One Way Ticket (2 page)

Oh, dear God, was there nowhere left on
earth undiscovered by Facebook, unchartered by Twitter? Not that I minded
people’s technology urges, but it meant that despite having thrown away my
phone when I’d left England, if people were online here, anyone could get in
touch. Anyone could find me.

A knock on the door made me jump.

“Everything alright, Jennifer?” Aunt June
asked.

Who else was it likely to have been, I
told myself, trying to calm my nerves. How could it be him?

“Yes, Aunt June,” I called, opening the
door for her.

“I brought you some towels.” She laid some
ancient looking material on the bed.

“Thanks. You know I’m here to look after
you.”

“You just settle in first. There’s plenty
of time for all that.”

“Okay, but tomorrow I’ll be establishing a
routine so watch out,” I warned her, in what I hoped sounded a playful manner.

“Dinner won’t be for a while yet. Why
don’t you unpack?”

I told her I would and she shuffled away.

Looking around the room, also styled in
the 1970s, I began to wonder where I would put everything. I’d crammed as much
of my life as I could into an outsize suitcase (and been charged handsomely for
this by my airline). The fact that I had so few remaining possessions that I
could do this had been vaguely depressing at the time, but the thought of what
would be welcoming me in my new life had kept my chin up. Now, my chin was
decidedly down, and my bottom lip was rapidly following it. I could feel it
trembling as hot tears threatened behind my eyes.

“No,” I told myself firmly, “I’m not
giving in to this. Not again.” I’d cried so much over the past few months it
was amazing I had enough water in me to produce any more. “No,” I told myself
again, got up, and unzipped the case.

Within moments the room looked like an
explosion at a jumble sale and I started to feel at home.

2 Reality

The next morning, sunshine
pouring in through the window made me forget my worries and decide to start
again. Seeing a crystal clear blue sky overhead had been so rare lately, it was
all I needed to buck me up. After a breakfast of fresh figs and yoghurt (at
least that hadn’t changed), Aunt June suggested I take a walk. I was chomping
at the bit to get out in the sun and explore, so I quickly agreed.

Stepping into the sun, I gloried in the
warmth of its rays and immediately felt happier than I had in ages. A couple of
lemon trees in a neighbour’s garden compounded my feeling as I marvelled at the
exotic (to a Swindon person) fruit, hanging on the branches like small miracles.

So there was a supermarket. So there was
no vineyard, no orchard. So what. This was still a great place. I would look on
the plus side - no vineyard meant less work for me and a local supermarket
meant handy, convenient foods for those times when I wouldn’t feel like cooking
(probably at least every other day). And let’s face it, living permanently on a
diet of figs, yoghurt and olives was a bit unrealistic; I’d be craving
chocolate and crisps within days (by that I mean hours). Now I could indulge. I
strolled down Aunt June’s drive (technically, I stumbled over the ruts and
potholes in it), feeling a lot happier.

I’d assured my aunt that I’d be able to
find my own way round the place. As I remembered it, her villa was at the top
of the small hill, a road down one side of it leading to the little bay with a taverna,
a couple of shops and a secluded beach. I could remember having races up and
down the hill as a child and figured walking to the bay couldn’t take more than
fifteen minutes. I set off at an easy pace, enjoying my walk in the sun.

The path, which had once been rough and
rocky, was now smooth and tarmacked. Easier for walking, especially for Aunt June
when she ventures out, I told myself as I thought of how the modern path jarred
slightly with the rural surroundings. It did make the going easier, which was
good as they seemed to have made this path a lot steeper than the old one. The
path went down and down with no end in sight.

But what lovely scenery it was. Unknown
plants with striking coloured blossoms littered the way, even the air smelt
different here, with a hint of rosemary and other mysterious herbs growing
wild. Yes, I certainly enjoyed the first quarter of an hour of that walk.

