The Holiday (38 page)

Dressed as Hercules, Max was one of the few who wasn’t wearing a sheet. He had plumped for shorts and a Lion King beach towel he had bought in Kassiópi. He had made a tail out of plaited string and sewn it to the bottom edge of the towel, which hung off him like a cloak; anyone who came near him, received a swish of his tail and a flash of his biceps.

Corky was dressed as Zeus, and to complete his sartorial sheeted elegance he had hung a lightbulb round his neck, stuck a three-foot-long cotton wool beard to his chin and fixed a lightning bolt made of cardboard to his chest. Olivia was stylishly decked out as Hera, Zeus’s wife, and she had made herself a sceptre out of a garden cane borrowed from Angelos, which she had wrapped in cooking foil and used to keep Corky in line by poking him with it whenever the mood took her.

The girls had predictably gone for the not-wearing-very-much look. Francesca, dressed as Hebe, the goddess of youth, was barefoot, having laced her feet and lower legs with rose pink ribbons. The sheet she wore, or what there was of it — and Laura was sure that some of her precious bed linen had been sacrificed in the name of adornment — stopped a few inches below her bottom and was held in place by more of the rose pink ribbon to give her a perfect Playtex Cross-Your-Heart-bra outline. She was wearing her hair loose and her lips were heavily painted with red lipstick. Max had swished her with his tail and called her a pouting Botticelli tart.

Like Izzy, Sally had kept her costume a secret right up until the moment she made her entrance into the kitchen earlier that evening, before their guests had arrived. The look on Max’s face when he saw her summed up their collective fear.

‘Is that a muslin drape from your bedroom window that you’re nearly wearing?’ Laura had asked, wishing she had the body to do the same but fearing for every man’s blood pressure.

‘It is,’ said Sally, performing a little twirl for them. ‘Can you guess who I am?’ She held up a makeshift bow and arrow, which action parted the folds in the diaphanous layers of muslin and exposed her breasts. When nobody answered — they were all too stunned — she said, ‘I’m Artemis, the huntress.’

Francesca had laughed loudly. ‘But she was a virgin.’

Sally grinned. ‘Yeah, well, a little artistic licence goes a long way.’

‘I’ll say. Does it extend to wearing any knickers?’

‘I’m wearing a flesh-coloured thong. Look, can’t you see?’

It was an offer that had Max and his father averting their eyes and suggesting it was time for a drink.

Izzy appeared, then, dressed in what the girls called her Lara Croft khaki shorts and vest top. She was carrying a spear made from a garden cane and an impressive shield, made of cardboard and beautifully painted in shades of silver to match the spear. Though her ankle had more or less healed, this evening it was bandaged again and a toy arrow stuck out from her heel where a few drops of red paint had been dabbed on. ‘Achilles,’ she said, ‘in case you were wondering.’

‘My goodness, haven’t we all been inventive?’ said Olivia, ‘How do you think our guests will fare? Will they pass muster?’

The guests, as Laura looked at them all now, had been equally creative, and the only repeat character was that of Hebe. While Francesca was more than qualified to play the part of the goddess of youth, Dolly-Babe was pushing the boundaries of belief a smidgen too far.

The Fitzgeralds had been the first to arrive and, just as Francesca and Sally had predicted, Bob’s only concession to the theme of the party was a balloon at the end of a short length of string pinned to the shoulder of his shirt. It made him look as though he had two heads. It also made him conspicuously awkward, as it bobbed beside his right ear as though agreeing with his every word as he talked to Corky about problems with his business ventures on the island. He sounded more than a little put out that he wasn’t finding things as straightforward as he had expected. He was full of conspiracy theories: of cartels that were freezing out honest men like him, and of red tape that magically appeared from nowhere if the locals didn’t like the look of you. ‘I had a neat little number all lined up with some old peasant who didn’t have a clue what he was sitting on, and just as I was about to get a contract organised, he refused to sell. Said he’d had a better offer. Better offer, my arse!’

Laura hadn’t caught the rest of the conversation because Dolly-Babe had turned to her and said, ‘Gawd, I wish he’d shut up. If I’ve heard him go on about losing that piece of land once, I’ve heard it a million times.’ Laura suspected from the smell of Dolly-Babe and the way she swayed as she leaned into her that she had already had a head start on the drinking before she arrived. ‘So what do you think of my costume?’

