Wish You Were Here (4 page)

One taxi, one plane, one boat and another taxi later, and Alice and Stella were finally holding the keys to their villa. The taxi had dropped them outside a large pair of iron gates and Alice looked at them in surprise.

‘Are you sure we’re at the right place?’ she asked Stella.

‘Joe obviously knew my taste,’ Stella said, acknowledging the splendour with a brief glance. ‘Come on, help me with my bags.’

Stella sauntered through the gates and Alice followed with the bags, smiling at the tree-lined driveway that led to the villa.

‘This is beautiful!’ she said, between short breaths as the luggage weighed her down. The villa was a dazzling white and its brilliant turquoise shutters couldn’t fail to make you smile. Well, they failed to make Stella smile – she was frowning down at her dress on which a large beetle had landed.

‘Ewww!’ she cried, flicking the offending creature off her. ‘What kind of a place is this?’

‘A foreign one,’ Alice dared to say, producing another key as they reached the enormous wooden front door. It opened with a long, low groan and the hallway that greeted them was large and echoey with a flagstoned floor which made everything feel wonderfully cool. Alice looked up at the lofty ceiling and then back down at the floor which could easily accommodate a grand ball. ‘This place is huge!’ she said with a whistle.

‘Yes, well Joe always knew I never settled for second best,’ Stella said, making her way to the sweeping staircase in order to choose the best bedroom for herself. ‘Bring my bags up,’ she said as an afterthought.

Alice stared at her, dumbfounded for a moment.

‘Oh, you
know
how much stronger you are than I am,’ Stella added with a tiny smile.

Alice rolled her eyes at the insincere flattery and then struggled up the stairs behind Stella, watching as she viewed all five of the bedrooms before picking the largest room for herself. It had an enormous four-poster bed draped with a white canopy, a gigantic en suite and a long balcony that overlooked the coast to the east of the property.

‘Just put my things there,’ Stella said, motioning to Alice whilst she flopped down on the immaculate white bed. ‘It’s probably best if you hang my dresses up before they’re creased out of all recognition.’

Alice glanced at her sister. Was she serious? Alice had half a mind to tell her where she could stick her dresses when Stella stopped her.

‘You know you do a much better job of it than I do,’ she said.

Once again, Alice caved in. It wouldn’t take her long and, if she didn’t keep Stella sweet, there’d be all sorts of hell to pay, she was quite sure of that.

‘I’m off to find a room for me now,’ Alice said a moment later, having hung up her sister’s clothes.

Stella groaned from the bed and swatted a hand in Alice’s direction as if dismissing her. Relieved that she could have some time to herself at last, Alice walked out onto the landing and looked around. There were two large double bedrooms either side of Stella’s and one small single at the end of the corridor. She headed to the single. Privacy, she thought, was more important than size.

Like Stella’s room, the colours were soft and muted: the bed was a vision of white, and pale blue curtains fluttered in the breeze when Alice opened the windows. She didn’t have a balcony but the room did have an unrivalled view down to the harbour at Kethos Town and Alice stood looking at it for a few moments, watching the boats bobbing about on the glassy, blue-green water.

‘Am I really here?’ she asked herself as she gazed at some distant mountains that rose and fell like the back of a sleeping beast. ‘Am I really on holiday?’ She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper holiday that involved going abroad. She hadn’t been able to afford more than a couple of weekends away over the last few years and they’d been a very modest hotel break in the Lake District where she’d been rained on for an entire weekend, and a couple of nights in a youth hostel in Derbyshire where she’d had to share a room with a party of fifteen hyper schoolgirls. Not exactly the stuff of envy-inducing postcards. But here she was and it was a wonderfully sunny April day and the cold, grey days of the English winter that had seemed to drag on forever were now far behind her.

She glanced around her room again and then decided to do a bit of exploring, gasping at the enormous bathroom with walk-through shower and roll-top bath and the window looking straight out to sea.

