The Holiday (25 page)

Thanking them for the lift and watching their hire car disappear down the drive, he began to change his opinion of Dolly-Babe. Behind the glossy make-up, the too young designer frocks, the sunglasses and the ridiculous belief that some Mystic Meg at the other end of a telephone line had the answers to what lay ahead for her, there was a sad and lonely woman. A woman who, while her husband was playing the big wheeler-dealer, probably drank more than was good for her. It made him wonder what she was running away from.

 

They had long since finished breakfast — fresh figs, toast with local honey and a pot of coffee — and had moved into the shaded area of the terrace, which was covered by a pergola of twisted vine. Theo was explaining to Izzy how the fruit above their heads, green and tiny now, would grow into fat red grapes that would be harvested in the autumn and made into wine. She was looking at Theo with what Mark could only describe as a private half-smile, as though she had just thought of something that amused her. He was intrigued to know what it was.

‘Don’t you believe a word of it, Izzy,’ he said, as he heard Theo trying to convince her that he would be taking off his socks and shoes to help Angelos tread the grapes. ‘Can you imagine him risking his expensive handmade clothes with such dirty work?’

‘Ha! And do you see so much as a callus on my friend’s hands?’ asked Theo. ‘He is no more a sweaty son of the soil than I am. Ever since I have known him, he has tried to make himself out to be a friend of the people, a working-class hero, but it is nothing more than an act with him. Don’t let him fool you, Izzy.’

‘I think if I have any sense at all I won’t let either of you fool me,’ Izzy said, with a laugh. ‘Are you always like this?’

‘Like what?’ asked Theo.

‘So rude and horrible to each other.’

‘This is us being nice to each other,’ said Mark. ‘You should be around when we’re going at it hammer and tong.’

‘And who usually gets the upper hand?’

‘You think that I, Theo Vlamakis, would let a fraud like Mark get the better of me? Tsk, tsk, Izzy, you disappointment me. I never lose at verbal fisticuffs.’

‘The hell you don’t! I let you win occasionally just so you don’t lose heart.’

‘But I allow you to think that you have let me win so that your poor little ego can give itself a pat on its back.’

‘Oh, you poor sick bastard, how did you ever climb to the top of the food chain?’

Theo turned to Izzy with a triumphant smile. ‘There! You see how easily I have won the argument? When Mark resorts to profanity, it is because he knows he is losing the debate. He is a hopeless case, but one I take pity on. More coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I really ought to be going.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Goodness! Just look at the time. Laura will be wondering where I am.’ She picked up her bag, slipped it over her shoulder and got to her feet. ‘I had no idea I’d been here so long. I hope I haven’t kept you from anything important.’

‘Not at all,’ urged Theo. ‘But calm yourself, there’s no need to hurry. It is but a short walk to next door.’

They saw her to the wooden gate that led to the path which would take her back to Villa Petros. ‘And thank you again for breakfast,’ she said, as she turned to leave them, ‘I really enjoyed it. You’ve both cheered me up.’

‘You will come again, perhaps? When you are in need of more cheering up?’

She didn’t answer Theo’s question, but gave him a flicker of a smile. Then she waved goodbye and hurried away.

Watching her go, Theo sighed. ‘You know, Mark, I was very cross with you earlier for bringing Izzy here when I was in no state to be seen, but it seems that once again I am in your debt. How did you persuade her to come?’

Mark shrugged. ‘She mentioned that she felt bad about last night and asked if I would pass on an apology to you. I simply said that apologies were best made in person.’ ‘As easy as that?’

Mark slapped him on the back. ‘Yeah, old mate, as easy as that.’

A week later when Theo asked Izzy to have dinner with him, the response at Villa Petros was mixed.

Laura just smiled knowingly behind
Captain Corelli,
which she still hadn’t finished, and Max slipped into old-fashioned parental mode, warning Izzy not to take any nonsense from Theo. ‘Don’t give him so much as a hint of encouragement,’ he muttered darkly, leaning against the balustrade on the terrace and watching Theo make his way back down the path towards his own villa.

Francesca nudged Sally. ‘Good to see somebody else getting the treatment that’s usually reserved for me.’

‘I don’t see why Izzy shouldn’t encourage him,’ said Olivia. ‘He’s a perfect dear, utterly adorable.’

‘Oh, good Lord,’ said Corky, glancing in Max’s direction, ‘I knew that late-night Greek lesson would be a mistake. That fellow’s unleashed something dangerous in your mother.’

‘Well, if Izzy changes her mind, I’ll be more than happy to fill in for her,’ said Sally. ‘Two minutes’ notice would be all I’d need to get this body buffed up ready for him.’

‘More like an entire afternoon,’ sniggered Francesca.

Sally dealt her a nifty swipe with the magazine she was reading. ‘Two minutes and I’d be irresistible to him. I’d have him panting at my feet.’

‘Yeah, but he’d still be two decades older than you,’ laughed Francesca. She raised herself from her sun-lounger. ‘Come on, let’s go for a swim and see if those Patterson boys are out and about.’

Izzy watched the two girls gather together their towels, flip-flops, sunglasses and bottles of Ambre Solaire, then picked up Sally’s well-thumbed copy of
Cosmopolitan,
opened it at random and hid behind it, not wanting to catch anybody’s eye, especially not Laura’s. Too much had already been said on the subject of her having dinner with Theo and she really didn’t want the fuss to continue. She felt a little as though she had been tricked into accepting his invitation. He had made it in front of everyone and she had known that she would have looked rude and churlish if she had said no. Although, curiously enough, she hadn’t wanted to say no.

