Wish You Were Here

Which reminded her, which books was she going to take? She’d treated herself to a guidebook and a lovely paperback romance called Swimming with Dolphins as well as a funny little hardback she’d found in her favourite second-hand bookshop in Norwich. The book was called Know Your Gods and, as Alice didn’t, she’d bought it.

Their flight to Greece left shortly after seven and Stella refused to drive to the airport so early in the morning and didn’t want to pay the parking charges for the week either.

‘You can pay for a taxi. You are getting a free holiday, after all,’ she told Alice who swallowed hard, held her tongue and made a huge cash withdrawal from a hole in the wall.

Travelling with her sister was a trying experience. She had been the archetypal are-we-nearly-there-yet kid and she hadn’t grown out of that with the passing of the years.

‘I don’t understand why we have to be at the airport so early,’ she complained. Then came, ‘There really isn’t enough leg room for somebody like me. It’s all right for you with your short legs.’ Then, ‘I can’t believe we don’t get a meal on this plane. Not that it would be edible or anything but it’s the principle, isn’t it?’

The world would never please Stella no matter how hard it tried, Alice thought, gazing out of the window and smiling at the intense blue waters far below them as they neared their destination.

The island of Kethos lay in the Mediterranean Sea just off the mainland of Greece. From the air, it looked rather like a squashed heart and Alice wondered if this had anything to do with the Aphrodite legend that was linked to the island.

She picked up her guidebook. ‘Do you want to read this?’ she asked Stella.

‘No, I’m reading this,’ her sister answered, holding up a copy of a glossy gossip magazine. Alice was just about to try and find out more about the famous Greek goddess when the announcement came that they were about to land.

‘About time too!’ Stella said, shoving her magazine into her handbag and reaching for her compact to make sure her face was still immaculate. Alice didn’t bother reaching for hers.

For a moment, she was aware that her sister’s eyes were upon her. ‘You could’ve made an effort,’ Stella told her. ‘Were you in a rush this morning?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Well, just look at you!’

‘We’re travelling, Stella, not attending a party,’ Alice said, noticing her sister’s lacy dress with the plunging neckline.

‘Yes, and you never know who you’re going to meet,’ Stella said, pointedly looking around the aeroplane. ‘Take him over there – he’s quite nice looking. In fact, I might introduce myself.’

‘Stella, you’ve just broken up with Joe.’

‘Oh, that was ages ago!’ she said. ‘And what’s wrong with a bit of flirting, anyway? I’m totally up for a holiday romance and you should be too. Once you get a bit of sun on your face and do something with your hair, that is.’

Alice took a deep breath and counted to ten. She might be getting a free holiday but she knew that it was going to cost her dearly.

Chapter 5

Milo Galani had lived on the island of Kethos for all of his twenty-six years. His brothers – all three of them – had left for the mainland years ago but there was no life there for Milo. He couldn’t imagine living anywhere that wasn’t completely surrounded by the sea and the idea of a city gave him nightmares. He’d once stayed with his eldest brother in his tiny flat in Athens for a whole week and it had nearly killed him. He’d been kept awake all night by the sounds of the city: the police sirens, the drunken party-goers and the incessant mopeds.

When he’d returned to Kethos, he’d vowed he would never leave again. The bruising, bustling city might suit his three brothers but it didn’t suit him. He would rather walk through an olive grove than a crowd and he preferred a rocky mountain track to a shop-lined pavement. The island was like an extension of himself and he knew every field and every cove and he loved them all, especially once the spring arrived, like now.

There were some islanders who objected to the arrival of spring because, just as the island was reawakening after its winter hibernation and the first of the year’s flowers were emerging, the first tourists would arrive and the island would be wrenched from the residents and hauled back into life. There were some residents who lived up in the hills who had nothing to do with the tourists at all. They led solitary lives and were happy to do so. They believed that the island belonged to them and them alone and that the outside world had no business intruding upon it.

Luckily, the objectors to the tourists were in the minority and Milo certainly wasn’t amongst them. He welcomed the new injection of life which the tourists brought – he liked talking to them and hearing about the places they came from and the lives they lived there. It was his way of travelling without actually having to leave his beloved island.

