Chloe Rayban - Footprints in the Sand

‘What about the harbour?’ I suggested.

‘Let’s go down and see. ’

So we tried the bay on the left. A flight of rough irregular steps wove its way down through some poor little tumble-down houses. At the bottom there was a pathetic fringe of shingle edged by some rotting fishermen’s shacks. Nets were stretched out on the tarry stones to dry. The air smelt of weed and gently decaying fish.

‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful!’ said Mum brightly. ‘Look Lucy, real fishermen!’

I looked. Some rather depressed-looking whiskery Greeks were sitting barefoot on the beach mending nets.

‘Look at their boats! Oh, it’s all so unspoilt.’

I thought the place could do with a bit of spoiling actually, but I didn’t comment. I suppose the boats were pretty. They were a fading weathered sea-blue, like those trendy kitchen cabinets you get in Ikea – but this weathering was obviously genuine. One of the fishermen was rowing his boat out to sea. He stood up in it and rowed in the direction he was going, leaning forward on the oars in a really weird way.

‘We can’t swim here, it’s all fishy and tarry,’ I pointed out. My new sandals were rubbing a blister on my foot and it was already really hot. I was longing for a swim.

‘There’s probably a beach in the next bay,’ said Mum. ‘We just need to clamber over those rocks.’

The rocks were dark and evil-looking and I didn’t hold out much hope of there being a nice white sand beach the other side. But I clambered after Mum anyway. It took about half an hour to get round to the next bay. And once we got there, predictably enough, we found there was yet another headland to negotiate. I was lagging behind and my blister was rubbed red and raw.

When, at last, we rounded the further point, I could see that there were only more jagged rocks. To top it all, this bay wasn’t as sheltered as the fishing harbour – the sea looked dark and angry as it lashed against the rocks. It didn’t even look safe to swim in.

I was getting really fed up. The Greek sea Dad had described to me was calm, blue, crystal clear – so clear, he said, you could see fish swimming beneath you, twenty metres down.

Mum was up ahead of me, trying to see round into the bay beyond. I tried shouting to catch her attention but my voice was lost in the sound of the sea.

I sat down crossly on a rock and took my sandal off to examine the damage. The blister was throbbing. I dabbled my foot in the water to cool it.

‘Lucy! Come on!’

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I shouted back.

‘What?’

She turned and started picking her way back over the rocks. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’m hot and I’m thirsty and I’ve got a humungous blister,’ I shouted.

Mum joined me on my rock. ‘It doesn’t look very inviting, does it?’

‘No.’

‘But having come so far…’

‘Look. Anyone in their right mind can see there’s no way there’s going to be a decent beach anywhere round here.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. Maybe we should go back.’

‘At last!’

I climbed to my feet and tried to ease my foot back into my sandal, but it was too painful.

‘Oh Mu-um! I don’t believe this!’

‘What is it?’

‘Tar. I’ve got it all over my new shorts.’

‘Oh Lucy.’

‘Oh Lucy’ – it was the way she said it. Mum had her tired voice on. I could tell she was really fed up too. We made our way back over the sun-baked rocks. I was forced to limp with one sandal on and one foot bare, and I could feel the sole of my bare foot practically griddling on the hot stone.

‘I think we should treat ourselves to a really nice lunch to make-up,’ said Mum, trying to cheer me up in the most obvious way as the harbour came into view once again.

The ‘restaurant’ the taverna owner had mentioned was nothing but a few blue-washed tables and chairs set out in a sloping lopsided way on the beach. The whole place was salt-encrusted and fishy, and by the look of it, salmonella was generally the dish of the day.

But by the time we reached it, I was past caring about food. I just sank down gratefully on one of their rickety rush chairs.

‘All I want is a drink,’ I said.

‘Oh Lucy.’

‘Well, do you seriously want to eat here?’

‘There isn’t anywhere else. Not without climbing up all those steps again.’

I just sat on my chair not speaking. By all rights, I should be stopping off somewhere glamorous with Migs and Louisa – somewhere clean and civilised, sitting at a café in Venice maybe, eating a nice squidgy slice of pizza, with loads of dark and gorgeous Italian boys chatting us up.

‘Well, the dredger’s stopped anyway,’ said Mum.

‘I thought something was missing.’

‘Oh come on Lucy, what are you going to have?’

I sighed. ‘What’s the choice?’

‘Umm…’ Mum peered at the menu, which was all in Greek.

‘I bet it’ll be fish, fish, fish or fish.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with fish.’

‘I loathe fish, as well you know.’

‘You used to love fish fingers.’

‘That was ages ago.’

‘I think we’ll have to go into the kitchen and choose,’ said Mum, after a minute or so. ‘They won’t mind, everyone does that in Greece.’

The kitchen was dark after the bright sunlight outside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I found I was face to face with a glass-fronted fridge.

I was right, the choice was fish. There were loads of them, all shapes and sizes, staring back at me. This fish wasn’t cut up into neat white rectangles like it was back home. And it didn’t have batter or breadcrumbs on it. It had heads on, and tails on, and looked as if, ever so recently, it had been swimming around alive and well, unaware that the day’s swim was going to come to such a nasty end.

There was a large lady in a witch dress standing behind the fridge, grinning at us. A gold tooth gleamed in the darkness.

‘I don’t fancy anything if you don’t mind,’ I said with a grimace.

‘Oh Lucy. Don’t be such a wimp, darling, it looks simply delicious. It’s probably just come out of the sea.’

‘Can’t I have chips?’

‘Only chips? Well, if you must. But we didn’t have much to eat last night.’

‘Chips’ll be fine.’

So I had chips and a Coke and Mum had fish and some wine. We sat at a table in the shade not far from the water’s edge. I think the wine must’ve been pretty strong because after a glass or so, Mum kept going on about what a brilliant place it was. She came out with all this ‘unspoilt’ stuff again and droned on and on about how we were getting back to the ‘real Greece’ and how time stood still in this kind of place. It was all that ‘alternative lifestyle’ nonsense that Dad sometimes came out with. I reckon the olds had been brainwashed with it when they were young.

All I could see was that we were sitting on a grotty beach that had several centuries of discarded fishbones and rotting fish heads mixed in among the pebbles. And that there were feral-looking cats hanging around which seemed horribly mangy and possibly rabid. And that the sea looked weedy and oily and fishy and had bits floating in it …

‘Oh look at those children. It must be paradise for them here. It’s like going right back to nature…’ said Mum, absent-mindedly filling her glass again.

I looked. A couple of unhealthily chubby little boys were wading in the rust brown sea. They had a plastic bag with them and they were emptying it into the water a few metres out. A load of bloody-looking fish guts fell from the bag. As they did so, a shoal of tiny fish surrounded them and the water boiled around their legs as the younger fish eagerly devoured the remains of their elders. The boys squealed with delight and tried to catch them with their fingers.