was contrite about his jealousy, and I was flattered when he told me that the reason he was so upset was because he loved me so much he wanted me to be with him all the time. What I didn’t realise, of course, was that far from simply being a stupid row, it was actually the start of his determined efforts to separate me from my mother.
Not long after we had moved into another apartment – a few streets away in the same town – Mum told me she had booked seats for us on another flight back to England. Apparently, she hadn’t paid rent on our council house for the last six weeks and a friend of hers had phoned to say that the people from the council had been in, cleared everything out of it, dumped all our stuff in a skip and changed the locks.
‘I don’t want to leave,’ I told Mum. ‘There really is nothing for us to go back for now.’
But she was adamant. ‘I don’t want to go either,’ she said. ‘But we’ve got to. It’ll only be for a few weeks. Once we’ve sorted things out at home, we’ll come back again.’
Everything was going really well between Mum and Nikos, so I knew she had as many reasons to want to stay as I did. Even a few weeks seemed like a very long time to me though, particularly when I already knew from experience how quickly and irrevocably things can change.
Jak was really upset when I told him. ‘I don’t know how I’ll survive if you leave me,’ he said, in his now-excellent English.
The night before our flight, Jak drank quite a lot of whisky and cried as he told me, ‘I will suffer so much if I have to live without you even for a few weeks.’ Then, with tears streaming down his face, he stubbed out his cigarette on his arm. I was frightened by the passion of his distress, but I was thrilled by it too and by the thought that he really did love me and that he felt as miserable as I did at the prospect of us being apart.
Despite sleeping in the same bed during the weeks we had been together, Jak and I still hadn’t had sex, although we had come close to it a few times. That was something else I really liked about him – the fact that as soon as he sensed I was getting tense, he always backed off. I slept badly that night, and every time I woke up and felt his arms around me, I dreaded the prospect of being alone again.
The next morning, Mum and Nikos took my suitcase to the airport in Nikos’s car, and I went with Jak on the back of his motorbike. When he pulled up outside the terminal, I swung my leg over the seat and as I turned to give him a last kiss, I saw that he was crying.
‘Don’t go, Megan,’ he said, holding my face in his hands and looking deep into my own tear-filled eyes. ‘I love you so much. Please don’t go. Get back on the bike and we’ll drive away from here and go and live our lives together. Please, Megan. I love you.’ And that’s when I realised I couldn’t leave him.
We were already speeding along the road away from the airport when Jak’s phone started to ring. It kept on ringing until he stopped the bike and answered it. After listening impassively for a few seconds, he handed the phone to me, saying, ‘Speak to your mum. She’s very angry.’
I could hear Mum’s voice even before I held the phone to my ear and I could tell that she was upset too. ‘Where are you, Megan?’ she said. ‘People are starting to go the departure gate. We’re going to miss our flight if you don’t come now. What are you doing? Please, Megan.’
‘I’m not coming,’ I told her, unnerved by the fact that my resolve had started to crumble as soon as I heard her voice. But I knew it was already too late to change my mind. ‘I’m not coming back, Mum. I can’t leave Jak. I love him and he loves me. We’re going to make a life together.’
‘For God’s sake, Megan …’ Her voice was drowned out for a moment by the tinny echo of a flight announcement. When she spoke again I could tell that she was crying. ‘Please, Megan, don’t do this,’ she pleaded. ‘Come home with me now. We’ll come back, I promise.’
‘I love him, Mum,’ I said again, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.
‘I don’t think you understand.’ Mum sounded angry now. ‘For God’s sake, Megan, you’re 14 years old. This isn’t a decision you can make. If you don’t come back to the airport right now and catch this flight with me, I’m going to have to go to the police.’
I didn’t know how to respond, how to make her understand there was no way that I was going back.
‘Megan, listen to me, you need to come home. You cannot stay here by yourself!’ I could tell that she was starting to panic. ‘Megan, please. They’re calling our flight!’
‘I can’t come home,’ I said, tears now streaming down my cheeks. ‘I’ll kill myself if you try to make me go home. I mean it, Mum. I want to be with Jak.’ I didn’t hear what she said after that, because I turned off the phone.
It still makes me cry when I think about that phone call. I don’t blame my mum for leaving without me. My decision to stay in Greece took her (and me) completely by surprise, and my heartfelt threat to kill myself must have sent her into such a tailspin of panic that she didn’t know what else to do.
After Jak had taken the phone out of my shaking hands, he drove to a block of apartments where a friend of his called Vasos lived. As soon as we were inside, I began to sob. Jak kept hugging me and telling me everything would be all right. But suddenly I couldn’t imagine how I was going to live without my mum. I felt terrible for having upset her so much, and although just a few minutes earlier I had believed that if I had to leave Jak I would never be happy again, I now felt scared and was already regretting the decision I had made.
‘I just need a minute,’ I told Jak, and as I stepped out on to the balcony, I saw the plane. It seemed to be ascending very slowly into the sky above a distant row of rooftops, and as it came closer I could see the distinctive colours of the airline on its tail and I knew it was the plane I should have been on with my mother. Plummeting from distress into hysteria, I began to wave frantically and shout, ‘Mum, I’m here. Can you see me? Come back. Don’t leave me here. Please, Mum. I’m sorry. Don’t go home without me.’
For a moment, I almost believed I could see her face looking out of one of the windows of the plane, and that she could see me standing on the balcony. Then a wave of panic washed over me and I couldn’t breathe. I tugged at the handle of the balcony door, shouting, ‘I want my mum,’ and ran out of the apartment, down the stairs and on to the street. I kept on running until I reached the end of the road, where I sank to my knees on the hot, stony pavement, sobbing, ‘I’m sorry, Mum. Please come back.’
When Jak caught up with me, I was still waving frantically at what was now an empty sky. ‘Come on. Come back inside. You’ll be okay,’ he told me, putting his arms around my shaking body and lifting me on to my feet before half-carrying me back up the road.
When we were inside the apartment again, Jak handed me a mug of hot chocolate and said, ‘Drink this. Then go and have a shower. It will make you feel better.’ It didn’t, though, and for the rest of day I sat staring at the wall of the living room while the two men watched television.
My suitcase had been loaded on to the plane with Mum’s this time, so I had nothing except my handbag and the clothes I was wearing. ‘I’ll buy you something tomorrow,’ Jak said when we were lying beside each other in bed that night. But even though I knew what I had done wasn’t his fault, I felt sick and pulled away from him when he tried to touch me.
‘I’m not ready,’ I told him.
‘I
