The Holiday (20 page)

Having spent so much time in the quiet seclusion of Áyios Nikólaos, the brash commercialism of Paleokastritsa had come as something of a culture shock. Despite the warnings in the guidebooks that the area was one of the island’s top tourist attractions, nothing had prepared Izzy for the sight that had met them after they had driven through the twisting, rural landscape and arrived to find hundreds of people spilling out of rows of coaches and all dashing for the sun-loungers and fringed umbrellas on the beach. For all that, though, the resort was breathtakingly beautiful, with its unbelievably clear water and dramatic cliffs, and Izzy was glad she had tagged along for the day. Thinking that Max and Laura might prefer to spend a day alone with his parents, she had mentioned to them last night that she would stay behind, but they would have none of it. ‘For heaven’s sake, stop being so considerate,’ Laura had said.

‘Quite right,’ Max had agreed. ‘You’re not an optional extra, Izzy, you’re here on holiday with us, so you can jolly well pull your weight when it comes to joining in with the fun. There’ll be no slacking from anybody.’

It was a funny phrase to use —
optional extra —
but it came close to how, as a child, Izzy had sometimes seen herself. Though a more precise analogy was that she had viewed herself as one of those free gifts in the cereal packet: something that nobody needed.

She couldn’t be the first person who had grown up knowing that her birth had not been a much longed-for event. There had certainly been no planning for hers, no sense of joyful anticipation. But how could there have been, when her mother had been through the process once before, pinning all her happiness and expectations on a tiny boy who had died within days of his arrival in the world?

Without him knowing it, that child’s whole life had been mapped out for him in his mother’s mind. He would have been perfect in every way; the gifted son every parent would have wanted. Clever. Handsome. Kind. Loving. Musical. Artistic. Nothing would have been beyond his capabilities. He would have excelled at school, college, and in his career. And it would have been no ordinary career. He would have been dynamic. A key player. A man to be admired.

Izzy knew all this because her mother had raised her on a daily diet of everything her dead brother would have been. No one else would listen. No one cared enough. Izzy had taken it upon herself to be her mother’s audience and had listened attentively, as if her life depended on it.

It was an unworthy thought, but she believed that John Richard Jordan had been fortunate not to survive. He had got off lightly. How could he have hoped ever to live up to his mother’s expectations?

No expectations had been laid down for Izzy when, five years later, she had been born. From an early age she heard her mother arguing with her father, blaming him for whatever trouble Izzy had caused that day, blaming him for her very existence.

One of her earliest memories was of feeling sorry for her father. How awful it must be for him, she had thought, watching his sad face as he sat reading a book. From then on she had tried hard to please her mother, always to keep on her good side. Because if she could do that, she told herself, her father wouldn’t be blamed and he might smile at her. With steadfast determination she learned where it was safe to tread, and where the landmines of her mother’s black moods were hidden. She learned the importance of being invisible and when to hide from her mother when she was in the throes of one of her terrifying rages, which came from nowhere but always had to run its course.

It was such a strain and it made her an uneasy child, never comfortable with herself — or with anyone else, for that matter. She was quick to make mistakes and quicker still to be flustered over the slightest things. She was accident-prone too, which only added to her mother’s frustration. She tried to be careful — to pick up her feet, to watch where she was going, to hold the glass properly, not to bang the door shut — but it rarely worked and a stinging hand would catch her on the back of her head, making her eyes feel loose and her ears ring. Often she would go to school with vivid bruises on her arms and legs and had to pretend to anyone who asked that she had tripped and fallen over in the garden.

