Thirteen
The view was spectacular: candy-pink bougainvillea trailing from the whitewood latticework that framed the window, the golden sand and stone beach, the bobbing boats tethered to the jetty and that forget-me-not-coloured sea barely moving, the tide a gentle back and forth, trickling over the shoreline.
Tess looked back to her phone, the pinwheel still going round and round searching for a connection to ‘Georgiou Taverna Free’. Why did technology seem to be so difficult here? It was fine on the coach. Did they just happen to be booked into the Internet blackspot of the island?
‘Oh! I’m going to have saganaki to start with,’ Sonya announced. ‘No, no wait … I’m going to have dolmades, that’s vine leaves and rice and herbs and—’
Tess pushed her phone to one side. ‘But neither of those end with the letter “a”,’ she teased.
‘Oh my! You’re right! So, I’d better have … taramasalata.’
Tess looked at the menu hoping there were no scallops. As much as she adored them, she still couldn’t face anything involving a shell just yet.
‘So, you didn’t mention the guy you had a spat with at the apartments was hotter than peri-peri sauce.’ Sonya leant over the table, hitching her red head to the right as Andras moved through the restaurant.
‘Sonya Culkin!’ Tess exclaimed.
‘Just looking, that’s all,’ Sonya stated, reaching for the water jug and pouring herself a glass. ‘I’m not silly enough to think that Joey doesn’t—’
‘Tch tch tch tch!’ Tess interrupted, finger to her lips.
‘Sorry, but there was actually this one woman dressed as Maid Marion at the Robin Hood Day last month he looked at for quite a long time.’ She sighed again. ‘And I’m not talking about her wimple here.’
Tess’s eyes went to Andras, balancing plates up those impressive forearms, moving his athletic limbs effortlessly between tables. How much wine was she going to have to get Sonya to drink before she reneged on the single thing?
‘OK, we should order some wine,’ Sonya said as if reading Tess’s mind. ‘Where did our little waiter go?’ She elongated her body upwards, eyes seeking. ‘He had nice eyes too, if I was looking.’
Tess looked back to her phone and pressed the screen. Still nothing was happening on the Wi-Fi front. She turned the Wi-Fi button to off. She was just going to have to phone the office tomorrow. Make up some excuse as to why she needed to speak to Russell. Then, when she knew Blackberry Boudoir was sorted, she could relax a little bit more.
‘Here he comes,’ Sonya announced, waving her hand in the air as Victor approached. She smiled as the waiter stopped and took out his notepad. ‘Could we order some white wine?’
Tess watched her friend’s cheeks flood with colour and her heavy mascaraed eyes begin a dance like two horny butterflies preparing to mate. Just how precarious was her relationship with Joey? Maybe there was more to this break business than met the eye.
‘White wine in one of those gorgeous flagons,’ Sonya continued.
‘Dragons?’ Victor questioned, looking confused.
Sonya laughed, her cheeks reddening further, a finger curled around a loose tendril of her auburn hair. ‘One of those jugs. The gold-coloured ones.’
Victor laughed and nodded. ‘Karáfa.’
‘Oh! Like carafe! Silly me!’
‘No,’ Victor answered. ‘Not silly.’ He smiled. ‘Very beautiful. Ómorfi.’
Before Sonya could start to melt from the attention, Tess interjected. ‘Do you have Dr Pepper?’ She swallowed. ‘To go with the wine?’
‘You are not well?’ Victor asked, looking slightly alarmed.
Sonya laughed. ‘It’s a drink.’
‘I do not think we have this here,’ Victor answered.
Tess sighed. This was Greece, not some tiny uninhabited island cut off from the rest of civilisation. She should be able to get a well-known brand of soft drink and an Internet connection.
‘I will ask the boss if he knows of this,’ Victor said.
‘Thank you.’
He left the table.
‘Do you really need Dr Pepper?’ Sonya asked.
‘I’d quite like one.’
‘But we’re having wine,’ Sonya said.
‘I know. I just could do with a sugar rush.’
‘Then have a Coke,’ Sonya said. ‘Coke is on the drinks menu.’
‘Why are you cross? Because I made Victor leave while you were flirting with him?’
‘I wasn’t!’
‘Eyelashes batting like a hovering hawk.’
‘We’re allowed to look,’ Sonya reminded her. ‘We said we were allowed to look.’
Tess made a grab for Sonya’s hands and held them tightly in hers. ‘Something isn’t right,’ she began. ‘I think this is way, way more than too many visits to Dunelm Mill, Son, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ Sonya breathed out, shoulders shaking.
‘You’re keeping something back about Joey.’
‘Tch, tch, tch, tch,’ Sonya mimicked, averting her eyes and dropping them to the tablecloth.
‘You have to tell me everything,’ Tess stated. ‘Please, Sonya. I want to know what you’re worrying so much about.’
