Chapter 1
Everyone has a theme song.
Oh, come on; don’t try to tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Don’t pretend you haven’t danced around your bedroom with a hairbrush for a mic, singing like no one’s watching.
Or run for the bus in the rain, secretly imagining you’re in the opening scenes of a movie; your wet hair cascading dramatically down your back while the music plays and the credits roll.
In that moment, you’re not just some random woman who’s going to be a few minutes late to her boring admin job if she misses that bus; you’re the Main Character — and you have your very own theme song to prove it.
And so do I. Except, in my case, the song in question doesn’t just play in my head; it plays everywhere I go.
And I hate it.
“Hey, Lana! Listen to this!”
As if to prove the point, my friend Angelina reaches over the top of the bar and cranks up the volume on the radio that’s playing there.
“It’s your song,” she beams, as the opening bars of Bikini boom out across the little taverna, and I slap my hands quickly over my ears as if I can block it out that way, even though I know from bitter experience that I can’t. And trust me — I’ve tried.
Just like everyone else, I have a theme song.
Unlike everyone else I know, though, my theme song is a song I wrote thirteen years ago … and which was stolen from me by the man I hate more than anyone else in the world; the same man who went on to become famous from it, while I just ended up feeling like I’m being stalked by it.
Sometimes life really isn’t fair.
“It’s not my song, Angel,” I remind her, wrinkling my nose in protest as the voice of Leo Wilde fills the night air, making people pause their conversations and look up from their moussaka. Leo tends to have that kind of effect on people.
He would.
“It’s not my song,” I repeat, as Angel turns the volume up another notch, taking advantage of her status as the owner’s granddaughter to do whatever she likes, as usual. “I hate this song, remember? And I’ve heard it at least twenty times today already.”
I pout, looking out over the terrace to where the sea is lapping gently against the shore, the normally soothing rhythm of the waves completely drowned out by the sound of the Brit-pop boy band floating down from the taverna.
Okay, twenty times is possibly an exaggeration; but only a very slight one.
Bikini was the song that woke me up this morning, blasting out of the old-fashioned radio alarm I’d set as a backup, just in case my phone died in the night and I missed my flight.
It was playing in the taxi on the way to Edinburgh airport, and then again over the speaker in the departure lounge.
It was the first thing I heard when I boarded the plane — and that made it the last thing I heard before I put on my noise-canceling headphones in a bid to block it out.
(Pro tip for anyone else who finds themselves in the oddly specific situation of being stalked by a song they wrote years ago, but didn’t get the credit for; yes, it’s worth splashing out on the expensive headphones…)
It’s almost as if I’m being haunted by it, really.
“D’you think you can be haunted by a song?” I ask Angel, accepting the glass of ouzo she hands me, even though the stuff makes my eyes water. Well, when in Greece, and all that.
“Like an ear worm, you mean?”
“No, more like a stalker. A really, really determined one. The kind that stands outside your front door for hours so they can give you a picture they made of you from their toenail clippings.”
“Bikini isn’t stalking you, Lana,” Angel says, downing her own drink in one. “And that’s a really disgusting visual, by the way. It’s just super-popular, that’s all. You’re going to have to get used to hearing it, agapi mou. Especially here.”
I sip my drink and give an involuntary grimace. Angel’s right. If there’s anywhere I should expect to hear Bikini — or any of the other songs from The Wilde Boys’ debut album — it would be right here on the island, wouldn’t it?
This is the place I wrote it, after all … and the place Leo stole it from me.
Not that Angel knows that bit, of course.
No, the only person who knows that a vaguely uptight teacher from Edinburgh wrote one of the biggest hits of the last decade is me — and, of course, Leo Wilde himself.
And, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, that’s how it’s going to stay.
Unfortunately for me.
Angel goes to serve a customer, and I treat myself to a sneaky spin on my bar stool, just like I used to do when I came here as a kid.
The taverna’s had at least one lick of paint in the decade or more since I last saw it, and someone’s strung fairy lights up over the wooden terrace that forms the outdoor seating area, to make it a bit more Instagrammable, but it’s otherwise unchanged.
I can even see a photo of me and Angel, aged about 12 or 13 (She’s got her tongue out and I’ve got both eyes closed: standard…), pinned up on the wall behind the bar, surrounded by dozens of other snapshots, all depicting happy holiday-makers in various states of inebriation.
