Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘A tall man, big shoulders, too thin, probably a cyclist, great leg muscles?’ Agnes at the embroidered goods shop is listening earnestly as Pavel, another one of Christos’s cousins, describes the missing tourist from Villa Artemis.
Agnes no longer reveals her age to anyone, and wears bottle-top glasses but can spot both a shoplifter and a good-looking man from at least a hundred yards away.
‘Yes, that’s the one,’ says Pavel.
He and Marceline have already contacted as many of the island’s taxi drivers as they can on their vast WhatsApp group. They’re all determined to track Dan down. If Dan is on Corfu, they insist they will find him.
Without the police, Pavel has been at pains to explain.
Looking for the same man twice would annoy any policeman.
‘He’s trying to get away from it all,’ Adriana told Pavel and Marceline. ‘I can’t see him leaving the island. He hasn’t taken his suitcase. He panicked, I think. That’s all.’
Agnes has good news for Pavel.
‘This Dan, he came into the village this morning. Looked sad,’ says Agnes thoughtfully. ‘I hate to see a beautiful man sad. I came out of the shop to see if he wanted to talk but he walked on, never saw me.’
Agnes sighs.
She’s been experimenting with tigerish orange and black streaks in her grey hair but nobody has noticed so far, which is disheartening.
‘What direction did he walk in?’ asks Pavel.
‘Past the Sia girls’ shop and the beach shop, in the direction of La Taverna which obviously wasn’t opened then.’
‘Thank you,’ says Pavel, kissing her hand.
He must ask his mother if Agnes’s eyesight is going. Her hair is currently full of mad colours, like an explosion in a hair dye place.
Agnes smiles happily as she turns back into her shop.
Pavel kissed her hand.
Well, now.
Seventy-eight years old and she still hasn’t lost it.
‘They’ve cancelled everything for today,’ says Bernard loudly as he stomps to a sunbed. ‘I told you this retreat was a shoddy affair.’
‘Oh shut up, Bernard,’ says Keera crossly. ‘You’re being nasty. There’s lunch laid out inside for anyone who wants it.’
He ignores her and snorts loudly, irritation leaking from every pore.
Keera knows that Grazia has gone into Xanthe to shop.
Rose has told them all that the timetable is paused until Dan is located and the unwanted visitors are dealt with.
Keera would like a few words with Dan.
But first, she needs to speak to her mother. Bobbi’s at the bar, carousing with Alexei, Stavros and Julia.
Keera leans against the terrace wall and listens to the laughing and giggling. Just half an hour ago, her mother and Julia were on the verge of hitting each other but now it seems that booze and admiring men have taken the edge off.
A very cheesy French album is playing loudly and, as Keera walks up to the bar, she can hear her mother singing along to it.
Julia is looking very undone, with her bare feet up on a barstool, the strap of her tiny blue camisole falling off her shoulder revealing a sexy curved shoulder and the swell of one breast. She has one arm around Stavros, holding a giant glass of wine, and Keera feels a violent urge for a drink.
Just one sip—
‘Look what the cat dragged in!’ shrieks her mother.
Bobbi clambers off her barstool and hugs Keera.
The alcohol fumes hit Keera and suddenly the idea of being drunk feels like the most appalling thing in the world.
‘What are you doing here, Mom?’ asks Keera, leading her mother away from the bar and up to the terrace, which is mercifully empty.
Bobbi has brought her glass and plonks it on the table.
‘I came to see you, honey bun,’ says Bobbi, grabbing her daughter and kissing her on both cheeks now that her hands are free. ‘What have you done with your hair, hon?’
Bobbi fluffs Keera’s wig a little with a disapproving moue. ‘It’s a bit drastic. You look like Barbie. Norm-core Barbie. That’s never been our brand.’
Then she stands back and looks at Keera critically.
‘It’s a wig, isn’t it?’ she says suddenly. ‘Why the fuck are you wearing a wig? What have you done?’
Keera sighs and pulls off the wig, revealing her freshly shaved head.
India had done it for her the night before and had then applied some Voya lime and mandarin lotion onto Keera’s skull, all the while telling her that she had a beautifully shaped head.
‘You’re bald!’ shrieks Dr Bobbi, sinking onto one of the seats on the terrace and taking a huge gulp of her drink.
‘Yeah, Mom, I shaved it off,’ says Keera with irritation. ‘Nobody’s died, OK?’
‘What about your career? Bald or Barbie, either one will kill that off. What the fuck have you done?’
‘Mom, we try not to use swear words on the retreat,’ Keera feels obliged to point out.
‘Like I fucking care!’ Bobbi’s up to full shriek now.
Keera wonders if everyone in Xanthe can hear her.
Their view of tourists will be broken beyond belief.
But then, last season, according to Adriana, the village hosted a week-long hen night and the place was awash with pink fluffy handcuffs, cowboy hats with glitter on them and parties into the night.
Bobbi is still shouting.
‘You’re crazy, crazy!’
The sound grates in Keera’s head.
She wants to do this away from everyone else.
‘Follow me,’ she says, ignoring Bobbi’s shouting.
There are stone steps and a wooden handrail behind the terrace. Keera and India climbed up here before to a hidden high point overlooking the hotel, the village and the sea.
‘Up here,’ Keera says and starts climbing up to the acropolis without waiting for her mother to reply.
‘Come down—’ begins Bobbi but Keera keeps climbing the smooth stone steps. She is not talking to her mother in the bar or anywhere else with proximity to alcohol because then Bobbi will have more to drink, and drinking changes her mother into something else.
Like mother like daughter, Keera thinks ruefully as she climbs.
‘OK,’ she hears her mother shout and she knows Bobbi is coming up behind her, gold platform sandals clopping with each step.
