Red Ink (21 page)

Then Nikos explained that there was a supermarket just down the hill in the village where you can buy Marmite and PG Tips.

“All these important things,” he went, with a big-eyebrowed smile. Then he laughed, loud, while Paul looked at his feet. Ha ha.

Nikos also told us not to put paper down the toilet and to move the loo roll when you have a shower because Greeks don’t believe in shower curtains and you’ll only get your loo roll wet. So basically he filled us in on all the important things – eating and shitting.

Nikos’s son lugged our suitcases from the hire car into the villa. Haris, his name is. Well, that was how Nikos introduced him. When Nikos was ordering him about he called him ‘Haralambos’. Hilarious. Haris is about the same age as me, with shiny, tanned skin and a gelled front quiff that you’re just dying to reach over and squash. Once he’d done our suitcases, Haris stood in our doorway gawping at me while his dad ran through the local tourist attractions. I tried staring Haris down but that just made him smirk. I don’t know why he was acting so pleased with himself. He was wearing the dodgiest T-shirt I’ve ever seen. It had this ridiculous English slogan:

I
TS
T
HE
N
EW
T
HING!

L
IFE
T
HE
D
REAM,
USA

At one point when his dad was speaking, Haris piped up with, “The pool, it is very deep at one end.”

“Yes,” went Nikos. “Is very deep. More than two metres. You share with other guests. You be very careful.”

Haris grinned at this, like the pool being deep had some kind of double meaning.

In the welcome pack of food there is a bottle of olive oil, a jar of olives, a bottle of wine and some rock-hard bread, so in a way I’m thankful that Paul has been an idiot and brought half of Tesco with him. I know he has teabags and marmalade in that suitcase of his. He was even talking about bringing bacon.

Paul is standing on the small terrace that leads off from the kitchen/living room to look out across the swimming pool, hands resting on the back of his head. His hair has been clipped really short for the trip. His silhouette against the bright blue sky is all head and ears. He does a dramatic oh-it’s-all-so-beautiful sigh. “Let’s get in that pool before it gets dark,” he goes.

It’s five in the afternoon and but the sun is still hot enough to strike you dead.

“Wanna eat these first,” I go, dribbling chocolate milk down my chin.

“I’m going to find my trunks.” Paul bustles back through the living area, off to his suitcase in one of the bedrooms. He’s bagsied the double room. I’m stuck with the twin.

The Coco Pops are hitting the spot. Mum always used to buy Variety Packs.

“This way,” she used to say, “you are not getting bored every morning.”

Paul obviously shares this philosophy.

I stayed overnight at Chick’s once and mentioned to Mrs Lacey at breakfast that we have Variety Packs at home, and Mrs Lacey said they were a really bad thing. I thought she was going to say because of the sugar or the lack of fibre, but no. She said, “Variety Packs don’t teach a child that you have to make choices in life and commit to things.” When she said ‘a child’, she meant me.

Next breakfast with Mum, I parroted back what Mrs Lacey had said and Mum cackled to herself for about five minutes straight.

I’m shovelling down the Coco Pops double-quick, silently thanking Nikos for leaving us a ‘hello to Crete’ half litre of milk in the fridge too. I’m so hungry. The last thing I ate was in a coffee shop at Gatwick at seven thirty this morning. Paul dragged us up there, away from all the good shops on the ground floor, and told me to get a sandwich as there wouldn’t be any food on the plane.

“Yeah, there is,” I told him. “There’s a hot meal.”

“Only if you order it,” he went. “I decided against paying for it. They always taste awful.”

I couldn’t believe it. The best thing about the flight is the food. Everyone knows this.

“Have a sandwich,” he goes, “because they’ll only have crisps on the plane.”

I scanned the glowing fridges. “But I don’t want to eat a chicken and avocado sandwich at seven in the morning.”

“Have a croissant then.”

So I had a croissant and I ate it under protest, while Paul hoovered up a crayfish and rocket sarnie like it was the middle of the day or something.

We didn’t speak. How could he cancel the in-flight meal? I couldn’t look at him. I pretended to be interested in the posters advertising how fresh everything was, and the dead-eyed staff who looked the total opposite of fresh. I wondered if they kept them in the dark, in locked cages in the basement of Gatwick airport, only letting them out to brew up cappuccinos.

“Ta da!” goes Paul. He slides on bare feet across the tiles of the living area. He’s put on bright blue Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, his shades and a floppy hat. I’m supposed to laugh but I can’t find the energy. The whole journey has left me feeling sad, washed out.

“Ready to swim!” he announces, clicking his heels and saluting. I still can’t find a laugh.

Flying just wasn’t the same without Mum. With her it was all about the anticipation. Not about coming to Crete, but about each moment on the journey itself – the take-off, the meal, the Toblerone from the trolley. There was something really thrilling about knowing what to expect. Mum would always get nervous, struggle with her seatbelt, and then try to have a smoke in the loos. Looking back, I see now that she wasn’t actually scared of flying, she was scared of the family at the other end. But now I am scared of flying.

On the plane with Paul I was terrified. Without Mum there to be the scaredy-cat, I had to take on the role. As we walked down the boarding tunnel all I could think about was how people who’ve had near-death experiences say they go down a tunnel. Flying is exactly like dying – you end up in a different place. I hyperventilated, I nearly fainted. Although, maybe it wasn’t a fear of flying exactly. Maybe it was
my
fear of what’s at the other end. In Crete. And at the other end of life too.

Paul drops the clown act and sits opposite me at the kitchen table. He watches me slurp the dregs of the milk.

“They good, were they?”

“Mmm.” I nod.

“Excellent.”

“Did you know breakfast cereals really do actually have iron in them?” I say this to avoid the heart-to-heart conversation that I can see hurtling my way. “You know, like actual iron filings, not just injected vitamins.”

“Yeah?” goes Paul.

“I saw this thing on the telly where a scientist rubbed a magnet over a clear plastic bag of crushed cornflakes and all these bits of grey came to the surface.”

“Wow, that’s good knowledge, Melon.”

Patronising words. He’s softening me up.

“You’d never have known it was there, would you?” I go, running out of things to say.

“What do you want to do this holiday?” Paul asks.

This is it – the serious talk.

“Nothing much. Get her ashes scattered. Get a tan.”

“We’ll go out for some shopping and lunch on Friday for your birthday, of course.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Sixteen!” He does jazz hands when he says this.

“Yes.” I smile. Just a day and a bit left of being a child. Just a sliver.

“And I have a list of archaeological sights that are supposed to be fantastic,” Paul goes, “and then there’s the cathedral and the museums in Chania. So much for us to do.” He says Hania all wrong, with a hard ‘ch’ at the front.

“Yeah?” I push the bowl away. “Great.”

“But what do you want to do while you’re here? We’re here for the ashes, yes, but it’s about you, too.” Paul has flicked on his ‘social worker’ switch. “It’s about tying up any loose ends you might have; it’s about building some bridges.”

“What, with Aphrodite, you mean?”

“If that’s what you want?”

“You must be having a laugh.”

Paul gets up and takes my empty bowl to the sink. There is no dishwasher. Nightmare.

“There is one thing I’d like to do.” It’s easier to say these things without Paul sat right in front of me.

“What’s that?” Paul turns, nodding hard, an eager beaver.

“I know I’ve said this before, probably just to wind you up, but the more I think about it, maybe I should do it, just to see, just to kind of know . . .” I feel silly saying it out loud.

“What?”

“I thought I might try to find my dad.” There. “No offence.”

“No offence taken. You mean, find out about his childhood here.”

“No, actually find my living, breathing dad.”

Paul pulls that worried face, just like the last time I mentioned Christos.

“Your father isn’t here, Melon,” he says firmly. “You won’t find him in Crete.”

It’s strange the way he says this, so definite.

“Oh, yeah?” I say. “Well, where is he, then?” I smirk. Paul may be an expert on crumbling monuments but he’s no expert on this piece of history.

“Ahhhmmm . . .”

That voice. Like he’s preparing a difficult speech.

“He . . . He came over to England with your mum and then . . .” He puts his hand up to his forehead and pinches a section of skin. “Your mother really never told you anything about this?”

“Yeah, I know plenty, thank you very much.”

My turn to speak. My turn to show off my knowledge.

“His name is Christos Drakakis and he was the neighbour’s son and he liked to draw and he was skinny and he never left Crete
actually
and . . .” I’m running out of facts. “And I have a picture of him.”

