Wish You Were Here (8 page)

‘It's Ouzo isn't it?' asked Andy.

‘Close,' replied Steve. ‘Raki.'

He pushed the glasses over to our side of the bar, poured himself a glass too. ‘Yassou,' he said, holding up his glass, and then on his cue we all knocked back our shots.

The small explosion at the back of my throat was instant. And as the flames licked their way down to my lungs, up to my nostrils and tickled the back of my eyeballs, it was all I could do not to cough and splutter like a schoolboy trying his first cigarette.

‘You get used to it,' said Steve. ‘You sort of have to because they serve it everywhere around here.'

Still chuckling, he began pouring our beers while Tom and Andy asked him questions about the best places to go in Malia.

Feeling removed from the conversation I announced to my friends that I was going for a leak and made my way to the lounge area where I promptly sat down on one of the large sofas near the pay-per-go pool table. The truth was I didn't need the toilet at all; I just needed to be on my own for a while. As much as I was enjoying being with my friends, the prospect of spending all day every day with them over the coming week was already beginning to overwhelm me. Things had changed a lot since our college days when we'd lived in each other's pockets. I'd got older. More grumpy. Less likely to put up with other people's nonsense. Now I was thirty-five I'd completely lost the tolerance required for living with anyone other than the woman I loved. Unfortunately for me, somewhere during the decade we were together, the woman I loved had somehow lost the tolerance for living with me.

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone and reread Sarah's text message, imprinting every word in my brain. Then, taking a deep breath, I pressed ‘delete', and she was gone.

I woke up shivering. I peered through the dim bedroom at the flashing light on the front of the air-conditioning unit that indicated that it was on (thanks to Andy) its maximum setting. Grimacing, I looked over at Andy and watched as he snored oblivious of the arctic chill in the air. With a sigh I pulled on my T-shirt from the floor and then looked at my watch. It was just after ten o'clock.

As I slipped out of bed and continued getting dressed, I wondered how long Andy had been asleep. It wouldn't have surprised me if it had only been a couple of hours. As it was, the three of us had remained in the hotel bar talking with Steve-the-barman until nearly four in the morning. Once again Tom had been the first to bed, followed half an hour later by me. But I could tell from the look of determination on Andy's face as he labelled me a lightweight and finished off my beer that he was prepared to see in the daylight, because he had a point to prove: that when it came to excess he was a giant amongst dwarves. It was a message wasted on me: I already knew this and was more than content with my vertically challenged status.

Still, it felt wrong being the first one of us awake – almost unmanly. On the original holiday to Malia there had been an unspoken daily struggle between Andy and me to win the coveted title of Last Man Up. Although I managed to beat him on a number of occasions, and once even clocked up a staggeringly tardy six-thirty in the evening, it was always Andy who was the more consistent winner. I was nothing more than his pace-maker. Now a decade on, here I was awake while Andy and
even
Tom were both still asleep. I felt like a genuine lightweight.

Other than the cold, the main reason I was awake was due in no small part to the vast array of things on my mind. Everything from my encounter with the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat to my alcohol consumption over the past few nights and right through to a genuine sense of excitement at being on holiday had managed to wake me up and get me thinking. But right at the top of the list, straight in at the number-one position, was Sarah and her text message.

What did she want? Should I reply? Did she know that I had gone on holiday? Did she know when I was getting back? Why hadn't she called me directly? And was it bad news? Or was it good news? Did she want me back? Did I want her back? Were things not going well with Oliver? Was it about money? Or bills? Or change of address cards? There were just too many questions and not enough answers. And although I knew all it would take to put my mind at rest would be to pick up the phone and dial her number I was also well aware that all it takes is a slight shift in perspective for the easiest things in the world to become the most difficult.

The one thing I wanted from this first day of my holiday was for it to be untainted by Sarah in any way, shape or form. Today was too special for that. Too hopeful.