Sonya shook her head, emotion looking like it was about to brim over. ‘Joey promised me, when I asked him, that it had nothing to do with it but … I’ve been churning it all over since we got here and … I don’t think I believe him.’ A tear snaked out of her eye. ‘I mean, I know it was quite a while ago but …’ She sniffed. ‘He just came right on out with it and I didn’t know what to say. Well, I did know what to say – I practically recited the whole Collins English dictionary rather than talk about the subject he’d just dropped in there, completely unannounced.’
‘Came right on out with what?’ Tess asked, still holding Sonya’s hands.
‘There was no build up. No gentle questioning. It just happened, one day, when we were halfway through a spicy cheese-feast stuffed crust, you know, the new ones that burst with the little jalapenos and scotch bonnets—’
‘Sonya, what did he say?’ Tess demanded.
There was a sharp intake of breath and then: ‘He said … he said he’d changed his mind. He said how nice it might be to have a baby.’
Tess just stared at her friend, unblinking, almost waiting for the punchline.
‘Say something,’ Sonya whispered, squeezing Tess’s hands this time.
Tess swallowed. ‘Are you sure he said “baby”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not “Jay-Z”?’
‘No.’
‘Or “pup-py”?’
‘Why would he say Jay-Z or puppy?’
Tess shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m just thinking you misheard. That he didn’t say—’ She didn’t really want to say it again.
‘Baby,’ Sonya stated. ‘You can say “baby”.’
‘I don’t want to say it,’ Tess said.
‘I should have said it though, shouldn’t I?’ Sonya spoke. ‘I should have said it a long time ago, at the very beginning, but he said from the start that he didn’t want a family and so I thought I didn’t have to say it, and now he’s changed his mind and we’re on this break and I still haven’t said it.’ She sighed. ‘And I need to. Don’t I need to now? So he can make a proper decision about us … about me.’
‘Sonya …’
‘Because that’s got to be it, hasn’t it? Not Dunelm Mill. And if it is then we’re never getting back together.’
‘Sonya …’
‘Because a baby is the one thing I can never give anyone.’
Tess swallowed the lump in her throat and gave her friend’s hand another squeeze. ‘Oh, Sonya.’
‘I’m stupid,’ she sniffed. ‘I’ve been stupid to think I could carry on pretending—’
‘Not pretending,’ Tess stated. ‘Just not wearing a badge telling the world you can’t have children.’
‘But Joey isn’t a stranger on the Tube. Joey’s my boyfriend. My long-term boyfriend.’ She sighed. ‘I should have known this was going to happen.’ She threw her arms up in the air. ‘I did know it was going to happen. I mean, that’s what people do, isn’t it? They fall in love, they get married, they have children …’
‘He told you he didn’t want children. And anyway, you know there are other options to having children rather than the traditional method.’
‘No one wants that!’
‘That’s not true,’ Tess said straightaway. ‘I mean, look at … look at Elton John.’
‘And you tell me how he and David Furnish were ever going to be able to go down the traditional route!’
She swallowed. She was making a complete mess out of this when she should be doing so much better. Sonya had confessed her inability to have children to draw out Tess’s jilted-at-the-altar past over those margaritas. A secret for a secret. Two sad stories that had bonded them even closer. And they’d both agreed. Once. They talked about their life-changing moments for that one time and then it was all put back in the box to never be cried over again. Except this summer seemed to be unlocking that box, spilling out the parts of their lives both women preferred to keep hidden away.
‘We can sort this out,’ Tess offered. ‘Honestly, we can have some wine and even though we said we wouldn’t, we can talk about it if that’s what it takes to make you feel better.’ She patted Sonya’s hand.
‘He updated his Facebook page today,’ Sonya informed her. ‘An old photo when he was with two Cavaliers and a wench I could tell was fertile just from her rosy cheeks.’
Tess’s jaw dropped. ‘When the fuck did you get signal?’
‘Excuse me.’
Tess turned her head. It was Andras, standing at their table. Just how long had he been there?
‘Please,’ he said, addressing Tess. ‘I am sorry, we do not have Dr Pepper here.’
‘Oh.’ It hardly seemed important now. ‘That’s OK.’
‘Perhaps I can get you something else?’ he offered.
‘You are the boss?’ Tess asked him.
‘I am the boss.’
Of course he was. Tess looked to Sonya. Her friend had released her hands and was searching the contents of her bag, as if trying to hide her tear-stained face. She turned back to Andras. ‘I’ll have full-fat Coke with three sugars, please.’
‘Three sugars?’ he queried, raising an eyebrow. ‘This is a lot of sugar, no?’
‘Is there a sugar shortage as well as a distinct lack of Internet connection?’ She wasn’t sure she liked her quirks being scrutinised.
‘No, I have sugar,’ he answered, smiling and taking a step back.
‘A couple more things,’ Tess called.
He stopped moving and she smiled.
‘Taramasalata for my friend, please.’
‘And for you?’ he asked her.
‘For me?’ She drew in a breath. ‘Well, Andras, seeing as your Wi-Fi isn’t working … you tell me the best place to stand in this village to get 4G and I might just tell you my real name.’