Wish You Were Here (24 page)

‘This is what I've been up against all holiday,' said Andy climbing off Lisa's back. ‘Some people wouldn't know a good time if it bit them on the backside.'

‘Actually I think Tom's right,' said Lisa struggling to retie her bikini top. ‘Maybe we should save ourselves for the last night and have a big blow-out then? Tonight we could go out for a nice meal and then maybe have a bit of a drink and a chat on the balcony when we get back. It's nice out there.'

‘Sounds okay to me,' said Tom.

‘I suppose that's all right,' added Andy, ‘as long as we're definitely going out tomorrow.'

Lisa turned and looked at me expectantly. ‘What do you think, Charlie?'

‘Sounds like a great idea,' I replied even though I was already beginning to get the feeling that this quiet night out might turn out to be more eventful than we'd bargained for – Lisa was an unknown quantity in what was already a pretty volatile mix. ‘Count me in for sure.'

It was now just after ten in the evening and we were all sitting at a table on the vine-covered terrace of Taverna Stefanos. The taverna was tucked away in the older part of Malia, far enough from the hectic pace of the main strip to imagine that we might be somewhere rural. Much of the tension from earlier in the day now seemed to have evaporated. Tom was talking to Andy. Andy was talking to me. And I was even talking to Lisa. Everybody seemed to be getting on and the meal, the wine and the entertainment (halfway through our second course a couple of bouzouki players dressed in traditional Greek costumes emerged from the rear of the restaurant) seemed to bind us all closer.

‘Now that was a fantastic meal,' said Tom to Georgiou, the owner, as he brought our bill. ‘We'd be back in a shot if tomorrow wasn't our last night.'

‘Well if you were to bring this lovely lady back with you tomorrow night,' grinned Georgiou, ‘you might get yourself a free bottle of wine.' He paused and gave Lisa a cheeky wink. ‘What do you say?

‘It's tempting,' said Lisa, allowing Georgiou, who had complimented her on both her beauty and her dress sense at regular points throughout the meal, to steal a kiss on the cheek. ‘We'll have to see.'

I couldn't blame Georgiou – a middle-aged father of three – for trying it on with Lisa as she was absolutely stunning in her black backless dress. Sitting with the three of us at the table she was the perfect definition of a rose amongst thorns.

‘I feel I have died and gone to heaven,' said Georgiou swooning theatrically from Lisa's kiss. ‘To which one of you lucky men does this stunning lady belong?'

‘This is my boyfriend,' said Lisa, pointing to Andy. ‘And these two handsome gents are just friends.'

‘Well, my friend,' said Georgiou in a mock whisper as he leaned in towards a clearly embarrassed Andy, ‘I hope you know that you are a very lucky man.'

We piled up a small mountain of Euros in the middle of the table to cover the bill and as Georgiou was about to sweep the cash away, Andy asked if there were any chance that we could buy a bottle of raki from him to take away. Georgiou immediately called for one of his waitresses to get a bottle.

‘I make it myself,' said Georgiou as she returned with a plastic litre bottle of the clear liquid. ‘I make the best raki on the island.' He thumped the table dramatically. ‘Mine has a little extra kick!'

‘That's good to hear,' said Andy. ‘A little extra kick is just what we all need.'

We thanked Georgiou for the meal and then slowly made our way out of the taverna to the quiet street outside.

‘What have you bought that rot-gut for?' asked Tom as we made our way through the winding back streets. ‘We've still got some beer back at the apartment.'

‘I'm not touching a drop of that stuff,' I said, adding my weight to Tom's objections. ‘That stuff is lethal.'

‘Will you two stop acting like old ladies?' said Andy. ‘This stuff is brilliant.'

‘What is it?' asked Lisa taking the bottle from Andy's hands to examine it closely.

‘Have you ever had ouzo?' asked Tom.

