Chapter 5 #2
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for being kind. I’m not used to sharing anything with anyone, to be honest. I’ve always rowed my own boat. But sadly, my boat’s sprung a big leak; it’s sinking fast.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘My way’s not working. I’ll have to try something else.’
Her truthfulness was startling, but Cleo also felt honoured to have been entrusted with her confidence. She’d seriously misjudged Maya, and felt she owed it to her now to be supportive.
Tash was clearly on the same page.
‘Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘But you know what? At least we’re all here, in this beautiful place, trying to move forwards and do something positive for ourselves.’
She glanced round the silent, shadowy garden and up at the stars once more, twinkling like diamonds scattered across a black velvet canvas. Cleo and Maya followed her gaze.
‘You’re right,’ Cleo said at last, breathing in the crisp scent of night. In that moment, she felt as if the entire universe was holding its breath in quiet anticipation.
The coming days seemed to spread out before her like the pages of a book yet to be written. But where the story would lead was a mystery yet to unfold.
Cleo was sure she’d sleep soundly that night, weary from all the fresh air and exercise.
However, she was woken in the early hours by strange noises, like whisperings and mutterings, which made her shiver.
She told herself not to be silly, it was obviously the wind, but it took her a while to nod off again.
Then she was fast asleep the following morning when her alarm went off.
Opening her eyes, she looked up at the ceiling, round the room and over to the window where sunbeams, like naughty children, were creeping through the chinks in the shutters and dancing cheekily on the wooden floorboards.
She smiled, realising that despite the interrupted night, her head felt light and her mind unusually sharp and clear. What’s more, when she sprung out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror, she noticed a few small but significant changes.
The dark circles under her eyes weren’t as prominent, her eyes seemed more alive and even her complexion looked a little brighter. Was this the first glimpse of what Mark had called ‘The Sparkle Face’? She hoped so.
Today’s schedule was pretty much the same as yesterday’s, with yoga before breakfast followed by two hours of high intensity training outside the villa’s grounds.
Cleo only said a brief hello to Maya over breakfast and they exchanged few words during the classes. Even so, Cleo detected something different about her new friend as well. She seemed softer and less hostile, like winter frost starting to thaw under the warm sun.
Maya sat between Noreen and Lesley at lunch, which was a tasty salad of tomato, kale, quinoa, sliced avocado, chopped walnuts, almonds, pistachios and poached egg.
Cleo would have expected the two alpha females, Maya and Lesley, to find something to clash over but in fact, Maya sat back and let Lesley do most of the talking. She even smiled once or twice but her eyes were sad, not that Lesley would have noticed.
It must be devastating for Maya, Cleo thought, to feel she’d dedicated her whole life to achieving a goal that in the end proved worthless, like building a castle on loose sand and watching it collapse.
Somehow, she needed to find new strength and fresh purpose. Otherwise, there was a danger she’d go under.
Cleo was planning to spend another afternoon by the pool, but Tash suggested they do the coastal walk to Chora Sfakion, which Mark had recommended on the first day.
‘We can get the ferry back to Porto Liakáda when we’ve had a look round. Henrietta mentioned there might be some traditional Cretan music in the village later. Some of the local guys play together on weekend nights.’
The prospect of a long walk after this morning’s activities was somewhat daunting, but Cleo didn’t want to miss out on the hike – or the promised views. ‘That sounds good,’ she said. She’d quite forgotten until now that it was Saturday. ‘But what about supper? We don’t want to miss it.’
‘They’ll keep some back for us if we’re late. Henrietta said Mark would leave plates for us in the kitchen.’
‘Fab!’ Cleo shuffled closer to Tash, who was sitting beside her at the table, and whispered in her ear, ‘Do you think it would be nice to invite Maya?’
Tash nodded. ‘Absolutely. Will you ask her?’
Maya had just finished eating when Cleo headed purposefully round to the other side of the table to speak to her. She’d deliberately waited till Lesley had risen and was well out of earshot.
When Cleo enquired how Maya had found the classes this morning, she put on her tough, standoffish mask again.
‘All right,’ she said with a sniff. ‘But I still think Ima doesn’t challenge us enough.’
As soon as Cleo mentioned the walk, however, Maya’s face unstiffened and her whole body seemed to relax.
‘Thank you for including me,’ she said. Were her eyes slightly damp? Perhaps Cleo was imagining it. ‘I’d love to come.’
Cleo felt quite young and skittish leaving Villa Ariadne behind and strolling down the mountain with her two new friends. The sun was warm but not too hot and they were all in shorts, T-shirts and trainers, clutching water bottles and with just a small bag each slung over their shoulders.
Tash had borrowed a map from Henrietta, but the route round the headland and along the cliff was quite obvious, if a little scary. They had to pick their way carefully round boulders and across the uneven, stony ground.
Meanwhile, the mighty sea smashed repeatedly against the rocks far below, roaring like thunder and spurting sprays of shattered glass high into the air.
After about half an hour, they stopped to let a small group of serious-looking hikers, with poles and rucksacks, pass by in the opposite direction. Other than that, however, they were alone.
They mostly walked in single file, except when the route widened enough for them to go two or three abreast.
‘I’ve booked a half-hour neck and shoulder massage with Anthea tomorrow afternoon,’ Cleo told Maya, making small talk when they were side by side. ‘Are you going to have any treatments?’
‘No,’ Maya replied. ‘At least, I haven’t given it any thought.
It’s funny,’ she went on, after a short pause.
‘I used to have regular massages once a week, like clockwork. I even had my own dedicated massage room at home, with special lighting and a proper therapy bed and everything. Now, it’s filled with rubbish – mostly stuff from work that I’ll probably never look at again.
