Chapter Twenty-Nine
The midday heat has simmered off as Dan and India climb the rocky hills high beyond the sea.
India has brought the rucksack Keera lent her and she’s filled it with two bottles of water, her journal, sunblock, a vial of perfume and a little bag of nuts for sustenance.
She did toy with the idea of bringing a couple of squares of very dark chocolate from the tiny minibar but realised it would melt.
Dan has a dark, sporty-looking rucksack and she has no idea what’s in it but it seems quite empty.
He’s faster than her at clambering over rocks and dusty scree.
After forty-five minutes of climbing like the ever-present mountain goats, India is panting as if she’s on a run. Yoga-fit is not the same as mountain-climbing fit.
‘Slow down, Dan,’ she says. ‘I can’t go as fast as you.’
‘Sorry.’ He stops instantly.
India reaches him, bends over to catch her breath and says ‘Can we take a breather?’
She’s taking one either way. Pulling off her hat, she wipes her sweaty forehead and thinks, automatically, that it’s a pity Dan is seeing her looking hot and sweaty.
No! she tells herself quickly. You are not here to hook up with Dan. You can’t fall in love with him.
Anxious attachment style. And limerence, remember limerence.
This time yesterday, she didn’t know what the damn word meant and now it haunts her.
She is addicted to limerence! Who knew?
Her addiction is to the joyous feeling of being loved by men she barely knows and it’s Not Real.
It’s like being addicted to handbags or gambling. India’s got two girlfriends who are totally addicted to handbags but they’re both children of wealthy people, so that’s OK. They can afford it.
She pokes inside her bag for some water and then decides that there’s nothing for it but to sit down on a rock for a rest.
Perching on the only vaguely flat rock in sight, she stretches out her legs and drinks deeply from the first of her two water bottles.
Dan has also found a rock to sit on, some way away from her, and she stares through the woods and tries to catch sight of the sea.
Rose’s session with India in the dock had hurt.
No matter what spin Rose tried to put on it, India wasn’t a perfectly normal person who might want a baby and liked dating lovely men.
No. She was obsessed with the feelings of being happily involved with any stupid guy who came along.
Well, paint her pink and mail her to Guam – everything in India’s life comes down to limerence.
India hates it. Hates herself for being addicted to something so stupid.
Does everyone else know? Her family? Dad? Georgie?
An insect skims close to her eyes and lands on her forehead, so she swats it away ineffectively.
‘Bloody flies,’ she mutters. ‘It’s too hot for a walk,’ she says to Dan, fanning herself with her baseball hat, aware that she must look dreadful with her hair all sweaty and gross.
She catches the thought and winces. She’s done it again!
Dan is most definitely not a romantic interest. He is another person on Rose’s course who wants to be healed. He is out of bounds, specifically for her.
She needs to go cold turkey on men. Especially ones who have to have life explained back to them like they’re aliens.
Dan, for all his cleverness and PhD, is clueless about people. Worse, he didn’t realise he was clueless.
But she can’t help but look at Dan, his long muscular legs stretched out. He must do marathons or something. Did he mention cycling?
India had not been paying attention then but now she is.
The retreat is a very female zone, now that she thinks about it. There are no other guests apart from Rose’s people. Rose must have chosen the male staff to make sure they were too old for her and Keera, India thinks. Apart from the delicious Alexei, of course.
Therefore, apart from Dan and Alexei, who is clearly obsessed with himself, the only gorgeous man around is Christos, who is married to Adriana.
India concedes that Dan is pretty hot.
One of those clever, distracted men who never really look at India because she doesn’t have a power job or know clever stuff.
But still – Dan falling in love with her would be incredibly special. He’d come home at night and talk about how science was fun but really, all day, he’s been thinking of her and couldn’t wait to hold her tenderly in his arms … Shit!
She’s doing it again! What is wrong with her? If Keera can give up drugs, she can give up men!
India crossly opens her bag of nuts, scoops out a handful and shoves the bag in Dan’s direction.
‘Do you have anything sugary?’ she asks, determined to sabotage any hope of anything romantic.
Eating in the presence of a man is a no-no in India’s mind. Her mother installed that information years ago.
She kicks the ground savagely and a few beetles scatter frantically.
‘I have some boiled sweets,’ Dan says, pulling something from the depths of his rucksack.
‘Gimme.’
India holds her hand out.
She wants sugar. Lots of it.
Ice cream. She’d kill for ice cream.