She had assumed, in the way that children do with their trusting, unquestioning acceptance, that whatever went on at home was normal, that all children had to dodge blows. Didn’t all mothers scream at their daughters that they hated them, that they wished they were dead? It never occurred to her that it could be different. Not until it was too late, when shame kept her mouth shut, preventing any words of disloyalty slipping out

She had never forgotten the day she broke one of her mother’s statues. Or its consequences. She was helping to clear away the breakfast things when she accidentally knocked a tight-lipped lady in a rose-pink crinoline dress off the draining-board where, along with her silent partners, she was waiting to be dusted. Only five years old, Izzy knew she was in trouble. She had stared down at her feet, at the pieces of china on the grey-tiled floor, then slowly, holding her breath, she had found the courage to raise her eyes to her mother’s face. For the longest of moments their eyes had met and held. Then hands reached out to her, and the room began to move, the walls bending like those weird mirrors at the funfair.

She was being shaken.

Up and down, backwards and forwards, her head snapping painfully on her neck.

Then she was spinning, round and round.

Everything was moving.

The kitchen clock whizzed by.

Followed by the cooker.

Then the big cupboard where they kept their coats and shoes, the carpet-sweeper with the little swirly brushes that stuck out at the front and back.

She saw the table she had been helping to clear: the plates; the bowls; the packet of cornflakes; the metal teapot, and the little milk jug. But it was all moving so fast, their shapes and colours blurred in a whirlpool of surreal confusion, just like in
The Wizard of Oz.

Faster and faster the room went.

She felt hot.

Clammy.

Dizzy.

And frightened that she was going to be sick.

Her legs felt loose as they dangled beneath her. One of her slippers flew off. Her teeth were clattering inside her head. Her ribs were hurting, something was crushing them. She wanted to scream but she could hardly breathe. She closed her eyes, wanting it to stop. Then suddenly there was a crash and a thud that hurt more than anything else had. But at last it had stopped. The room was still.

When she opened her eyes nothing made sense. Everything was a mess. Her mother was on her knees, surrounded by upturned chairs, bits of broken china and glass. She was crying. Her father was there. And he was shouting. She had never heard him shout before. It scared her more than all the blood that was coming from her head. Frightened, she began to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed, when she felt her father’s arms around her, ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’

It was a poor excuse he had given, and not for one moment did Mark think Theo had been taken in by his claim that he needed to work that evening. Besides, his friend understood well enough that a neighbourly drinks get-together was never going to be high on his list of hot options. So, having passed up the opportunity to spend an evening dodging a zealous hostess with an overflowing drinks tray, he was going for a quiet walk around Kassiópi to explore the harbour.

He set off shortly after Theo had left for next door. The day he had arrived, Theo had shown Mark a footpath situated just yards from the end of his oleander-lined drive. It went through the nearby olive grove and, according to his friend, was a handy short-cut into Kassiópi. He followed the stony, uneven path for a while then remembered with annoyance that Theo had said it was advisable to take a torch when using this route late at night. It was light now, but give it a couple of hours and it would probably be pitch black. Well, he could either risk it or come back the long way via the road, though even then he would have the last hundred yards of ankle-turning potholed track to negotiate in the darkness. Despite his misgivings he pressed on, the parched grass swishing at the bottoms of his jeans, the low branches of the olive trees nearly catching his head, and the cool evening air rich with the scent of wild garlic and thyme.

The rock-studded path rose steeply, deceptively so, until finally it flattened out and he came to a clearing. He paused to catch his breath, and cursed himself for his lack of fitness. Then he heard something move behind him. He stiffened. He turned slowly. Nothing. He let out his breath, swallowed the lump of fear that had lodged in his throat, then pushed a hand through his hair. Just as he had convinced himself he had imagined it, he caught a faint rustle of something —
someone —
moving in the dried tangle of undergrowth. A rush of adrenaline surged through his bloodstream and he clenched his fists.

Then he saw it.

Relief made him laugh out loud. ‘Jeez, a bloody tortoise!’ He went over to take a closer look. ‘Well, I was pretty sure this wasn’t bandit country,’ he said, bending down to inspect the scaly expressionless face. Beady eyes peered back at him, then the long neck, face and curved stumpy legs withdrew into the safety of the shell. ‘Don’t blame you, mate,’ said Mark, straightening up. ‘I know the feeling.’

