themselves together at the side of the queue while Donna made her way back to me.

‘Everything okay?' I asked.

‘Yeah, fine,' said Donna. ‘Nina and the girls are going to meet me on the other side of passport control in a minute or two but I'm just going to the loo first.'

There was something about her face when she spoke to me that didn't seem right. I let it go, reasoning that perhaps this was a good sign: that she was finding it as difficult to leave me as I was finding it to accept that she was going. At this rate, I told myself, our departure gate goodbye could be nothing short of a resounding success.

After about five minutes or so with no sign of Donna's return I became uneasy, so I headed towards the ladies' toilets in search of her. When she failed to emerge after a further five minutes I began to be convinced that something was wrong. Aware that I was once again possibly going too far I approached a couple of English girls on a flight bound for Manchester and asked if they could check the toilets for any sign of Donna. When they emerged a minute later without her, a real panic set in and I searched the whole of the airport frantically, even briefly considering contacting the airport's security. In the end I decided that the best thing to do would be to return to the spot where we had parted and wait. And there I remained for over an hour before I finally accepted that she had gone.

With Donna still occupying my every thought, I made my way back to my hire car. As I opened the car door a folded sheet of paper on the driver's seat fluttered down into the footwell. I reached down and opened it up:

With my heart still racing, I started up the car and wound down the window. A warm gust of night air caused Donna's letter to flutter on the dashboard. I read it one last time, as though saying a final goodbye to both her and the notion that there was any fairness in the world. Nice guys did finish last. Sarah had taught me that and now Donna had rammed the point home.

I told myself that I was tired of being a doormat to the world at large. From now on I was going to switch off my brain and act on instinct. I wasn't going to agonise over every decision or wallow in the past. In short I was going to take a leaf out of Andy's book and start putting myself first.

And so as I tore up Donna's letter into a fistful of confetti, dropped the pieces out of the window and watched them flutter to the ground, there was no doubt in my mind that it was the right thing to do.

I cracked open my eyes. The bedroom was still shrouded in darkness although chinks of light coming through the curtains indicated that morning had broken. I sat up in bed and two things happened: first, the covers slipped down my body resulting in legions of tiny goosebumps springing to life as my skin came in contact with the arctic air. Secondly I was temporarily overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of biliousness that had me racing to the bathroom. I wasn't sick but I wished I had been because then at least the nausea currently gripping me might have gone away. Instead it stayed with me, clinging tightly to the pit of my stomach with a fist of iron.

As I left the bathroom I looked over at Andy's bed. Although it was empty it had clearly been slept in. I carefully opened the kitchen door. Tom's bed was empty too. I opened the fridge, pulled out a bottle of water and attempted to rehydrate myself. It was just after midday.

I threw on some clean clothes and then looked around the room for inspiration as to what to do next. I spotted
The Da Vinci Code
on my bedside table and decided to read for a while. Picking up the book along with my sunglasses I drew back the curtains over the patio doors to reveal Tom lounging in one of the white plastic chairs with his feet up on the balcony. In one hand was his beloved
Rough Guide
and in the other a cigarette. What was strange about this scene was that Tom didn't smoke and never had done.

‘All right?' I said as I opened the patio doors and stepped out into the midday sun. I stared pointedly at Tom's cigarette. ‘Anything you'd like to tell me?'

‘I'm experimenting.' He paused and inhaled heavily, then slowly expelled the smoke from between his lips. ‘I found them on the table,' he said, holding up a pack of Andy's Benson and Hedges. ‘I was sitting here looking at them and I thought to myself: if I have actually got cancer then at least the cells that are screwing me up will be too busy attacking my bladder to worry about my lungs.'

‘And what if it's something else?' I asked.

‘Well, if it is and I've gone through all this for nothing,' Tom plucked the cigarette from his lips, ‘then I think the very least I deserve is a cigarette.'

I sat down next to Tom, slipped on my sunglasses and squinted at the sky. ‘So – fledgling cigarette habits notwithstanding – how are you this bright and sunny afternoon?'

‘I feel like crap,' said Tom. ‘Which is I'm guessing how you must feel too.'

‘I feel like I'm dead from the neck downwards,' I groaned. ‘Any chance you could take me through the details of last night because some of them are more than a bit foggy?'

‘I think it started when you came back to the apartment after your evening with Donna and didn't speak for ages,' began Tom. ‘I asked you what was wrong and you said that you didn't want to talk about it. So then I suggested that we go for a drink because I was sick of thinking about this cancer thing and you said, “Good idea let's do it.” Nine bars, roughly six hours and many, many, many drinks later we crashed out here.'

‘Was Andy with us? I don't seem to remember much about him last night at all.'

‘Bizarrely, he chose to stay in,' said Tom. ‘Something about wanting to catch up on his sleep.'

‘So where is he now?'

Tom shrugged and lit another one of Andy's cigarettes. ‘When I was in bed this morning I heard the door open. I assumed it was Andy either coming in or going out but I don't know any more than that.' Tom stubbed out his cigarette. ‘That's me done with smoking for now,' he said cheerfully. ‘Maybe I'll see what other vices I can succumb to before the holiday's out.' He stood up and picked up his book. ‘Hungry?'

‘Starving.'

‘Stars and Bars?'

‘Of course,' I replied. ‘Why break the habit of the holiday?'

‘So,' said Tom, as the waiter brought our ‘killer' breakfast and lager combo, ‘I think we've now skirted round enough diverse topics for me to ask the billion dollar question.'

‘Me and Donna?' I replied. ‘It was a disaster. A near-perfect disaster.'

‘You told her how you felt and she turned you down?'

‘Worse than that,' I replied. ‘Much worse. I hired a car, took her out for dinner and then to the airport, only to have her do a runner when my back was turned.'

‘You're kidding me,' said Tom looking gratifyingly outraged.

‘I wish I was,' I replied. ‘Now come on, what she did was a bit harsh wasn't it? Women always talk about how men hate confrontation and will do anything to avoid it . . . but if what Donna did wasn't avoiding confrontation I don't know what is.'

‘Obviously I'm not taking her side or anything,' said Tom cautiously, ‘but I can't imagine that she did it for a laugh. It must have been hard for her. It's not like it's that long since her kid's dad left her is it? Maybe she's a bit gun shy.'

‘Gun shy?' I replied. ‘I'll tell you who should be gun shy – me. I found out the night before last that Sarah's pregnant.'

Tom was stunned. ‘I don't know what to say.'

‘There's nothing
to
say,' I replied, ‘other than that I know for a fact that it's not mine.' Suddenly I didn't feel quite so hungry any more and so I pushed my breakfast plate away to one side. ‘I really loved her you know.'

‘I know you did,' replied Tom quietly.

‘So how could she do this to me after being together so long? A whole decade, Tom. Surely that has to count for something?'

Tom looked on blankly.