Chapter 2
Chapter Two
T wenty-four hours later and the world was a different place. Grace had waved goodbye to the unseasonably heavy rain in Oxfordshire without looking back. The moment she’d boarded the plane, she’d forced herself to stop worrying about climate change and what sort of planet her generation would be leaving behind for their children and grandchildren.
Swapping the big jet for a forty-seater island hopper at Athens, she stared down at the place that would become her home for the next three months as the tiny plane made its descent. Rocky land rose up from a turquoise sea, as the whitewashed houses came into focus, and the sun reflected off the many churches with their blue domed roofs.
Grace looked down at her hands, and before she could change her mind, carefully took off her plain gold band of a wedding ring and put it in the zipped compartment of her bag. Thirty-five years of marriage cancelled, just like that.
It was something she’d been daring herself to do for weeks. It would stop any awkward questions from people, and she needed to do it now, so she didn’t leave a thin white line on her finger from removing the ring once she had a tan.
It was the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to old Grace, widow of the parish, and say hello to new Grace, international woman of mystery.
The plane came in low over the sea, and Grace could even make out the features of some of the people on the boats that thronged the port, though her tears made things a little blurry. The wind that the island was well known for playfully buffeted the plane as the runway loomed. Several of the locals did the sign of the cross as the plane came into land, and even Grace heaved a sigh of relief as the wheels touched down on the tarmac.
A blast of hot air hit her in the face as soon as she stepped off the plane, and she had to reach into her bag for her sunglasses to be able to see anything at all. Plus, she hoped they’d hide her puffy face. Crying always made her eyes look bright green, rather than the murky hazel they were most of the time, but she was fairly sure that the red rims and swelling that went with it spoilt the effect. After more or less dispensing with makeup since Phil died, she’d slipped a large bag of the stuff into her case, which she’d definitely need if Mrs Kokkinakis was any guide as to how much slap Greek women wore.
Her new boss was waiting for her in the arrivals hall. All around Grace were cries of recognition as it seemed that everyone on the plane was scooped up by a friend or relative and hugged half to death.
Mrs Kokkinakis satisfied herself with a handshake and a hello. Grace wasn’t expected to know any Greek for her job, all the talking would be in English, but she’d learnt a few words and phrases to get her through the basics.
Nai for yes, ochi for no, and good morning, good afternoon and good night were kalimera , kalispera and kalinichta . Please and thank you, parakalow and efcharisto , were the two words she’d been taught to say properly by her Greek neighbour on the plane. The pronunciation of the word efcharisto made it sound like you were trying to get rid of excess phlegm from your throat, but she was sure she’d get used to it.
‘ Kalispera , Mrs Kokkinakis.’
The elegant brunette smiled her sad smile.
‘Please, call me Elena, now that we’re colleagues.’
‘And I’m Grace.’
‘OK, Grace, let’s get you out of here.’
Grace followed her employer into the car park and watched her click the keys on an open-top Mercedes. The business was obviously doing well. Elena indicated for her to throw her suitcase into the back seat and revved the engine the moment Grace opened the door.
As soon as her bottom touched the seat, they were off down the hill from the airport and onto the main road into town, joining the other cars that seemed to Grace to be moving rather fast, their drivers overtaking each other every few moments and shouting out greetings to people they recognised, Elena included.
Grace lay back and let the wind take her hair and whip it up behind her. There was no point trying to talk over the noise of the engine.
Shops, cafés and restaurants painted white with their doors and windows highlighted in pastels whizzed past on her left, while the port opened up on her right. The odd superyacht with its nose nearly on the road lay side by side with the smaller boats, all swaying slightly in the breeze as the sunlight glinted on the water, scattering the sea into a thousand diamonds.
Everywhere she looked, people were sat outside, eating, and drinking in every possible location, from pavement cafés to boat decks, and the sound of laughter in the air and the smell of meat being grilled made her close her eyes for a moment and just take it all in.
She opened them again when Elena pulled the car into a violent left turn, and they ended up behind a large white four-storey building.
Elena grabbed Grace’s case from the back seat and pointed upwards.
‘We’re here. There won’t be many people around at the moment, as it’s the quiet time, but come and meet my husband Giannis and I’ll show you your room.’
Grace would have opted for a nice cup of tea and a lie-down if she’d been offered it, but she followed Elena into the school, going past a series of teaching rooms with their familiar plastic chairs and interactive whiteboards, until they came to a large office with the blinds down.