He loved watching the boats chugging across the sea from the mainland and he couldn’t help but stare at the holiday-makers as they disembarked. What had brought them to his little island, he wondered? Were they in search of peace and solitude? Did they come in search of Greek myths and legends?

He was watching them today after doing a spot of shopping in Kethos Town. It wasn’t a large crowd – they would come during the busier summer months – but there was enough to fill a couple of tavernas. He spied an elderly couple who were linking arms. The man looked a little pale after his sea crossing and the woman was patting his hand as if to reassure him it was all over. There was a young family with two children who were tugging their parents along as if they couldn’t possibly wait a moment longer for their holiday to begin.

Then, his eye was suddenly caught by a young woman whose face was full of wonder as she stepped off the boat, her eyes large and searching as if she was trying to take everything in at once, and that made him smile. She looked so thrilled to be there – as she should, of course, but he’d seen some really miserable faces coming off that boat in the past. Like her, he thought, staring at a young woman who was following the smiling girl. She was beautiful with her shoulder-length golden hair and her perfect figure encased in a lacy dress but her face was as grim as a stormy day at sea. There was no joy to be found in it and Milo found his gaze returning to the smiling girl once again. She didn’t have the golden hair or knockout figure of her companion but there was something rather special about her and Milo couldn’t help but wonder if he would see her again. Maybe she’ll come to the gardens, he thought. Yes, let her come to the gardens.

He didn’t have time to hang around the harbour. He had to get to work and, for Milo, that meant a short moped ride to the Villa Argenti high up in the hills on the other side of the island. His boss was leaving the next day and wanted to go through some things with him and that always meant trouble. The sooner he left, the better, Milo thought, and then he would have the place to himself again.

Cedric Carlson was an American businessman who did something in technology. Milo wasn’t quite sure what it was, exactly, but it was obviously something that made a lot of money because Mr Carlson had homes in New York, Los Angeles, London and Milan as well as the Villa Argenti on Kethos where Milo was the groundsman.

Milo loved his job at the villa. He had a team of three part-time gardeners working for him but, most of the time, he had the gardens to himself and that was exactly how he liked it.

When Milo clocked in for work, Mr Carlson was sitting on the veranda with an enormous newspaper obscuring the view and covering almost his entire body. How could he be bothered with such things? Milo wondered. Couldn’t he sit back and luxuriate in the sun and enjoy the view for once? But perhaps that was the difference between the two of them – Milo might be able to enjoy the views that the Villa Argenti gave him but he’d never own them. Owning them took hard work, endless work. There was no time to just sit and stare at things.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Mr Carlson said as he spotted Milo.

‘Yes, sir,’ Milo said, running a hand self-consciously through his dark hair. He’d been told to address Mr Carlson as ‘sir’ on his first morning of employment seven years ago and woe betide him if he ever forgot.

‘I’m leaving for New York in—’ he paused and looked at the very expensive gold watch he was wearing, ‘thirty-eight minutes precisely.’

Mr Carlson liked to be precise and his chauffeur would be fired on the spot if he ever failed to match his boss’s precision.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I’ll be gone for a fortnight.’

Milo nodded.

‘I’ve left a list of things I want doing. It’s all quite straightforward.’

Milo had no doubt that it was. He was used to the lists; his life was dominated by them. Not only would he be handed them by Mr Carlson each week but he would find them all over the gardens too: inside temples, taped to tree trunks and once on the inside of Milo’s favourite wheelbarrow. That had been a classic. It had read:

1. Take this wheelbarrow to the tip.

2. Replace with new one.

3. Store new wheelbarrow away each night.

Milo had ignored it. What Mr Carlson didn’t understand was that an old wheelbarrow was a good one. Its handles were almost a part of the user’s hands because they had worked in perfect harmony for so long. It might not always move in a perfect straight line but that didn’t mean it was ready for retirement. No. Mr Carlson should stick to things he knew and keep out of the garden whenever possible.