After twenty minutes though, I was
starting to worry I was on the wrong trail, headed for another town. To my
relief, the path started to flatten out and, after another couple of turns my
now aching legs could have lived without, a bay came into sight. I groaned. I
obviously had taken a wrong path. This wasn’t my bay. This wasn’t Kythios. This
place was all built up with hotels and restaurants and lots of people milling
around. And a supermarket.

Oh, crap. I recognised the word ‘Kythios’
in the supermarket sign. This
was
it. They’d paved paradise and put up
some hotels. How could all this have happened in less than twenty years? My
happy feeling ebbed away as fast as it had arrived.

I sat on one of a number of conveniently
placed benches that had also sprung up, and watched children running up and
down on my beach. My beach. Obviously not any more. A sign by the pavement
caught my eye. A sign to turn an explorers heart to stone, to make a true
traveller’s blood run cold.

‘Full English breakfast served here’, it
read.

I knew then, nothing would be the same
again. I thought back to my home town of Swindon where, in the last twenty
years, the only advance had been cable television and men’s hair stylists. It
certainly hadn’t had a boom like this place. Then again, it didn’t have blue
skies, golden sunshine and a lovely beach. I slumped further on the bench.

My reverie was interrupted by someone
walking by.

“Hi, how’s it going?” the young man asked.
You couldn’t even be depressed in this place without someone wanting to talk to
you (another difference with Swindon).

Someone with that dark colouring and
healthy look was hardly likely to be English, more probably a local. He must
have mistaken me for someone else. “Fine thanks,” I lied.

“It’s me, Addi,” the man persisted,
lifting his sunglasses up as if that would make it all clear.

I looked at him blankly.

“Taxi driver.”

“Oh, right.” I sat up on the bench. “Sorry,
I didn’t recognise you.” Now I thought about it, he did have that ‘chubby’ look
people who spend most of their days sat down often have. He leant on the back
of my bench as if settling in for a chat. I could only presume business was slow.

“So, it’s great huh?” he asked, spreading
his arms wide, indicating the bay, a large smile on his face.

“Well, it’s different,” I murmured.

“You need a taxi back home?”

To England? Only if I could take out a
second mortgage to pay for it, was my immediate thought (it’s a phrase, I don’t
technically have a first mortgage), before I realised he was talking about my aunt’s
villa. That was home now. “No, thanks. I’m just having a look round.”

“Well, if you need a taxi, you give me a
ring.” Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out a lurid business card. ‘Addi’s
Taxis, no journey too short or too long.’ “I can also get good deals on
alcohol, you know, brandy, whiskey, no tax,” he added quietly.

I pocketed it and nodded politely,
relieved when he left, I was in no mood for small talk. After a few more
minutes self pity, I dragged myself up and walked the rest of the way along the
front. It was still kind of the Kythios I remembered, I tried to convince
myself. Palm trees still dotted the shore, there were just a lot more buildings
behind them. And a lot more tourists. And a lot more concrete. And an internet
café. Damn. But also a bakery, I noticed.

 Making a beeline for it, I almost elbowed
a granny out of the way (no points if they’re slow moving!) in my haste to get
in the door. A wonderful aroma hit me. A sugary, vanilla warmth that set my
mouth watering and my stomach rumbling. I took my time delighting in the array
of cakes and pastries on offer. Unlike back home, where cakes lately had been
whisps of things topped with towering mounds of sickly icing, these seemed to
be big slabs of pure sponge, flavoured with vanilla, honey, almonds, dates, and
other gorgeous things, completely unadulterated by suffocating icing. There
were lovely little filo pastries too, filled with feta cheese, spinach, and potatoes.
This was my kind of bakery. After a few minutes indecision, I put a couple of
the pastries in a bag and a big slab of coconut cake. I practised my Greek for
‘hello’ that I’d learnt on the plane when I got to the cash desk, but the girl
spoke such good English I didn’t have to try to remember any more.

Within a few moments, I was back on the
beach greedily devouring the cake, gorgeously moist and sticky, and easily
enough for two people. I ate it in two minutes flat, a small bit of the happy
feeling returning. I decided to head back to Aunt June’s straightaway before I
had a chance to go buy a second one, or feel drawn into the internet café.

