Chapter 22
A short while later, having swept the water away and indulged in a shot of ouzo that I knocked back, I’m sitting with Phoebe feeling a little calmer. I don’t know what I would do without Phoebe next door.
A plumber arrives in no time, and it’s not too long before the punctured water pipe is replaced and there is a steady sound of hammering and drilling coming from the kitchen again. Dimitri assures me the kitchen, which is only a small space, will be completed by this evening.
‘Did you ever think about opening the kitchen out?’ asks Dimitri, glancing around the space. ‘This is not a supporting wall.’ He prods the space behind him.
‘Now you tell me. Although actually, I quite like a separate kitchen. Maybe I could have one of those serving hatches. My gran had one in her house and she used to pass the plates of food through the hatch to the diners at a table on the opposite side.’
I have a picture of Dimitri wearing an apron cooking something up, and passing me a gin and tonic, and the faraway look in my eyes has Phoebe telling me to go off somewhere.
‘Maybe you take a step back and go for a walk,’ Phoebe advises. ‘The more you see, the more you worry. You pay these people the money, remember.’ She rubs her fingers together. ‘If you do not see the problems, you cannot know they exist.’
‘You know you are right, Phoebe. I am paying them, and a good price too. I just thought I could help things along by doing the garden and a bit of cleaning and tidying things away into the skip. But maybe I will leave them to get on with things now.’
Things haven’t exactly gone to plan, but when a picture pops into my head of Yiannis falling through the ceiling and onto the mattress, I can’t help but laugh. Especially as I know that he is now on the mend.
‘Good, good.’ We are standing outside at the front of the house and the lady across the road walks out of her front door. I lift my hand and wave, and she waves back as usual. Phoebe turns her head the other way.
‘What’s the story between you two then?’ I ask, maybe feeling emboldened by the ouzo. I can’t help feeling sad that two widows of a similar age are missing out on a friendship.
‘She is no good.’ Phoebe pulls a face, and dismisses my question with a flick of the hand but I press on.
‘What do you mean no good?’
‘Come inside,’ she says and I follow her into her home.
Seated at her kitchen table, drinking a cup of lemon tea and resisting a slice of baklava, I listen as she begins her story.
‘It was ten years ago at my sixtieth birthday party,’ she tells me, her expression hardening. ‘That was when I find out.’ She sips her tea slowly.
‘Find out?’
‘Yes. That she was sleeping with my husband.’
My cup freezes halfway to my mouth. There was no way I was expecting Phoebe to say that.
‘Oh my goodness,’ is all I manage to say.
‘It was a warm evening,’ she says, recounting the event. ‘The party was at the bar in the village. Many people were in and out, some sitting drinking and smoking at the outside tables. It was late and most people had left.’ She stops and takes a sip of her tea. ‘We were ready to leave, but I could not find my husband.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘And so I went outside and there they were.’ She shakes her head.
‘Go on,’ I say gently.
‘Wrapped in each other’s arms.’
‘Kissing?’ I ask, knowing that a hug can often be misinterpreted for something very different.
‘Yes, kissing.’ She pours more tea from a jug. ‘On my birthday too.’
‘Oh, Phoebe, I am so sorry to hear that. Did they have too much to drink?’
She fixes me with her dark eyes then. ‘Do you make the excuse for them?’
‘No, no, of course not. So you say they were having an affair? Maybe I was wondering if it was just something they would later regret.’
‘They have the affair, God forgive her.’ She crosses herself.
It rankles me that she never asked for forgiveness for both her friend and her husband.
‘Do you know long it had been going on?’ I ask gently, taking a nibble of a delicious home-baked biscuit.
‘No. My husband deny everything. But I know. The instinct of the woman.’
‘Did you ever ask her about it?’ I ask, wondering if they stopped speaking that very day.
‘No. Never since the day of the party when I see them kissing,’ she says, confirming my thoughts. ‘She try to talk to me, but I say no. I told my husband to stay away from her, and I believe that he did.’
‘So you stayed together?’
‘Yes, for six more years before he died.’
‘So you forgave him but not your friend?’ I can’t help asking.
‘I took the vows, yes. I forgive him. Besides, he told me she was always interested in him, she started it.’ She almost spits the words out.
‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’ The words tumble from my mouth.
‘What do you mean?’ She places her cup down and frowns at me.
