Page 22 of Greek Island Fling to Forever

‘Yeah. We...um... Sometimes they wriggle a bit and we have to fight them first.’

‘Dad rolls around on the carpet, wrestling them. But he always wins.’ Jonas threw himself down onto the ground in a life and death struggle with an imaginary monster. ‘Monsters don’t like it if you fight them; they get scared.’

Arianna was laughing now, but he could see understanding in her eyes. Maybe the monsters that she faced weren’t so different from the ones that occasionally inhabited any child’s dreams, even if they were much more persistent.

r /> ‘That would be very nice. So we’re going to practise fighting monsters?’

Jonas was nodding his head vigorously, and Ben stepped in before he could invite Arianna to show him her best fighting moves.

‘I just thought that a relaxing day might give you a more restful night.’ Ben wasn’t entirely sure that relaxation was all Arianna needed. Talking about it, voicing the terrors that dogged her seemed to be a more necessary part of the process. Maybe a day spent doing nothing much at all would encourage her to do that.

She slipped out of her seat to bend down in front of Jonas. ‘What do you say to making another sandcastle? A bigger one than last time.’

‘Yes!’ Jonas nodded vigorously and Arianna got to her feet, smiling.

‘Looks as if that’s today planned out, then.’

* * *

Ben had applied all of his ingenuity to the new sandcastle. He’d made a central lake this time and while Arianna and Jonas sculpted a sand cliff that ran up to the level of the veranda, he had constructed an arrangement of beakers and straws, taped together to make a water cascade, which syphoned water over the edge of the veranda in a small waterfall, to fill the lake.

Jonas was so happy with it all. Ben was a great dad, and his own pleasure in playing with his son was obvious. Arianna dimly remembered her own father playing with her and Xander, but then his grief had taken him away from her. Even now, it felt wrong that she should resent that, when her parents had suffered so much at the loss of their son.

Enjoying this didn’t feel quite right either. Xander had never had the chance to play again, or to grow up and play with his own children. Arianna got to her feet, brushing sand from her dress and leaving Jonas and Ben to get on with their castle. The wide settle on the veranda was somewhere to sit and watch, without being a part of it all. Here she felt less like a thief, stealing sandcastles from her brother.

When Ben joined her on the veranda they sat together in silence for a while, watching Jonas. Arianna poured two glasses of lemonade from the jug, pushing one towards Ben.

‘I was wondering...’ She felt so close to him when they talked, but right now she didn’t want to think about her own life. Arianna wanted to know more about his.

‘Yeah?’

‘What did you mean about the day on the ferry changing your life too? I know how it changed mine, but surely what you did couldn’t have given you any regrets.’

He took a swig from his glass. ‘No regrets. Just an impossible set of aspirations for me to live up to.’

‘How so?’

Ben shook his head. ‘You don’t want to hear about that.’

‘Why not? It strikes me that it changed us both, and that maybe we’re two sides of a coin. Maybe it only really makes sense if we can see both sides.’

He thought it over carefully, and then nodded. ‘It was an odd experience for me. I was so elated, and then there was...nothing. I got to the shore and found my mum and dad—all they were worried about was that I was safe, and I didn’t tell them about you because I knew they’d tell me off for jumping in after you. You were my secret.’

‘A good one?’ Arianna rather liked the idea.

‘Yeah, you were a great secret to have. It felt as if I was a superhero and I could dress up at night and climb out of the window and do things that no one else could do.’

‘Did you?’

‘I thought a lot about it. I couldn’t get a handle on the logistics of how I was going to make my way down from the first-floor window of a suburban semi without breaking my neck, so I decided to leave it awhile until I had my own place. Somewhere to hang my superhero costume where my mum wouldn’t find it when she was tidying up.’

‘So you went to medical school. Super doc.’

Ben chuckled. ‘There was an element of that. I just knew that there was someone in the world who might have drowned without me. It made me feel good that you must be out there somewhere, leading your life the way you were meant to. When I think about it, it was probably quite convenient that I didn’t know you. Always best to keep the objects of those kinds of daydreams one-dimensional.’

He wasn’t quite making a joke of all this, but he was keeping it light. Somewhere beneath all that there was pain. Arianna nodded, smiling, and waited for Ben to guide her towards that pain. Maybe if they shared their pain then it would make sense to both of them.

‘Being a doctor went some way towards injecting a dose of reality. There are things we can’t do, but there are also ways that we can make a difference. It meant a lot to me that I was able to help people.’

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