Halfway up the hill, I started to regret
eating the cake so quickly, the heavy weight in my stomach not being an aid to
mountaineering. It was hard to believe I used to run up this hill as a child, I
could barely walk up it now. Suspicions that Aunt June had moved to a bigger
hill in the last twenty years began racing through my oxygen starved brain. Suddenly,
I was very grateful for the tarmac and the smoother climb. I knew I should be
enjoying the view, but the sweat running in my eyes made it hard to see.

Stopping to catch my breath, my face hot
and sweaty from the effort, I began to wish I’d taken Addi up on his offer of a
taxi. I’d have to start taking the car in future, this hill was too big.

The car? If I hadn’t just stopped in my
tracks, this thought would have halted me. There hadn’t been one outside the
villa. With a sinking feeling, I began to wonder if Aunt June actually owned a
car any more. There had definitely been one when I’d visited before, but that
would be long gone now. Had she not replaced it? How did she get to her bingo
without one?

My breath was so ragged when I reached the
top and staggered in her door, it was a full three minutes before I could
answer Aunt June’s question.

“No, I don’t need medical assistance,” I said.
“I don’t remember it being so steep,” I managed after another minute.

“It is if you’re not used to it,” she
sympathised as she put a glass of water on the table in front of me.

“Have you got a car?” I gasped out the all
important question between sips of water.

“Oh no, they’re too expensive nowadays. I
couldn’t afford to run one.”

What hell was this? “How do you manage?”

“Muriel takes me to bingo. Lorna picks me
up to go to the supermarket on Thursdays. My friends are very good at giving me
a lift. And there’s always a taxi if I need it. There’s a local one I use, I’ve
got his card somewhere…”

I pulled Addi’s card from my pocket as
Aunt June made to get up and look for the number. “This?”

“Why yes,” my aunt told me, as if I had
been very clever. “He’s very good.”

“When you say a car is too expensive, just
how bad is it round here?”

Aunt June’s face seemed to go a little
red. “You can get a secondhand car quite cheap, they last longer here, the
warmer weather. I just haven’t got the money for…” Her voice tailed off.

Right. Another quick glance around the
room made me realise things were a lot more dire than I’d realised. Aunt June
hadn’t neglected the villa because of advancing age, it was a shrinking wallet.

I didn’t want to embarrass her by pressing
any further, so I just patted her hand. “I was going to get a job anyway. To
help out a bit.” It was possibly going to need to be more of a job than I’d
anticipated. “I was thinking of maybe teaching English? What d’you think?”

“Who to?” Aunty asked, looking confused.

“The locals.”

“They speak better English than we do.”

I thought about the only two locals I’d
come across so far, Addi and the girl in the cake shop had spoken English fine.
“Ah.”

“They learn it in school here and they get
some English television programmes on satellite.”

Double ah.

So, not only has my paradise been lost, my
aunt appears to be broke and I have no means of supporting us. This wasn’t
quite the new life I’d hoped for.

“Well, I’ll have to get a job doing
something else,” I told her, trying to sound more optimistic than I felt.

“I could ask Jackie to find out if they
want anyone at the shop,” Aunt June said.

I tried not to wince. Not to sound like a
snob, but I didn’t see myself as ‘shop’ material. I’d been an administrator at
a small engineering firm until recently, and, after handling that kind of
responsibility, felt I was now above such things. Unless it was working at the
cake shop.

“…I know her cleaner left a few months
ago,” Aunt June continued.

A cleaner? It just got worse and worse.
“I’ll have a look round tomorrow,” I told her.

“I don’t know how you’ll get to a job
without a car.”

The same thought had occurred to me and
I’d already reached the conclusion that I might have to dip into my meagre
savings. Even without a job to think about, that hill alone would probably have
brought me to this step. “I’m going to buy one.”

Aunt June was up and out of her seat
faster than I would have credited her for. “I’ll give Frank a ring, he’ll know
the best place to get one.”

