Chapter 31
‘Is he really that famous?’ Saffron asked.
‘Like Kylie Jenner famous?’ She sipped at her frappe as Faye was eyes down on the booking system on her phone, attempting to move a group of guests who had made a complaint about a grasshopper.
One grasshopper. The conference room was still busy, over an hour on, people – adults and children – buzzing around like they were being given the chance for an audience with Jesus.
‘I don’t think anyone is that kind of famous in Greece. We have different priorities here,’ Faye reminded her.
‘But hundreds of people have turned out to see him. This guy who chased me on his motorbike and almost punched Dad’s friend.’
And Faye was still waiting to see if there was going to be any backlash from Matthew about that. It wasn’t Matthew’s style to immediately jump on information. He was a processor. He liked to sit and mull and then think of the best possible way to use the opportunity to his advantage.
‘Basketball is very popular here,’ Faye stated.
She raised her head from her phone and looked across at Kostas, sitting at a table.
His friend – Stathis, she had found out he was called – was helping keep everyone in order as well as talking to the reporters that had turned up.
If she had felt embarrassed about the one-night stand before, she felt even more embarrassed now having met his latest hook-up.
Beautiful. Much younger than her. But she shouldn’t be surprised.
She wasn’t surprised. He was a very good-looking, athletic young guy.
Why wouldn’t he be wanting all the fun at his disposal?
And she had already chalked it up to experience until…
that moment last night when he had wound her towards him with her handbag strap.
It had given her shivers in all the hottest of ways.
‘So, do you think you and Dad will get back together?’
Saffron’s question made Faye cough, and she put her phone on the table and reached for her bottle of water. ‘Saffron, what on earth do you mean?’ She glugged some fluid down quickly. ‘We’re divorced.’
‘I know,’ Saffron said. ‘But, you know, people do that and then they, you know, reconsider.’
Faye looked at her daughter now. Was she really serious? And, if she was, where had this thought come from? There was only one person she could think of who liked to stir the pot. Matthew’s mother.
‘Saff, has Nan been talking about this?’
Saffron was a little too quick to shake her head. ‘No.’
‘Saff.’
‘OK, well, maybe she said something about Dad not being good on his own and not having moved on and that when you get to a certain age different things hold more importance and no one knows real loneliness until you catch yourself talking to the plants that you bought on a solo trip to the garden centre.’
Bloody garden centres! What was it with them? She took a deep breath, knowing that her daughter worried about both her parents far more than someone her age definitely should.
‘Saff, I’m not lonely,’ Faye said softly.
‘And your dad’s never really been the kind of person to not be doing something.
He always did something when we were married, with his friends.
If he wasn’t playing golf he was working, or if he wasn’t working he was, I don’t know, lining up awful TV shows for us to watch, and you said he’s on Bumble now. ’
‘Yes, but I don’t think he wants to be. And, I think, if you gave him another chance then he might—’
‘Saff, I gave him more chances than any person really deserved.’ Her love for Matthew, her need to make the marriage a success, her resolute values that Saffron needed to have two parents in a committed relationship together had held her together through the first affair, but the second…
the second killed every feeling she had ever had, obliterated every good memory for a time.
‘I just think,’ Saffron began again, ‘that if Dimitria sells the hotel then… what will you do without it? Because work is everything to you and—’
Faye looked at Saffron in shock. ‘Has Dimitria said something to you?’
‘About what?’ Saffron asked.
‘You just said if she sells the hotel. Why would you think she would sell the hotel?’ Had Faye herself let something slip?
‘No, I… might have… overheard you talking,’ Saffron said nervously, pulling at a tendril of her hair.
‘And, I mean, it’s not really a huge surprise.
She’s quite old and that’s what people do, isn’t it?
Retire or something so they have more time to do things they enjoy more than working.
Unless they really enjoy working. Like you. ’
Now she could feel a headache coming on. The potential sale of the hotel, the loss of her job and her home and apparently Matthew’s mother trying to orchestrate a reunion and get Saffron involved. There was only one thing she could do now to get some focus back. Take control.
‘OK everyone!’ she called to the packed conference room. ‘I will need the room back in fifteen minutes so let’s get our last photos and signatures.’
‘What’s happening here in fifteen minutes?’ Saffron asked, taking another sip of her frappe.
‘The curtain comes down on this circus,’ Faye said, pushing her chair underneath the table. ‘And, Saff, I don’t know what Nan’s been filling your head with in Wales but your dad and I getting back together is about as likely as there being no Strictly scandal this year.’ She took a breath. ‘Sorry.’