Standing in front of a huge desk was a good-looking man in his forties, wearing a navy polo shirt and white jeans that were just a little too tight.
‘Welcome! You must be Grace. Our new recruit.’
Giannis was what her long-divorced friend Sofia would call ‘a walking willy’. Catnip to most women. Not her type, he reminded her a bit of a Greek Danny Dyer, the actor whom a lot of women apparently wanted as their guilty pleasure.
‘Yes, that’s me. Pleased to meet you.’
Grace held out her hand and Giannis came towards her, took it and brought it up to his lips, but not until he’d given her a full top-to-toe once-over, lingering over her chest area a few seconds too long. She couldn’t believe she’d be his type either, she was twenty if not thirty years too old, but he obviously just couldn’t help himself.
‘Enchanted.’
Grace hid a snort with her own hand. Definitely not to be trusted. She already felt protective towards Elena, who wasn’t much older than her eldest daughter. Maybe it was all for show, and he was a devoted husband underneath, but she wasn’t convinced.
Giannis lost interest almost immediately, which was fine with her, and ambled off into the corridor. Elena went to pick up Grace’s case again.
‘No, please let me carry it.’
She didn’t want to give Elena the impression that she’d need help with anything.
Elena nodded and indicated a set of stairs. Four flights up, Grace wasn’t so sure it had been one of her better ideas, and she had to hold onto the wall behind Elena’s back to give herself a breather. She considered herself to be fit, but she wasn’t used to the heat, and although only June, it was already in the low twenties. She prayed her room had air conditioning.
Elena opened the door with a flourish.
‘You are the first of the new teachers to arrive, so I’ve given you the best room.’
‘Thank you.’
The white walls and tiled floor were all fairly standard, but a pretty yellow throw on the bed and stunning framed shots of the Aegean dotted around the room helped no end, as did the large air-con unit.
Grace bobbed her head into the bathroom to show willing and murmured her appreciation. But it was the view beyond the French doors she was truly desperate to see. The bright blue shutters, the colour of the stripes in the Greek flag, were shut against the sun.
Grace pointed towards the port. ‘Can we…’
‘Of course.’
Elena opened the shutters and Grace watched how she did it very carefully, having once had an old shutter disintegrate on her as soon as she twisted the metal handle at a gite in Brittany. Phil had laughed and accused her of being cackhanded, and the ‘Grace is clumsy’ tag had become part of family legend. The thought that no more family legends would be created by their little gang of four made her stomach contract a little.
But the view outside was all she hoped for and more. A cute balcony with two white chairs and a table overlooked the port in all its glory. Grace stood for a moment and watched a big old ferry coming in, engines churning and port police in their smart navy uniforms blowing their whistles for all they were worth. She was going to enjoy spending time out here on her balcony, people watching.
Elena obviously had better things to do than watch the world go by as she was almost at the door.
‘I’ll leave you to it. We only have two major rules. The first is…’
‘No boys after lights out?’
Grace wasn’t sure why she’d said that. It took her back to a school trip to Paris aged eleven, when she and her friends had been caught with the deputy head’s thirteen-year-old son hiding in their bathroom.
Elena frowned. ‘What you do in your own time is your own business.’
Obviously, that hadn’t translated well. She was probably overtired.
‘The first is that it’s not a good idea to drink the water from the tap. There’s a small fridge here, with bottles of water that you can replenish anytime from the kitchen.’
‘OK, thanks.’
‘And…’ Elena twitched her nose. ‘I know this will be strange for you. But there is no paper allowed down the toilet. The plumbing on the island is’—Elena stumbled on the right word—‘kaka… rubbish.’
Kaka indeed. Another Greek word she could put in her little book.
‘There is a bin provided and the rooms are cleaned every day.’
Grace nodded. She needed to get away from the visual this conversation was creating, and she was sure Elena did too by the way she was looking at the ceiling.
‘So, what will be a typical working pattern for me?’
‘It’s six hours a day on weekdays as discussed, and three on Saturday mornings. We start lessons at nine-thirty in the morning, there’s a break from twelve-thirty until three when it’s too hot to teach, and then lessons again from three until six.’
‘Understood. Sounds good.’
‘Obviously we’re not expecting you to start teaching on travel day, so we’ll see you down there in the morning.’
‘Great. Looking forward to it.’
As soon as Elena left the room, Grace flopped face down on the bed, not even bothering to take off her shoes, and let out a huge sigh.
* * *
When she came to, it seemed like a minute had passed, but after scrabbling in her bag for her reading glasses, her phone told her she’d been asleep for an hour. Her hair was flat against her head with sweat.
