Page 36 of Not in a Million Years

‘Andy? Of course. Oh my God. Has something happened to him?’

‘We don’t know,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s why we’re here. We’ve come out from London to try and find him.’

‘My name’s Kate,’ I said, my voice coming hoarsely from my dry throat.

‘Daniel,’ Daniel said.

Ash didn’t offer to shake hands. She looked at us for a moment, concerned but wary.

Then she said, ‘You’d better come inside.’

We followed her round the pool and into one of the low buildings. A bar stretched across its far side, a bright multi-hued woven rug covered the stone floor, and cream armchairs were arranged in groups around low tables. Ash gestured to one of them, and we sat down. A waitress appeared with a tray holding three glasses and a jug of iced water, cucumber and lemon slices floating in it.

‘Would you prefer tea?’ Ash asked. ‘I’m afraid we don’t serve alcohol here.’

‘Water would be great, thanks,’ I said.

Ash poured carefully, and Daniel and I took deep, thirsty swallows. I could see that her hand was trembling when she set the jug back on the table.

‘So, you’re friends of Andy’s?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘We hadn’t heard from him in a while and he wasn’t answering his phone. So we flew out from London to try and locate him.’

‘How did you find… I mean, how did you even know to look here?’

Quickly, Daniel summed up the detective work we’d done so far.

‘Andy left over a week ago,’ Ash said, taking a sip of water. I imagined that her mouth must be dry with shock, too. ‘I thought he’d be home by now. I mean, he said he was going home. He was going to hire a car and drive to the airport.’

‘But what about his phone?’ Daniel asked.

Ash flushed, spots of pink appearing on her tanned skin. ‘We had a row. Andy – I mean, you must know what he’s like. Impulsive. He threw his phone into the sea. That was right before he left.’

‘He never made it home,’ I said. ‘That’s for sure. He’d have been in touch with us if he had. He’d have got a new phone.’

The colour had left Ash’s face now, and she looked almost grey beneath her golden tan.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘We’re going to have to make some calls.’

She stood, hurried over to the bar and retrieved her phone, a notepad and a pencil, then sat back down with her legs tucked up under her.

‘You speak Turkish?’ Daniel asked.

‘Sure. My mum’s Turkish. I was born here, then we moved to the UK when I was seven because Dad wanted me to go to school and uni there. I’d only been back for holidays until I took the job at this place a couple of months ago.’

It was the answer to just one of about a million questions I wanted to ask her. But they’d have to wait – the worry about Andy’s welfare, which had been simmering in the back of my mind for days now, was reaching boiling point.

I pictured the scene in my mind: Andy and Ash together by the water, heated words passing between them. Andy hurling his phone away from him in a rage, not thinking what the consequences might be, and then storming off, ending their relationship just like that.

I could see it. Since his recovery from addiction, Andy had become more serene, more at peace with himself. But that volatility had always been there beneath the surface: whatever dark side of him had driven him to drugs in the first place still erupted in fits of petulant ill-temper or bouts of morose silence that ended abruptly, like the sun coming out after a storm.

But there had been no end to this one. No moment when Andy had smiled his irresistible smile at Ash and said, ‘God, I’ve been a dick, haven’t I?’ before taking her in his arms for a cuddle.

Instead, he’d gone. And I felt sick with fear at the prospect of him never coming back.

Ash had her phone pressed to her ear, speaking rapidly in Turkish. Daniel and I sat silently, waiting. There was nothing else we could do – we couldn’t even listen in on her side of the conversation, because neither of us understood a word of what she was saying, only Andy’s name, which she repeated several times before – I presumed – spelling it out for the person on the other end of the line, to whom it would be as unfamiliar as Turkey’s version of the ABC was to me.

We waited while she finished the call, glanced at the numbers she’d written on her notepad, then dialled again. Another long conversation ensued, ending with her shaking her head, then dialling another number. This time, after repeating the query with which she’d begun the last call, the frown disappeared from Ash’s face. She looked up at us, tentatively hopeful. Through her phone, I could hear tinny hold music playing.

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