De Havilland sandals, Keera knows. Nobody can ever say that Bobbi doesn’t give every outfit the full rock-chick look.
At the top, Rose and Adriana have planted aromatic peachy-pink oleander bushes that smell of floral talcum powder.
They’re blooming, clusters of flowers with vibrant green leaves.
There’s a long wooden bench installed by Christos close to the edge of the tiny terrace and Keera sits on it now, taking in the sight of the sea.
In the distance she can see boats – large luxury yachts with vast masts and sheeny white flanks, alongside colourful small fishing boats.
Keera closes her eyes and lets the sun warm her face. She loves it here.
If only she could stay, but she can’t. She has to go back to the real world and face it.
But the retreat and Rose have opened a door for Keera. A door that allows her to realise that she has to make her own choices.
‘I don’t know why we have to clamber up here,’ pants Bobbi as she arrives and sinks on the bench, slipping off her golden platforms.
Keera stays silent. Once Bobbi has her breath back, she starts afresh.
‘I’m angry, Keera, and I have a right to be angry!
You disappear, telling me damn all about where you’re going, with fuck all money left in our accounts – and don’t pretend you don’t know this, madam – and then, when I need you to come home to record songs with Santi, you don’t answer your phone any more.
You’re just – pouf.’ Bobbi mimes blowing a bubble.
‘Gone. What have you got to say for yourself?’
The idyllic calm of Xanthe has allowed Keera’s mind to step off the cortisol merry-go-round. She sees her mother almost frothing at the mouth and yet, in her head, she hears Rose speaking to her.
You can’t control other people or what they feel. You can only control your own feelings, thoughts and actions. You are not responsible for other people or their happiness.
This is what she came to the retreat for. This clarity.
She’s also mindful of Rose’s dictum about approaching difficult conversations with love.
‘Mom, I love you,’ she starts.
Bobbi makes a ‘hmfff’ noise.
‘Funny way of showing it. I had to hawk myself around Vegas trying to get work!’
Keera feels her scalp itch with irritation and anxiety.
This is hard. She has never spoken to her mother honestly – not about important stuff.
Bobbi’s the one who makes the decisions and Keera has to follow those decisions.
But then she thinks about all the work she’s done here on herself: how she knows she tries to keep her mother happy and how, as Rose explains it, we can’t fix other people.
‘Mom, I’m sorry we don’t have much money left but let’s live in the real world now. I’m not making any money right now. Why didn’t you look for a normal job if you couldn’t get singing work?’
Bobbi explodes.
‘Normal job!’ she shrieks. ‘I don’t do normal jobs. I’m a performer! I’m in the entertainment business!’
It’s now or never, Keera thinks. In her head, she sees the whirling dreams of her mother – from a small Donegal town to the dizzying heights of backstage at Madison Square Gardens where her daughter had once, just once, played two opening numbers before a teenage country-music star had headlined.
Keera had been so excited at the time but it was nothing compared to her mother. Bobbi had been on a high for weeks.
Her mother had needed that buzz more than Keera had.
‘Mom, we both need normal jobs from now on,’ says Keera. ‘I can’t go back to touring and making records: not in the same way, anyway. It’s bad for me. I’m clean and sober and I won’t be for long if I stay in the industry.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s what we do,’ says her mother dismissively.
‘I don’t want to do it any more,’ Keera says. ‘We’ve got to find other ways to make money, Mom. We’ve lots of contacts, we could get personal assistant jobs or stuff like that—’
‘Personal assistants! I’m not going to be some wage slave,’ Bobbi hisses. ‘How can you even say that? We’re artists: people would kill to have even a tenth of our talent.’
‘Yeah, but look where it brought me,’ says Keera. ‘I can’t be in a music job and stay sober. Not now anyway.’
‘You could if you wanted to,’ her mother says, wheedling.
She’s very drunk, Keera realises belatedly. Once, she’d have been matching her mother drink for drink, so she knew if Bobbi had had too much. But now, her awareness of drunk people is awry.
Unless they actually fall off stools, she can’t see how advanced it is.
Bobbi must be drunk if she’s using her wheedling voice.
‘Mom, this dream is over,’ says Keera. ‘Really over and you have to accept that. I’m out of the music business. You need to get a job.’
‘What? You really mean that?’ Bobbi has shades of the girl from The Exorcist in her voice now. ‘I can’t believe how ungrateful you are! After all I’ve done for you—’
Keera hates to be even sharing the bench with this version of her mother.
‘You didn’t do it for me, Mom, you did it for yourself,’ she says bluntly. ‘It was fabulous but it was your dream. Always your dream.’
‘You liar!’ shrieks Bobbi. ‘Who wanted that role in the Disney show? Watch me practise one more time, Mommy …’
‘I was eleven years old! Eleven-year-olds don’t really know what they want. Of course I wanted it: you wanted it and I wanted to make you happy! That’s what kids do.’
‘Liar,’ shouts her mother again.
Keera stands up, the glittering view behind her, and faces her mother.
‘I’m not your slave, Mom. I’m your daughter and my career – or our career, as you call it – nearly broke me. I became an addict. Not saying that’s your fault – nobody made me do it, but drugs and alcohol nearly destroyed me.’
Keera feels tearful as she says this but it’s all true. She’s heard people talk about recovery in terms of how many recoveries they have in them. Most people say they get one recovery and don’t want to risk going back to drinking or using.
She’d hoped her mom would understand that but she doesn’t: it was a silly hope, really.
‘I’ll talk to you when you’re sober,’ Keera says and speeds down the stone steps, knowing her mother’s sandals are off and that she’ll never be able to follow as quickly.
Perhaps she was mad to think there might be a resolution with her mother. Just because Keera’s changed, doesn’t mean anyone else has.