One Way Ticket

  One Way Ticket

  Evie Evans

  Copyright

  This ebook edition published 2014

  Copyright © Evie Evans 2014

  Cover image © Evie Evans 2014

  The moral right of Evie Evans to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  I apologise to karaoke fans now (I might as well add Cypriots and expats whilst I’m at it). If it’s any consolation, chapter 16 contains, at last count, the names of 13 Elvis songs. Happy spotting.

  Contents

  1 Pure Shores

  2 Reality

  3 (Don’t Fear) The Reaper

  4 Don’t Talk To Me About Work

  5 Who Let The Dogs Out

  6 Theft, And Wondering Around Lost

  7 The Tip Off

  8 Driving Me To Drink

  9 Lucky Lucky Me

  10 Secret Cops

  11 Mrs Robinson

  12 White Lies

  13 My Heart Will Go On

  14 All Falls Down

  15 Friend Is A Four Letter Word

  16 Let’s Get Down To Business

  17 Always On My Mind

  18 So This Is Christmas (War Is Over)

  19 Back To Black

  20 Before The Dawn

  21 Papercut

  22 The Last In Line

  23 Your Mama Don’t Dance

  24 Good Girls Go Bad

  25 Busted

  26 Rat Trap

  27 The Dead Can’t Testify

  28 Fool If You Think It’s Over

  For Sharon, who always cared.

  1 Pure Shores

  When I decided to ‘give up my life’ and come to Cyprus to care for Aunt June I didn’t think I would be taken so literally. To me it was only a phrase, but the hands now tightening around my throat seemed to have another idea. As I struggled for breath, it was clear my plans had gone a bit wrong again. I wondered if my whole life was about to flash before my eyes like they say and, if so, could it start somewhere useful like the self-defence lessons I’d had many years ago?

  It didn’t.

  No angels appeared either, or harp music. No tunnel with a light at the end, all that rubbish Hollywood’s been selling for years. It was a bit of a letdown. The only celestial input in my demise was the stars appearing before my eyes as I began to pass out.

  It was the unexpectedness of it all - the hatred in my killer’s face, a real burning fury that had come out of nowhere to flash in their eyes as they rushed for my throat. I’d heard about people descending into the ‘red mist’ but never seen it first hand before. It froze me to the spot.

  Deep down, I think I knew it would all go wrong. Following a pattern, my mother would say, history repeating itself. I just didn’t realise it would be this spectacular.

  The new life hadn’t gone right from the start. The island was all different when I arrived - bigger airport with lots of buildings outside, bustle instead of calm. After almost twenty years since my last visit, I guess I should have expected some changes but I was so naive. Ignoring the signs of ‘progress’, I’d just jumped into a taxi to Aunt June’s villa and my new life.

  It must be the boredom in jobs such as hairdressing and taxi driving which results in the inane drivel that invariably accompanies them. “On holiday?” the taxi driver had asked me over his shoulder, as soon as we were on the road.

  “No, I’m coming to live with a relative for a while,” I told him in that standoffish manner the English do so well.

  Not discouraged, he’d continued, “You come here often, then?”

  That’s what passed for a chat up line where I came from, but as a foreigner, he couldn’t be expected to know. I answered politely, but coolly. “No, haven’t been here for a while, actually.”

  “But, you’re moving here?” he queried, in what I felt was starting to be an impertinent manner.

  Adopting the standard action of many of my fellow countrymen faced with this situation, I ignored him.

  “I hope things are how you remember them,” he continued regardless. “My cousin went to live in the States for a while. He couldn’t believe how much this place had changed when he came back.”

  I stared out the window resigned to the fact this forty minute taxi journey was going to be a long ride.

  “This place you’re going to is the old lady, yes?”

  I nodded, too polite to ignore a direct question.

  “Your grandmother?”

  “Great-aunt,” I said, wondering if every passenger’s whole life story was part of the fare.