‘I just wonder why the woman always gets the blame? They are usually the ones who are branded a homewrecker, even though the man is more than happy to go along with it. I mean, you can’t force someone to have an affair, can you?’
The memory of my cheating ex rises to the surface, including the vile messages I received from his fiancée, yet she forgave him and even went on to marry him, instead of showing the cheating rat the door.
I’m expecting Phoebe to ask me to leave, especially when I think about it. She was Phoebe’s friend after all, and she knew he was married. At least I had no idea about the bloke I met online who was supposedly single. Phoebe says nothing and it feels like an eternity before she finally speaks again.
‘I did not want him to leave.’ She sighs. ‘I could never bear the thought of him living with my friend, just across the road, torturing me every time I see them together. I prayed every night for him to stay with me. To you, a young, modern woman, that probably sounds sad. But it is how I felt. The marriage vow I take, until death us do part.’
I’m sure there is also something in the holy book that says a marriage can be absolved on the grounds of adultery, but I don’t say anything.
‘Oh, Phoebe, it doesn’t sound sad, and I didn’t mean to be cruel,’ I tell her gently. ‘It just annoys me how women always get the blame when it takes two to tango, as they say.’
I wonder how much pressure Phoebe’s husband felt in a small village, to stay with his wife, but I know I could never be with a man whose heart wasn’t truly in the relationship, always living with the fear that they may leave again in the future.
My whole sorry story comes pouring out of how I spent six months of my life with a man who was leading a double life. I met him online and he failed to mention his childhood sweetheart who was now his fiancée. I should have read the signs, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? He would visit me at weekends, or occasionally during the week if he was working ‘up my way’. I never went to his place, him explaining he was sharing a flat that was a bit of a dump, and that the landlord was in the middle of doing it up. It’s amazing what you will believe when you are in love, or at least think you are. As my story unfolds, Phoebe’s expression softens.
‘Then I can understand your anger. And maybe I did not want to admit that I was not enough for my husband. Eliza was always prettier than me.’ She sighs.
‘I doubt that,’ I say, looking at her pretty, hardly lined face. ‘Who knows why some people behave the way they do? Ego maybe, flattered by the attention of another woman? But my boyfriend was in a relationship, and actively went looking for someone else. In my opinion, that is even more despicable than having your head turned. I’m not sure I will ever trust a man again.’
‘You are young. Do not be soured by one bad experience,’ she advises. ‘Not all men are that way. As for my husband, I believe he stayed faithful until his death, but if I tell myself the truth, I know that things were never the same.’ She sighs. ‘I think the guilt would have been too much for him if he left,’ she says, and I feel sad that her marriage ended up that way, after all those years together.
‘Were you good friends with Eliza before that?’ I ask and she nods.
‘For over thirty years, when she first moved here with her husband. They saved to come and live near the sea. Her husband, he had the bad chest.’ She takes the cups across the kitchen and places them in the stone sink.
‘And you don’t think you could ever be friends again?’
‘Too much time has passed. Ten years now.’ She shakes her head. ‘Some things are best left buried,’ she says, but there is a sadness behind her eyes.
‘How do you know, if you don’t try? I have seen her glancing over at you. I get the feeling she might like to put the past behind you both. You are both widows now. You could be friends once more.’
‘Pah. I do not think so.’
Her phone rings then, and her face lights up as she takes a call from her daughter. I gesture to the door to leave her to it and she waves me off.
All afternoon I think about how a friendship of over thirty years came to an end because of her husband’s unfaithfulness. And yet her friend is the one she blames solely for the indiscretion and Phoebe still feels saddened and annoyed about it, but no one is unfaithful unless they really choose to be, surely? Maybe Phoebe’s husband was weak, flattered by the attention of another woman, or maybe he had been unhappy in his marriage. I don’t suppose Phoebe will ever know the answer to that now. I just think it a great shame that there can be no forgiveness on Phoebe’s part and that two women have lost a friendship that they could probably do with in their older age.
Back at the house, Dimitri has already secured two of the kitchen units to the wall, and I offer to help with the base units, but he refuses.
‘I am paid to do this job. I would not mind a coffee though.’ He brushes his hair out of his eyes and smiles.
‘Sure thing.’
‘A double espresso. Maybe it will keep me going.’ He smiles again.