Picking up my sunglasses from my bedside table I walked over to the patio doors, held back the curtains, opened the latch and stepped out on to the balcony. Instantly I was transported from the middle of the harshest winter on record to the kind of record-breaking temperatures that result in people dropping dead from heat exhaustion. The sun seemed a million times brighter and more intense than anything I'd ever experienced. I'm pretty sure it was my imagination but for a few moments I could have sworn that I smelt the hairs on my arms singeing in the sun.

The balcony furniture consisted of two white plastic chairs, a small round table, a clothes airer, and a bucket into which dripped water from a pipe connected to the air-conditioning unit. I sat down on one of the chairs and carefully manoeuvred myself so that I could peer over the edge of the balcony and get a better view of the swimming pool below. Though the pool itself was empty, the loungers around the edge – there must have been at least forty of the things lined up together – were occupied either by a vast array of bikini-clad girls of all shapes and sizes or large beach towels with colourful logos.

Feeling too fragile to cast anything more than a cursory glance across the girls below I adjusted my chair to its lowest reclining position, leaned back, closed my eyes and instead basked in the almost reptilian sensation of my sun-starved body being brought to life. Within minutes the sensation of being baked had shifted from pleasant but tingly, to searing and uncomfortable, as though I might be seconds away from bursting into flame. But I didn't care. This was it. I was warm. I was free. I was on holiday.

I ended up spending the next few hours shifting between a range of activities that included getting a few chapters further into my book, staring aimlessly into the sky, and wondering what I could possibly wear that might make me appear cool for my ‘date' with the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat. I would've continued like that for a few hours more, too, if a bleary-eyed Tom, wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts, hadn't put his head through the gap in the patio doors and informed me that he was hungry.

‘What are we doing for breakfast, mate?' he asked. ‘I'm starving.'

‘I was waiting for you and Andy,' I replied.

Tom ducked his head back into the room. ‘Andy's out like a light,' he said, reappearing. ‘I'll die of hunger before he wakes up. What time did he make it to bed? Dawn?'

I shrugged. ‘How about we give him another ten minutes and then go out and get something?'

‘All right then,' said Tom joining me on the balcony. He sat down gingerly on the hot plastic chair next to me.

‘How long have you been up?' he asked shielding his eyes from the sun.

‘A few hours,' I replied. ‘Couldn't sleep.'

‘And you've been sitting out here all this time? It's like being grilled on a barbecue.'

‘It gets all right, after a while,' I assured him. ‘And even if it does burn you, to a sun-hungry Brit like me there's nothing better than being toasted like this.'

Tom laughed and leaned back in his chair. ‘So when was the last time you went on holiday?'

‘Last August. Sarah and me went to Malta. It was nice. The hotel was fantastic.'

‘Isn't Malta meant to be big with the grey brigade?' asked Tom. ‘I know my grandparents have been going there every summer for the last ten years. They meet up with a whole bunch of friends that they made out there and spend all their time visiting places they've already been a million times before.'

‘It is a bit like that,' I replied. ‘When we first booked the holiday, the girl at the travel agent's tried to talk us out of it. She was really polite, but you could see in her eyes she just wanted to say: “Look, you'll hate it. It'll be full of British pensioners sucking humbugs.” But it wasn't like that at all. It was really chilled out actually. Sarah and I loved it. We ate great food. Slept late everyday. And in the afternoons we just lay on the beach and read. We didn't go to a single nightclub, get drunk or stay up past midnight once. It was fantastic.'

‘Sounds great,' said Tom. ‘Before Anne and I had the kids we spent a month touring around Tuscany. The trip was worth it just for the food, let alone the scenery and the weather.'

‘We were supposed to go to Tuscany this summer,' I said despondently. ‘Some friends of Sarah's parents had a villa out there and they were going to let us have it on the cheap. It would've been great too.' I paused and allowed myself the necessary indulgence of a small sigh. ‘I can't tell you how different life is without her, Tom. It's like I've got all this time on my hands and no one to spend it on. When we lived together I always felt like I didn't have enough time to myself. If she ever went away for the weekend to see her parents I'd go mad trying to fit in all the things that I felt I was missing out on. I'd go to the cinema and watch stupid action films; I'd watch
South Park
box sets back to back; I'd eat takeaway food until it was coming out of my ears; I'd listen to music until the early hours. And then an hour before she was due back I'd steam around like a demon and tidy the whole place up. By the time she'd got back to the flat everything would be immaculate.'