  “This bit of the island has done well,” he chattered away. “Lot of development. Big drought though,” my taxi driver continued. “Did you know about that?”

  It may have been a long time since my last visit, but I had written to my aunt in the meantime. Well, I’d sent her cards on her birthday and at Christmas.

  “Yes, I have heard about what’s going on here,” I told him, my voice sounding a bit icy, even to me. There was something about his babbling, good humoured friendliness that annoyed me (probably because it highlighted my reserved coldness). “I haven’t just come into this blind, you know!”

  He looked at me in the rear view mirror, but said nothing. It seemed my rudeness had finally shut him up.

  I went back to staring out of the window, enjoying the feeling of sun on my face (something I’d not seen a lot of lately), trying not to think about how rude I’d been and how easily it had come.

  My plane ride over had been spent reliving the childhood holidays I’d spent here – aunty’s lovely villa on top of a hill of olive groves and grape vines, the blisteringly hot days we’d spent cooling down on the secluded beach at the foot of the hill, the sticky, honeyed pastries my aunt seemed to magically produce whenever I was hungry. I returned to them again now. Living on a lovely, unspoilt Mediterranean island was going to beat Swindon, Wiltshire, any day (then again, almost anything would). This new life was going to be fabulous and not at all like the old one.

  Even the knowledge that I’d have to get a job at some point didn’t faze me. For a few moments I envisaged being a paid companion to an old dear, providing a few hours of reading, maybe some conversation, before realising that probably described my new role with Aunt June, I was coming here to take care of her after all. Perhaps I could teach English to the locals instead?

  Sitting in the warmth of the sun with these happy thoughts, my eyes suddenly felt heavy. I swear I only closed them for a second. Forty minutes later, to my embarrassment, I was being shaken awake by the driver.

  “You’re here!” he cried, then stepped lively round the back to get my suitcase.

  It took a moment to focus my eyes and see the airport wasn’t the only thing to have changed. At first, I thought he was trying to drop me off at a large bush before realising aunty’s villa was hidden in there somewhere. It looked like it had been almost completely overtaken by the bougainvillea. Noting that we’d need to get a gardener in, I groped in my handbag for what seemed to be an exorbitant amount of money and paid the driver, including a reasonable tip to cover my unfriendliness earlier. As he pulled away, I reasoned that if the teaching English idea didn’t work out, taxi driving might be an option, as surely I could buy half a car for what I had just paid out.

  Anyway, I was here now, so shouldering my bag, I gathered my suitcase and rang the doorbell, not filled with confidence by the rust around its edges. I rang it again a couple of minutes later when there was no response. Then I resorted to banging on the door.

  Slight feelings of desperation began forming. I was in a strange country, a strange town, and if my aunt didn’t answer the door soon, I would be spending the night amongst th
e vines a la Tarzan. I was just trying pull back some tendrils to look through a window when I heard a shuffling sound from inside, getting louder.

  “Aunt June? It’s me,” I shouted.

  “Okay dear, won’t be a minute,” a voice came back.

  I let out a breath, panic over.

  After another pause, there was a tantalising rattle of locks and I smiled in anticipation. I was still trying to hold the smile some seconds later when the door actually started to open.

  “Jennifer?” what looked like a small raisin with eyes asked, in a wavering voice, on the other side of the door.

  “Yes, Aunty June. How lovely to see you again.” And it was, or the part of her that I could see. I stepped in to give her a hug.

  “My, how you’ve grown,” she told me. “You must be almost six foot!”

  “I’m five foot six.”

  “Well, you’re a lot bigger than last time, but I haven’t seen you since you were eleven.”

  I couldn’t say the same for her stature, she seemed smaller than I remembered, I had to bend down quite a way to hug her. “It’s been too long,” I told her, which was true. Why had it been so long since I’d been here?

  “I thought you’d look more like your mother, she was so pretty when she was a young woman.”

