staring proudly up at the circle of yellow stars that had come to represent a force for good in his eyes.
‘And tourists bring money.’
At that, Ajax and his wife, Theodora, would both nod their large heads enthusiastically at the prospect of so much money.
It wasn’t so much that he was unethically bankrolling an economic boom on Iraklia – there were thousands of projects like this all over the EU – but more that he was not above feathering his own nest by vicariously benefiting from the growth. Iraklia was on its way up in the world and Andrew intended being part of its gold gilt future.
That meant ingratiating ourselves with the right kind of social scene on the island. Theodora and Ajax were all very well, but unfortunately one couldn’t spend every Saturday drinking raki on Ajax’s fishing boat.
In his characteristically relentless pursuit of new friends, Andrew soon managed to unearth a wealthy Athenian family called the Gerardos, whose vast holiday home sprawled arrogantly across about a quarter of the island. After our first dinner with them Andrew cheerfully listed their excellent qualities as he undressed that evening and even announced Dimitri was a ‘regular bloke’. Regular was a term he used often to describe people he liked. It meant steady and predictable. No worrying eccentricities or outspoken ideas. A fish that swam with the rest of the shoal. This was just as well, since the Aegean had virtually been fished dry and Dimitri’s frozen foods company was probably responsible for it.
Within days Andrew knew everything there was to know about the Gerardos, although they knew very little about us. Despite being loquacious, Andrew seldom gave out personal information. He was a conversational cuckoo who nested in the minutiae of other people’s private lives while offering nothing of his own. This he prided himself in. The fact that he could extract the most delicate of confessions from people at dinner parties and leave a full six hours later untarnished by the shabby business of reciprocal self-disclosure.
Dimitri’s wife, Christina, was beautiful and vacuous. She shopped and entertained for a living. A disturbing Greek version of myself. Andrew expected me to sit with these people night after night talking about nothing. All the while the boredom and fear of desiccating into shrivelled Mediterranean olive ate away at my subconscious, smudging out what was left of me, particle by particle, causing my brain to collapse into itself like a space-time wormhole through which I slid and emerged in a parallel universe. A universe where it was no longer necessary to think or even exist, just to drift along in Andrew’s slipstream. A ribbon of fragrance that trailed in the air behind him.
Andrew would vehemently have denied such an accusation if I’d ever found the courage to raise it with him, because Andrew prided himself on being a card-carrying feminist. He’d read all the literature and felt it was important to think progressively whilst behaving like a medieval laird at home.
At the end of July, he abandoned me in Iraklia to house-hunt. He had an important series of meetings in Brussels to attend and since it was ‘all agreed’ we were definitely buying, it was left to me to find a suitable abode. His instructions were clear:
West-facing.
Sea view.
Close enough to the Chora to be able to walk in for dinner.
Not so close as to be disturbed by late-night revellers.
Three to four bedrooms.
Two bathrooms.
So, not much to ask for.
After he’d gone, the Meltemi blew in from the north-east and battered the island remorselessly for seven days. My skin withered and shrivelled under its relentless onslaught. I started applying a layer of petroleum jelly as a barrier to lock in whatever moisture remained in my shrunken face. Now I looked like a shiny, white, cadaverous mummy.
Every night I’d scan the mirror for signs of damage. The line between my eyebrows that I’d botoxed before I left (another small triumph for Bridgette) was starting to re-emerge.
Ghastly stuff Botox. My friend Rene assured me it was just a gentle plumping of the skin with a product found in nature, but I Googled it and found out it was a concoction of vile toxins harvested from the Clostridium Botulinum bacteria, in other words Botulism - an illness so dangerous that each case is considered a public health emergency. By that stage my face was becoming a public health emergency, so I decided to go ahead with it anyway. Even though I was totally revolted and morally opposed, by then the line on my forehead was starting to resemble the Bristol Channel, so I had no choice. As I lay on the dentist’s chair – yes, unbelievably Dr Katz my dentist administered the shots – I could picture the poisons seeping towards my neuromuscular junctions and immobilising the acetylcholine chemical messengers. (As usual I had done way too much research). But hey-ho, if botulism was strong enough to paralyse a man, then it was good enough to paralyse my face.
The effects were remarkable, but sadly only lasted a few months. Rene suggested collagen implants, but I went right off that idea after I found out on Google that the Chinese were exporting human collagen extracted from dead convicts. Definitely a step too far.
That was then. After three weeks of Iraklia’s harsh sun I was ready to personally kill the convicts and extract their collagen with my own bare hands.
Heavy make-up can make a woman look much older. Especially round the eyes, it’s important to taper eyeliner toward the edges. I read on a beauty web forum, that nothing is more aging than a thick bovine line of colour on the bottom lid.
With Andrew still in Brussels, I faced interminable evenings on my own, so I’d taken to going to a local restaurant for a drink in the evening – and the extra care with my make-up was because someone there had caught my interest.
Kikis was a lively restaurant in the Chora where the locals hung out. I chanced upon it by mistake one night when I snuck into town to buy some fags. Yes, yes – smoking is just about the most aging plague you could set upon your skin – but something about the island just made me want to smoke. Perhaps it was the small village of bohemian travellers camped out on Livadi beach. Perhaps it was because everyone in Greece seemed to smoke. Who knows, but I was feeling reckless, and smoking was the only thing I could think of to stick it to Andrew for abandoning me. He abhorred the habit. In fact it was Andrew who made me give up shortly after we’d met. Another on his list of ‘minor adjustments’ that I spinelessly went along with.
Kikis was rocking when I pulled up outside in my dune buggy. Apparently I’d been living in a different time zone. The Greeks ran a split-shift: up early for fresh bread and chores, back home for lunch and a siesta, out again at night. Two days for the price of one. I’d been sleeping till ten and leaving the house at midday. No wonder the island seemed empty.
That first night as I walked up the stairs to Kikis I felt this overwhelming sense of relief to see so many smiling people. Even the vulgar assault of colour felt welcoming. Blue chairs, yellow table clothes and red candles. Purple bougainvillea draped from the ceiling and green vines hung from the balustrades. There was even a parrot with violently clashing feathers parked plumb in the middle of the room. He shuffled around kicking bits of straw and shit onto the floor with gay abandon and no one seemed to mind. The waiters picked up the shit on their shoes and walked it through the restaurant, stepping over dogs on route. Cats stalked along the railings and forked food off people’s plates when they weren’t looking.
