A few miles away in a small café with insufficient air conditioning, Frankie drew a line down the middle of a blank page of an exercise book and wrote ‘for’ and ‘against’ at the top of the two columns. It wasn’t exactly a spreadsheet, but its practicality was a comfort nonetheless.
Under ‘against’, she noted her only real sticking point; or two points, technically. Joshua and Elliott. Her beloved, boisterous boys, the reasons she’d put the last half of her own life on hold. It was hard to imagine that she’d given birth to them at the same age as they were themselves now; they were still her babies and the thought of them as fathers right now was utterly incomprehensible. Please let them have at least another ten years of freedom first, she murmured. Please let them make a million mistakes that don’t matter rather than one huge one that changes their lives for ever.
Tapping her pen against her teeth, she considered what to write next. There really wasn’t much she could think of to add to the ‘against’ column, and in truth the boys didn’t really need her around at home any more. Josh was living away at a sports academy for the most promising youth footballers in the country, and Elliott had won a hard-fought-for apprenticeship with one of the luxury car brands he coveted and moved into a shared house forty miles away. Fierce pride bloomed bright in her chest at the thought of how well they were doing; if there was one thing she was certain of it was that her sacrifices had been worth it, and that she’d do the same all over again to ensure that her kids were set on the right path.
After a second, she wrote ‘Marcia’ in the ‘for’ column, followed by ‘find an adventure’. Then she added ‘sunshine’, ‘friendship’, ‘new start’, ‘excitement’ and ‘not lonely any more’ to the list in quick succession. Her hand hovered over to the ‘against’ column to add ‘money’, but in fact going thirds on the villa had still left her with a decent chunk in the bank, so it really wouldn’t be accurate to put it down as an against, exactly. That made seven for, and two against. Quite definitive, really, even though the thought of living in a different country from Josh and Elliott made her feel queasy. Perhaps if she framed it in her mind as an exploratory trip, then it would be less of a wrench. Three months or so, and if she missed the boys too much, she could always come home again. She closed her book, laid her pencil neatly on top and unscrewed the lid from her bottle of water.
If the spreadsheet said it was a good idea, then it had to be right.
In a dressing room in the department store in town, Stella stripped off and jiggled herself into the first of the many bikinis she’d picked out. For such tiny garments, they were a minefield to get right. She wanted uplift without her double Ds being under her chin, pants that gave the illusion of maximum leg length because she was five foot four on a good day, and for God’s sake some bum coverage rather than letting it all hang out. Not that it hung out very much; she sweated blood and tears in the gym most mornings to make sure of that.
Stella knew that self-confidence came from feeling good about yourself, and confidence was one of the most important factors in her job. Or else it had been up to now. As marketing and PR manager for Jones & Bow, she’d been the public face of the company, the brand ambassador. Her eyebrows were always immaculately threaded and her designer clothes a perfect fit around her curves; no workout in the world could minimise the fact that she’d inherited the Daniels family boobs. Her mother, her aunts and her grandmother all had the same small-waisted, full-breasted Jessica Rabbit figure and over the years she’d learned to work with it rather than against it. Sexy was no bad thing, in the boardroom or the bedroom.
Turning, she eyed her body critically in the mirror, and then rejected the polka-dot bikini as too kitsch and opted for the sleek red Victoria’s Secret instead.
Working her way through the collection of irritatingly tangled hangers she ended up in a muddle of straps and ties, then lost her cool and threw the whole lot in a heap on the floor and flopped down onto the padded stool. What was she doing? This whole scheme to move to Greece had come as a bolt out of the blue, and her stomach had flipped uncertainly even as she’d signed her name on the contracts. She didn’t do random things. She didn’t do whimsy. Oh, she could be impulsive, but in Stella’s world that meant buying a new leather couch or an unneeded pair of Jimmy Choos just because, not committing her entire life to an ailing business in a foreign country. She couldn’t even speak Greek! None of them could. God, it was going to be a disaster – what had they been thinking?
Prickles of panic broke out on her forehead at the thought of leaving behind everything she’d worked so hard for. So she’d lost her job; it wasn’t the end of the world or an excuse to have a total breakdown and do something as outrageous as flee the country. Another job would turn up soon enough. She was too good to be ignored, too well-known and respected in her field to be left on the career shelf, so why had she just hurled herself off it like Buzz Lightyear flinging himself from the edge of the table? He hadn’t been able to fly, not really. It was just a smoke-and-mirrors illusion.
Stella threw her clothes back on, thrust the knot of bikinis at the shop assistant and marched out of the shop. She didn’t need new bikinis. She had three perfectly good ones already, and it was highly likely that she wouldn’t be staying on Skelidos long enough to need more.
Winnie checked her cross-body bag for the millionth time to make sure she had the keys to Villa Valentina zipped safely inside the side pocket.
‘We’ll have to get some more keys cut as soon as we can,’ she said, settling her bag into her lap on the hour-long ferry ride from Skiathos across to Skelidos. Now that they were almost back at the villa, her nerves had kicked in hard. Ajax had emailed to let them know that he and Nikolas had left for Athens a couple of days back and the place was locked up and waiting for them. They’d bought it fully furnished with several upcoming reservations already in the book, so for all intents and purposes they could just turn the key, open the windows and be up and running. It sounded quite easy, put like that, until a worrying thought hit her.
‘Oh, God! I hope someone has been feeding The Fonz since Ajax left!’ She looked from Frankie to Stella sitting on the opposite bench. ‘What if he’s starving, or dehydrated?’
Stella shook her head. ‘Donkeys are like camels, I should think. They retain water.’
Both Frankie and Winnie looked at her, taken aback. ‘Surely he’d need a hump for that?’ Frankie said, doubtful.
Stella shrugged and dropped her Aviators over her eyes; the donkey was the least of her worries. She’d had a job offer a couple of days ago from old business rivals of Jones & Bow; on the one hand it was reassuring to be head-hunted, but on the other they were offering a pitiful package and hadn’t even included a company car. She hated the loss of freedom being without wheels represented, and couldn’t help but feel that the derisory job offer had been designed more to put her in her place rather than to genuinely recruit her. It stung, and it rammed home the fact that she wasn’t as indispensable as she’d always allowed herself the indulgence of believing. She hadn’t replied yet. Her instinct had been to tell them where to shove their pitiful offer, but she was slowly coming around to the horrible realisation that she might not have