Chapter 9
NINE
‘Lulu!’
I squeeze my friend in a hug at the airport, just after seven thirty the following morning.
I’m so glad I didn’t overindulge last night, as I feel fresh this morning, and ready for some breakfast.
‘How are you?’ I say, when we pull apart.
‘Apart from shattered, I’m fine,’ she says. ‘I did manage a few hours’ sleep on the plane, thankfully, but I still feel a bit rough. I bet I look a right sight.’ She pulls a face.
Lulu with her curly hair, sunhat, and long white-linen dress looks as fresh as a daisy.
‘You look great. Anyway, come on, let’s get to the apartment, freshen up and I’ll take you for breakfast before the car collects us to go to the hotel for the wedding. Ooh I can’t wait,’ I squeal excitedly.
‘Lead the way,’ says Lulu as we leave the airport terminal and head into the brilliant sunshine outside, even at this early hour.
‘Oh wow, that’s a bit different to back home,’ says Lulu, squinting up at the brilliant blue sky, before she puts on her sunglasses.
‘Just a bit. In fact, it’s even hotter than usual, a bit of a heatwave I’m told. Actually, let’s have a selfie.’
We pose outside the hire car, and I will post to my followers later saying something about heading off in a car to explore the island.
Pulling away from the airport, we are soon on a road flanked by pastel-coloured hotels and villas, some with huge ferns and palms in the front gardens. We drive past early morning joggers, dog walkers and older couples enjoying a leisurely stroll before the sun really gets up.
I couldn’t help noticing that one couple, maybe in their eighties, were holding hands as they strolled, and marvel at how people can find that kind of enduring love.
Or maybe they have recently met on Tinder.
Perhaps they are each other’s first love who have hooked up again, following the death of their spouses.
There goes that imagination of mine again!
‘So what happened that you needed to get a later flight?’ I ask Lulu as we drive.
She sighs. ‘Phil gave me the afternoon off, so I was set for an earlier flight as you know, then Tom called me in a panic.’
‘Oh no what happened?’ I frown.
‘He’d had an accident at work. A concrete slab fell on his hand,’ she tells me.
‘Ouch, sounds painful. Is he alright though?’ I ask. Tom works part time around his university course, as a labourer on a building site, and despite health and safety regulations can be a bit accident prone.
‘Oh fine, but I went to meet him in A and E and you know how long the wait can be these days.’ She sighs.
‘I decided to stay with him and take him home. Turns out his finger was broken, which is what he suspected. No nerve damage thankfully, which was what he was initially worried about as he couldn’t feel anything in his fingers,’ she tells me.
‘Well that’s a relief, I suppose.’
I hope Tom realises how lucky he is to have a caring mum like Lulu.
‘I’m pleased he’s okay.’ I smile. ‘And now you know that is the case, I hope you can relax and enjoy your time here.’
‘Oh, I will do,’ she assures me. ‘This break is exactly what I need.’
Back at the apartment, while Lulu takes a quick shower, I text Patsy and ask if she and Irene are okay.
She texts me back saying they are downstairs and about to have a Bloody Mary as a ‘hair of the dog’.
I suggest meeting in the lobby in half an hour, so we can all go out for breakfast together and she sends me a thumbs up emoji, alongside an angry face, which I am pretty sure she has sent in error. Surely, I am not such unpleasant company?
When Lulu is out of the shower, she fishes her phone from her bag that has been ringing, and begins chatting to Chloe. I can see a crease form in her forehead as she talks.
‘I thought you were going to keep that in your bag,’ I remind her.
‘Oh, I know, and I will now.’ She smiles.
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask.
‘Oh yes, it was just Chloe asking me where something was at home.’
Give me strength.
‘Anyway, maybe you ought to do the same. With your phone, I mean.’ She laughs.
‘Well, I would, but I need to take photos for my social media pages, you know that. I certainly won’t be on it all the time though,’ I reassure her, feeling a little stung by her remark.
‘Me neither.’ She smiles.
Surely taking a photo here and there is hardly the same as having grown-up children pestering you when you are meant to be having a well-earned break, is it? Although I refrain from saying this out loud.
Talk of phones soon disappears as we enjoy a breakfast at the Sea Breeze restaurant across the road that overlooks the sparkling sea, the morning sun gently dusting the water.
Greek yoghurts, honey, and an assortment of fruit and pastries jostle for space on the table, alongside jugs of fresh orange juice. Patsy and Irene are having a Bloody Mary with a celery stick poking out.
‘A virgin one for me,’ says Irene, raising her glass of tomato juice. ‘I shouldn’t have had that large ouzo as a nightcap last night,’ she continues with a groan. ‘I have the faintest of headaches this morning.’
‘No one was forcing you,’ Patsy reminds her. ‘Although mine has no alcohol in it either. I’m saving myself for a glass of champagne at the wedding.’
‘I will be fine,’ says Irene, slathering a hunk of seeded brown bread with butter and honey. ‘A bit of breakfast will sort me out.’
I ask a waiter to take a group photo of us, and I send it to Tasha before giving her a video call.
‘Good morning, how are we?’ I ask.
Tasha is having a coffee on the balcony. Owen has gone for a swim in the indoor pool, before having a Turkish shave, she tells me.
‘I feel nervous, happy. Oh, I can’t wait to see you all!’ she says excitedly. ‘And thank you for last night, it was just wonderful, and thanks to me abstaining from alcohol, I feel as fresh as a daisy,’ she says.
I tell her we will be there before she knows it, and we all wave and I introduce her to Lulu before I end the call.
Irene is dabbing at her face with a tissue, as at nine o’clock the sun can already be felt.