Since last week when she had made her peace with Theo he had behaved with impeccable restraint towards her. Not that they had seen much of him. Like Max, he had been busy with work — much to Laura’s disappointment Max had even flown home for three days of important meetings. But when she had seen Theo, it had been down on the beach, before anyone else was up and while she had been sketching the bay. He would come and sit next to her after his early-morning swim. Yesterday Mark had joined them too, though he hadn’t swum.

‘Don’t you like swimming?’ she had asked him.

‘I could ask the same of you,’ he had said.

‘It’s too early for me. Too cold. I need the sea to have warmed up before I venture in.’

‘Then that’s the excuse I shall use as well. May I see?’

She passed him her sketchpad and watched his face for his reaction.

‘I thought you said you weren’t any good at this game?’

She looked critically at the charcoal drawing, a view of the headland showing Theo’s villa peeping through the cypress trees. ‘It’s one of my better attempts.’

‘So what are the bad ones like?’ He began flicking through the pages, but Izzy remembered that the pad contained the drawing she had done of him some weeks earlier and snatched it out of his hands.

‘That bad, eh? Well, I suppose we all underestimate our talents.’

‘Even you?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Implying that I don’t seem the type to be insecure?’

‘You seem very confident to me.’

‘It’s all a front. I’m as riven as the next artistic soul.’

She laughed.

‘Why do I get the feeling you’re not taking me seriously?’

‘Perhaps I should read one of your books. Maybe then I’d be able to judge you better. Reading between the lines, I might get to see the real you.’

He feigned a look of hurt pride and put a clenched fist to his heart. ‘You mean you haven’t read one of my novels? I’m deeply wounded.’ Then, dropping the act, he said, ‘So if you don’t like my kind of fiction, what do you read?’

‘All sorts,’ she said evasively. She let a handful of sand slip through her fingers, strongly suspecting that he would frown upon her choice of reading matter which usually contained romance and a happy ending.

‘And specifically?’ he pressed. ‘What was the last book you read?’

‘Don’t let him bully you, Izzy.’ Theo had emerged from the water. ‘He is too used to mixing with literary snobs to appreciate that some people read for pleasure and escape rather than to be lectured.’

‘That’s simply not true, Theo, as well you know. I’ve never been able to abide that affected attitude. Pejorative conceit is what I’ve always fought against. Perhaps you should let Izzy speak for herself.’

They both looked at her, each waiting for her to take their side.

‘Um ... I think I’d rather leave you both to it,’ she said, feeling that she couldn’t answer one without offending the other. She put her things into her bag and stood up.

‘You see what you’ve done, Mark?’ Theo exclaimed. ‘With your intimidating arrogance you have scared her away.’

‘Hey, she was fine until you poked your nose in.’

‘Stop it, you two.’ She had laughed. ‘I have enough of bickering children during term-time. When I’m on holiday I expect a break from it.’

They had been quick to apologise, and Theo said, ‘Come and have breakfast with us and we’ll prove to you that we can behave quite civilly.’

‘And if we misbehave you can scold us again,’ smiled Mark. ‘You do it so beautifully.’

‘Another time perhaps,’ she had said. ‘It’s my turn this morning to go up to Nicos and fetch the rolls and croissants for everybody.’

That had been yesterday, and this morning Theo had appeared with a present for her. It was a book. ‘It’s from both of us and is by way of an apology for behaving like two naughty schoolboys yesterday. You mentioned to Mark that you were interested in reading one of his books and he wondered if you would enjoy this one. It is his first, and possibly his least bloodthirsty, but by no means the least unnerving. Please, borrow it for as long as you wish.’

She had read the blurb on the jacket and, under everyone’s gaze, had opened the book and read the printed dedication: ‘To Theo, because he was stupid enough to care.’ Underneath was written, in a large loose hand, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going soft on you - Mark.’

Intrigued, she had asked, ‘What did you care so much about?’

He had closed the book in her hands, flashed her one of his brilliant smiles, and said, ‘Have dinner with me tonight and I’ll tell you.’

Confident now that everybody was going to leave her alone, she put down Sally’s magazine and reached for the book Theo had brought for her. Its title -
Culling The Good
- didn’t give the impression that she was in for a light-hearted romp. She looked at the photograph of Mark on the inside back flap: it showed him leaning against a wall in a darkened archway, his arms folded across his chest. He was wearing a leather jacket and an air of open hostility. The photographer must have spent an age getting the light and shadows just right, ensuring that they fell across his cheekbones to accentuate their sharpness as well as hollow out his eyes and emphasise the slight twist to his mouth. His hair was shorter than it was now, savagely so, and gave him a chilling insolence that was as disagreeable as it was threatening. He looked quite terrifying, the kind of man anyone with any sense would cross the road to avoid late at night. “The new prince of darkness,” was one of the quotes on the back of the book, and certainly the man in the picture gave the appearance of more than living up to that description. Yet it was difficult to equate the man she had met, who made her smile with his unexpected humour, with the bleak person portrayed here. She turned to the author’s biographical notes, to see if she could learn more about him, but there was only the year in which he had been born and the wide-ranging number of jobs he had had a go at: she could quite easily see him as a cub reporter, but not as a milkman. Nor could she visualise him working in a funeral parlour. Perhaps it was
de rigueur
to have an off-the-wall CV if you were going to be a successful author.

Exactly on time, Theo brought his car to a halt outside Villa Petros. He had been ready for over half an hour, but Mark had insisted that he play it cool. ‘Early just won’t do at all,’ he had said.

‘And you would know, would you?’ Theo had thrown at him, while fiddling with his keys and checking his shirt collar in the mirror.

‘Okay, I might not have your experience, but I know for sure that women don’t like to be surprised when they’re getting ready. Hurry her through those last few moments and the evening could be a disaster. She’ll spend the first thirty minutes worrying that her makeup isn’t right, or cursing you for making her forget those essential pieces of jewellery.’