Victoria Connelly - Wish You Were Here

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.