Paul looks at me, broken. “Your mother told me a different story.”

“I bet she did. Keep you sweet.”

“She . . . No . . .” He closes his eyes, massages his forehead with his thumb now – hard. “She told me a . . . worse story.”

“Worse?” I snort. “How could that story get any more bloody tragic?”

Paul puffs himself up with air, rests his chin on his chest, then lets it out . . . “Your father is dead, Melon, I’m afraid. I really think I should be honest with you about this and . . .”

The floor disappears from under my seat. Suddenly nothing in the room, in the world, is in the right place. How can Paul know this?

He can’t. That’s how. He just can’t.

“He died when you were a baby,” Paul goes on, looking me in the eye. He seems utterly convinced. “You wouldn’t have known about it at the time. It was . . .”

“No.”

“Yes, Melon.”

“That’s bollocks.”

“No.” He flattens down the air with his hands. “It’s not. Don’t you think we would have tried to contact him after . . . After your mum . . . If we knew that he was alive?”

Poppy asked me for Auntie Aphrodite’s number when she visited. She never asked about my dad.

“Okay then,” I go. “How? How did he die?”

He studies me for a few seconds before saying, “A drugs overdose.”

“What, he killed himself? With paracetamol or something?”

“No, he didn’t do it on purpose. It was . . .”

“No,” I say. Enough. I scrape back the chair to put a stop to all this stupid talk.

“Let me finish, Melon.”

“No.” I keep my calm. “Because you have got this all wrong. This is not how The Story goes. I should know. I’ve heard it enough times. It’s even written down.” I stride off towards my bedroom. “And I have pictures,” I call back at him again, in case he didn’t hear it the first time.

In my room, I pop open the catches of my suitcase and pull the black bikini from the zipped compartment inside. My book with The Story is in there too. I flip it open. The photo of Mum with Christos and Yiannis is inside the cover. I examine Christos’s lopsided smile. He’s not dead. I can feel it. I undress and put on my bikini.

Mum’s dove box is propped up against the pillow on one of the beds, watching me. I glare at it.
So speak, will you, settle this for good
. It keeps its trap shut.

I walk back out into the living area with a towel wrapped around me.

“Are you coming for a swim then, or what?” It is my turn to be the cheerful, determined one.

Paul is sitting at the kitchen table, sulking.

“I’m going to give it a miss actually, Melon. You go ahead. Watch out for the deep end.”

“Suit yourself.”

I should stay and talk to him, tell him how things really were, but I’m not in the mood. Mum lied to him, but he’ll get over it. After all, it’s just a story.

When I wake up and wander into the living area, Paul isn’t there. We didn’t mention my dad over dinner last night. We went down the hill to the village and ate at a taverna with a blue-painted terrace and dusty metal chairs. The waiter spoke perfect English but Paul insisted on getting out his phrase book and practising his hopeless Greek. He was
parakaló
-ing and
efharistó
-ing all over the place. He was still thinking about the conversation about my dad though, I could tell.

There is a pot of coffee on the go in the kitchen so I pour a cup and move out of the dark cool of the villa into the blaze of sun on the terrace. The sound of cicadas seesaws in the air. Paul is in the pool, doing lengths. Up and down, swift and expert. Paul is a new person like this, with the water washing away his goofiness.

A cat jumps over the wall as I watch, and starts slaloming round my ankles. Its white limbs are bone and fur, its face is pinched and meatless. It makes Kojak seem like a monster by comparison. I go inside and pour a saucer of milk and head for the terrace, have second thoughts, go back and tip Special K into the milk for extra calories. It feels mean giving diet cereal to a skinny cat but it’s my least favourite of the Variety Pack. And anyway, when I put it down on the terrace, the cat chomps it down as if it’s prime steak.

Paul is out of the water now, dripping up the path to our terrace.

“You’re up,” he calls, cheery.

“Yeah, just going to get my swimming cossie on.”

“Oh.” He stops at the terrace edge, brow furrowed. My plan to sunbathe obviously doesn’t fit in with his timetable for the day.

“What?”

“I was just going to say, stick on some shorts and come with me. I’m going up the road to see this late Minoan tomb. Nikos has just been telling me all about it.” Paul thumbs in the direction of the pool. Nikos is spraying a hose at the base of a tree that looks like a giant pineapple. There is no sign of Haris.