‘Oh, very nice,’ Laura had said, casting her eyes over a sparkly Spandex figure-hugging dress that Tina Turner would have been proud of, and a head of hair that was piled higher than normal and threaded through with sequin-covered ribbons.

‘You know, I spent ages trying to decide who to come as, but then I thought, Come on, gal, who else could you be but Hebe, the goddess of youth?’

‘Snap,’ Francesca had said, joining them from across the terrace. ‘I’m her as well.’

Barefoot confidence meets barefaced cheek, Laura had thought, with a private smile.

‘Well, Gawd bless us,’ Dolly-Babe had cried. ‘You know, it was a close-run thing, it was her, or that Afro ... Afro ...’ She had clicked her fingers as if to summon up the name. It had worked. Well, almost. ‘You know, that one into love, Afrodykey.’

The Pattersons had arrived next.

Courtesy of the girls, everyone at Villa Petros had been given an advance-warning thumbnail sketch of Mr and Mrs Patterson and Laura wasn’t at all sure that it had been a good idea to invite them, but having seen so much of their sons she had crossed her fingers and hoped for the best.

Within seconds of hearing and seeing Virginia Patterson, Laura had been plucked from the present and dumped in the past of her schooldays and, in particular, on to the frozen hockey-field where a formidable games mistress had bullied the spirit out of her. Dressed in a crumpled white sheet, her plump feet pushed into flat Ecco sandals, Nick and Harry’s mother had come as Athena, the goddess of wisdom and strength, and now, as she took the glass of Pimm’s that Laura had just fetched for her, it sounded worryingly as if she was going to play her character a little too exact. ‘Of course, if I’d had more warning I would have made a better job of my costume,’ she said airily.

Yes, thought Laura, you might have taken the trouble to iron the sheet. And just as the horrible woman was getting into her stride, her words dried up and her eyes narrowed. Following her gaze, Laura saw that she had caught sight of Sally, who, it had to be said, looked as if she would be more at home in a soft-porn movie than at a holiday drinks party. Behind her large-framed glasses, Virginia’s beady gaze immediately turned to her husband who was making no attempt to hide the fact that he was feasting his eyes on the gossamer vision as she drifted into the arms of his younger son. The good feeling Laura had enjoyed only moments earlier evaporated, to be replaced with concern, as if the mix of people here tonight was going to prove explosive.

But that was nonsense, she told herself. What could possibly go wrong? She looked around the terrace as though seeking confirmation that all would be well, that everyone was still enjoying themselves. Seeing nothing to alarm her, she thought what a shame it was that Theo had had to rush back to Athens that afternoon. ‘I suppose that means Mark won’t come,’ Sally had said, when Izzy told them the bad news, and she crossed his name off the guest list along with Theo’s. Giorgios’ name already had a line through it: he was working in Kassiópi tonight.

‘You sound disappointed,’ Francesca had laughed.

‘It’s all right for you, you’ve got Harry. Now I’m definitely lumbered with Nick.’

Excusing herself from the circle of guests, Laura went inside the villa to fetch a tray of
mezéthes
that Sophia had prepared. When she came back out she saw Virginia Patterson being approached by Dolly-Babe. Feeling the need to intervene, or at least supervise the conversation between these two unlikely bedfellows, she quickly joined them and offered the tray of food.

‘I shouldn’t really,’ said Dolly-Babe, her long-nailed hand playing eeny-meeny-miny-mo. ‘Mm ... they all look so delish. What are these?’

‘I’m not really sure, I didn’t make them, but they might be spinach pies.’

Dolly-Babe’s hand hesitated and she looked up at Virginia. ‘Spanky-what?’

‘Spanakópita,’
repeated Virginia, with an irritating tone of lofty supremacy. ‘That’s the correct Greek name for them.’

Oh, Lord, thought Laura. Was there going to be no let-up from this woman’s need to feel superior to them all? But ever the polite hostess, she said, ‘Nick and Harry were telling me that you live in London. Whereabouts?’

‘Dulwich. You’re from the north, aren’t you?’ She made it sound as if Laura came from the wrong side of the tracks.

Oh, go on, thought Laura, don’t hold back, ask about our pigeons and whippets. ‘Our families are both from Worcestershire,’ she said lightly, ‘but Max and I have lived in Cheshire for many years now.’

