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
