Actually, here’s something important about Clio; when she says ‘tits’ she sounds smart and sexy and 21st-century – ‘There’s no point fucking around with these things, Eric’ – the way that some women, and I suppose, some guys effortlessly can. When I say ‘tits’, though, I sound like a sleazy tabloid journalist. I’ve tried and tried and there’s no way around it. I used to say ‘boobs’, although I try not to now because Clio laughs and says I sound even worse, like a sex pest in denial. Recently, I’ve resorted to the painfully meek ‘You look great without your top on,’ which sometimes earns me an ‘awww’ and a kiss on the head. She says cunt too.
By the time Clio made it back to the sun loungers, the audience had more or less lost interest. She hung up the mask and snorkel in the spokes of our big shady parasol and took the towel that had been keeping the sneaking-its-way-round sun off my feet. She had a disapproving look that was just a little exaggerated; if you look carefully at that look, you can spot a smile that hangs around its edges and usually draw it out.
“Repeat after me,” she said. “There’s nothing funny about saluting like Hitler.”
“There’s nothing funny about saluting like Hitler,” I said, taking my sunglasses off and squinting up at her. “Everyone thought it was funny when Peter Sellers did it.”
“Yeah,” she said, rubbing her hair. “Except he was funny, wasn’t he?”
“Oh yeah,” I grinned. “I forgot.”
“So,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“Not salute like Hitler.”
“And?”
“Buy lots of drinks so you don’t get the next ferry off the island and abandon me for being the amoral worm that I am?”
“And?”
“What?” I said.
“And?”
“And what?”
“You’re not funny.”
“And what?”
She finished off with the towel and threw it at my head. “Grab that,” she said, “and take my bikini top off, I need it.”
We went to the campsite bar.
The campsite bar is good because it serves really cold Amstel beer, which we drink in the daytime, and really strong cocktails, which we move onto as soon as the sky gets dusty. Sometimes you’ll have an orange sunset, sometimes though, maybe most times, the blue of the sky will just get dustier and dustier, and at some point in the process you’ll realise the sand and stones you’re walking on are now warmer than the air. Cool breezes coming in from the sea.
Usually, between the Amstel and the cocktails, we’ll go for dinner at one of the tavernas along the beachfront. Our campsite is well away from whatever club action there may be on the island, and just a bump-crunch-bounce style unsurfaced road separates the tavernas, the general shop and the campsite entrance from the beach proper.
Clio will usually go as native as she can ordering food. I’ll generally have pizza because I’m a philistine and on holiday and can do whatever I like.
A couple of days before the bikini top/saluting incident, I’d discovered there’s so little light pollution over our part of the island that, if you’re lying on your back on a clumpy little sand dune at 3 a.m., you can see the blues and purples of the Milky Way all across the sky. I’d never seen the Milky Way before and thought there was something quite 1950s sci-fi about the whole thing. Lost in Space.
“You’re a philistine,” Clio said.
I nodded, looking back down at her and straw-sucking up a mouthful of high-alcohol campsite bar Zombie.
“This thing you have about always comparing things in real life to things in films?”
“What thing?”
“Well,” she said, “it makes you look shallow, uninteresting and –” lips pushed together, tipped head, strands of her dark hair dropping down, a mock-sympathy smile “– like a bit of a geeky loser, to be honest.”
“Well, I am a geeky loser. You should probably chuck me because you can do so much better and you’re worth so much more.” I crossed my arms. “You owe it to yourself, Clio. And anyway –”
“What? Mer mer mer, I was talking about the original Lost in Space, the TV programme, not the rubbish ’90s film remake? Mer mer mer?”
I looked down at my drink.
“A bit of a geeky loser,” she said again, in exactly the same way, but chasing it this time with a slow, inevitable nod.
I shrugged.
“Awww,” she said.
Clio’s badness smile is something else – the edges of her normal smile turn sharp like little blades and her eyes go all shiny and electric. I think, for the half-second it lasts, that mean naughty sexy cruel little smile might be the single and only perfect thing that’s ever existed. A bright warm flash amongst a billion old scratchy stars.
“I love you.”
“Oh, honey,” she smiled. She reached over and laid her fingertips lightly on the back of my hand. “You’re so regional.” When I didn’t respond she leaned back on the back legs of her chair and raised her eyebrows.
Here’s a secret: just the idea that Clio Aames is real and in the world makes me ache.
I fished my foot up under the table and tried to push her over. She caught onto what I was doing and slammed the chair back down on all fours.
“Childish,” she said.
Later that same night, we found ourselves talking to a couple of backpackers from London. We’d been away for almost five weeks by that point and it was only the second time we’d had any kind of extended conversation with people. It was odd, talking like that again, in a down-the-pub kind of way. We had to keep explaining things, backtracking and filling gaps. We realised our own conversations had evolved into a kind of shorthand, a tidy, neat little minimalism. Covering the whole canvas in broad obvious brushstrokes for outsiders felt like a waste of sounds, time and effort. Speaking with footnotes, Clio would call it later, as we ambled back towards the tent. Still, they were nice enough and we did have some fun with them. Apparently, they had a flat close to Heathrow Airport.
“You get used to the noise,” the girl, Jane, said. “For about a month we didn’t think we could stand it, but then we just got over it. Now it’s like it isn’t even there.”
“First couple of nights in the tent,” the guy, Paul, said, “we really struggled getting to sleep. Even though we don’t hear the planes any more at home, we couldn’t sleep without them. How weird is that?” He thought for a second. “It was like there was this hole in the quiet.”
“Cool,” I said. “Anti-sound.”
Clio looked at me.
“And Dusty,” said Jane, chipping back in. “When we first moved, I thought Dusty was going to have a nervous breakdown.”
“Dusty?” asked Clio.
“Our cat. She’s an old thing, used to belong to Paul’s great aunt. She’s Siamese and she’s pretty sensitive.” Jane talked about Dusty the cat for a while, a couple of cat anecdotes I don’t remember.
“We’ve just got two kittens,” Clio smiled. “Two boys.”
“Awww,” Jane said, “what are they called?”
I grinned on the inside.
“Gavin and Ian,”