Page 41 of Old Girls Go Greek
We opened our lunch bags and after a few minutes’ quiet enjoyment of the delicious flavours, Effie went off to the water cooler in reception and brought back four plastic cups.
‘Well, we ought to give this wine a try before it gets warm, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘It would only be polite.’
Beryl unscrewed the lid and poured a tiny amount into each one, and after touching our beakers together and shouting ‘Yamas’, we tried it.
Then we pulled faces at each other.
‘It’s not what I would calllively.’ Anita coughed.
‘Probably deadly,’ Beryl suggested, ‘still, I am sure it will take the tea stains off my tooth enamel. I’ll ask my hygienist if that’s even possible the next time I see her.’
We took another sip.
‘Sherbert lemons?’ Effie suggested.
‘Mixed with salad dressing,’ I added.
‘But actually, now I’m getting used to it, I quite like it,’ Anita said, holding up her beaker and squinting at the wine. ‘It’s sort of… brisk.’
‘That’s a good word. Brisk and efficient,’ Beryl said, ‘and a bit lively. That sounds like my hygienist too. It’s certainly woken up my tastebuds.’
Effie stuck out her tongue and patted the end of it. ‘I think mine are a bit numb actually.’
‘Probably good with fish,’ I said, and I pointed at my chocolate-glazed cream puff. ‘Notkokakia.’
Beryl filled up our beakers. ‘Let’s give it another try. It reminds me of something I drank in Peru years ago, made by such a lovely family. But they didn’t really know what they were doing. Anyway, I’m sure this is much better than that. It doesn’t taste particularly wine-ish though, does it?’
She picked up the bottle and squinted at the label.
‘It just says wine from local growers, nothing about alcohol content. But the good thing is we are supporting the local economy so that’s fine. It’s growing on me actually. Which is just as well as I bought two bottles. Two litres. That’s a lot of wine.’
‘Go big or go home, isn’t that what people say?’ I said.
Beryl gave me a look. ‘People who say that seriously underestimate my enjoyment of going home. Now then, did anyone get any good pictures this morning? Even if we didn’t paint anything.’
We all took out our phones and scrolled through them. Mine seemed to have a lot of pictures of food, some great views over the sea and a few from the ancient village that morning. Including – I felt a jolt of shock – one with Will in the background. Goodness, I hadn’t even realised he was there.
I enlarged the photo and zoomed in to look at it more closely.
Yes, it was definitely him. And he had been smiling. Sunglasses off for once. The others had been standing by the remains of an amphitheatre, chatting away quite comfortably by the looks of it. Dennis had been holding out one finger, presumably pointing out the perspective he hoped to capture. Will was standing in that easy, rather elegant way that was so hard to define.
I stared at Will’s face. For once he had his hat off as well as the sunglasses, and I thought again what a nice face it was. A face you could trust. A face that was new to me and at the same time annoyingly familiar.
I sent some of the pictures on to Nicky, plus a couple of selfies I had taken of the four of us about to eat, another sitting on the minibus, all of us looking excited.
Mum
Just so you can see where we are and what we have been up to, although not much painting done yet. I’ve been having too much fun exploring. As you can see I’ve made some new friends. The weather is gorgeous and the food is excellent. We are in the middle of drinking a bottle of local wine, 4 euros for a litre! It’s different but I don’t think I will bring any home. How is work going? Any updates on if the library is closing or not?
An hour later, we had finished the bottle of wine and all of us were thinking it was probably stronger than we realised.
‘I need a little nap,’ Effie said, ‘and I need to commune with my conscience about not having any alcohol today. Perhaps I will call it in-depth training, so when we get some of the good stuff tomorrow we will realise the difference.’
‘That’s a great take on things,’ Beryl said. ‘We are now informed. We can make our own choices.’
‘My choice is to have a lie down,’ I said.
I looked at my watch; it was three thirty. Had I changed it to local time or was that GMT? For a moment I couldn’t remember. We had a discussion about this and decided it was right, so there was still the opportunity for a bit of a – what had Beryl said? Amessimeri.A siesta.