“O-kay.” My savings wouldn’t go far, so it
was a big leap I was taking. Paradise or not, it looked like I was already putting
down roots.

If I’d known then what was to come, I may
not have been so hasty.

3 (Don’t Fear) The Reaper

There I was, a couple of days
later, driving around in a battered old fiat Aunt June’s friend, Frank, had
assured me was a good buy. Luckily, my UK driving licence allowed me to drive here.
Better yet, Cypriots also drove on the left, so there was less likelihood of me
pulling out in front of a truck like that time in France a few years ago (which
my mother will not let me forget).

Aunt June had suggested a celebration
jaunt down to Kythios where she stocked up on firelighters and enormous tins of
olive oil. Next, she insisted on showing me some of the nearby countryside,
including the lovely village of Agios Geros which is where, she told me, by sheer
co-incidence, she gets her vegetables, and proceeded to buy a sack of onions
and one of potatoes. Weighed down by this on the journey home, I was reminded
of my idea that I could start a taxi service should teaching English fall
through. Well, it had and I now owned a car… Was it fate?

Only if fate came in the form of a sheep.

That’s what hit me as I rounded the corner
of a vicious bend at the bottom of our hill. The sheep had definitely been moving,
and had hit me as much as I hit it, I’d insisted to the policeman at the
station, but I don’t think he’d believed me. The sheep had lived, thank
goodness (its abundant wool giving it some bounce), so I felt insisting I provide
a statement was excessively heavy handed.

My mention of a licence to operate a taxi
produced a derision-like smirk from the police officer. I guess my driving hadn’t
impressed him. He told me I would need a police certificate of good character
to start with, and I could tell it wasn’t going to be forthcoming. Probably
lucky really, as I hadn’t been entirely honest about the spelling of my name with
the officer (I’d decided it might be prudent to try to fly under the radar here,
for fear of certain events back home catching up with me).

As we left the police station, I noticed Aunt
June looked excited, which I thought particularly inappropriate. Before I could
ask her what she was so happy about, she thrust a piece of paper under my nose.

“Look, they’re advertising for an admin
assistant in the police tourism unit, I heard they were expanding the force now
we’re getting a lot more holidaymakers. There’s a job for you.”

I looked at the advert. Admin assistant
was certainly something I could do, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to work for the
police service if that policeman’s attitude was typical of the people who worked
there.  More importantly, there was also a small matter of events back home
which I wouldn’t want to draw police attention to. Not wanting to go into this
with my Aunt at that moment (or ever), I tucked the ad away wordlessly and
braced myself for the drive home.

No more ovine accidents occurred and I
felt relieved when we arrived safely. Aunt June looked thankful too, I noted.
“I just need a bit more practice on these roads,” I assured her.

“Course dear,” she said, but her movements
as she shuffled into the house looked a little shakier than usual.

Step one in the ‘Cyprus’ campaign down (the car), I just had to work on step two (the job). It was never an option to
think of returning to England. For a start, the mess I’d left behind would
still be there. It had been a blissful few days being away from it, not looking
over my shoulder (much), not having to explain myself to people. I was in no
hurry to return to that. Plus, there was Aunt June to consider. Now I knew
things weren’t going well for her, I couldn’t just abandon ship so… job hunting
it was. (Okay, the wonderful blue skies and warm sunny days also helped.)

The new Kythios was something I had
quickly gotten used to. How naïve I’d been to assume this place would be
exactly the same as when I’d left it. I sat on a bench overlooking the bay one
morning on an outing to purchase the local paper, and realised that, even with
the extra tourists and buildings, this was still a wonderful place. How amazing
to live somewhere where you feel permanently on holiday. Suitably heartened, I
opened the paper and turned to the employment page.

There were a (very) few job adverts. Most were
looking for experienced waitresses willing to work for below the minimum wage.
That seemed to let me out on both counts. Two were for shop assistants and I got
application forms for both (unfortunately neither of them in the cake shop). My
completed forms looked hopelessly inadequate though.

