Lizzie Allen - PS Olive You

That was then. After three weeks of Iraklia’s harsh sun I was ready to personally kill the convicts and extract their collagen with my own bare hands.

Heavy make-up can make a woman look much older. Especially round the eyes, it’s important to taper eyeliner toward the edges. I read on a beauty web forum, that nothing is more aging than a thick bovine line of colour on the bottom lid.

With Andrew still in Brussels, I faced interminable evenings on my own, so I’d taken to going to a local restaurant for a drink in the evening – and the extra care with my make-up was because someone there had caught my interest.

Kikis was a lively restaurant in the Chora where the locals hung out. I chanced upon it by mistake one night when I snuck into town to buy some fags. Yes, yes – smoking is just about the most aging plague you could set upon your skin – but something about the island just made me want to smoke. Perhaps it was the small village of bohemian travellers camped out on Livadi beach. Perhaps it was because everyone in Greece seemed to smoke. Who knows, but I was feeling reckless, and smoking was the only thing I could think of to stick it to Andrew for abandoning me. He abhorred the habit. In fact it was Andrew who made me give up shortly after we’d met. Another on his list of ‘minor adjustments’ that I spinelessly went along with.

Kikis was rocking when I pulled up outside in my dune buggy. Apparently I’d been living in a different time zone. The Greeks ran a split-shift: up early for fresh bread and chores, back home for lunch and a siesta, out again at night. Two days for the price of one. I’d been sleeping till ten and leaving the house at midday. No wonder the island seemed empty.

That first night as I walked up the stairs to Kikis I felt this overwhelming sense of relief to see so many smiling people. Even the vulgar assault of colour felt welcoming. Blue chairs, yellow table clothes and red candles. Purple bougainvillea draped from the ceiling and green vines hung from the balustrades. There was even a parrot with violently clashing feathers parked plumb in the middle of the room. He shuffled around kicking bits of straw and shit onto the floor with gay abandon and no one seemed to mind. The waiters picked up the shit on their shoes and walked it through the restaurant, stepping over dogs on route. Cats stalked along the railings and forked food off people’s plates when they weren’t looking. It was a health and safety shockfest – but also the first signs of life I’d seen in a while, so I was not going to be put off by a few rabid animals and a bit of parrot poo.

I wandered in unnoticed and came to a standstill in front of a tableau of fresh fish displayed on a bed of ice. In the centre was a large pissed-off-looking Sea Bass with a cigarette hanging from its lips.

‘Ha ha,’ a cheerful voice said behind me. ‘You like my smoking fish?’

I turned round to see a vaguely familiar face. It was Mr Potatohead from my Goddaughter’s Toy Story DVD.

‘Kalispera!’ he said jovially. ‘Welcome to my restaurant!’

He stuck out a massive paw and enveloped my hand in his.

‘You looking like my most beautiful of actress’.

‘Really? Who’s that?’

‘Goldie Horrrn of course!’

He turned and shouted loudly towards the kitchen. ‘Sofia, Sofia!’

A tired woman with dimpled cheeks came out smiling and wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

‘Look, look! Goldie Horrrn, no?’

She laughed warmly and nodded her head. ‘Neh, neh.’

Of course the idea was absurd. I looked nothing like Goldie Hawn, apart from my blonde hair, which was inherited from Scandinavian grandparents. I did have blue eyes though, and apple cheeks which I hated.

The two of them prattled on in Greek for a bit with the word’s ‘Goldie’ and ‘Horrrn’ surfacing every so often as they nodded and smiled and looked me up and down.

‘My husband, he like American movie stars.’

She pointed to the parrot. ‘Barbara Streisand.’

The bird shouted ‘yaso’ and bobbed up and down as if it understood and they both laughed heartily.

‘But our Barbara Streisand is a boy!’

‘Ha ha,’ laughed her husband merrily.

I asked if they sold cigarettes.

‘Of course, of course but you must have a drink first. On the house! ’

Mr Potatohead led me to a bar where a small bow-legged man was spooning out dishes of olives with a smouldering fag hanging from his mouth, not dissimilar to the fish. So much for the EU ban on smoking in the workplace.

‘Christos, give my friend a drink,’ boomed Mr Potatohead, pulling forward a barstool and thumping a bowl of olives down in front of me before retreating back into the restaurant. Christos gave me a cheeky smile and revealed two missing front teeth.

‘My name Christos’ he said offering a plump hairy hand.

‘Hello Christos’ I said responding to his hearty shake by nearly falling off my stool. ‘I’m Faith’.

‘Fat?’

‘Erm…no. Faith’.

‘You no fat!’

‘Oh…no…erm. Thank you. I know I’m not fat. At least, ha ha, I hope I’m not. You can call me by my nickname, Fay.’

‘Nick name?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your name Nick?’

‘No no. Fay! Oh never mind.

We both knew we’d exhausted that line of conversation and I looked round nervously while he continued to grin at me like a maniac.

‘First time in Iraklia?’ he asked, carefully measuring a double shot of raki into a glass and adding iced water. I smiled and nodded as the clear liquid clouded milky-white.

‘You like?’

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘But too hot.’

He nodded cheerfully and concurred. ‘Eeez wery wery hot!’

‘And windy,’ I added.

‘No so wendy,’ he replied. ‘Sometimes.’

He loaded up a pile of empty boxes and disappeared down some stone steps into a cellar. I looked around self-consciously and sipped at the raki. It slid down my throat and left a pleasant liquorish taste on my tongue.

Halfway through my second one I started to relax and enjoy my surroundings a bit more. Kikis was at the top of a cobbled road overlooking the steep cliffs of the harbour and the rest of the Chora. In truth it was no more than a wooden terrace with a tiny kitchen attached to one end, but the vined walls gave it a feeling of permanence, as if the ancient bougainvillea was enough of a structure without the annoying complication of bricks and mortar. At the far end stood the family’s living quarters, cordoned off by a row of pot plants.

Tables were occupied by a variety of clientele. Families spanning four generations, romantic couples, old men playing backgammon. In the distance, the twinkling lights of Schoinoussa blinked halting Morse code across the purple sea.

I wasn’t the only loner at the bar. At the other end, a woman in her late twenties was industriously threading beads onto a leather thong by the light of a candle. Her forehead was creased into a frown of concentration and wisps of blonde hair hung from a turban coiled around her head. She stopped to stretch out her neck and examine her handiwork before carefully laying it alongside several others in a wooden display case. As she took a slug from her beer, her wide eyes caught mine, green and moody. I blushed and smiled but she just continued staring over the rim of her beer with a kind of hostile indifference. I popped an olive into my mouth and pretended I didn’t care but it turned out to be a discarded pip and I nearly cracked a tooth before gagging silently into my raki.

A motorbike pulled up outside and there was a commotion as several people shouted in delight and waved to the new arrivals over the railings. Two men appeared in the doorway and Mr Potatohead hurried over to greet them with warm hugs and hearty backslaps. Even the dogs got up to say hello.