‘Not since I was seventeen and my parents went away for the weekend,' replied Lisa. ‘A couple of friends came over to keep me company and things got a bit out of hand. We ended up dumping a whole bottle of ouzo that my parents had brought back from a holiday in Athens into the remains of a two-litre bottle of Coke and split it four ways.' Lisa shook her head in shame. ‘Before long some boys got invited round, my friend Katie ended up getting a huge love bite from a boy called Kevin and we all ended up in my parents' bathroom taking it in turns to be sick.'

‘Well,' said Tom laughing, ‘it's just like that . . . only stronger.'

Lisa looked at Andy. ‘Do we really have to do this?'

‘Of course we do,' he replied. ‘It's a rite of passage. You know as well as I do that every holiday needs a good hangover story.'

‘Like you haven't got enough already,' sighed Lisa. ‘Fine. Count me in. Only because I don't want you moaning that I spoilt things by not getting into the mood. But when you wake up in the morning with a screaming headache don't come running to me.' Shaking her head in disapproval, Lisa joined Tom who was walking slightly ahead of the group. She looped her arm through his and started asking him lots of questions about his kids, which forced Andy and me into walking together. Neither of us spoke for quite a long time but as we paused waiting to cross a road Andy eventually broke the silence.

‘Listen, mate,' he began, ‘I'm sorry about yesterday. What

I said was absolutely out of order.'

‘It's okay,' I replied. ‘It's no big deal.'

‘So we're all right, then?'

‘Yeah . . . we're all right.'

There was another silence.

‘So, did you always know you were going to bring Lisa out here?'

‘Yeah,' replied Andy. ‘Pretty much so.'

‘So this holiday was never about me?'

‘Of course it was about you. But it was about me too.'

‘And you don't feel guilty?'

‘About Lisa?'

‘Of course about Lisa.'

Andy shrugged. ‘I don't think about it.'

‘I guess that's the big difference between you and me.'

Andy checked that Lisa and Tom were out of earshot.

‘Nina called me today,' he began quietly. ‘Said she wants to carry on seeing me when I get home.'

‘You've said no though, haven't you?'

Andy shook his head. ‘It's difficult.'

‘What's difficult?'

‘I think I might want to see her again.'

‘What about all that stuff you said to me yesterday?'

‘I think that was more for my benefit than yours.'

There was another long silence.

‘Being with Nina . . . it makes me feel like I'm alive again.'

‘So what about Lisa?'

‘I need her too,' said Andy. ‘Like I said, it's difficult.'

‘Look,' I said pointing to Lisa and Tom up ahead. ‘Just look. That beautiful woman there is your girlfriend. And more than that she loves you. Why would you want to risk losing all that?'

‘I wouldn't be risking anything,' said Andy evenly. ‘She'd never find out. All Nina's suggesting is that we meet up once in while.'

‘You'll get caught.'

Andy shook his head. ‘No we won't,' he said confidently. ‘I've thought it through.'

‘People who cheat always get caught,' I replied. ‘It's a fundamental law of the universe. You take one risk, and then you take another and another until you've convinced yourself that you're invincible. Then one day you'll take a risk too far . . . or you'll get careless . . . or you'll end up hating Lisa so much for not catching you out that you won't care if she finds out . . . but whichever way it happens, the truth will come out because it always does. Just like it did with me and Sarah.'

Andy stopped and looked at me. ‘I thought you said you only found out when Sarah left you.'

‘That wasn't true,' I replied. ‘I lied to you because I didn't want to look stupid. But the truth was I knew Sarah was cheating on me long before she left.'

‘How?'

‘I went through her things one morning after she left for work. I went through everything – her bags, clothes, underwear, diary – even her computer. I was trying to find evidence that might explain why she had changed so much in the past few months. I felt terrible. I really did. It felt like a real intrusion. Until I found something. It was a letter from him folded inside an empty compact in her make-up bag. It had all the stuff you'd expect. And it was quite obviously not the first letter of its type either. So I had to ask myself what was so special about this one? I read it and reread it a million times and I couldn't work out why she'd kept it when she'd obviously disposed of the earlier ones. And then it hit me . . . she'd kept it because the thought of destroying the letter upset her more than the idea that I might find it. That's when I knew that it wouldn't be long until she left me.'