I look quickly away before I can see the one of Leo Wilde and his band mates that I know’s up there somewhere, too.
It’s bad enough that I have to hear his voice everywhere I go; I don’t want to have to see the guy, too — which makes me quite possibly the only single, straight woman in the world who doesn’t.
Get out of my head, Leo Wilde. You definitely don’t belong there.
“Okay, okay,” Angel huffs, seeing the look on my face as the final chorus of Bikini kicks in. “I’ll put on something else if it’ll stop you making that face at me.”
She ducks behind the bar and starts fiddling with the radio, which is almost as old as she is, and which spits out a bunch of static, before finally finding a new station.
Which is also playing Bikini.
Of course it is.
“Okay, that’s it,” I say, throwing my hands up in a way I know is overly-dramatic, but which feels like the only fitting response to being haunted by your own song. “I’m out. I’m going to head back to the beach house to unpack.”
“Oh, come on, Lana,” Angelina says, pouting. “You just got here. I haven’t seen you for years. You can’t run off again before Yiayia even has the chance to feed you. You know how seriously she takes food.”
“I know.”
I smile at my friend. I haven’t seen Angel since we were teenagers, but, before that, we spent every summer together, right here on the island she grew up on, and which my parents first visited on their honeymoon, and then almost every year since; to the point that they ended up buying their very own beach house here, rather than wasting money on hotels.
Well, what can I tell you? I guess we Lawsons are creatures of habit; or, as my sister Eden would have it, “Really freaking boring.”
“Look, it’s not because of the song,” I lie, knowing perfectly well that it’s totally because of the song. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long day. And I need to call Mum and Dad and give them a status report on the house. They’ll be waiting to hear from me.”
“I can’t believe they’re actually selling it,” Angel replies, her brow creasing under her heavy fringe.
(At some point in the years since I last saw her, it seems Angel has grown her hair and started wearing makeup.
It suits her, but it’s taking a bit of getting used to, given that the last time I saw her she had a short bob and was occasionally mistaken for her twin brother, Atlas; and, on one occasion, her uncle, Costas.
I’m pretty sure the woman who said that was just being mean, though.)
“I know,” I say again, quickly arranging my face into what I hope is an appropriately mournful expression. “It’s… well, it’s sad.”
“It’s more than just ‘sad’, Lana,” Angel says, eyes widening in protest at the inadequacy of the word. “Think of all the summers you’ve spent here. The Easter breaks. That Christmas when you cried because you were expecting it to be as hot as it was in August. Think of the memories.”
She gestures to the photo wall behind her, and, of course, her waving hand just so happens to land right on the one photo I’ve been trying to avoid, forcing me to look at it, in the same way my so-called theme-song demands to be listened to. Repeatedly. Until I want to cry.
It’s just as silly to be scared of a photo as it is to be haunted by a song, though, and I am nothing if not sensible (Or, again, boring, according to Eden…), so I flex my shoulders, like an aging boxer limbering up for his last big fight, and stare right at it, just to prove I can; to rob it of its power, if you like.
And there they are. The Wilde Boys, all lined up in front of the taverna, the summer they became famous.
The summer Leo Wilde casually ruined my life.
My shoulders drop in defeat.
Round one to Leo; already looking like the golden boy he became in his photo, even though I know perfectly well that his soul’s as black as the center of the volcano this island sprung from.
“I didn’t think they’d ever sell it either,” I reply, realizing Angel’s still waiting for a response.
I twist around in my seat so The Wilde Boys are no longer in my line of sight.
“But Eden’s baby’s due any day now, and you know what Eden’s like; she’s got absolutely nothing ready for it.
Mum and Dad are going to need all the money they can get to help her out. ”
“I can’t believe Eden’s old enough to have a baby,” Angel replies, attempting to pour herself some more ouzo and spilling most of it on the bar. “Isn’t she, like, 12, or something?”
“She’s 28,” I reply, my fingers tightening around my glass. “It’s … well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
A wave of nausea hits me; jet lag, or nostalgia, or something else I can’t quite name, but which I know is somehow connected to the song, and the photo, and being back here on the island after all this time.
“Sorry, Angel,” I say, feigning a yawn, “But I really am knackered. Rain check?”