Authors: Evie Evans
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Cozy, #International Mystery & Crime
One Way Ticket
One Way Ticket
Evie Evans
This ebook edition published 2014
Copyright © Evie Evans 2014
Cover image © Evie Evans 2014
The moral right of Evie Evans to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988
I apologise to karaoke fans now (I might as well add
Cypriots and expats whilst I’m at it). If it’s any consolation, chapter 16
contains, at last count, the names of 13 Elvis songs. Happy spotting.
Contents
6 Theft, And Wondering Around Lost
15 Friend Is A Four Letter Word
For Sharon, who always cared.
When I decided to ‘give up my
life’ and come to Cyprus to care for Aunt June I didn’t think I would be taken
so literally. To me it was only a phrase, but the hands now tightening around
my throat seemed to have another idea. As I struggled for breath, it was clear my
plans had gone a bit wrong again. I wondered if my whole life was about to
flash before my eyes like they say and, if so, could it start somewhere useful
like the self-defence lessons I’d had many years ago?
It didn’t.
No angels appeared either, or harp music. No
tunnel with a light at the end, all that rubbish Hollywood’s been selling for
years. It was a bit of a letdown. The only celestial input in my demise was the
stars appearing before my eyes as I began to pass out.
It was the unexpectedness of it all - the
hatred in my killer’s face, a real burning fury that had come out of nowhere to
flash in their eyes as they rushed for my throat. I’d heard about people
descending into the ‘red mist’ but never seen it first hand before. It froze me
to the spot.
Deep down, I think I knew it would all go
wrong. Following a pattern, my mother would say, history repeating itself. I
just didn’t realise it would be this spectacular.
The new life hadn’t gone right from the
start. The island was all different when I arrived - bigger airport with lots
of buildings outside, bustle instead of calm. After almost twenty years since
my last visit, I guess I should have expected some changes but I was so naive. Ignoring
the signs of ‘progress’, I’d just jumped into a taxi to Aunt June’s villa and
my new life.
It must be the boredom in jobs such as
hairdressing and taxi driving which results in the inane drivel that invariably
accompanies them. “On holiday?” the taxi driver had asked me over his shoulder,
as soon as we were on the road.
“No, I’m coming to live with a relative
for a while,” I told him in that standoffish manner the English do so well.
Not discouraged, he’d continued, “You come
here often, then?”
That’s what passed for a chat up line
where I came from, but as a foreigner, he couldn’t be expected to know. I answered
politely, but coolly. “No, haven’t been here for a while, actually.”
“But, you’re moving here?” he queried, in
what I felt was starting to be an impertinent manner.
Adopting the standard action of many of my
fellow countrymen faced with this situation, I ignored him.
“I hope things are how you remember them,”
he continued regardless. “My cousin went to live in the States for a while. He
couldn’t believe how much this place had changed when he came back.”
I stared out the window resigned to the
fact this forty minute taxi journey was going to be a long ride.
“This place you’re going to is the old
lady, yes?”
I nodded, too polite to ignore a direct
question.
“Your grandmother?”
“Great-aunt,” I said, wondering if every passenger’s
whole life story was part of the fare.
“This bit of the island has done well,” he
chattered away. “Lot of development. Big drought though,” my taxi driver
continued. “Did you know about that?”
It may have been a long time since my last
visit, but I had written to my aunt in the meantime. Well, I’d sent her cards
on her birthday and at Christmas.
“Yes, I have heard about what’s going on
here,” I told him, my voice sounding a bit icy, even to me. There was something
about his babbling, good humoured friendliness that annoyed me (probably
because it highlighted my reserved coldness). “I haven’t just come into this blind,
you know!”
He looked at me in the rear view mirror,
but said nothing. It seemed my rudeness had finally shut him up.
I went back to staring out of the window,
enjoying the feeling of sun on my face (something I’d not seen a lot of lately),
trying not to think about how rude I’d been and how easily it had come.
My plane ride over had been spent reliving
the childhood holidays I’d spent here – aunty’s lovely villa on top of a hill
of olive groves and grape vines, the blisteringly hot days we’d spent cooling
down on the secluded beach at the foot of the hill, the sticky, honeyed
pastries my aunt seemed to magically produce whenever I was hungry. I returned
to them again now. Living on a lovely, unspoilt Mediterranean island was going
to beat Swindon, Wiltshire, any day (then again, almost anything would). This
new life was going to be fabulous and not at all like the old one.
