‘I love him, Mum,’ I said again, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.
‘I don’t think you understand.’ Mum sounded angry now. ‘For God’s sake, Megan, you’re 14 years old. This isn’t a decision you can make. If you don’t come back to the airport right now and catch this flight with me, I’m going to have to go to the police.’
I didn’t know how to respond, how to make her understand there was no way that I was going back.
‘Megan, listen to me, you need to come home. You cannot stay here by yourself!’ I could tell that she was starting to panic. ‘Megan, please. They’re calling our flight!’
‘I can’t come home,’ I said, tears now streaming down my cheeks. ‘I’ll kill myself if you try to make me go home. I mean it, Mum. I want to be with Jak.’ I didn’t hear what she said after that, because I turned off the phone.
It still makes me cry when I think about that phone call. I don’t blame my mum for leaving without me. My decision to stay in Greece took her (and me) completely by surprise, and my heartfelt threat to kill myself must have sent her into such a tailspin of panic that she didn’t know what else to do.
After Jak had taken the phone out of my shaking hands, he drove to a block of apartments where a friend of his called Vasos lived. As soon as we were inside, I began to sob. Jak kept hugging me and telling me everything would be all right. But suddenly I couldn’t imagine how I was going to live without my mum. I felt terrible for having upset her so much, and although just a few minutes earlier I had believed that if I had to leave Jak I would never be happy again, I now felt scared and was already regretting the decision I had made.
‘I just need a minute,’ I told Jak, and as I stepped out on to the balcony, I saw the plane. It seemed to be ascending very slowly into the sky above a distant row of rooftops, and as it came closer I could see the distinctive colours of the airline on its tail and I knew it was the plane I should have been on with my mother. Plummeting from distress into hysteria, I began to wave frantically and shout, ‘Mum, I’m here. Can you see me? Come back. Don’t leave me here. Please, Mum. I’m sorry. Don’t go home without me.’
For a moment, I almost believed I could see her face looking out of one of the windows of the plane, and that she could see me standing on the balcony. Then a wave of panic washed over me and I couldn’t breathe. I tugged at the handle of the balcony door, shouting, ‘I want my mum,’ and ran out of the apartment, down the stairs and on to the street. I kept on running until I reached the end of the road, where I sank to my knees on the hot, stony pavement, sobbing, ‘I’m sorry, Mum. Please come back.’
When Jak caught up with me, I was still waving frantically at what was now an empty sky. ‘Come on. Come back inside. You’ll be okay,’ he told me, putting his arms around my shaking body and lifting me on to my feet before half-carrying me back up the road.
When we were inside the apartment again, Jak handed me a mug of hot chocolate and said, ‘Drink this. Then go and have a shower. It will make you feel better.’ It didn’t, though, and for the rest of day I sat staring at the wall of the living room while the two men watched television.
My suitcase had been loaded on to the plane with Mum’s this time, so I had nothing except my handbag and the clothes I was wearing. ‘I’ll buy you something tomorrow,’ Jak said when we were lying beside each other in bed that night. But even though I knew what I had done wasn’t his fault, I felt sick and pulled away from him when he tried to touch me.
‘I’m not ready,’ I told him.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
When I woke up the next morning, no less exhausted than I had been the night before, Jak and Vasos were getting ready for work.
‘You stay here,’ Jak said. ‘You can clean up the apartment.’ I felt numb and the day passed incredibly slowly. I couldn’t eat or think about anything except my mum. Where would she be now? What would she be doing? How would she be feeling?
‘She’s coming back,’ I kept telling myself. ‘I’ll see her again very soon.’ Even though I knew it was true, it didn’t make me feel any better, and as the hours dragged by, I became increasingly anxious to talk to her. So when Jak got back from work that evening and told me he’d had a text from her and that I should call, I almost snatched the phone out of his hand.
‘I’ve been so worried about you,’ Mum said. ‘Just take care of yourself. I’ll be back as soon as possible, I promise.’
I felt much calmer after I had spoken to her. I knew I was really going to miss her, but it was stupid of me to have got into such a state about it all, particularly when I had Jak to look after me until she came back. And I really was all right, once I knew Mum wasn’t worried to death about me and that I would be able to text and speak to her on Jak’s phone every day.
For the next couple of weeks, our lives fell into an easy pattern. I would either go with Jak to work or stay at Vasos’s apartment during the day. Then, in the evening, after we’d had something to eat, we would go out for a coffee. I would often tell Jak how impressed I was by the extraordinarily rapid improvement in his English, and he’d respond by teaching me some more words in Albanian and telling me how proud he was of me when I repeated them back to him.
One evening, as we were sitting outside a café in a square in the centre of town, Jak’s phone rang. He listened before speaking rapidly in Albanian for a few seconds. Then he put the phone down on the table and sighed.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked him, touching the warm skin of his arm with my fingers. ‘Has something happened? Are you all right?’
‘I’ve just had some bad news,’ he said. ‘My mother is very ill.’ His eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh no, I’m so sorry.’ I gripped his arm tightly. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘It’s cancer.’ He spread out his hands with their palms turned upwards in a gesture of helplessness. ‘It’s in her throat. The doctor thought it was … How do you call it?’ He touched his neck. ‘Tiroide?’
‘Thyroid?’ I said.
He nodded miserably. ‘They did some tests and now they’ve told her today that it is cancer.’
‘Oh, Jak, that’s terrible! Can it be treated?’
The sound he made was like a burst of angry laughter. ‘Yes, it can be treated, for someone who can afford to have an operation. This isn’t England, you know. Just visiting a doctor here costs fifty euros. I can’t even imagine what the operation would cost.’ He rubbed his face with his hand and wiped away the tears that were falling openly now. ‘My parents don’t have any money. You know that. And it takes me a whole day to earn fifty euros, even though I work very hard.’ He sighed again and I tried to think of something comforting to say, but couldn’t. ‘Well, I’m just going to have to get a second job,’ he said at last. ‘I just hope I can earn enough money to pay for the treatment my mother needs before … before it’s too late. I don’t have any choice: you can’t just stand by and watch someone you love suffer and then die.’
I was crying too by that time. I had always had the sense that Jak’s mother didn’t really like me, but that didn’t affect the fact that I felt incredibly sorry for her, and for Jak too. I knew he was very fond of his mother, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine how I would feel if my mum was ever seriously ill. What I didn’t know until a long time later was that Jak could have won an Oscar for his performance that evening.
I think he had already decided we were going to move back in with his family. So that’s what we did a couple of days later. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I certainly wasn’t going to argue about it, given the circumstances. Sometimes, I would see him touch his mum’s throat as he was talking to her. Otherwise, neither