Chloe Rayban - Footprints in the Sand

Lucy’s side of the story…

CHLOË RAYBAN

with grateful thanks to Nick Price for his help with the windsurfing

Cover

Title Page footprints in the sand Lucy’s side of the story… CHLOË RAYBAN

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

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Copyright

About the Publisher

‘Mu-um! Have you read this?’

My mother looked up from her reading with one of her intentionally vague expressions.

‘Umm – guide book, yes – no… Not sure. Think so.’

‘You can’t have. It sounds ghastly. Listen to this…’

I put on my official travel guide voice and read:

‘The island’s relative fertility can seem scraggy and unkempt when compared with its neighbours. These characteristics, plus the lack of spectacularly good beaches, meant that until the late 1980s very few visitors discovered Lexos. The tiny airport which cannot accommodate jets still means that the island is relatively unspoilt. Not that the island particularly encourages tourism – it’s a sleepy peaceful place populated mainly by local fishermen.

‘Unusually for a small island, Lexos has abundant ground water, channelled into a system of small lakes. These make for an active mosquito population…’

Mum cut in. ‘Well, it sounds fabulous in this – listen. “Lexos – undiscovered paradise of the Aegean. ” Smashing picture too.’

I leaned over her shoulder. She was leafing through a glossy tourist brochure. She thrust the cover under my nose.

‘It’s only a pot of geraniums and a bit of blue sea. It could be anywhere.’

‘Well, I’m intending to enjoy this holiday Lucy – whatever.’

I sat back in the airline seat and put my Walkman on. ‘Undiscovered’ – typical. I reckon she’d done this on purpose.

Neither of us had actually said anything, but we both knew it was going to be our last holiday together. By all rights I would have gone inter-railing with Migs and Louisa – three girls off round Europe together, what a laugh. That’s what I’d intended to do. But just when we’d got all the arguments over our itinerary sorted out, Mum had this phone call…

Dad was getting married again.

I don’t know why it got to her so much, they’d been divorced for years – five years at least. Everything had settled down. She’d seemed perfectly happy. But after the call she got this sort of thin-lipped look on her face, like I remembered from way back, when they separated.

‘You know what you need – a really good holiday,’ I said.

“Yes, you’re right. I do. I know I do. Why don’t we go somewhere right away from it all?’ she said.

‘We’. I hadn’t actually fixed anything with Migs and Louisa. I mean, we hadn’t booked the tickets yet.

She looked at me, all kind of bright-eyed and expectant. So I nodded and left it at that. I hoped she’d forget about it. But then, a day or so later, she came up with this plan. She wanted us both to go to the Greek islands just around the time Dad was due to get married. I had no intention of going to the wedding anyway. I didn’t like Sue, Dad’s ‘partner’ much. And Mum seemed so set on the idea, so I hadn’t the heart to refuse.

But I didn’t expect it to be this far away from it all.

Lexos was really off the beaten track. We flew to a larger island first – Kos. And then we had to travel on by ferry. Dad said I’d love Greece. It was the furthest I’d ever been from England. He said it was the first place where you actually felt the influence of the East. Dad was really into the East. He’d gone overland all the way to India and back when he was young, and he’d kept a ratty kind of embroidered Afghan coat in the loft. I used to dress up in it when I was little. It smelt like a dead goat.

But he was right about Greece. It did have a sense of the East. As soon as I got off the plane I could feel it in the warm dry heat of the sun, soaking into me.

We hired a taxi to take us from the airport to the ferry port, and the driver played this kind of clattering Eastern music on his radio. We drove past little whitewashed churches with strange round domes, and all the old women were dressed like witches in long fluttering black dresses. They held scarves up to their faces to keep out the dust. And the air smelt different. Hot and perfumed with herbs and pine and something sweet and kind of musky. And now and then there was just the odd whiff of dead goat smell. Maybe that was what made it feel Eastern to me – by association with the coat.

The boat trip took hours. We had to queue to board with all these backpackers who looked as if they’d been in Greece all their lives. I couldn’t help noticing that some of the guys were gorgeous. Their skins were a deep bronze and their hair and clothes bleached as if they’d been left out in the sun for months. I felt really self-conscious with my white skin and my brand new jeans and T-shirt – and I was with my mother too. Pretty humiliating.

Mum said we should go up on the outer deck in case it got rough. By the time we got up there, there were no seats left, so we had to sit on the deck and lean on our suitcases. But she was right. It did get pretty rough.

Apparently, there’d been this massive storm the night before. The wind had died down but the sea was still recovering from its effects. After about an hour of being tossed around I started to feel really sick and my head ached. I must have looked sick too, because this old Greek lady leant over and handed me half a lemon. I didn’t know what I was meant to do with it. But she held it to her nose and sniffed and nodded. And I did the same and I felt a bit better. Mum said it was a traditional Greek cure for sea-sickness. So I nodded and sniffed and smiled at the old woman and she laughed and nodded back. We kept up this nodding and sniffing and smiling routine for the rest of the trip.

I’ll never forget my first view of Lexos. Some paradise! But, quite frankly, in the state I was in – any bit of dry land was as good as any other. As we drew nearer, the truly dire condition of the port came into focus. Boy, was it run-down. The buildings were mostly rough squareish boxes of concrete and grey breeze block. Most of them had odd bent ribs of rusty iron sticking out from their flat roofs as if they’d meant to build another storey on top and changed their minds. I think my first impression must’ve registered on my face because Mum was desperately trying to stay positive.

‘Oh look Lucy, there’s a palm tree,’ she said, as her eye lit on the sole acceptable item in the panorama. I was beyond a reply.

I wasn’t actually sick until I got on shore. And then I was, dramatically, behind a cactus. Cheers! Welcome to Lexos, I thought to myself as I took sips from the bottle of water Mum sympathetically handed to me.

After we’d sat at a café for a while and I’d drunk a lemonade, I started to feel a bit better.

‘Well, I hope you don’t think we’re going to stay here,’ I said as I recovered the faculty of speech.

‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ said Mum, looking fixedly in the direction of the palm tree.

‘Mum – it’s ghastly and you know it.’

‘Let’s get back on the boat then,’ she threatened, pointing to where the last boxes of freight were being loaded into the hold. ‘It’ll be leaving in a minute.’