Though the rest of the guys are working hard finishing things upstairs, his comment reminds me of how he promised to work until midnight if he had to in order to keep on schedule. I am beginning to learn that he is a man of his word.
Tomorrow the rendering on the outside of the villa will start, and I dare to imagine a smooth, white-walled building standing tall like the proudest house in the street. There will be pots of flowers either side of the front door, and at last I am able to envisage the long summer days I will soon be able to spend here in my dream holiday home.
Returning with the drinks, I watch Dimitri bending and stretching, his strong body hardly breaking a sweat, clearly very fit, his job no doubt keeping him in shape. His rippling arm muscles are flexing, and I struggle to keep my eyes on the little bit of work I am doing, screwing some hinges onto doors, despite his protestations. I haven’t found a man so physically attractive in a long while, but that’s all I am doing, admiring his physical appearance. Relationships are off the table for me, even if Dimitri had shown the slightest indication that he finds me attractive, which up to now, he hasn’t.
‘Is everything okay?’ Dimitri asks me a while later.
‘Yes, why do you ask?’
‘You are very quiet,’ he observes as he wipes his hands on some kitchen towel.
‘I’m okay. I was just thinking about Phoebe and a conversation I had with her. She was telling me about her friendship with Eliza across the road before they fell out.’
‘Hmm. I remember my aunt telling me a little about that. I was a teenager at the time, but I recall them having a huge row one evening in the street, when I was visiting my aunt with my parents. It seems Phoebe saw her husband coming out of Eliza’s house, after she had returned home early.’
‘Poor Phoebe.’ I shake my head.
‘The strange thing is, my aunt told me that Eliza always swore it was innocent, he had been doing a job for her. He liked to help her out after her husband died. He was just being a good neighbour.’
‘But Phoebe told me that they had an affair and he admitted it.’
‘As far as I know, it was never his intention. Phoebe drove him crazy with her accusations. Some people say she drove the two of them together with her jealousy.’
‘I don’t believe that’s possible if two people really love each other, surely.’ I dismiss his idea.
‘If you love someone, surely you trust them though?’ He looks me in the eye. ‘Why didn’t Phoebe trust him? Without trust, there is nothing.’ He picks up a hammer and returns to his work.
I find a crazy, jealous woman hard to reconcile with the kind woman I have come to know these past few weeks.
‘Well, I can’t argue with that,’ I say. ‘Human relationships can be so complicated, there is no doubt about that.’
‘They don’t have to be. If two people love each other, then that should be enough,’ he states simply.
I’m about to reply, but the sound of his hammer blows tells me the conversation is over.
I think of Evie then, and how her marriage had slipped into the doldrums and wonder whether she may have acted on the attention from Kostas, if they had not decided to make more of an effort. Thank goodness they never threw everything away.
‘You still have to work at it. Love isn’t always enough,’ I mutter to myself as I finish up with a base unit.
He glances over at me then. ‘Did you say something?’
‘Nothing important.’
Dimitri persuades the young men to stay until ten o’clock this evening, and it’s just after eleven before he puts the finishing touches to the units himself, fastening the modern chrome handles onto the cream wooden doors.
‘I really can’t thank you enough for working so hard.’ I glance around at the cream kitchen with the granite worktops, and glossy sage-green splashbacks. We are sitting on the floor eating the pizza we ordered from a box and sipping bottled beer.
‘I told you I would. And before the midnight deadline. Maybe I will have a small lie-in tomorrow.’
‘I think you deserve that. You can start at nine fifteen.’
‘Slave-driver.’
I still have over a week of this visit left, and my spirits have been lifted by the installation of the kitchen. Knowing the roof is secured, as well as the ceiling in the lounge, is huge too. Exhaustion suddenly takes over, and I wish I could climb upstairs and crawl into bed in this very house.
Dimitri gets slowly to his feet.
‘I am grateful to be staying so nearby,’ he says. ‘I will let Prudence out for the night and take a shower before bed. But first I will walk you home.’
‘Really, there is no need.’ One thing I can say is that it feels perfectly safe around here, and the apartment is literally a few minutes’ walk away. ‘It’s been a long enough day for you already.’
‘I would feel better if I did,’ he insists.
‘Okay. If you insist.’
We walk quietly and outside my apartment he doesn’t linger, but says goodnight, and heads off.
It’s been a good day today, and I hope tomorrow will bring more of the same.