Milo listened to the rest of his instructions although there wasn’t really anything new and he nodded politely. He said ‘Yes, sir’ wherever appropriate then wished his boss a good journey and got on with his day’s work, walking down the long straight path lined with trees that was known as ‘The Avenue’. He was going to get on with some work in the kitchen garden today. It was one of the few areas that wasn’t open to the public and was hidden behind a large wall which harvested the best of the sunshine and produced bowlfuls of fruit on the trees grown against it.

Milo loved the kitchen garden because it was private and he was rarely disturbed there. In the other parts of the garden, he was always at the mercy of the tourists with their questions and their cameras. If he had a euro for every photo he’d taken of tourists, he could probably afford to buy the Villa Argenti himself, he thought.

But, before he could reach his sanctuary, he saw a figure half-hiding in the shadows of a wall and he instantly knew who it was. Sabine – ‘The Pushy French Girl’ – as he had come to think of her. It wasn’t really her fault. She was sixteen and was on holiday with her family and bored out of her mind. She’d been visiting the gardens with her parents one Tuesday afternoon and had taken one look at Milo and decided that she’d spend the rest of her time on Kethos trying to seduce him. It wasn’t bad as fates went, Milo thought, and goodness only knew that he’d had his fair share of holiday romances with tourists. There was obviously something about being a gardener, he’d decided, that attracted women. Perhaps they liked men who worked with their hands in the great outdoors and it was certainly more original to fall for a Greek gardener than it was a Greek waiter.

He took a deep breath and walked towards her. Be brusque, he told himself.

‘What are you doing here, Sabine?’ he asked as he continued walking. He spoke in English in which she was also fluent.

‘Keeping you company,’ she said, running to catch up with him, her long blonde ponytail swinging about her bare shoulders.

‘I don’t need company. I’m very busy. How did you get in, anyway? We’re not open yet.’

‘I climbed over the wall.’

‘Where?’

‘I’m not telling you. You’ll fence it off.’

‘That’s right,’ Milo said. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’

‘But the gardens are open to everyone, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, but not you,’ he said.

‘Why not me?’

‘Because you should be with your family.’

‘Oh, they’re so boring!’ she said, puffing her cheeks out and sighing dramatically. ‘They do nothing all day!’

‘That can’t be true.’

‘But it is!’ Sabine said. ‘Dad sits around reading his boring books and Mum just sunbathes.’

‘I thought you were going to the museum?’

‘Oh, God! That was even more boring than sitting around the pool.’

Milo frowned. The little museum on Kethos might not be able to rival anything on the mainland but Milo was very proud of it and he objected to people who made fun of it. So it might only have two rooms but it housed a very interesting collection of coins and pottery.

‘Well, what do you want to do all day?’ he asked and then realised that he shouldn’t have.

‘I want to be with you,’ she said, her green eyes large and wide.

‘But I’m at work.’

‘There’s nobody around,’ she said, still running to keep up with him.

‘Sabine!’ he said sharply, stopping in the middle of the path so abruptly that she crashed into him. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said coyly, fluttering her obscenely long eyelashes at him and smiling prettily. She really was very attractive. She was tall for her age too and her figure was full and—

Milo stopped. She was sixteen years old and, although that might all be legal and above board, she was still a child. She might have the body of a woman but she behaved like a petulant teenager and he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. It was courting disaster.

‘Sabine,’ he tried again.

‘Yes?’ she said, tilting her head to one side and giving him her full attention.

‘You have to go.’

‘Oh, not yet!’

‘Yes, you do. I really have to get on with my work and you can’t come with me.’

She pouted at him. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But say something in Greek first.’

‘What?’

‘Say something in Greek – anything! Go on!’

‘Sabine!’

‘Go on!’ she pleaded.

‘And then you’ll go?’

‘Yes,’ she promised with a nod.

Milo took a deep breath and told her – in Greek – that she was a spoilt young girl who should really know better and that he didn’t want her getting him into trouble.

‘Oh!’ she said once he’d finished. ‘That’s so romantic!’

He shook his head at her and then pointed towards the exit.

