Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The following evening, the wind took their hair and whipped it up around their heads as the three friends stood at the back of the boat and held on to the railings.
The engines churned the turquoise water below them to a frenzy as the ferry started to pull out of the harbour, and the whistles of the Greek port police gradually faded into the distance, while the friends and relatives frantically waving to passengers reduced in size until they were miniature figures on the dock.
Maria and Dimitris had accompanied them to the harbour and there’d been plenty of hugging and kissing.
The week had gone by in a flash. Sofia had agreed with the others that she was sad to say goodbye, and there was lots of talk of returning the following year.
She’d refrained from saying anything when she saw Charlotte and Dimitris exchanging contact details.
There was no way she was going to light the touchpaper on that one again.
The evening sun was warm on their faces, and the breeze had lulled to a soft caress as the boat edged further and further from the port.
The essence of the island was laid out in front of them as if on a platter.
Behind the harbour the rows and rows of white cubed houses rose up and up with the ruined castle standing proud against the sky.
On the other side of the port the hills loomed large on the horizon, slumbering brown shapes crisscrossed with paths and roads.
The sun glinted off the windscreens of toy-sized cars crawling across the landscape like ants, and the sound of laughter floated through the air like old perfume.
Maddie climbed up and spreadeagled herself against the railings to do a quick Kate Winslet in Titanic, earning her a grin from Charlotte. There’d been precious few of those on offer this week, mused Sofia.
Her friend’s curly red hair was even more unruly than usual after the wind had messed with it, reminding Sofia of how she’d been the one to spend hours brushing and styling it in Maddie’s bedroom after school, trying to coax it into one of the trendy styles that the other girls at school were sporting.
She’d been there to witness Maddie’s joy, when her friend’s single mum had paid for a birthday blow-dry that she could ill afford, to give her daughter straight shiny hair for the first time ever, and then Maddie’s sadness a week later that it was back to its usual copper curls.
Deep down her friend must have known that it wouldn’t last, but she’d wanted to believe in it so badly.
The light tan than Maddie had acquired over the past week and the smattering of freckles across her nose really suited her. They couldn’t wave a magic wand and bring Tony back to life, but Sofia hoped and prayed that this holiday was at least allowing her funny, brave friend to relax a little.
The noise of the engines straining told Sofia, who’d been on a few Greek ferries, that the boat was turning, ready to pull out into the open sea. They had three hours to kill before they reached the next island, and she had something special in mind.
Maddie climbed down from the first rung of the railings, slipped on the deck and was caught by Charlotte.
‘Thanks, lovely. What’s the plan now then? Are we going to go to the bar?
Sofia clapped her hands together.
‘No, we are not. Fanfare please…’
Maddie played an imaginary trumpet.
‘We’re going for a three-course meal with wine thrown in at the boat’s restaurant.’
Maddie frowned.
‘Sounds pricy.’
Sofia held hands with her friends.
‘I am treating you both.’
Maddie opened her mouth to protest.
‘And I’m not taking no for an answer.’
Sofia fought to keep the emotion out of her voice.
‘I’ve got something I want to tell you both … but first we eat.’
‘You’re not ill or anything, are you?’
Maddie’s worried little face almost undid her. She should have thought before she opened her mouth. For Maddie, ‘something to tell you’ was always going to be linked with Tony and illness, major illness.
‘Oh God, no, sorry. It’s nothing like that. This is a good thing, honestly.’
It didn’t feel like a good thing at the moment, and she wasn’t sure it ever would, but she didn’t want Maddie worrying all through the meal.
The restaurant was on the next floor down.
They were shown to a table next to the lovely picture windows overlooking the sea by a waiter in a blue and white striped waistcoat echoing the colours of the ferry company, and indeed of Greece itself.
Sofia idly wondered if their uniforms had been made up out of a job lot of leftover flags.
Crisp white tablecloths and a carpeted floor were a world away from the cafeteria they’d passed on the way, with weary travellers slumped in their chairs over half-drunk coffees, or fast asleep on bench seats.
The final destination of the ferry was Piraeus, Athens’ port, but it wouldn’t arrive there until early the next morning.
Happily, they were getting off at the next stop, just the right amount of time for a decent dinner and a confession.
Sofia shooed Charlotte and Maddie into the seats right next to the window. She wanted her friends to have the best possible experience.
Charlotte’s animated face proved she’d done a good thing.
