Chapter Eleven
‘Romantic,’ sighs India, turning automatically to Keera, ‘and yet I can see Rose’s point. Dan is totally wound up in taking care of Julia. Rose didn’t say co-dependent but it’s hanging there, right?’
Keera watches Dan striding off in the direction of the steps down to the terrace below.
‘Apart from that, it’s like a storybook romance,’ India goes on, ‘meeting at school and staying together.’
Rose has left the terrace after commanding that the group cook and serve dinner this evening. Before that, the afternoon session will be at three.
But Bernard is grizzling about having to do anything as menial as cooking.
‘I don’t cook,’ he’s storming now, ‘I get things cooked for me!’
‘Darlink, it will be fine, I will do it,’ Grazia’s replying, which makes India and Keera look at each other and begin to laugh.
Relief at getting through the first bit makes them giggly.
‘Rose isn’t going to like that,’ India says. ‘I can’t see Bernard getting out of cooking.’
There’s only the four of them left on the terrace – Dianne practically ran back into the hotel.
‘I can’t cook,’ says Keera, shrugging. ‘I can reheat pizza, that’s, like, it.’
‘I can make pasta pesto if I have enough basil, but you need a lot of it. I can do hummus too and a veggie bol,’ India says, grinning.
‘That’s pretty much it. Go to the beach with me?
’ she asks, standing up and stretching her back with her arms in the air.
‘There’s bound to be a sea breeze down there. ’
She arches her spine just enough to feel her achy lower back loosen up.
‘I’d love to go to the beach,’ Keera agrees. ‘I’ll just dump my stuff back.’
‘Me too. I need a hat and more sun cream,’ India says, looking at her faintly golden skin.
‘I need sun cream too,’ says Keera. ‘Or I’ll be red as a lobster.’
Ten minutes later, they’re both staring at the prettily hand-drawn map of the villa and its environs, and walking down the small, dusty road that leads to the beach.
‘It is not like Palaiokastritsa down the coast,’ Christos explained when he gave them the map.
‘There are pebbles as well as sand. You need good sandals. The water is very clean if you want to swim. Do not stray too far off the beach, ladies. People get lost around here. They walk, forget water and sunhats, and overheat. Promise you will stay on the path?’
They promised.
‘This morning was pretty intense,’ says India when they’ve walked past the low curved stone wall that signifies the entrance to another villa, and then followed the car-free curve of the road.
The road’s bordered to the right by a field containing goats who watch them with interest, strange yellow eyes narrowed.
India trails her hand along the lavender bushes edging the goats’ field.
‘Yeah, it was intense,’ says Keera. ‘I’ve done rehab so it’s not unfamiliar territory.’
‘You look too young for rehab.’
‘You’re never too young,’ jokes Keera lightly.
‘This might sound silly, but I’m beginning to feel like a bit of an interloper,’ India says awkwardly.
‘You’ve obvs got rehab stuff. Dan has his girlfriend attempting suicide.
Bernard and Grazia must have something that’s a very big deal because there are two of them here.
I’ve no idea what Dianne’s thing is – and me: I’ve got nothing much to talk about compared to that. ’
‘Don’t believe you,’ says Keera easily. ‘We’ve all got stuff.’
‘Not big stuff, though,’ India protests. ‘My stuff’s all ordinary.’
‘I bet it’s not. Why did you come?’
India grimaces. ‘It really sounds lame. I’ve been so blessed all my life, I have lovely parents – not that they’re together.
I adore my stepmother … None of this is enough for me to be here.
I loved The Talisman Effect when I was young.
Rose is so cool, isn’t she? She looks totally different than from on TV, though.
I like the hippie vibe – it suits her. The long silvery hair, cool. ’
‘Very cool,’ agrees Keera.
‘I love that she can listen to you and ask the right questions,’ India goes on. ‘I guess I thought she could sort my life out.’
‘You see?’ Keera says. ‘You do have stuff. What needs sorting out?’
‘Normal stuff …’ India says hopelessly. ‘Nothing big. I have this problem with guys – I meet them, we hook up and just when I think it’s for ever, they leave. I haven’t dated anyone longer than six weeks in, like, two years. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.’
‘That’s stuff,’ Keera points out.
‘I suppose.’ India’s silent.
‘I’ve realised that I don’t want to leave it too late to have a child.’
Saying it is a rush. The words are out there.
She’s half-waiting for Keera to say: How can you look after a child, you don’t know what you want to do with the rest of your life, never mind take care of a baby?