‘All right, I’m going,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Sabine – no!’ But she’d trotted off and pretended not to hear him. It was Milo’s turn to sigh. Why, oh why, couldn’t he meet a nice normal girl?

Chapter 6

One taxi, one plane, one boat and another taxi later, and Alice and Stella were finally holding the keys to their villa. The taxi had dropped them outside a large pair of iron gates and Alice looked at them in surprise.

‘Are you sure we’re at the right place?’ she asked Stella.

‘Joe obviously knew my taste,’ Stella said, acknowledging the splendour with a brief glance. ‘Come on, help me with my bags.’

Stella sauntered through the gates and Alice followed with the bags, smiling at the tree-lined driveway that led to the villa.

‘This is beautiful!’ she said, between short breaths as the luggage weighed her down. The villa was a dazzling white and its brilliant turquoise shutters couldn’t fail to make you smile. Well, they failed to make Stella smile – she was frowning down at her dress on which a large beetle had landed.

‘Ewww!’ she cried, flicking the offending creature off her. ‘What kind of a place is this?’

‘A foreign one,’ Alice dared to say, producing another key as they reached the enormous wooden front door. It opened with a long, low groan and the hallway that greeted them was large and echoey with a flagstoned floor which made everything feel wonderfully cool. Alice looked up at the lofty ceiling and then back down at the floor which could easily accommodate a grand ball. ‘This place is huge!’ she said with a whistle.

‘Yes, well Joe always knew I never settled for second best,’ Stella said, making her way to the sweeping staircase in order to choose the best bedroom for herself. ‘Bring my bags up,’ she said as an afterthought.

Alice stared at her, dumbfounded for a moment.

‘Oh, you know how much stronger you are than I am,’ Stella added with a tiny smile.

Alice rolled her eyes at the insincere flattery and then struggled up the stairs behind Stella, watching as she viewed all five of the bedrooms before picking the largest room for herself. It had an enormous four-poster bed draped with a white canopy, a gigantic en suite and a long balcony that overlooked the coast to the east of the property.

‘Just put my things there,’ Stella said, motioning to Alice whilst she flopped down on the immaculate white bed. ‘It’s probably best if you hang my dresses up before they’re creased out of all recognition.’

Alice glanced at her sister. Was she serious? Alice had half a mind to tell her where she could stick her dresses when Stella stopped her.

‘You know you do a much better job of it than I do,’ she said.

Once again, Alice caved in. It wouldn’t take her long and, if she didn’t keep Stella sweet, there’d be all sorts of hell to pay, she was quite sure of that.

‘I’m off to find a room for me now,’ Alice said a moment later, having hung up her sister’s clothes.

Stella groaned from the bed and swatted a hand in Alice’s direction as if dismissing her. Relieved that she could have some time to herself at last, Alice walked out onto the landing and looked around. There were two large double bedrooms either side of Stella’s and one small single at the end of the corridor. She headed to the single. Privacy, she thought, was more important than size.

Like Stella’s room, the colours were soft and muted: the bed was a vision of white, and pale blue curtains fluttered in the breeze when Alice opened the windows. She didn’t have a balcony but the room did have an unrivalled view down to the harbour at Kethos Town and Alice stood looking at it for a few moments, watching the boats bobbing about on the glassy, blue-green water.

‘Am I really here?’ she asked herself as she gazed at some distant mountains that rose and fell like the back of a sleeping beast. ‘Am I really on holiday?’ She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper holiday that involved going abroad. She hadn’t been able to afford more than a couple of weekends away over the last few years and they’d been a very modest hotel break in the Lake District where she’d been rained on for an entire weekend, and a couple of nights in a youth hostel in Derbyshire where she’d had to share a room with a party of fifteen hyper schoolgirls. Not exactly the stuff of envy-inducing postcards. But here she was and it was a wonderfully sunny April day and the cold, grey days of the English winter that had seemed to drag on forever were now far behind her.

She glanced around her room again and then decided to do a bit of exploring, gasping at the enormous bathroom with walk-through shower and roll-top bath and the window looking straight out to sea.

