Chapter 4
Limani Beach, Lesvos, Greece
The boy with the jumping dog, once frozen in the air by a photograph taken more than a decade ago on the much more northerly beach in the Hebrides is not a boy any more and the dog is long gone and much lamented in the way of all well-loved childhood dogs.
The boy-now-a-man sits at a battered, blue-painted table beneath the gnarled olive trees at the back of the beach and watches the sun set over the Limani.
His phone is propped against an empty beer bottle with a bright red A on the label.
The girl who took the photograph is now a woman, but her face, on the phone’s screen, is still a riot of freckles.
She’s in a moving vehicle, leaning against the side door as a brown landscape flies past. She looks tired, but happy.
“And Skalachori?” she says. “What’s changed?”
“The shop’s closed. For good this time they say. Have to go to Kalloni and stock up. But the old women are still running the bakery, so you’ll get your cake-fix, don’t worry.”
“I love those old women,” she says.
“And they love the bakery,” he says. “They’ll keep it going till they drop, I reckon.”
“Well,” she says. “Nothing lasts for ever. We’ll just have to enjoy it while it’s there…”
He drinks more beer and squints at the sun, which is now touching the line where the Aegean meets the sky, the golden light bouncing flatly off its surface somehow making the gentle heave of the waveless sea seem dark and thick as motor oil.
“This won’t go on for ever,” he says, gesturing with his free hand at the scene beyond the phone.
“Sunsets?” she says. “Or bakeries?”
“Beer,” he says.
“Oh” she says. “Wow. That’s dark…”
“Well, the conference wasn’t a chuckle-fest,” he said. “Big manufacturing’s contracting everywhere, even China and India. Flights will stop. Trains will stop, ferries too. Breweries won’t brew, machine shops won’t machine, canneries won’t can because growers won’t grow and fisheries won’t fish—”
“Fisheries won’t fish?” she says, one eyebrow hoisting northwards, one of the many things he loves seeing her face do.
“Get fished,” he says. “Fisheries won’t get fished.”
“Right,” she says. “Sounds like you’re pretty fished already. Might want to slow down a bit, keep your head clear for tomorrow. There’s stuff we need to talk about—”
He doesn’t notice her hand drop to her stomach, and neither does she. It’s a completely unconscious gesture.
“You still going to marry me?” he says.
“Absolutely.” She smiles.
“Then that’s all I need to hear,” he says. “That’s all that bloody matters, isn’t it?”
She peers out of the screen at him, as if by leaning into her phone she can close the couple of hundreds of miles between them and see him better.
“You getting a bit bleak on your lonesome?” she says. “Or is that just post-conference hangover?”
“Everyone was talking about ‘Exit Strategies’, even the smart guys,” he says, grimacing.
“Like they just sort of half woke up to what’s happening, but not enough to realise we don’t have enough time for something long-term like strategy; I mean there’s barely time for short-term tactics.
It’s beautiful here. You should be here. ”
“How many of those have you had?” she says.
He looks at the brown glass bottle in his hand.
“Well, I started drinking Alpha, but they ran out so now I’m on to Fix which is a distinctly less favourite beer,” he says, “not least because it never fixes anything, least of all today’s main problem, which is a treacherous lack of you being here to share the drinking duties…”
“So it sounds like you’re somewhere between too many and not nearly enough” she says.
“Nah,” he says, grinning, “Takis only had one bottle of Alpha in the fridge. I’ve had two small beers and a couple of nice swims. Just getting maudlin because you’re not here yet.”
He sees her crane forwards to peer over the seat at the dash of the moving vehicle.
“Well, Google Maps says we’ll be in Ayvalik in two and a bit hours,” she says. “So, if the ferry’s on time—”
“Big if,” he says.
“Think positive, Eeyore,” she says. “If all goes to plan, I’ll be in Mytilene tomorrow morning and we can both be sitting at that table for lunch. Maybe ask Takis to put more Alpha in the fridge.”
“Who’s driving you?” he says. “Thought you were going to get the bus from the camp?”
“Lucked out,” she says. “Some of the UN guys are dropping me off. I’m in a nice airconned Land-Cruiser.”
“Guys?” he says, swigging his beer as the sun blinks out below the horizon. “Hunky UN guys? Should I be worried?”
“Well, they are pretty ripped, blond and Swedish,” she says. “But they’re married to each other, so I think you can relax…”
He doesn’t hear the explosion, but he sees the screen jump and tumble, and for a moment he thinks she’s just dropped the phone but the image rolls and rolls and he realises the car itself is tumbling and he hears a shout of something between shock and a word he cannot make out and then her face smears and freezes, leaving a jagged edge of pixelation cutting through it like a glitched bloodstain.
And then the signal drops.