“I don’t speak fluent Greek,” I pointed
out to Aunt June when she told me to include that. “I can’t write that down.”

“Conversational Greek,” she insisted.

“Yes, so long as the conversation consists
of only ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’! I’ll never get away with it.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll practice in the
evenings, you’ll soon pick the language up.”

She clearly hadn’t been in my French
lessons at school or she wouldn’t be so confident.

There was also the small matter of
providing references. My ‘problems’ in England meant requesting a reference
from my last employer would be extremely inadvisable. I explained this to my
aunt by lying that my last boss had died.

“Put me down as a referee that will be
fine.”

“Aunt June, I’m pretty sure they’ll find
out you’re a relative.”

“Not till after you’ve started the job. By
then, who’ll care?”

Who was this lawless person and how could
she be related to my family? I was starting to see why the rest of my family
always shook their heads when they spoke of ‘Aunt June’.

I handed the application forms in with
little hope. Fortunately, Aunt June with her thirty-five years standing in the
area knew the family that owned one of the shops and called in a favour,
otherwise I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten an interview. So, despite not
being keen on the idea, I found myself a few days later, off to claim my role
in the retail world.

Entering the shop confidently, I marched
up to the counter and announced that I had an interview with the manager. The
woman behind the till replied in Greek, and I felt a sense of doom forming over
me. Through a series of mimes, we quickly established that I spoke little of
the language and she swapped to English.

“Have you worked in retail much before?”
she asked. She seemed to be starting with the tricky questions.

“I worked in a shoe shop when I was a
student.”

“We sell a few shoes here but not many
lines. You are familiar with the European sizes for shoes and clothing?”

Another tricky one. The answer would have
to be: “Er, no.” Eloquently delivered though, I thought.

“Have you had any customer service
training?”

Oh dear. Clearly there was a bit more to this
shop assistant malarkey than I’d imagined. “Er, no.”

And just like that, I was back on the
street again, having been turned down, politely, for a job I’d thought was
beneath me. Served me right, really.

Not wanting to face my aunt right away, I
stopped at a café opposite the seafront to lick my wounds, and ordered their
cheapest coffee. At least the sun was still shining, despite my aunt’s warning
of the changing seasons. Sitting in the shade of a palm tree, watching a boat
speeding across the dark blue waters of the bay, I felt life wasn’t quite so
bad, after all.

“You don’t want to drink the local coffee,”
the middle aged man at the next table told me when my drink arrived, “you’ll be
sat on the toilet all day”. His skin was the colour of strong tea but he
sounded English. (This kind of tan on an Englishman is noteworthy because of its
rarity, a number of them are so white there’s a tinge of blue involved.)

 “Just off the plane, are you?” he asked,
even though I hadn’t acknowledged his first comment. “I can tell by the colour
of you,” he continued (I may have a blue tinge myself). “On holiday?”

This I couldn’t resist answering. “No, I’m
here to stay.”

“Another one realises life is so much
better out here.”

“I hope so.”

“You and your family, is it?”

“No, just me. Well, I have an elderly
relative that lives here. I’ve come to look after her.” I liked the Mother
Theresa ring of that sentence and revelled in the smug feeling it gave me.

“Ah, the young woman coming to a foreign
island out of family duty. Hoping for a bit of sun, sea and romance with a
Greek god, I bet?”

Had he just turned my portrait of
self-sacrifice into a cheap romance novel?

“Whereabouts are you staying?”

I was still picturing myself on a beach with
a hunky Cypriot, leaning against a donkey, all in silhouette. “Oh, up on the
hill.”

“Good view from up there. There’s quite an
expat community going on here, they’ll rope you into something, I warn you.”

“Right.” I tried to go back to my coffee.

“Is it an old lady you’re looking after?”
he asked.

Was it going to turn out that he knew Aunt
June too? This place wasn’t that small, surely? “Yes,” I replied, suddenly a
bit curious.

“You want to keep a good eye on her then, after
what’s happened.” He held up the front cover of the newspaper he’d been
reading.