  Perhaps that was why. I love you too, Aunt June. It was a running joke in the family that she had an unfortunate way of phrasing things sometimes, so I decided not to take her comment personally.

  “You’ve got more of your father’s colouring, dark haired and pale,” she continued. “And his build.”

  Still ignoring it.

  “I bet you want a drink after your long journey,” she told me and led me into the hallway.

  I say hallway but it was a little more than an alcove really. Not that I could see much in the gloom; hardly any light came from the overgrown windows. My aunt shuffled along to a doorway and beckoned me to follow. I felt a sudden wave of sadness at how much she’d aged and how small she seemed.

  Looking around, I realised she wasn’t the only thing that looked smaller. From an eleven year old’s perspective, her villa had seemed quite spacious. Now, my thirty year old self realised it wasn’t quite the dimensions of my memory. I got my first inkling that this stay may not be as comfortable as anticipated.

  Aunt June switched on the kettle in her kitchen. “Now, let’s have some lovely mint tea.”

  “Actually, something cold would be nice,” I told her, sweating slightly from dragging my enormous case inside.

  “This is much better at cooling you down, trust me.”

  I eyed the cup thirstily when she put it on the table in front of me, wondering how long it would be until it was cool enough to drink. Quite a while. I decided to fill the time catching up with her. “How are you?” seemed a good enough place to start.

  “I get a bit of trouble with my leg, but other than that, not too bad.” She gave me a smile.

  Now that I could see her in the light, she didn’t look quite as frail as she had at the front door. She may not be moving too fast but she still had some vitality about her. I felt a little relieved inside that she was not yet at death’s door.

  “I’m sorry the place is a bit of a mess. I can’t get round to tidy up as much as I used to.”

  “Not to worry, I’ll sort that out now,” I said, gazing around. The place didn’t look too bad, just...dated. Everything looked as if it had come from the 1970s. Which it probably had. Fitted kitchens didn’t seem to have hit this part of the world yet; formica-topped tables and wooden cupboards were still king. It was quite quaint, a bit like my aunt.

  “I hope you won’t be bored here,” she told me, looking a little worried, as I tried sipping from my cup.

  Boredom wasn’t something I’d contemplated. I’d envisaged spending my days picking up delicious fresh produce at the local market, tending to the grape vines at the bottom of my aunt’s garden (glass of Chateau Giles anyone?), and lazing on the beach. In between this, the odd spot of sitting outside a taverna, cup of thick Cypriot coffee or refreshing ouzo in hand, would keep me entertained. “No, no,” I said, “I’ll be fine.”

  “There is quite a lot going on here, really. There’s bingo on a Wednesday at the Poseidon,” my aunt began, counting off on her fingers, “water aerobics on a Tuesday at Paradise Gardens, my book club meets every second Thursday at the community centre, karaoke on a Friday at Hotel Yannis...”

  Bingo? Karaoke? Since when had these been part of a Mediterranean idyll?

  “...you’ll have to come along to that,” my aunt was saying.

  I smiled and nodded, not sure what I was agreeing to, but impressed my aunt had so many interests. So many English, banal interests.

  “I was sorry to hear about your−” my aunt started before I cut her off.

  “Thanks, but let’s not talk about that today,” I told her, standing up and stretching out some of the airplane cricks from my neck. “Not when there’s so much to enjoy here.” I stepped up to the window and looked out at the view of her vineyards and the olive groves below.

  Except there weren’t any vineyards or olive groves. At the end of the garden, was a fence then another villa. Beyond that were more villas, in fact the hill seemed to be full of them. “What’s happened to the vineyard? Where’s the olive grove?”

  My aunt shambled up to look out herself. “Oh, they went ages ago. Got a good price for the land, so I sold it. It’s a pity about the view, I know, but I couldn’t keep up with it, it was too much work for me. And what with the drought and all...”

  I continued staring at what had once been an almost perfect vista, just managing to utter, “What a shame,” to cover feelings of disappointment.