‘So, why didn't you say something?' said Andy. ‘You shouldn't have let her walk all over you like that.'

I could've predicted Andy's reaction down to the letter. He didn't understand because he couldn't understand. And he couldn't understand because he'd never been in love.

‘I didn't say anything because I knew that would mean she would leave me sooner rather than later. So I put all of her stuff back exactly where I'd found it and carried on as if nothing had happened. A month later she left me anyway. And do you know what? I don't regret not confronting her about it for a second because the thing you won't understand – I don't think you
can
understand – is this: when you love someone and you find yourself living on borrowed time, you're just too grateful for every last moment you get to worry about anything else.'

When we finally reached the apartment, the first thing Andy did was raid the kitchen cupboard in search of receptacles for the raki. Failing to find any shot glasses he chose to improvise and brought four white ‘I
♥
Crete' mugs out to the balcony. Carefully pouring a double shot's worth of raki into each mug, Andy distributed them out amongst us and then on his cue we raised our mugs in the air and simultaneously knocked back our shots in one. Our reactions were instant: Andy's eyes began to water, Lisa and I coughed so violently I thought we might choke and Tom gritted his teeth like a tough TV detective and immediately poured himself another glass.

That first drink marked something of a watershed for the four of us. It was as if we had unanimously decided to give our minds a night off from our various individual troubles and just have fun. And with each shot of raki we consumed, having fun seemed to become a lot easier. Encouraged by Lisa, Andy, Tom and I wheeled out all our old favourite stories from the past. Everything from how we'd met during our first week at college, through our post-college years right up to and including the ‘edited' highlights of our first night out in Malia only a few days earlier. Anyone watching this scene would have immediately assumed we were not just friends, but good friends. People who cared about each other. People who loved each other.

It was just before midnight and we'd been drinking, smoking and talking for well over an hour. Andy was sitting on one of the patio chairs with Lisa lodged on his lap, Tom was sitting on the other chair with his bare feet propped on Lisa's lap, and I was sitting cross-legged on the table looking round at my friends and grinning like an idiot. This was one of those moments that I wished would last for ever. It was the kind of moment that makes a holiday feel like a holiday.

‘Never let it be said that I won't admit when I'm wrong,' I said drunkenly to Andy. ‘You were absolutely right about the raki, mate. This stuff is spot on.'

‘You're telling me,' said Andy. ‘For the past half an hour I've been shocked by just how entertaining Tom can be when he's drunk too much.'

Tom raised his mug. ‘And with every double shot of raki, Andy, you somehow become a lot less obnoxious.' Tom then walked over to me and gave me a drunken squeeze. ‘I'm off to bed,' he announced. And after proceeding to embrace both Lisa and Andy, he slid back the patio doors and disappeared inside.

‘And then there were three,' said Andy sharing out the last of the raki.

‘How can we have drunk a whole bottle already?' said Lisa staring disappointedly into the bottom of her mug.

‘Maybe it's a sign that we should call it a night,' I said conscious of the fact that this was the second night in a row that I had drunk too much. ‘Maybe we should quit while we're ahead.'

‘There'll be no talk of quitting,' said Andy. ‘The night is still young. Don't worry, for the greater good I'll nip out and get some raki and fags, too, as we seem to be running low on B&H. I won't be long . . . half an hour.'

‘No, mate, don't,' I pleaded as I realised that with more raki in the apartment there would be little chance of any of us getting to bed before dawn.

‘Too late,' said Andy, standing up, ‘I'll be back before you know it.'

Through my raki-addled brain I did a quick calculation: one Tom (already in bed) minus Andy (to get raki and fags) plus me and Lisa would equal an opportunity for an uncomfortable conversation (or two). I did not want this to happen, especially as the alcohol had already done a pretty good job of loosening my tongue. ‘I'll come with you,' I said, struggling to my feet. ‘Keep you company.'