Even the knowledge that I’d have to get a
job at some point didn’t faze me. For a few moments I envisaged being a paid
companion to an old dear, providing a few hours of reading, maybe some
conversation, before realising that probably described my new role with Aunt
June, I was coming here to take care of her after all. Perhaps I could teach
English to the locals instead?
Sitting in the warmth of the sun with
these happy thoughts, my eyes suddenly felt heavy. I swear I only closed them
for a second. Forty minutes later, to my embarrassment, I was being shaken
awake by the driver.
“You’re here!” he cried, then stepped
lively round the back to get my suitcase.
It took a moment to focus my eyes and see
the airport wasn’t the only thing to have changed. At first, I thought he was
trying to drop me off at a large bush before realising aunty’s villa was hidden
in there somewhere. It looked like it had been almost completely overtaken by
the bougainvillea. Noting that we’d need to get a gardener in, I groped in my
handbag for what seemed to be an exorbitant amount of money and paid the
driver, including a reasonable tip to cover my unfriendliness earlier. As he
pulled away, I reasoned that if the teaching English idea didn’t work out, taxi
driving might be an option, as surely I could buy half a car for what I had
just paid out.
Anyway, I was here now, so shouldering my
bag, I gathered my suitcase and rang the doorbell, not filled with confidence
by the rust around its edges. I rang it again a couple of minutes later when
there was no response. Then I resorted to banging on the door.
Slight feelings of desperation began
forming. I was in a strange country, a strange town, and if my aunt didn’t
answer the door soon, I would be spending the night amongst the vines a la
Tarzan. I was just trying pull back some tendrils to look through a window when
I heard a shuffling sound from inside, getting louder.
“Aunt June? It’s me,” I shouted.
“Okay dear, won’t be a minute,” a voice
came back.
I let out a breath, panic over.
After another pause, there was a
tantalising rattle of locks and I smiled in anticipation. I was still trying to
hold the smile some seconds later when the door actually started to open.
“Jennifer?” what looked like a small
raisin with eyes asked, in a wavering voice, on the other side of the door.
“Yes, Aunty June. How lovely to see you
again.” And it was, or the part of her that I could see. I stepped in to give
her a hug.
“My, how you’ve grown,” she told me. “You
must be almost six foot!”
“I’m five foot six.”
“Well, you’re a lot bigger than last time,
but I haven’t seen you since you were eleven.”
I couldn’t say the same for her stature, she
seemed smaller than I remembered, I had to bend down quite a way to hug her.
“It’s been too long,” I told her, which was true. Why had it been so long since
I’d been here?
“I thought you’d look more like your
mother, she was so pretty when she was a young woman.”
Perhaps that was why. I love you too, Aunt
June. It was a running joke in the family that she had an unfortunate way of
phrasing things sometimes, so I decided not to take her comment personally.
“You’ve got more of your father’s
colouring, dark haired and pale,” she continued. “And his build.”
Still ignoring it.
“I bet you want a drink after your long
journey,” she told me and led me into the hallway.
I say hallway but it was a little more
than an alcove really. Not that I could see much in the gloom; hardly any light
came from the overgrown windows. My aunt shuffled along to a doorway and
beckoned me to follow. I felt a sudden wave of sadness at how much she’d aged
and how small she seemed.
Looking around, I realised she wasn’t the
only thing that looked smaller. From an eleven year old’s perspective, her
villa had seemed quite spacious. Now, my thirty year old self realised it
wasn’t quite the dimensions of my memory. I got my first inkling that this stay
may not be as comfortable as anticipated.
Aunt June switched on the kettle in her
kitchen. “Now, let’s have some lovely mint tea.”
“Actually, something cold would be nice,”
I told her, sweating slightly from dragging my enormous case inside.
“This is much better at cooling you down,
trust me.”
I eyed the cup thirstily when she put it
on the table in front of me, wondering how long it would be until it was cool
enough to drink. Quite a while. I decided to fill the time catching up with
her. “How are you?” seemed a good enough place to start.
“I get a bit of trouble with my leg, but
other than that, not too bad.” She gave me a smile.