No, cheesecake.
It’s been years since she had cheesecake. Years.
What else has she given up so she can appear like a bloody unicorn to a litany of stupid men who don’t deserve her?
She thinks Rose said that, didn’t she?
‘These guys are creatures you have burnished to make them seem better,’ Rose had said. ‘They’re half real, half invented. You’re falling in love with the invented parts of them, the promise of what life would be like if you were together.’
Dan watches India unwrap two sweets at once and stuff them in her mouth.
She moans as she tastes both a hard-boiled lemon and a hard-boiled orange sweet at the same time.
Bliss.
She wants more sugar.
‘You don’t have a Coke?’ she asks, mouth full.
Dan shakes his head.
‘I thought you were a vegetarian and didn’t eat processed foods?’ he says, looking adorably confused.
India feels the automatic pull deep inside her. He listened.
‘I can’t date you,’ she says fiercely.
‘I … I … don’t want you to,’ he says, entirely taken aback.
Dan realises that India has a wild glint in her eyes and he feels a hint of nervousness.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ he asks. ‘Do you want to go back?’
‘No, I want to keep walking. Can we go via a shop? I think a Coke will help.’
India decides that exercising this stupid feeling will – ha! – exorcise it.
She will walk all over this damned island twice if she can stop thinking about how stupid she’s been.
She plans to tell her mother off for all the unicorn claptrap.
But then, India is thirty-four. Old enough to know better.
The unicorn thing must be something India loved, an idea that played into her own hopes and desires.
‘I like the Sanskrit idea that one is given lessons, and that they will be repeated until we have learned them,’ Rose had said the previous evening on the beach.
‘I’m a bit woolly about Sanskrit,’ India had said carefully to Dianne, sitting beside her, perched high on a lumbar-support cushion.
‘It’s a very ancient language in India. It’s Hindu, I think.’
‘The answers lie inside you,’ Rose had gone on.
India now thinks that she’s spent far too long worrying about her outside and clearly not enough time on the inside. That’s all about to change, she thinks grimly.
They set off again in a slightly different direction after Dan has consulted his small map.
‘Do you want to see?’ he asks, holding it out to her.
‘Nope,’ says India, voice firm.
Rule five: always be interested in your man.
‘OK,’ he says.
Yes, definitely something up but he is not asking what.
Asking women what’s wrong with them never, ever works out well.
‘Do you want me to go first,’ Dan asks brightly, ‘or do you want to lead so we’ll go at your pace?’
‘I’ll lead,’ India says, striding off. ‘You tell me left or right.’
She stomps along, feeling crosser all the time as her past unravels in front of her.
She trips on a piece of gorse and only manages to stop falling because Dan reaches out and grabs her elbow.
‘You OK?’ he asks.
With his new-found awareness of sensitive people, he doesn’t want to screw up.
‘Yes!’ shrieks India, pulling her arm out of his grasp.
Dan backs off.
That’s pretty conclusive: she’s OK and she doesn’t want to be touched.
Fine. He can do that.
They continue heading in the direction of Paleokastritsa where Dan thinks, from looking on Google Maps earlier, that there’s a small cluster of shops on the way into the village. He doesn’t have his phone because he likes the challenge of finding his way without a smartphone app helping him.
That may have been a mistake.
It takes another hour of walking down through tangles of gorse and dense forest and loud insects that make India shriek, until they reach a road. It’s dusty, very narrow and is definitely not the main road from Xanthe into Paleokastritsa.
Dan decides he won’t say this because India is displaying definite on-the-edge signs that he’s unhappily familiar with.
She’s drunk nearly all her water and he’s been eking out his last bottle. Dan is beginning to think that heat stroke is next on the agenda and he’s wondering if he’d be able to carry India to safety.
She’s skinny but taller than Julia, he thinks. A tall dead weight will be hard to carry but he won’t say this. Even he knows that implying a woman is overweight is a fatal mistake to make.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ demands India, who is now red-faced from the heat and holding her second water bottle which she has nearly drained.
‘Think so,’ Dan says, which is a total lie. They are completely lost but it’s easier to worry in his own head. They’ll make it to civilisation soon.
At ten to six, Rose and the team set up the small beach for the pre-dinner beach meditation.
Christos and Stavros, who manages the grounds, have carried down the mats, tiny bolster cushions, sunloungers and sunshades the group will need to meditate that evening.
‘Is it going to be too warm?’ worries Rose.