‘This must be the beginning of the bloomin’ heatwave,’ she says, pouring herself a glass of water. ‘I’ll have to make sure I have my fan with me, although I can’t really have it whirring around during the marriage vows, can I?’ She sighs.
‘No, you can’t,’ says Patsy. ‘There’s a shop across the road that I’m sure sells some traditional fans, you will have to make do with one of those.’
‘I guess so. Anyway, it’s better having a wedding here than back home where you can’t rely on the weather,’ she says. ‘It rained on my wedding day.’
‘Isn’t that mean to be good luck?’ asks Lulu, helping herself to some yoghurt and fruit.
‘So, they say,’ agrees Irene. ‘And I suppose we were happy together for almost forty years, even though, thinking about it, we never really had that much in common,’ she muses.
‘They do say opposites attract though,’ says Patsy.
‘I used to think about our old age, going on holidays, that sort of thing,’ Irene continues. ‘Malcolm didn’t enjoy driving, so we thought we might do a couple of coach holidays, maybe even a cruise, but it wasn’t to be,’ she says, her eyes misting over. ‘Malcolm died two years ago.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ says Lulu sheepishly. ‘I didn’t mean to dredge up memories for you.’
‘Don’t you worry.’ She smiles. ‘These things happen, don’t they?’ says Irene, a widow for over two years. ‘And we did do a lot together during his lifetime, I’m sure he would have no regrets’.
‘You’re okay though, aren’t you?’ says Patsy. ‘And we do enjoy our days out and weekends away, don’t we?’ she says, gently placing her hand over Irene’s.
‘That we do,’ agrees Irene. ‘I can spend as long as I want mooching around markets, something Malcolm hated. And watching soaps on television without him complaining or talking all the way through them,’ she says, hiding her hurt with her usual humour.
‘Who needs men, eh?’ Patsy says laughing, just as two gorgeous-looking men in shorts and tight T-shirts walk past, and cast a glance our way and smile.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I say, nudging Lulu as I watch them disappear out of sight along the strip of restaurants.
‘Ah to be young again.’ Irene sighs theatrically as she fires up her handheld fan, the air blowing her shoulder-length ash blonde bob. ‘If I had my time over again, I would do things a little differently.’
‘Would you?’
‘I would have travelled abroad more,’ she reflects as she sips her orange juice. ‘Malcolm preferred to stay in England, as he wasn’t a lover of the sun, although neither am I these days.’ She laughs.
We settle the bill, and head to a gift shop across the road, where Irene purchases a cotton fan displaying the sights of Santorini to use later at the wedding.
As we walk, I take in the rugged mountains in the background, and the tip of the blue-domed church at the end of the main street.
It’s certainly pretty enough to have a wedding here, but I guess Fira just tops it for vista when it comes to stunning wedding photos.
The far-reaching sea with the view, taking in the volcanic island known as the caldera in the middle, and the jumble of white buildings with steps leading down to the port, will all make for the most perfect wedding album.
Inside, we freshen up and change into our wedding outfits, and before we know it, a taxi has arrived to take us into Fira to see Tasha as she prepares for her wedding.
The other guests will be arriving in a coach laid on later for the ceremony at two p.m., that will continue into the evening at the luxurious hotel.
‘You look stunning,’ says Lulu kindly, appraising my knee-length pale-green silk dress I bought in a sale from John Lewis. I have accessorised it with a silver necklace and I have a white blazer for this evening in case it turns a little cooler.
‘So do you,’ I tell Lulu, who looks effortlessly stylish in a pale-blue trouser suit.
Irene and Patsy are wearing pretty summer dresses, and Irene has a white, wide-brimmed hat, while Patsy’s dark hair is clipped up into a stylish bun.
As the taxi winds along the roads, we once more take in the glorious scenery against the backdrop of a cloudless blue sky. The roar of a motorbike as it overtakes has Irene flinching, then smiling as she recalls riding pillion on a bike as a young woman with her first boyfriend.
‘Oh, I thought I was the bee’s knees, even though it was only a Kawasaki moped,’ she tells us laughing. ‘Still, the boy in question was the first person to get one in our street, so I was the envy of the local girls,’ she recalls.
We drive through the village, with its throng of bars and restaurants, set against a rugged mountain landscape devoid of any greenery.
Restaurants, car hire places and shops – one with a full-sized straw donkey outside – line the roads before we head out onto the highway, where the rugged landscape is interspersed with sightings of white villas with pink bougainvillea climbing the walls.
Fields of grapevines stretch out ahead of us, the vines growing on the ground like a bush and Irene comments on this.
‘They are wound around in crowns to secure them, due to the island being so windy,’ I tell her knowledgably, a fact I learned from a Santorini travel guide I found in a charity shop.
Passing one of the iconic blue-domed churches makes me think of Tasha. Her and Owen originally thought of marrying in a church, but as neither of them are religious they opted for the hotel instead, which I guess is more genuine than wanting a church purely for the photographs.
I wonder how her nerves are holding up, although I imagine she will be doing just fine. As a child, Tasha was always the calm one, sensible even. She followed a career path to become an interior designer, certain from a young age that was what she wanted to do.
Even then she had an eye for design and would sit in our lounge flicking through magazines, commenting on the home interior pages, rather than the fashion and make-up as I did, so I guess it was always going to be her destiny.
Me? I flitted in and out of jobs, although really I wanted to be one of the celebrities on the glossy pages, envying the women having their hair and make-up done, and posing for photographs.
I guess not much has changed really, other than my photos are for my own social media profile, rather than some high-end magazine. But who knows what the future holds?