Descending the staircase, Alice found an enormous modern kitchen with gleaming black worktops, a dining room with a table that sat twelve people and a living room filled with enormous white sofas. There were also doors out onto a terrace and Alice’s eyes widened in wonder when she saw the swimming pool beyond them. It was a traditional rectangular shape with a mosaic of pale tiles around it. There were sun loungers, an umbrella, a scarlet hammock and a barbeque – everything the holidaymaker could possibly want. There was even a large table and chairs under the shade of a pretty pergola over which clambered a magenta bougainvillea, its flowers dazzlingly bright against the blue sky above.

Beyond the terrace was an olive grove before the land dipped down and headed steeply towards the sea, punctuated every now and then with the tall, dark spires of cypress trees. It was the stuff of fantasies and, for a moment, Alice felt guilty for being there. After all, Joe had booked this holiday and he must have paid an absolute fortune for it but Alice couldn’t help thinking that maybe he’d thought it was worth missing out on it to be shot of Stella.

A huge bubble of excitement rose within her and, not wanting to waste a single moment, she decided that they should go straight down to Kethos Town and get something to eat, do a bit of shopping and stock up on supplies so they could cook at the villa.

Walking back upstairs, she popped her head round Stella’s bedroom door. She was still on the bed and her eyes were closed.

‘Do you want to get something to eat?’ Alice whispered.

‘What?’ Stella croaked without opening her eyes.

‘I’m going to walk into town and get some food.’

‘Some
Greek
food?’

‘I imagine so.’

‘No thanks,’ Stella said. ‘I’ve brought some cereal bars with me.’

Alice wrinkled her nose. Her sister had flown all this way to fall asleep and eat cereal bars.

‘Well, I’m going out, okay?’

‘Knock yourself out,’ Stella said before rolling over on the bed and burying her head further into her pillow.

Alice returned to her bedroom and changed from the jeans she had been wearing on the plane and opened her suitcase to reveal the summery clothes she’d optimistically packed. There were T-shirts in cream and navy and – Alice’s hand hovered over a third –
grey
. She didn’t dare wear grey in Greece. Stella would kill her if she did and, for once in her life, Alice didn’t want to wear grey either. The brilliant colours of the island seemed to be whispering to her, persuading her to be a little more adventurous with her palette.

Ditch the grey
, it seemed to say. Only she seemed to have an awful lot of it. Even one of her dresses had grey in it. It was only a background, mind, hiding behind the pretty pink roses but it was there all the same.

‘Best to avoid,’ she said to herself, her hands reaching under the layers of grey, white and navy and pulling out her one magnificent piece of colour. She caught her breath as she saw it because it was so un-Alice like. She remembered the day she’d bought it. She’d seen it on the sale rail of a shop she normally walked right by without even glancing at because it just wasn’t the sort of shop someone like Alice went into but it had beckoned her in, urging her to take it home with her and now, holding the light folds of turquoise between her hands, she was so glad of her impulse buy. It was the one truly beautiful thing she owned and she was going to wear it right now.

First, she took off the rest of the drab clothes she’d been wearing on the flight and ran into the shower, washing away the weariness that comes from travelling. Then she combed her hair. Being fine, it would dry quickly in the sun.

Returning to her suitcase, she pulled out the turquoise dress. The little buttons down the front winked in the sunny bedroom and the fabric felt so luxurious against her skin, tickling her knees with its softness. If only she had some pretty piece of jewellery. If only she could borrow one of Stella’s necklaces. She had heaps and heaps but, the problem was, Stella wasn’t exactly a sharing sort of sister. Growing up, they’d never swapped make-up, and the idea of sharing or lending was abhorrent to Stella.

‘But she never needs to know,’ Alice thought, thinking that her sister must have packed a veritable treasure trove of jewellery judging by the weight of her luggage and Alice couldn’t help feeling entitled to borrow a piece seeing as she’d carried it all.

With silent bare feet, Alice peeped round Stella’s door. She was fast asleep on the bed and was snoring like an angry volcano. Alice spied the suitcase. She’d already hung up all the clothes on her sister’s command but knew there must be a jewellery box or roll still hiding there so she crossed the room to where she’d left it.

