Page 65 of Old Girls Go Greek
‘Good idea, two of those,’ Will said, and the boss wandered off through the tables again. ‘Perhaps you should take a bottle home with you in your luggage.’
‘But what if it broke? We discussed this before, didn’t we? I’d never get the smell out. I’d spend my next holiday pursued by sniffer dogs.’
‘And where will you go next?’ he said.
‘I think I will go and visit my sister in Washington; it’s a while since I’ve seen her. And then perhaps Carcassonne,’ I said, imagining myself wandering through those medieval streets and learning all about the Cathars. ‘Or maybe a transatlantic crossing. The trouble is when I get to New York, what would I do? I wouldn’t know where to stay or how to get there, that’s the problem. It’s the travelling I like the idea of.’
‘You could always join a tour group?’
‘Hmm, I’m not very good at being herded around by someone,’ I said with a rueful smile, ‘as you may have noticed.’
‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘My sister made me come on this trip. She used to go to the Begley Mortimer group a few years ago and she’s still on their Facebook group. I think she was fed up with me refusing to book anything, so she did it for me and paid the deposit and presented it to me as a fait accompli. If I’m honest, I didn’t realise there would be such an emphasis on the group as a thing, or I wouldn’t have come. And before you ask, no I haven’t done much actual painting since I’ve been here. A few sketches, the picture of Costas.’
‘That was hilarious,’ I said. ‘What a character he is. Tell me some more about your sister?’
‘Lorna is twelve years younger than me, she’s a doctor, and married with twin boys. She lives in Banbury now, with her husband Oliver.’
I seized my moment.
‘So you were both doctors.’
He shot me a look as though he knew where I was going.
‘Yes, following in a family tradition.’
Our drinks arrived at that point, in long narrow glasses decorated with mint.
I took a sip through the straw. ‘Look, you can either tell me or not tell me about what happened when you stopped doing television work, I don’t mind. Although I am mildly curious, but that’s all.’
He stirred his drink with the plastic stick which had a tinsel cocktail umbrella on the end and looked thoughtful.
‘Have you ever had people photographing you through the windows of your kitchen? Or chasing your car down the street, banging on the windows so much that you had to move house? Or people going through your rubbish bins? Invading every aspect of your life so that nothing was safe and you didn’t know who to trust any more?’
I shook my head. ‘None of those things. I’m very uninteresting.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, but I know what you mean. One minute I was just a doctor who had worked in general practice and then gone to Africa, doing my best there against terrible odds of poverty and disease, and the next I was in a television studio with a girl patting make up on my face, interviewing celebrities I’d never heard of about their weight loss or smoking or pregnancies. Sometimes all three at the same time.’
‘A bit of a culture shock, I imagine?’
‘It was ridiculous. There are so many medical professionals out there quietly getting on with their jobs, and yet because I looked a certain way, had a certain background and had been approached by an agent who was married to one of my patients, I was invited to premieres and openings, celebrity events and the sort of parties you and I would normally run a mile from.’
‘It must have been exciting though?’
‘For about a year, I suppose it was. But then after we got married, all sorts of ridiculous stories started coming out. Rumours and lies – click-bait, I think they are called these days. And my wife was beautiful and incapable of having a bad photograph taken, designers lent her clothes, the press interest got worse. And then you know what happened.’
‘Well, no, actually, I don’t,’ I said. ‘I have to admit whatever it was passed me by completely.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you said that. For years my wife’s behaviour was fair game for the press. Long lens cameras following her into hotels, pictures of her stumbling out with her shoes in her hand the following morning. Until she realised they were there and she was becoming famous for the wrong reasons. Back then I thought it was just a blip that we could weather, that eventually interest would die down and we would rebuild our marriage. That’s what I wanted. I had microphones stuck in my face asking for a comment. She was followed into shops and restaurants. Even then, while it was going on, I couldn’t believe anyone would care that much.’
‘So what happened?’
‘She left me for some hairy individual in a heavy metal band. She went off in their private jet to Los Angeles just after our second wedding anniversary and filed for divorce three weeks later. He had promised her a career in films, an exciting life where the house was decorated with gold discs and awards, not books and research papers about obscure illnesses.’
‘And did she get the exciting life?’
He shrugged. ‘I think so, until he took up with someone else and then she met an actor, and after that she married a basketball star, and when that relationship failed I think she went into running a wellness retreat. I haven’t heard from her in years. I hope she found what she was looking for. I hope she’s happy. It must have been difficult for her too.’
‘And what about you?’