Now that I could see her in the light, she
didn’t look quite as frail as she had at the front door. She may not be moving
too fast but she still had some vitality about her. I felt a little relieved inside
that she was not yet at death’s door.
“I’m sorry the place is a bit of a mess. I
can’t get round to tidy up as much as I used to.”
“Not to worry, I’ll sort that out now,” I said,
gazing around. The place didn’t look too bad, just...dated. Everything looked
as if it had come from the 1970s. Which it probably had. Fitted kitchens didn’t
seem to have hit this part of the world yet; formica-topped tables and wooden cupboards
were still king. It was quite quaint, a bit like my aunt.
“I hope you won’t be bored here,” she told
me, looking a little worried, as I tried sipping from my cup.
Boredom wasn’t something I’d contemplated.
I’d envisaged spending my days picking up delicious fresh produce at the local
market, tending to the grape vines at the bottom of my aunt’s garden (glass of
Chateau Giles anyone?), and lazing on the beach. In between this, the odd spot
of sitting outside a taverna, cup of thick Cypriot coffee or refreshing ouzo in
hand, would keep me entertained. “No, no,” I said, “I’ll be fine.”
“There is quite a lot going on here,
really. There’s bingo on a Wednesday at the Poseidon,” my aunt began, counting
off on her fingers, “water aerobics on a Tuesday at Paradise Gardens, my book club meets every second Thursday at the community centre, karaoke on a Friday
at Hotel Yannis...”
Bingo? Karaoke? Since when had these been
part of a Mediterranean idyll?
“...you’ll have to come along to that,” my
aunt was saying.
I smiled and nodded, not sure what I was
agreeing to, but impressed my aunt had so many interests. So many English,
banal interests.
“I was sorry to hear about your−” my
aunt started before I cut her off.
“Thanks, but let’s not talk about that today,”
I told her, standing up and stretching out some of the airplane cricks from my
neck. “Not when there’s so much to enjoy here.” I stepped up to the window and
looked out at the view of her vineyards and the olive groves below.
Except there weren’t any vineyards or
olive groves. At the end of the garden, was a fence then another villa. Beyond
that were more villas, in fact the hill seemed to be full of them. “What’s
happened to the vineyard? Where’s the olive grove?”
My aunt shambled up to look out herself. “Oh,
they went ages ago. Got a good price for the land, so I sold it. It’s a pity
about the view, I know, but I couldn’t keep up with it, it was too much work
for me. And what with the drought and all...”
I continued staring at what had once been
an almost perfect vista, just managing to utter, “What a shame,” to cover feelings
of disappointment.
“Right, stuffed aubergines for dinner,” my
aunt announced, turning round and busying herself. I continued to stare out the
window for a few minutes more. “Won’t be eating till late though, when it’s
cooler, so if you want to get a snack now, help yourself. I got some crisps
in.”
Still feeling slightly stunned, I accepted
a packet from her unseeingly. Only when I turned them over in my hands did I
notice they were a popular brand from home. “Didn’t know you could get these
here,” I said.
“Oh yes, we can get all sorts of things
now at the supermarket.”
“Supermarket?” I queried faintly, fearing
more images of my rural paradise were about to be trampled.
“Yes,” my aunt said, “what a godsend. Can
get all kinds of food from back home: tea, biscuits, spam. Just down the road.
Are you alright? You look a bit pale.”
“I just haven’t seen much sun lately,” I said,
clutching at the back of a chair, trying not to look crushed.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place for
that!” my aunt told me as she began chopping an onion. “Course, we are about to
go into the rainy season.”
I felt my shoulders sag. “I think I’ll
just go to my room for a few minutes,” I told her, “have a lie down.”
“Of course, you must be exhausted after
your journey.”
Once Aunt June had showed me to my (small)
room, I sat down on the bed for a minute. What had happened to the tranquil
‘away from it all’ idyll I remembered? I was expecting ouzo, tavernas and
goats not supermarkets, karaoke and bingo. I looked at a frilly doily on top of
the chest of drawers with a sense of doom.
It wasn’t just that I’d envisaged a quiet
life, there was something more serious going on here. I tried to push aside
what was really worrying me, my secret fear, but couldn’t.
Were people on the internet here?