  “Right, stuffed aubergines for dinner,” my aunt announced, turning round and busying herself. I continued to stare out the window for a few minutes more. “Won’t be eating till late though, when it’s cooler, so if you want to get a snack now, help yourself. I got some crisps in.”

  Still feeling slightly stunned, I accepted a packet from her unseeingly. Only when I turned them over in my hands did I notice they were a popular brand from home. “Didn’t know you could get these here,” I said.

  “Oh yes, we can get all sorts of things now at the supermarket.”

  “Supermarket?” I queried faintly, fearing more images of my rural paradise were about to be trampled.

  “Yes,” my aunt said, “what a godsend. Can get all kinds of food from back home: tea, biscuits, spam. Just down the road. Are you alright? You look a bit pale.”

  “I just haven’t seen much sun lately,” I said, clutching at the back of a chair, trying not to look crushed.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place for that!” my aunt told me as she began chopping an onion. “Course, we are about to go into the rainy season.”

  I felt my shoulders sag. “I think I’ll just go to my room for a few minutes,” I told her, “have a lie down.”

  “Of course, you must be exhausted after your journey.”

  Once Aunt June had showed me to my (small) room, I sat down on the bed for a minute. What had happened to the tranquil ‘away from it all’ idyll I remembered? I was expecting ouzo, tavernas and goats not supermarkets, karaoke and bingo. I looked at a frilly doily on top of the chest of drawers with a sense of doom.

  It wasn’t just that I’d envisaged a quiet life, there was something more serious going on here. I tried to push aside what was really worrying me, my secret fear, but couldn’t.

  Were people on the internet here?

  Oh, dear God, was there nowhere left on earth undiscovered by Facebook, unchartered by Twitter? Not that I minded people’s technology urges, but it meant that despite having thrown away my phone when I’d left England, if people were online here, anyone could get in touch. Anyone could find me.

  A knock on the door made me jump.

  “Everything alright, Jennifer?” Aunt June asked.

  Who else was it likely t
o have been, I told myself, trying to calm my nerves. How could it be him?

  “Yes, Aunt June,” I called, opening the door for her.

  “I brought you some towels.” She laid some ancient looking material on the bed.

  “Thanks. You know I’m here to look after you.”

  “You just settle in first. There’s plenty of time for all that.”

  “Okay, but tomorrow I’ll be establishing a routine so watch out,” I warned her, in what I hoped sounded a playful manner.

  “Dinner won’t be for a while yet. Why don’t you unpack?”

  I told her I would and she shuffled away.

  Looking around the room, also styled in the 1970s, I began to wonder where I would put everything. I’d crammed as much of my life as I could into an outsize suitcase (and been charged handsomely for this by my airline). The fact that I had so few remaining possessions that I could do this had been vaguely depressing at the time, but the thought of what would be welcoming me in my new life had kept my chin up. Now, my chin was decidedly down, and my bottom lip was rapidly following it. I could feel it trembling as hot tears threatened behind my eyes.

  “No,” I told myself firmly, “I’m not giving in to this. Not again.” I’d cried so much over the past few months it was amazing I had enough water in me to produce any more. “No,” I told myself again, got up, and unzipped the case.

  Within moments the room looked like an explosion at a jumble sale and I started to feel at home.

  2 Reality

  The next morning, sunshine pouring in through the window made me forget my worries and decide to start again. Seeing a crystal clear blue sky overhead had been so rare lately, it was all I needed to buck me up. After a breakfast of fresh figs and yoghurt (at least that hadn’t changed), Aunt June suggested I take a walk. I was chomping at the bit to get out in the sun and explore, so I quickly agreed.

  Stepping into the sun, I gloried in the warmth of its rays and immediately felt happier than I had in ages. A couple of lemon trees in a neighbour’s garden compounded my feeling as I marvelled at the exotic (to a Swindon person) fruit, hanging on the branches like small miracles.