He had only been walking a short while when a dog leaped up against a fence and barked at him. Once again the suddenness made him start. Not only am I the most unfit man who ever lived, he thought angrily, I’m probably the most neurotic. His annoyance stayed with him as he walked on. How long was it going to take him to lose this irrational fear and realise that he was quite safe? There was no way that the nutter who had been sending him those letters back in England could be stalking him here. Nobody, other than his agent, publishers and family knew he was here.

Rule number one, he told himself firmly, going over familiar ground, don’t let it get to you. It’s what goes on inside your head that causes all the damage. It’s what all stalkers set out to do. They want their victim to become as obsessed with them as they are with you.

But it didn’t matter how many times he repeated this calming mantra to himself, or reminded himself that he had written an entire novel based on the theory of what goes on in a stalker’s mind, he couldn’t shake off the anger that this unknown man — and, yes, he was sure it was a man — had the power to invade his life in the way he had. That even here, thousands of miles from home, his pernicious presence could still get to Mark.

Back in England Mark had got used to looking over his shoulder: it had become part of his routine. It had turned a walk up the hill to the post office into a bizarre parody of Cold War espionage. Locking his door, he would glance right, then left, walk a little distance, then stop to retie a shoelace, or maybe pause in front of the gift shop to take a furtive look around him. But it was always the same; the only person acting strangely was himself. Paranoid was not a word he wanted to start using about his behaviour — it reminded him of his cokehead days — but it was there waiting in the wings of his mind.

By the time he reached Kassiópi, he had calmed down and was looking forward to sitting in a bar with a cup of coffee and watching the world go by. It was busier than he had expected, and as he walked along the main street, lost in the crowd of suntanned tourists looking for somewhere to eat, he took pleasure from knowing that he was just another anonymous face in the crowd. He chose what appeared to be the busiest bar and a table close to the road, which gave him the best vantage-point to see everything that was going on.

Across the road was a small square, occupied mostly by the village elders. Sitting on green wrought-iron seats, chatting and smoking, their lives seemed untouched by the noisy, incongruous mix of people around them. No doubt they had seen it all before: the young British men with their cropped hair, earrings and tattoos; the Scandinavian contingent marked out by their startlingly blond hair, long legs and enormous feet in Ellesse flip-flops; and the girls, of whatever nationality, wearing more makeup than clothing. It was probably a safe bet to say that nothing surprised these local folk any more.

A waiter took Mark’s order and brought it to him with smooth efficiency. To his shame, and even after such a long-standing friendship with Theo,
‘Éna kafé parakaló,’
was just about the extent of Mark’s Greek. At college he had secretly envied Theo’s effortless ability to switch between English, German, Italian and Greek. Not that he had ever said as much. In those days he could never have openly admitted that Theo, or anyone else, was better at something than him. But age and experience had mellowed him and now he had no trouble in giving Theo the credit he deserved. But, then, he had always known that Theo was a far better man than he was or ever could be. He had hinted as much to Bones, during one of their spilling-the-guts-of-his-deepest-and-innermost-feelings sessions. ‘And is that something you wish you could be?’ had been Bones’s measured response.

‘What are you getting at now?’

‘I was asking if it was important to you to feel that you were Theo’s equal. Or, indeed, anybody’s equal. Because you don’t, do you, Mark? Beneath the outward show of swaggering arrogance and conceit that has taken everybody else in, you know that it’s all a lie. You’re convinced that you’re nobody’s equal. Am I right?’

‘Equality is something we have to strive for.’

‘Is it? How strange. I thought we were put on this earth with nothing but our circumstances dividing us from others. So what is it about Theo that makes you think he’s more special than you are? I recall only a few weeks ago, when he brought you here, you were claiming he was nothing short of ...’ he lowered his eyes to the notes he had made in his file ‘... ah, yes. “An effing devil in cashmere” is what you called him. My, how quickly your opinion has changed.’