often wondered what would have happened if Dad hadn’t started drinking, if we had stayed together as a family living in the nice house we used to live in, and if my sister and I had finished school and maybe gone to university. I know that was what Mum wanted for us – a good education that would lead to us getting good jobs. Our lives might even have been different if John and Mum had worked things out and stayed together.
I do have some happy memories of the early days after John moved in. For example, we used to have a party at our house every New Year’s Eve. Everyone would be cheerful and laughing, and even when they all got a bit drunk, no one was ever angry or shouted. Then we moved to the new house, everything changed and I began to wish we could turn back the clock so that Mum could make some different decisions. But we couldn’t, so there was no point being miserable about how things might have been.
I hated leaving my sister behind in England when Mum and I went to Greece. I would have been glad that she wasn’t coming with us if I had known what was going to happen when we got there. I had never been abroad before. I was so excited I could hardly sit still on the plane. When we arrived at the airport in Greece, we got a taxi to the small, basic but clean apartment Mum had rented. As soon as we had dumped our bags and done a little dance around the room, we went to the beach. The sand was golden, the water was warm and crystal clear; in fact, everything about the place we were staying was just the way I had imagined it would be, but better.
That first evening, we went to a bar right next to the beach, and as Mum and I sat laughing and talking, I felt more relaxed than I had done for a long time. I still didn’t drink alcohol, but that night I had a couple of Bacardi Breezers – and then went back to coke when Mum realised I was getting a bit tipsy. We danced and chatted to other tourists and to the bar owner, who spoke really good English and entertained everyone by mixing cocktails and telling jokes.
There were three guys sitting at a table near the back of the room and whenever I glanced surreptitiously in their direction, one of them seemed to be watching me. He was the best dressed and the best looking of the three, and when he caught my eye I got a fluttery feeling in my stomach. It was one of the other two who came over and asked Mum and me to dance. In fact, he didn’t really ask us; he was Albanian and didn’t speak any English, so he just kept repeating the word ‘Hello’ and then did a sort of mime that made us laugh. We did dance with him – by that time everyone in the bar was dancing and chatting with everyone else – and he seemed like a nice guy. But I was more interested in his friend.
It was late by the time Mum and I went back to the apartment. I fell asleep thinking about the guy I hadn’t spoken to, and maybe Mum dreamed about the bar owner, who had clearly been attracted to her and whose attention had made her giggle like a schoolgirl.
The next day, we went to the beach again, ate our lunch sitting in the sun outside a café, and then returned in the evening to the same bar, where the same three guys were sitting at the table they had been sitting at the night before. As soon as we sat down, Zef, the guy who had danced with us the previous evening, came over and asked me – again by the use of mime – if I wanted a drink. And after he had bought me a coke, he introduced me to his two friends.
All three of the men were in their early to mid-twenties. One of Zef’s two friends was called Veli; the other shook my hand and then held it for a few seconds while he looked directly into my eyes and told me, in broken English, that his name was Jak. Although I didn’t think for a moment that someone like Jak would ever fancy someone like me, I felt my knees go weak.
Mum had also had a reason for wanting to go back to the bar that night, and while I was sitting with Zef, Veli and Jak, she was talking to the Greek bar owner, Nikos. In fact, she was having such a good time I think she barely noticed when we left the bar at around 2 o’clock in the morning to go down to the beach. I knew Zef wanted me to go on the back of his motorcycle, but although he was obviously a nice guy, his faltering eagerness didn’t appeal to me the way his friend’s self-confidence did. So I went with Jak.
For the next couple of hours, we sat on the still-warm sand smoking cigarettes and talking. Then they dropped me back at the bar and Mum and I walked together up the road to the apartment. The chaotic life I had been living in England suddenly seemed a very long way away.
The days and nights developed a pattern after that. In the morning and afternoon, Mum and I would swim and lie on the beach. Then we would go back to the apartment to shower and get changed before having our dinner in a café or at one of the restaurants that lined the square in the centre of town. And then we would go to Nikos’s bar. I loved spending time with my mum, lying on the beach, laughing, talking and relaxing as the warmth of the sun eased all the tension out of my muscles.
Mum had made quite a few friends at the bar among both local people and tourists. So she was happy to leave me to do whatever I wanted in the evenings, which was mostly to sit on the beach with Jak and his friends. She did have one concern though. ‘I don’t like Jak’s eyes,’ she told me. ‘There’s something dead and cold about them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile, have you?’
‘Oh, Mum,’ I replied, groaning and raising my eyebrows.
‘Well, I’m just saying,’ she said. ‘There’s definitely something dodgy about him – whereas Zef seems like a really sweet boy, and he’s obviously keen on you. I’d stay away from Jak if I were you, and think about Zef instead.’
I wonder if any parent has ever managed to persuade their son or daughter to ‘stay away’ from someone they’re attracted to and to transfer their affections to someone the parent thinks is more suitable. Somehow I doubt it! And I wonder how many of those sons and daughters look back later on a specific piece of advice their parents gave them and think, ‘If only I’d listened.’ But you don’t listen to anyone when you’re young – expect perhaps to your friends, whose ideas are likely to be as half-cooked as your own – because you think you know it all. For me, in this particular instance, it was too late anyway: I was already smitten with Jak and I completely ignored what was probably the best piece of advice my mum has ever given me.
By mid-week, Jak had started coming to find us on the beach during the day. He only spoke half a dozen words of English, so we communicated – surprisingly well – using a sort of sign language. What he did say quite clearly one day though was, ‘Baby, I love you,’ and when he kissed me I thought I was going to pass out. We were together almost constantly. He had already told me several times that he didn’t want me to leave, and when he cried on our last evening, it almost broke my heart. The thought that he even ‘approved’ of me, let alone might be attracted to me, made me believe that there might just be a possibility that my life wasn’t to going to end up being the disaster I had begun to think it might be.
At the airport the next day, both Mum and I were very quiet. Things had been going really well between her and Nikos too, and I knew she was as miserable as I was. We had checked in for our flight and were walking across the concourse towards the entrance to the departure area when I stopped, put my hand on her arm and said, ‘Please Mum, can’t we stay? I don’t want to go home. What have I got to go back for? Please, just think about it.’ I began to cry, but Mum just sighed and said, ‘I know, Megan. I feel the same way. But we don’t have any choice. Come on, love. We’ve got to go.’
‘But, Mum …’ Not many days earlier, I would probably have thrown a full-scale tantrum and have had to be dragged to the plane kicking and screaming. This time though, the thing I wanted – which was not to have to leave Jak – really mattered to me and I knew instinctively that a fit of teenage temper wasn’t the way to get it.
‘But, Mum …’ I sniffed pathetically and looked at her with what I hoped was a sad and at the same time sympathetic expression. ‘How can you even think of leaving Nikos when he