Descending the staircase, Alice found an enormous modern kitchen with gleaming black worktops, a dining room with a table that sat twelve people and a living room filled with enormous white sofas. There were also doors out onto a terrace and Alice’s eyes widened in wonder when she saw the swimming pool beyond them. It was a traditional rectangular shape with a mosaic of pale tiles around it. There were sun loungers, an umbrella, a scarlet hammock and a barbeque – everything the holidaymaker could possibly want. There was even a large table and chairs under the shade of a pretty pergola over which clambered a magenta bougainvillea, its flowers dazzlingly bright against the blue sky above.

Beyond the terrace was an olive grove before the land dipped down and headed steeply towards the sea, punctuated every now and then with the tall, dark spires of cypress trees. It was the stuff of fantasies and, for a moment, Alice felt guilty for being there. After all, Joe had booked this holiday and he must have paid an absolute fortune for it but Alice couldn’t help thinking that maybe he’d thought it was worth missing out on it to be shot of Stella.

A huge bubble of excitement rose within her and, not wanting to waste a single moment, she decided that they should go straight down to Kethos Town and get something to eat, do a bit of shopping and stock up on supplies so they could cook at the villa.

Walking back upstairs, she popped her head round Stella’s bedroom door. She was still on the bed and her eyes were closed.

‘Do you want to get something to eat?’ Alice whispered.

‘What?’ Stella croaked without opening her eyes.

‘I’m going to walk into town and get some food.’

‘Some Greek food?’

‘I imagine so.’

‘No thanks,’ Stella said. ‘I’ve brought some cereal bars with me.’

Alice wrinkled her nose. Her sister had flown all this way to fall asleep and eat cereal bars.

‘Well, I’m going out, okay?’

‘Knock yourself out,’ Stella said before rolling over on the bed and burying her head further into her pillow.

Alice returned to her bedroom and changed from the jeans she had been wearing on the plane and opened her suitcase to reveal the summery clothes she’d optimistically packed. There were T-shirts in cream and navy and – Alice’s hand hovered over a third – grey. She didn’t dare wear grey in Greece. Stella would kill her if she did and, for once in her life, Alice didn’t want to wear grey either. The brilliant colours of the island seemed to be whispering to her, persuading her to be a little more adventurous with her palette.

Ditch the grey, it seemed to say. Only she seemed to have an awful lot of it. Even one of her dresses had grey in it. It was only a background, mind, hiding behind the pretty pink roses but it was there all the same.

‘Best to avoid,’ she said to herself, her hands reaching under the layers of grey, white and navy and pulling out her one magnificent piece of colour. She caught her breath as she saw it because it was so un-Alice like. She remembered the day she’d bought it. She’d seen it on the sale rail of a shop she normally walked right by without even glancing at because it just wasn’t the sort of shop someone like Alice went into but it had beckoned her in, urging her to take it home with her and now, holding the light folds of turquoise between her hands, she was so glad of her impulse buy. It was the one truly beautiful thing she owned and she was going to wear it right now.

First, she took off the rest of the drab clothes she’d been wearing on the flight and ran into the shower, washing away the weariness that comes from travelling. Then she combed her hair. Being fine, it would dry quickly in the sun.

Returning to her suitcase, she pulled out the turquoise dress. The little buttons down the front winked in the sunny bedroom and the fabric felt so luxurious against her skin, tickling her knees with its softness. If only she had some pretty piece of jewellery. If only she could borrow one of Stella’s necklaces. She had heaps and heaps but, the problem was, Stella wasn’t exactly a sharing sort of sister. Growing up, they’d never swapped make-up, and the idea of sharing or lending was abhorrent to Stella.

‘But she never needs to know,’ Alice thought, thinking that her sister must have packed a veritable treasure trove of jewellery judging by the weight of her luggage and Alice couldn’t help feeling entitled to borrow a piece seeing as she’d carried it all.

With silent bare feet, Alice peeped round Stella’s door. She was fast asleep on the bed and was snoring like an angry volcano. Alice spied the suitcase. She’d already hung up all the clothes on her sister’s command but knew there must be a jewellery box or roll still hiding there so she crossed the room to where she’d left it.