I had to lean in to see it. ‘Elderly
British woman found dead’ the headline read.

“What, murdered?” I asked, not able to
read the small print.

“The police are still trying to work it
out. It used to be nice here when I first started coming. Now, it’s all
nightclubs and tourists. If people are going to start getting murdered, I’ll
have to find somewhere else.”

“Quite.” I started to wonder myself what
kind of place I’d moved to. Still, it was certainly easy to get talking to
people around here, better than back home where trying to strike up a
conversation with a stranger was a precarious venture. That had to be worth
something.

“I sell real estate,” the man announced,
pulling out a business card from the top pocket of his shirt. “If you’re
interested in an investment opportunity, give me a call.”

Was everyone here trying to sell you
something?

He got up, seemingly oblivious to my disgust.
“See you around, no doubt,” he said, then left.

I watched the boat in the bay a little
longer before facing the fact it was time to tell Aunt June about the job.

“Never mind, dear,” was Aunt June’s
response to the bad interview when I got home, “that was just your first go.
Everyone messes up their first go.”

Unfortunately, there was the second go, the
third go and the fourth. I got turned down for a bartending job (you try adding
up 2.65, 1.75 and 2.40 in your head), a typist job (apparently 16 words a
minute isn’t good), and a gardening job (it looked like a weed to me), which
exhausted all of Aunt June’s favours. I was so desperate, I even phoned the man
from the café who’d given me his business card (he was called Richard), to see if
he could introduce me to anyone that might need a willing employee, but he
never returned my calls.

I was on the verge of giving up hope and turning
Aunt June’s villa into a massage parlour, when I received an invite to an
interview at the police station.

I rang to check it was for a job and not for
any sheep related incidents or application fraud, and they assured me it was
for the admin assistant role. Curious, as I hadn’t actually applied for it, I
wasn’t fool enough to put my name down with the police. Sadly, Aunt June was.

“You looked so down, dear, I filled it in
for you. Lucky I did really, you were running out of time. If I hadn’t, you’d
have missed out.”

On what? Jail? Deportation? Oh, Aunt June.

My options seemed few: I could revoke my
application and raise Aunt June’s suspicions, or I could carry on and hope the
Cypriot police didn’t look at their admin candidates too closely. Between the
Cypriot police and my aunt, I knew which one I’d rather mess with.

“You speak French, don’t you?” Aunt June
asked as I got out of the car at the police building on the morning of my
interview. She’d driven me there so she could use the car afterwards to visit a
friend.

“I did a bit at school a long time ago,
why?”

“I just remembered, I put down you speak
French on your application form.”

My body froze completely, apart from my
mouth which opened and shut a few times of its own accord.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll all come back
to you,” the harpy from hell told me brightly, as she leaned across to shut my
car door. “Good luck darling, I’ll pick you up afterwards.”

“Yes, I’ll give you a ring from the jail
cell,” I murmured as she drove away, leaving me standing in the gutter like a
lost child.

How did I get into this mess? I’d spent
the last few days practising Greek like mad; learning as many tourist phrases as
I could think of, just to find at the last minute, my aunt had dropped me in it
again. As I headed up the steps, I decided if things went pear shaped, I would
feign innocence and blame her for identity theft.

You would never have thought I had held the
administrator job at EMJ Holdings for three years, practically running the
health and safety department, if you had seen me waiting for that interview. Not
only did I look pale, a sheen of sweat formed on my upper lip. I also kept
forgetting basic Greek words like yes and good morning (but strangely could
remember the ones for artichoke and headache).

I couldn’t stop thinking that if I didn’t
get this job, I may have to go back to England after all (where he was). Then
who would look after Aunt June? A large poster on the wall opposite my seat, appealing
for information about the murder of the elderly woman from the newspaper
Richard had shown me, only served as a reminder of my responsibility for my
aunt now. I also couldn’t help imagining that at any moment a policeman could
come along the corridor and march me straight down to the cells. By the time I
was called into the room, I was a nervous wreck.