Page 52 of Take a Chance on Greece

‘Besides, you’d miss me, wouldn’t you, you disruptive beast?’ I addressed the donkey. ‘Probably best that you interrupted us when you did last night. A lot has happened since then.’ He blinked. ‘Yes, you’re right. I should stop putting off the dreaded moment. I’m going. Wish me luck.’

The donkey hee-hawed in response which I chose to interpret as an expression of goodwill, rather than disappointment that the treats he’d been hoping for hadn’t transpired. Then I picked up my pace and made my way to Alexis’s bookshop.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

When I arrived in the street, I instantly realised there was something different about it. Whereas before the window of the tattoo studio had been permanently shaded and dark, now a light was shining inside. The artist was back in residence. For a second, the skin on my back itched, as if memories of the night I’d got the tattoo were finally stirring. I hesitated, wondering whether I should go and speak to the tattooist about that evening, and find out about Awesome Andreas that way. I quickly dismissed the idea. It wouldn’t give me the full picture, and there were many questions that the artist wouldn’t be able to answer. I needed to hear from Alexis himself.

There was a ‘Closed’ sign on the bookshop door, but I paid no attention to it and went in anyway, the bell jangling in a far too cheery manner for my current state of nerves. For the first time, I crossed the threshold and didn’t feel immediately at ease, which was probably something to do with the nervous energy coming from the man standing in the doorway to the back room. Alexis didn’t look much better than I felt. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the buttons of his shirt were done up in the wrong order so one side was longer than the other. I’d never seen him looking less than perfectly turned out and I had to fight to ignore the tenderness it provoked in me. If he’d had a bad night’s sleep, it was because he had brought it upon himself.

He made as if to rush towards me, then stopped himself, holding onto the counter as if in need of its support.

‘Lydia, thank you for coming,’ he said quietly. ‘It is far more than I deserve.’

I tipped my head, acknowledging the truth in his statement. Now that I was here, I found myself uncertain what to say. I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start with them. And so, I stayed quiet and waited, ignoring Alexis’s gesture for me to sit in one of the squishy armchairs. Nothing was going to make this situation more comfortable. I had done my bit in returning to the bookshop and giving him the opportunity to speak. It was time for him to explain himself.

Alexis quickly looked me over, as if checking that I hadn’t come to any physical harm from Jim, then nodded, seemingly unsurprised by my silence. Without further prompting he launched into his confession.

‘I have spent all night trying to think about how to say this to you, where I would start were you to be kind enough to grant me the opportunity to talk to you again. But now you are here, it is clear to me. And I promise my complete honesty to you, whatever it might cause the outcome to be.’

I folded my arms, waiting for him to continue. If he was looking for reassurance from me, he hadn’t earned it yet. It was easy to promise future honesty, but much harder to make up for a lack of it in the past.

Alexis nodded as if he could read the thoughts going through my mind. ‘The explanation you are looking for is as follows. When you stepped in here two and a half weeks ago, fresh off the plane from England, and asked for my help in finding somewhere to stay, that was not the first time we had met. We also met when you were here before then on holiday. The night you got the Awesome Andreas tattoo.’

I closed my eyes and attempted for the millionth time to remember that evening, but try as I might, I still couldn’t picture when and where Alexis and I had encountered each other. Had he been just another face in the crowded bar, a stranger who bumped into me on the dancefloor? I took a deep breath, frustrated that the memories were still elusive. But then a faint recollection of something stirred.

‘Your aftershave. That slight spicy scent, I remember it now. You must have been wearing it that night. And you had it on yesterday evening when we went to Eleni and Stephano’s apartment. I knew it smelled familiar; I just couldn’t place it.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I was, that’s right.’ He paused, waiting to see if anything else came back to me.

‘And was it here that we met?’ I asked hesitantly. When I’d first returned to Sami and settled into the Helios Hotel, I’d tried to remember the fateful night again, but all I could picture was the bookshop. I’d assumed at the time it was because I’d just been there, but maybe that had actually been a memory from my original visit, although how I’d ended up in a bookshop after leaving my friends on the dancefloor to return to the hotel, I didn’t know.

‘Actually, it was in the lobby of your hotel. I’d stopped by there to say hello to a friend as I’d been away for a while. You walked in through the front door and it sounds like a cliché, but you lit up the room with your smile. You came over to the reception desk where my friend was working, and we got talking because you recognised the cover of a book I was holding and asked me if I knew of any others like it. My friend soon left us to it. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know you were drunk – we had such an interesting conversation.’

‘My friends tell me that Drunk Me still manages to act remarkably sober,’ I said. ‘The curse of normally being the sensible one of the friendship group. But having done the liquid maths with Kat and Amira, you’re right, I really hadn’t drunk all that much that night. I think it just had a greater effect on me because I rarely drank. Jim was always against the idea.’

A shadow crossed Alexis’s face at the mention of my ex. Once more, his eyes darted over me, as he reassured himself that I was unharmed after my earlier encounter with Jim. I nearly told him that I’d sent Jim packing once and for all, but quickly crushed the impulse. He hadn’t yet given me a reason why I should ever trust him with that kind of personal information again. While I was glad that he was finally filling in the blanks of that night, my frustration and anger were growing that he’d not done it before.

‘We talked non-stop, then you persuaded me to let you have a look at the bookshop, even though it was long past closing time. I was so happy to meet someone who shared my passion, who understood me. I was proud to show it to you, and your delight when you saw it got me here.’ He patted his chest.

My arms remained stubbornly folded.

Alexis continued his explanation. ‘When you returned to Kefalonia, you told me that you were searching for your soulmate who you believed you had met on that night. It sounds absurd, but it felt that way to me too. During that first conversation, we didn’t even get close enough to touch, yet I had never connected with another person as I connected with you. When I saw you, it was like I recognised you, like I knew you already, and had been waiting for you to arrive.’

I forced myself to stay quiet, even as he articulated the very thoughts that I’d had about that evening. Although my memories of it were so limited, hadn’t I too recalled that strong sense of contentment and utter joy, that feeling of rightness? But it didn’t change the current situation.

‘Then, when we were in the shop, I went into the back room to look for a volume we had been talking about, and when I came out, you had disappeared. I walked up and down the street looking for you, but it was like you had never been there, like you were a phantom I had created in my imagination. I feared I would never see you again. I knew you were a tourist and you had told me it was your final night on the island. I didn’t know how to find you again, we hadn’t even exchanged names. The only hope I could cling onto was that you knew where my bookshop was, but it was too much to dream that you would visit Sami again. And then, when you returned here a few days later, I was so surprised and overjoyed. Until you told me about your tattoo, and straight away I knew what must have happened, who you must have met after you left my bookshop.’

Alexis picked up a photo frame from underneath the counter and stared at the picture. Then with great effort he turned it around and passed it to me.

‘Awesome Andreas is the one on the left,’ he said simply.

I found myself staring at a picture of two very familiar-looking men. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders, and were mirror images of each other, except one was wearing glasses and one wasn’t.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said stupidly, although the explanation was plain to see, right there in front of me.

‘Awesome Andreas is my twin brother. He’s the one you’ve been looking for all this time.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

---