‘But that's good, surely?' said Tom. ‘Now you can do all that stuff all the time.'

‘That's just it,' I replied. ‘Now I've got all the time in the world I don't want to do any of that stuff any more. Instead I just sit around hoping that Sarah's going to come back through the front door.'

Feeling suddenly self-conscious I opted to change the subject but before I could do so the patio door slid open and Andy appeared in the doorway, scowling at the sun and naked except for his boxer shorts.

‘Now that is hot,' he said sliding a hand inside his boxers and scratching. ‘How long have you two been up?'

‘Half hour,' said Tom.

‘A while,' I replied, in a bid to sound cool.

‘Let's do breakfast,' said Andy firmly. ‘I'm starving.'

‘We were waiting on you,' said Tom. ‘What time did you get to bed?'

‘Half-five . . . maybe six . . . can't remember really.' He paused. ‘I'm going to have a shower then.'

‘Can't you do that after breakfast?' I asked.

‘Nah,' he replied, ‘after breakfast we should go straight to the beach.'

‘So if you're going to the beach why would you bother having a shower?'

‘You're joking aren't you? Now we're on holiday I can't take any chances. I mean, what if we bumped into the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat and her mates? No, from now on I'm on full-time duty, which means dressing to impress twenty-four-seven.'

There is no greater sartorial challenge for the British male than deciding what clothing is appropriate for a day at the beach. Living in a country where the sun rarely makes an appearance has had the effect of shaking our confidence so much that when it comes to removing layers of clothing in the public arena we have no idea what to do. Show us a hail storm in deepest Aberdeen and we'll be appropriately attired in a matter of minutes. Put us in the sunshine in Crete and we'll be flailing through our suitcases for hours on end. Andy, for instance, interpreted the theme of ‘dressing for the beach' as ‘dressing for a game of five-a-side in the park' (white Reeboks, dark blue Adidas football shorts and a white England T-shirt). Tom took it to mean ‘wear what you might put on if you were about to play a round of golf followed swiftly by some fell walking on the Yorkshire moors' (a pastel blue polo shirt, beige khaki shorts and a pair of chunky ‘all-terrain'-style sandals). And I interpreted it as ‘dress as if you're a thirty-five-year-old male trying to hang on to the last vestiges of his youth' (a T-shirt with a doctored image of Bruce Lee riding on a skateboard, a pair of cut-off camouflage print shorts, and a pair of knock-off Birkenstock sandals). Looking at the reflection of the three of us and our differing interpretations of the theme, the one thing I was sure our individual looks didn't say was: ‘We are going to the beach.'

Collecting together our essentials for the day (books, magazines, suncream) we made our way downstairs. In the hotel lobby there were a few lads milling about wearing only gold jewellery, shorts and trainers. Judging from the peeling skin on their backs they appeared to be veterans of this summer's assault on Malia rather than new recruits like us. Before we left the hotel I thought it wise to ask the Greek girl on the reception desk for directions to the beach. She just laughed and said: ‘Out of the door, take a right, and follow the road to the sea. You can't miss it.'

Stepping outside into the intensity of the sunshine I immediately lowered the sunglasses on my head on to the bridge of my nose and looked around. Last night when we'd arrived I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to our surroundings. In the full glare of daylight I took it all in. The Apollo appeared to be lodged on one of the main roads in the resort as every other frontage was a hotel, car-hire shop or takeaway food emporium. Scattered along the pavements were various groups of young Brits chatting to each other, sipping water or simply posing. Occasionally a delivery truck laden with bottled water or the odd hire car went by but the main source of noise pollution (other than the constant club DJ mix albums being pumped out of speakers located inside every shop) was from the roar of chunky-wheeled quad bikes being driven by lads like the ones at our hotel.