She’d never seen the point of siestas before, but then she’d been on holiday whenever she stayed in a hot country. There’d always been so much to cram in that she hadn’t wanted to miss a minute. Now she was fairly sure that she’d be taking advantage of her bed in the afternoons on a regular basis.
After a limp but welcome shower, she changed into shorts and a T-shirt, before drinking a small bottle of water. Hat and sunglasses in hand, it was time to explore.
Before she got to the door, Grace remembered sun cream and the dire warnings of her daughters. No, she most certainly did not want to turn into a leathery old crone with skin the colour of rolling tobacco, thank you. She picked up the factor fifty and nipped back into the bathroom to put on one of the new swimming costumes. There were beaches at the back of the town, only a ten-minute walk away, according to Elena, and a swim would be wonderful.
Grace crept down the stairs in case anyone was sleeping, but also because she wasn’t overkeen to bump into Giannis again so soon. As she passed one of the classrooms on her way to the back door, she caught a flash of white jeans through a crack, and the sound of female laughter. She’d hadn’t heard Elena laugh like that, but maybe she did when she was alone with her husband.
The door opened further, and Grace saw the bottom half of a young woman’s long, tanned legs in very short shorts. It must be another of the new arrivals. Grace hurried towards the exit, and almost collided with a guy coming in.
As good-looking as Giannis, although a few inches shorter and several years older, the man smiled wide, showing perfect teeth. Was every male member of staff destined to look like a male model? At least he held out his hand in the usual way. Grace had washed her hands thoroughly after her earlier encounter with Giannis.
‘Hi, I’m Thanassis. Director of Studies. You must be Grace.’
Grace returned the handshake.
‘Welcome to our language school. I’m sure you’ll be’—Thanassis left a long pause before continuing—‘amazing, Grace.’
‘Oh, I’ve never heard that one before.’
The smile dimmed a little, and confusion overtook his handsome face. Grace hadn’t thought to research whether the Greeks had a sense of humour, but it looked like sarcasm was possibly off the menu.
‘It’s so lovely to be here, and I’m excited to start teaching tomorrow.’
She was gushing, but there was no point getting off on the wrong foot.
‘And we are excited to have you. I won’t keep you; we will go through everything in the morning before class starts. If you can meet me here at nine.’
Thanassis did a mock bow.
‘Until then.’
Grace hotfooted it out of the door and breathed a sigh of relief as she left the car park. The shady backstreets were calling to her, and Grace wandered through the alleyways that led up and away from the town, where loops of pink and red bougainvillea grown across canopies gave café customers respite from the sun.
She sat down at one of the cafés and ordered herself an Aperol Spritz with ice. Eating or drinking alone in Britain was dismal in her experience. She’d only tried it once, and they’d shoved her on a table near the toilets. Here, it felt like it wasn’t a problem, and many of the tables were occupied by a single woman or man. Grace stared into the orange liquid, bubbles of condensation dripping down her glass. Phil had hated the stuff, saying it tasted like cough mixture. She tried out the idea in her head that Phil’s opinion didn’t matter very much anymore, which made her both sad and a little bit excited at the same time. Grace took a long, luxurious slurp through her straw.
* * *
An hour later, she was desperate for that swim, and after walking to the top of the town, she glimpsed the beach in the distance, the water glistening invitingly. She made her way down the dusty slope, her body longing for immersion in the water with every step.
Ten minutes’ walk seemed a bit of an understatement on Elena’s part; she’d been going for at least fifteen already. Near the bottom, she was tempted to break into a run, or a gentle jog if she was being honest with herself. There seemed to be two paths to the beach, one winding and long, while the other cut through a garden with a wall.
Surely that would be fine? There was no one about. Grace climbed over the wall, and kept to the perimeter of the property, not looking up at the enormous house to her left. She was nearly there. A couple more steps and she’d be able to hop over and directly onto the beach.
‘Hey!’
A male voice stopped her in her tracks.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Grace turned to see a tall, tanned man, dressed all in black, bearing down on her. His brown eyes were full of fury.
He was now so near she could smell his lemony aftershave. He was obviously British by the accent. Grace couldn’t miss the broad shoulders and the tensed muscles that bulged out of the sleeves of his polo shirt.
Up close he was even taller than she’d thought, long legs encased in black chinos, his close-shaven face looming at least half a foot above her.
Grace prepared to stand her ground. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of appearing frightened. They squared up to each other, just inches apart.