She rushes in to correct herself: ‘I mean, it’s OK if you don’t and I’m not making the point that all women should have children because, obviously, it’s a deeply personal thing—’
‘It’s OK,’ says Keera. ‘Your wanting a child doesn’t upset me. You do you and I’ll do me. I don’t see me wanting kids because I’m not sure I want to pass these genes on.’
She grimaces.
‘I’ve got to say that I’m not in a maternal phase right now – but who knows. Thing is: you do want a baby.’
‘Yes.’ India sighs a huge heartfelt sigh. ‘If you did rehab, why are you here? Sorry if that’s too personal,’ India adds.
‘It’s life and family stuff,’ Keera says quickly. India gets the impression that she doesn’t want to scare her off.
They walk on in silence.
As they reach the craggy path down to the beach, the vast, shimmering Ionian Sea is splayed out in front of them: infinite, mysterious.
In the distance, there’s a sea haze floating over the blue. Beneath the gentle waves, there’s an unknowable kingdom filled with coral, seaweeds, mysterious fish, big and small.
Both women gaze at it.
The sea has been here for millennia, seeing problems, worries, women’s tears falling onto this beach.
And then suddenly, those same women are gone, and the next generation and the next come along.
The thought of it was making the two women standing on the shore feel their insignificance beside this huge part of their planet.
That their current worries were puny things in the huge scheme of the ancient and modern worlds.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ sighs India, taking off her sandals and delicately walking across the flat rocks that lead to the sand and pebbles lining what Christos had called the Kri Kri beach.
‘It means a type of wild goat,’ he had said. ‘We don’t have this goat any more in Corfu, only in Crete and the smaller islands. They are very beautiful but wild, very wild.’
India loves the feeling of the sand and the pebbles on her feet. She feels connected to the earth.
She’s a part of the universe here – not simply a cog in a wheel, a lonely cog. Everyone has someone: her father has Georgie, her mother has Magnús, her rockstar boyfriend.
India has nobody.
Nobody actually cares where she is right now, and that hurts. She is fundamentally alone.
Tears fill her eyes, which she knows is a ludicrous reaction. She has so much! She’s here on a glorious beach just below a glorious retreat, and she’s crying!
Sobbing.
Keera puts an arm around India and squeezes.
‘Thank you,’ mutters India.
She wipes her cheeks with her arm but the tears keep flowing.
Blast Rose and her opening people up.
India doesn’t want to be opened up. It hurts.
She’s not even on the rack on the terrace and, already, she feels split open.
‘I thought this was supposed to help,’ she says to Keera, indistinctly now because of the tears.
‘It will, honestly,’ says Keera. ‘I did it in rehab and it helped so much.’
‘Why are you here now if rehab worked so well?’ India asks.
‘Rehab deals with addiction and once you get out and you’re clean and sober, you realise all the other stuff that’s wrong in your life. That’s what I need to sort,’ Keera says wryly.
They’ve reached the start of the beach proper and there’s a walkway through the rocks to the pebbled beach below.
Still holding on to the crying India with one arm, Keera guides them over the pebbles to a part of the beach where someone’s made a giant circle of pebbles on the sand.
‘Thought it wasn’t supposed to be a classic sandy beach,’ sniffs India, because this side is just that.
‘Christos was probably just warning us that there’s pebbly bits too in case we sue him for breach of contract,’ says Keera, laughing. ‘The contrast is cool,’ she adds. Then she laughs. ‘It’s the two sides of therapy seen as a beach: sandy stretches but also lots of big rocks to climb over.’
They both laugh and India rubs her eyes with her hand again, the tears finally drying up.
‘I’m a mess,’ she says and collapses cross-legged onto the warm sand.
‘You’re a work in progress,’ Keera says, shrugging, sitting down on the sand too and pulling her knees up so that her hands are clasped around them.
India’s gazing blankly out at the sea.
‘I’ve been reading this saying online,’ she says to Keera. ‘The heart wants what the heart wants, and I think, is that true? Or is it a stupid saying?’
‘You seem to have a lot on your mind,’ says Keera kindly, ‘and the whole The heart wants … stuff … I can honestly say that’s total garbage,’ she adds.
‘Really?’ asks India, appalled.
‘Yeah. The heart is a totally impractical organ and has the emotional intelligence of a banana.’
India laughs at this.
Keera continues: ‘The badly hurt part of us, call it Trauma Central: that wants what it wants, which is usually some hurtful scenario to replicate our past.’
India’s mouth is an oval.