‘I also had a cleaner, an ironing lady, a gardener, a personal shopper, a secretary, a personal trainer, a nutritionist and a hair stylist. Imagine! I paid the hairdresser a fortune to be at my beck and call whenever I wanted.
‘At the time, I couldn’t imagine not having all these people running round doing things for me; now, I’ve got no one except my cleaner, who comes once a week for two hours, and I realise I didn’t need most of them at all.
‘These days, I go to the bog-standard hairdresser round the corner, and you know what? It’s absolutely fine.
And I can manage the house and garden perfectly well on my own.
I could have saved myself a fortune if I’d realised sooner.
I thought having lots of staff was a status symbol, a sign of having made it, like driving a flash new car.
But now I’ve stripped everything back and it’s just me, I realise I’m the same frightened little girl with low self-esteem I always was, seeking validation in all the wrong places. Pathetic, really.’
Cleo frowned. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.
What’s done is done. Anyway, I imagine you did need lots of help when you were working crazy hours – and you could afford it.
Now you’ve cut back. Period. It’s no good any of us constantly looking behind us, wishing we’d done things differently.
We need to focus on the here and now and think about what we want going forwards.
As my dad used to say, life isn’t a rehearsal. He’s dead now – and he was right.’
As soon as she’d finished her speech, Cleo clamped her mouth shut, thinking she’d done quite enough talking. She hoped she hadn’t sounded preachy, as if she thought she had everything sorted. Nothing could be further from the truth, and she certainly didn’t practise what she preached either.
Her companions didn’t seem to object to her words, however.
‘I so agree with you,’ Tash said fervently. ‘The past is over and I do try to focus on the future. I just wish I could stop getting these awful flashbacks of when my husband, Alfie, was ill and dying. They’re always dragging me back, keeping me stuck in the misery and fear.’
Cleo shuddered. ‘I don’t know how you survived during that period; it must have been so traumatic.’
Tash breathed in and out deeply. ‘If it wasn’t for Jamie, I’m not sure I would have. He depended on me. I had to keep going for his sake.’
The women were about two thirds of the way there now and were beginning to see the shops, restaurants and houses of Chora Sfakion more clearly. A giant ferry, like the one they’d taken to Porto Liakáda on the first day, pulled out of the port and chugged slowly past them.
Cleo couldn’t help waving like a kid when she spotted some passengers pointing at them, and one of the men waved back, making her smile.
‘I wonder if they’re going to our village,’ she said, more to herself than anyone else.
‘Or maybe they’re going to hike the Samaria Gorge,’ Maya suggested.
‘What’s that?’ Cleo wanted to know.
‘It’s a giant canyon, sixteen kilometres long,’ Maya explained. ‘The longest gorge in Europe. It’s in a national park, with stunning forests and streams, and it ends at the Libyan Sea. I’d love to go there. It’s a shame we won’t have time on this trip.’
They stopped for a moment to have a drink of water, and the views from where they stood were breathtaking. However, Cleo was relieved when, after about an hour and a half, they started to descend at last.
On reaching the bottom of the mountain, they were soon strolling through the main street on the water’s edge, past numerous tempting-looking restaurants and souvenir shops.
‘I could murder an iced coffee,’ Tash announced, veering left onto the terrace of a café and plonking down at one of the tables. She didn’t bother to ask the others if they agreed, but they were all very much of the same mind.
‘God! Me too. I need caffeine,’ Cleo replied, before winking. ‘Henrietta will never know.’
‘Let’s share one of those Sfakian cheese pies, too,’ said Maya. ‘It’s a traditional dish.’
The pie was a dough made with flour and olive oil, filled with local Mizithra cheese, pan fried and served with a large dollop of Cretan honey. Tired, hungry and sugar-deprived as she was, Cleo thought she’d never tasted anything so good.
Afterwards, they explored the shops and tried on some of the brightly patterned dresses and loose, casual pants. Only Maya bought anything, however – a straw bucket hat which really suited her.
When they’d had enough, they decided to walk up the hill a little way to the ruins of a Venetian fort. Just below it stood an unusual memorial beneath which was an assortment of human bones, encased in glass.
The grinning skulls, bleached white by the sun, made Cleo shiver.
‘That’s macabre,’ she said. ‘I wonder who they were.’
Maya whipped a small guidebook out of her bag and flicked through until she found the relevant page. ‘It’s for twenty-six people from the village who were executed by the Germans in September 1941. They’d helped some Allied troops hiding in the district escape from Crete.
‘Apparently there’s also a memorial near the harbour that tells the story of the evacuation of ten thousand Allied soldiers by the Royal Navy.
Many of the ones left behind surrendered and were sent to prison camps, while others were fed and sheltered by locals and joined the Cretan resistance movement.
It says here the resistance fighters made a significant impact.
They carried out guerrilla warfare in the mountains, sabotaged airfields and generally harassed the enemy.
In return, the German meted out brutal punishments – massacring civilians and destroying whole villages. ’
‘It’s hard to imagine all that drama and suffering in a beautiful, quiet little place like this,’ Tash commented, taking a moment to gaze at the bones, perhaps trying to picture the brave men to whom they once belonged.
‘I wonder what role the villagers played in Porto Liakáda, and whether Villa Ariadne was used for something, too.’
They were silent as they made their way back to the ferry port, lost in their own thoughts.
‘I didn’t have a clue about Crete before coming here,’ Cleo said, feeling slightly ashamed about her lack of knowledge. ‘I thought it was just a holiday destination where people came to sunbathe and have fun.
‘I’ll look at the locals differently from now on. I bet they’ve got some tales to tell about the war. I’d love to hear them, wouldn’t you?’