The jewellery roll was easy to find and Alice sighed with pleasure as she saw the row of necklaces. There was silver and gold as well as all sorts of pretty costume pieces which one woman couldn’t possibly hope to wear in a single week even if she had a dozen necks, and Alice’s eyes fastened on a lovely blue pendant that was the colour of the summer sky. It would look beautiful with her turquoise dress and Stella wouldn’t miss it if it was returned straightaway.

Folding the jewellery roll and closing the suitcase, Alice tiptoed out of the room and, once safely in her own bedroom, placed the pendant around her neck and dared to gaze at her reflection. Her newly-washed hair was clinging to her face in dark strands and her blue eyes were made all the bluer by the bright dress. She dared to smile. For once, she looked almost pretty.

She slipped on a pair of sandals. They were a simple brown leather with nothing really to recommend themselves. In fact, they looked a little at odds with the pretty summer dress and Stella would no doubt have a fit if she clapped eyes on them but they were the only pair Alice owned and they would have to do.

Grabbing her handbag which was a rather monstrous black affair in which Alice usually kept at least three books, she left the villa and turned right out of the gates, heading down the steep path that led to Kethos Town.

How wonderful it was to feel warm. She hadn’t seen her limbs for months and they looked startlingly white in the Greek sunshine.

The road into town was quiet and Alice was soon down on the harbour front where they’d docked just a couple of hours before. She looked around at the pretty houses jostling along the water. Most of them were white and shaped like sugar cubes but there were some in brilliant colours too like Venetian red and sunset yellow and there, sat at the top of the hill overlooking the sea, was a beautiful church with a dazzlingly blue domed roof.

There were a few tourists about and Alice found a taverna overlooking the harbour and ordered moussaka, some salad and a glass of wine before closing her eyes and breathing in the salty tang of the sea and listening to it as it lapped against the harbour wall. Why couldn’t life always be like this? she wondered. Why was life more about in-trays than outings? And why were there always more workdays than weekends?

How hard it was going to be to return to England and her job after spending a week in such a paradise, she thought. Maybe it had been a mistake to come on holiday. Maybe she would have been better off not knowing there were such beautiful places in the world.

Tucking in to her moussaka a few minutes later, Alice did her best to banish thoughts of the office waiting for her back in England. She wasn’t going to think about the person she was there. Here, she could be anybody she wanted to be. Nobody knew her here. Nobody would judge her or gossip about her in the staff toilets. She was just another tourist who had come to soak up a bit of sunshine and that realisation made her smile.

Finishing her meal and glass of wine, she paid at the bar and noticed a handful of leaflets on a nearby table. There was one about the island’s museum and another about boat trips but one in particular caught her eye. It was for a villa set in acres of beautiful grounds which overlooked the sea at the south of the island.

‘The Villa Argenti,’ Alice whispered and the very name sounded like a promise. Its towers and turrets were mesmerising and its great Venetian-style windows seemed to hold secrets behind them, and the gardens rolled gently across the landscape before ending in cliffs which plummeted dramatically down to the sea.

She made up her mind then and there that she would visit it. Maybe it would even tempt Stella to leave the comfort of their villa. Yes, it would be the first of many wonderful adventures they would have together on the island. They’d laugh, relax and become closer than they’d ever been before, Alice thought, as she walked along the steep road that led out of the town and back to their villa. Stella couldn’t fail to be charmed by such a place as the Villa Argenti, could she?

‘I’m back!’ Alice called as she closed the front door behind her. ‘Stella?’

‘I’m through here,’ Stella said, her voice coming from the living room.

Alice found her sprawled out on one of the enormous cream sofas, the empty wrapper of a cereal bar on the table before her. She sat down next to her sister, half-expecting her to ask her where she’d been but she didn’t.

Undeterred, Alice took the leaflet for the Villa Argenti out of her handbag and handed it to Stella.

‘What’s this?’ Stella asked.

‘Somewhere I think we should visit.’

‘What – some boring old house?’

‘It isn’t a house – it’s a
villa
.’

‘But we’re in a villa already.’

‘Not like this one – just look at it!’ Alice said, her voice high with excitement. ‘Anyway, the villa isn’t actually open to the public but the gardens look so beautiful, don’t you think?’