‘What a view! We should be able to see the sunset from here as well, and watch it go down over the sea in a blaze of glory.’
‘Yes, I’m determined to hang out here until it’s time to get off, so we don’t need to move anywhere else. There’s no rush.’
Charlotte picked up her knife and fork and inspected it for marks.
‘Clean as a whistle. It’s like a proper restaurant. I didn’t expect that on a ferry.’
Sofia picked up the wine list.
‘It looks so much better than it did on the website. Now, wine. White or rosé?’
Maddie twisted the ring on her wedding finger round. Sofia had noticed she often did it when she was nervous. She hadn’t yet dared to suggest to her friend that it was time to take it off completely.
‘I was quite fancying a red tonight for a change, if that’s OK.’
‘Of course it’s OK. You have what you want. Char?’
‘Rosé for me please.’
‘Me too. So, let’s get a bottle of each. Here’s the waiter with the menus.’
With their food choices settled, and the wine opened, a basket of warm hand-made rolls was delivered to their table, wrapped in more crisp white linen and accompanied by a black olive dip.
Maddie raised a glass at the other two and took a big swig of her red.
‘Cheers! I bet those meatballs…’
She picked up the menu again.
‘I mean those keftédes you chose, Char, are nothing like the Swedish meatballs we had to make for home economics that time. Do you remember?
‘God, yes, what were they called? Kot-something?’
‘Kotbuller! That’s it.’
‘After we’d spent all lesson moulding that grey meat with our hands, I didn’t fancy them at all. I think I put them in the bin.’
Maddie’s mouth turned down.
‘We weren’t allowed to waste food in our house. Everything I made in that class my mum made us eat for tea.’
Charlotte wrinkled her nose at the thought.
‘What I most remember about the whole experience was those two brothers we were paired up with. Irish boys from the estate next to the school. What were they called?’
‘Keiron, and … Dennis! He was known as Dennis the Menace.’
‘He had lovely green eyes though. They spent the whole lesson giving us tips on how to shoplift. Do you remember?’
‘It’s coming back to me.’
‘It was in the days before plastic packaging. Dennis’s top tip was to shove things in the central well of toilet rolls and cover it over with something else.’
Maddie let out a snort.
‘Yes, I do remember. We just stood there listening, like the good girls from the villages that we were, bussed into the big town on a school coach every day. We nodded sagely as if it was something we were planning to rush out and do.’
The laughter in Charlotte’s voice cheered Sofia no end. But she had to say it.
‘But you did have a little go at it, didn’t you, Char?’
Her friend rolled her eyes.
‘I knew you’d bring that up. It was my one and only time, and yes … I got caught red-handed.’
‘It’s because you’ve got such an honest face.’
‘Mmmm. I was with that snotty girl … Camilla, was it?’
‘Yep, that’s her.’
‘I think her parents thought that sending her to a comprehensive was some sort of social experiment. Do you remember we all used to meet in town at the Wimpy on a Saturday afternoon? We’d spend hours in there, nursing a single coffee and waiting for certain boys to come in.’
Maddie’s confused face stared between them both.
‘Surely there wasn’t anything to shoplift in the Wimpy? Unless you had a yearning for those red plastic tomato sauce containers with the moulded leaves on top?’
Charlotte shook her head.
‘No! Although they were very kitsch. We were in that awful department store in town, Fogeys, or something like that.’
Sofia laughed. This was nicely taking her mind off what was about to come.
‘Hardly. I think it was called Fingles.’
‘Well, it was full of people our parents’ age and older.’
‘You mean our age now?’
‘Shut it. Things were different back then. Sixty-year-olds were considered old. Anyway, do you want to hear the story or not, since you’ve brought it up?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘Camilla told me to take a pair of tights to prove I was hard.’
Sofia let out a giggle.
‘You? Hard?’
‘Look, I was a bit scared of her. For some strange reason I picked a horrible pack of really thick old lady flesh-coloured ones that I wouldn’t be seen dead in, and put them in my bag. Next thing I know, there’s a tap on the shoulder and a “Come with me young lady.”’
Maddie put her hand over her mouth.
‘Did they call your parents?’
‘Oh yes, I had the full works. They allowed me to go with a telling off because I wasn’t a known face.’
‘And they didn’t even have CCTV in those days. So, it wasn’t like they were monitoring you from afar.’