‘Now there’s a coincidence. My Bob and me, we lived in Cheshire for a while. In Alderley Edge.’

‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Virginia. ‘Wasn’t there a lot of talk recently on the radio about it being a den of pagans?’

‘That was well out of order, all that stuff and nonsense. Bob and me took great offence to being called pagans. Why, I’m the most spiritual person you’d ever meet.’

‘Really? How interesting.’ Virginia’s voice was spectacularly condescending as she scanned the terrace for a kindred Dulwich soul, but found only her husband leaning in too close to Izzy and taking a peek down her front. Clearly annoyed, Virginia thrust her Pimm’s to her lips and spiked her nose on the cocktail stick loaded with slices of fruit. Laura had to look away to hide a smirk. She saw Olivia coming towards them.

‘Laura,’ she said eagerly, ‘you’ll never believe what Nick’s just been telling us. Apparently Christine and Mikey are here. He says he saw them on the beach this afternoon.’

‘Friends from England?’ asked Dolly-Babe.

Olivia laughed. ‘Goodness me, no! Christine and Mikey are the runaway lovers. You know, the ones in the newspapers. Haven’t you been following their story? We have. Avidly. Isn’t that right, Laura?’

Laura cringed with hypocritical embarrassment. It was all very well showing a keen interest in private towards some racy tabloid titillation, but to admit it in public, and in front of a woman like Virginia Patterson who probably never sullied her mind with anything less worthy than a broadsheet, was too much.

‘What? You mean that disgusting woman and the teenage boy? They’re here?’ Dolly-Babe’s voice was shrill with disapproval. ‘Gawd, it makes me sick every time I read about them. She’s old enough to be his mother.’

‘Talking about the runaway lovers?’ asked Francesca with Sally, Nick and Harry in tow.

‘Nick, I think you have some explaining to do,’ said his mother. ‘What’s all this about you claiming to have seen — ’

‘Relax, Mum, I saw them all right.’

‘So why didn’t you mention it?’

He shrugged. ‘Didn’t think you’d be interested.’

‘But are you sure it was them?’ Laura asked Nick.

‘I’m pretty sure. The age gap is a giveaway.’

‘So if they really are here, where do you suppose they’re staying?’ asked Olivia.

Angelos and Sophia gave them the answer. The couple were staying in the villa owned by the German businessman from Frankfurt.

‘But that’s next door to us!’ cried Dolly-Babe and Virginia Patterson together.

 

From across the terrace, Izzy was only half listening to Adrian Patterson. She was much more interested in what Laura and the others were discussing. She had already tried to give him the slip by saying she needed to go in search of a drink, only for him to follow her.

She had had more than enough of him with his sleazy smile and innuendo-loaded talk of what he did for a living. She had always wondered what kind of person made those dreadful TV programmes. Well, now she knew. The awful thing was, he probably thought she was impressed by what he did. She felt him pressing against her side as he stepped in closer still. ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she said, her patience snapping, ‘I promised Laura I’d help in the kitchen.’ She walked away as fast as her ankle would let her.

Only when she was sure she was going to be left alone - when she saw Adrian Patterson talking to Silent Bob — did she slip outside again. She went and leaned against the wall at the edge of the terrace, away from where everyone else was gathered. Though it was dark now, with insects buzzing around the flaming torches that Max and Corky had lit, the night air fell warm and a soft breeze blew in from the sea. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of contentment.

‘I’m sorry to see that your ankle has taken a turn for the worse,’ said a low voice from behind her. It was so distinctive, it could belong to no one else. ‘Hello, Mark, we didn’t expect to see you tonight. What a lovely surprise.’

Still looking at her
faux-
bloodstained bandage and toy arrow, he said, ‘Yeah, well, I’ve surprised myself. Achilles, I presume?’

‘How very astute.’ Then over his shoulder, Izzy suddenly caught sight of Adrian Patterson heading towards her. ‘There’s somebody I’m trying to avoid,’ she said, slipping behind Mark so that she was out of sight. ‘I don’t suppose you’d do me a favour by sticking around for a few minutes, would you?’

‘Always happy to oblige. Who are you hiding from?’

‘I’ll point him out later.’ When the coast was clear, she said, ‘Do you want a drink? There’s loads to choose from; wine, Pimm’s, beer — she stopped. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot, you don’t, do you?’ She felt herself colour.