Page 63 of Old Girls Go Greek
‘So tell me more about yourself. We only ever seem to talk about me.’
He looked down at his dessert.
‘I don’t like talking about myself,’ he said. ‘To be honest, there’s a lot in my past history I’m not very good at explaining.’
‘I’m a good listener.’
He didn’t reply for a moment, and I blundered in to fill the silence.
‘I know you used to be a doctor. I didn’t know at first, but then someone said something and of course then I remembered you.’
He looked down at his dessert and dabbed at it with the spoon.
‘Oh dear,’ he sighed.
I felt a plunge of anxiety. Had I spoiled everything?
18
I glanced at my watch. It was just after eight thirty and Hector was due to pick us up at nine o’clock.
I should have waited. Any conversation we could have now was going to be one where we were interrupted. The bill needed paying too.
I signalled to the waitress and did the usual scribbling in thin air that people did in every country when they couldn’t speak the language. She gave me one of her brilliant smiles and a few minutes later, I was presented with a discreet, green leather folder containing a printout.
Will and I had a short, polite discussion about who was going to pay, which I won, and of course the next few minutes were taken up with the slowness of the card machine while I worried that it was going to decline the payment, our discussion about leaving a suitable tip, and then the business of Will getting his jacket on and making our way through the gift shop to the front door. They had some lovely fridge magnets and tea towels too, which under other circumstances I would have bought.
We went outside into the warm, dark evening, where the skeins of lights were illuminating our path, past the old olive tree, and out into the car park. Hector was there, smoking a cigarette and still chatting with the other drivers. I wondered if he had been there all the time, waiting for us. Surely not.
Hector’s expression brightened as he saw us, and he stubbed out his cigarette and opened the back door for me with elaborate courtesy.
‘Good meal, heh?’ he said. ‘Good food?’
‘Excellent, thanks,’ I said, and then unexpectedly, bearing in mind my rather rattled mental state, I remembered the words, ‘Éxochos efcharistó.’
Hector smiled, pleased at my efforts, and started the car.
The drive home through the patchy darkness seemed to take twice as long as it had on the way there, and we didn’t talk much. It felt to me as though there was a distinct tension building between Will and me in the car, and I wondered if he felt it too. I should have kept my curiosity under control. What difference did it make after all? If he wanted to keep his life private, what right did I have to pry?
But human nature wasn’t like that, was it? Newspapers and magazines made a great deal of money rehashing other people’s secrets and scandals. How many column inches were filled with details of unwise behaviour and lawsuits by irrelevant soap stars or footballers? And hardly anyone cared, not really. It was just gossip; pathetic fodder. And most of the people I’d never heard of and would never meet in my local supermarket. Had Will been subjected to this, back in the day, I wondered?
Eventually, we saw the lights of our little town appearing in front of us. Past the petrol station, the supermarket, the bakery and the shop where we had bought that terrible wine, and then we turned into our road and stopped outside Hotel Costas at last.
I could hear music from the roof terrace bar, and all the lights up there were blazing. There was laughter and someone shouted, ‘Oh, Dennis, don’t be daft!’
I think it was Effie.
Will and I watched the taillights of Hector’s car disappear down the road and then we looked at each other.
I felt uneasy, unsure of what was going to happen next. I think I assumed he was going to say something polite about having had a lovely evening, and thank me, and then disappear back into his room. And I would do the same. I certainly didn’t feel much like going up and joining the others on the terrace.
In fact, I felt a bit sad. It wasn’t what I had expected from this evening at all. One that had started so well and gradually got worse until the two of us were barely speaking.
Will took a deep breath and jerked his head up towards the noise from the party that was going on.
‘I don’t think so, do you?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘Absolutely not.’
