One Way Ticket Read online

  So there was a supermarket. So there was no vineyard, no orchard. So what. This was still a great place. I would look on the plus side - no vineyard meant less work for me and a local supermarket meant handy, convenient foods for those times when I wouldn’t feel like cooking (probably at least every other day). And let’s face it, living permanently on a diet of figs, yoghurt and olives was a bit unrealistic; I’d be craving chocolate and crisps within days (by that I mean hours). Now I could indulge. I strolled down Aunt June’s drive (technically, I stumbled over the ruts and potholes in it), feeling a lot happier.

  I’d assured my aunt that I’d be able to find my own way round the place. As I remembered it, her villa was at the top of the small hill, a road down one side of it leading to the little bay with a taverna, a couple of shops and a secluded beach. I could remember having races up and down the hill as a child and figured walking to the bay couldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. I set off at an easy pace, enjoying my walk in the sun.

  The path, which had once been rough and rocky, was now smooth and tarmacked. Easier for walking, especially for Aunt June when she ventures out, I told myself as I thought of how the modern path jarred slightly with the rural surroundings. It did make the going easier, which was good as they seemed to have made this path a lot steeper than the old one. The path went down and down with no end in sight.

  But what lovely scenery it was. Unknown plants with striking coloured blossoms littered the way, even the air smelt different here, with a hint of rosemary and other mysterious herbs growing wild. Yes, I certainly enjoyed the first quarter of an hour of that walk.

  After twenty minutes though, I was starting to worry I was on the wrong trail, headed for another town. To my relief, the path started to flatten out and, after another couple of turns my now aching legs could have lived without, a bay came into sight. I groaned. I obviously had taken a wrong path. This wasn’t my bay. This wasn’t Kythios. This place was all built up with hotels and restaurants and lots of people milling around. And a supermarket.

  Oh, crap. I recognised the word ‘Kythios’ in the supermarket sign. This was it. They’d paved paradise and put up some hotels. How could all this have happened in less than twenty years? My happy feeling ebbed away as fast as it had arrived.

  I sat on one of a number of conveniently placed benches that had also sprung up, and watched children running up and down on my beach. My beach. Obviously not any more. A sign by the pavement caught my eye. A sign to turn an explorers heart to stone, to make a true traveller’s blood run cold.

  ‘Full English breakfast served here’, it read.

  I knew then, nothing would be the same again. I thought back to my home town of Swindon where, in the last twenty years, the only advance had been cable television and men’s hair stylists. It certainly hadn’t had a boom like this place. Then again, it didn’t have blue skies, golden sunshine and a lovely beach. I slumped further on the bench.

  My reverie was interrupted by someone walking by.

  “Hi, how’s it going?” the young man asked. You couldn’t even be depressed in this place without someone wanting to talk to you (another difference with Swindon).

  Someone with that dark colouring and healthy look was hardly likely to be English, more probably a local. He must have mistaken me for someone else. “Fine thanks,” I lied.

  “It’s me, Addi,” the man persisted, lifting his sunglasses up as if that would make it all clear.

  I looked at him blankly.

  “Taxi driver.”

  “Oh, right.” I sat up on the bench. “Sorry, I didn’t recognise you.” Now I thought about it, he did have that ‘chubby’ look people who spend most of their days sat down often have. He leant on the back of my bench as if settling in for a chat. I could only presume business was slow.

  “So, it’s great huh?” he asked, spreading his arms wide, indicating the bay, a large smile on his face.

  “Well, it’s different,” I murmured.

  “You need a taxi back home?”

  To England? Only if I could take out a second mortgage to pay for it, was my immediate thought (it’s a phrase, I don’t technically have a first mortgage), before I realised he was talking about my aunt’s villa. That was home now. “No, thanks. I’m just having a look round.”

  “Well, if you need a taxi, you give me a ring.” Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out a lurid business card. ‘Addi’s Taxis, no journey too short or too long.’ “I can also get good deals on alcohol, you know, brandy, whiskey, no tax,” he added quietly.

  I pocketed it and nodded politely, relieved when he left, I was in no mood for small talk. After a few more minutes self pity, I dragged myself up and walked the rest of the way along the front. It was still kind of the Kythios I remembered, I tried to convince myself. Palm trees still dotted the shore, there were just a lot more buildings behind them. And a lot more tourists. And a lot more concrete. And an internet café. Damn. But also a bakery, I noticed.

  Making a beeline for it, I almost elbowed a granny out of the way (no points if they’re slow moving!) in my haste to get in the door. A wonderful aroma hit me. A sugary, vanilla warmth that set my mouth watering and my stomach rumbling. I took my time delighting in the array of cakes and pastries on offer. Unlike back home, where cakes lately had been whisps of things topped with towering mounds of sickly icing, these seemed to be big slabs of pure sponge, flavoured with vanilla, honey, almonds, dates, and other gorgeous things, completely unadulterated by suffocating icing. There were lovely little filo pastries too, filled with feta cheese, spinach, and potatoes. This was my kind of bakery. After a few minutes indecision, I put a couple of the pastries in a bag and a big slab of coconut cake. I practised my Greek for ‘hello’ that I’d learnt on the plane when I got to the cash desk, but the girl spoke such good English I didn’t have to try to remember any more.

  Within a few moments, I was back on the beach greedily devouring the cake, gorgeously moist and sticky, and easily enough for two people. I ate it in two minutes flat, a small bit of the happy feeling returning. I decided to head back to Aunt June’s straightaway before I had a chance to go buy a second one, or feel drawn into the internet café.

  Halfway up the hill, I started to regret eating the cake so quickly, the heavy weight in my stomach not being an aid to mountaineering. It was hard to believe I used to run up this hill as a child, I could barely walk up it now. Suspicions that Aunt June had moved to a bigger hill in the last twenty years began racing through my oxygen starved brain. Suddenly, I was very grateful for the tarmac and the smoother climb. I knew I should be enjoying the view, but the sweat running in my eyes made it hard to see.

  Stopping to catch my breath, my face hot and sweaty from the effort, I began to wish I’d taken Addi up on his offer of a taxi. I’d have to start taking the car in future, this hill was too big.

  The car? If I hadn’t just stopped in my tracks, this thought would have halted me. There hadn’t been one outside the villa. With a sinking feeling, I began to wonder if Aunt June actually owned a car any more. There had definitely been one when I’d visited before, but that would be long gone now. Had she not replaced it? How did she get to her bingo without one?

  My breath was so ragged when I reached the top and staggered in her door, it was a full three minutes before I could answer Aunt June’s question.

  “No, I don’t need medical assistance,” I said. “I don’t remember it being so steep,” I managed after another minute.

  “It is if you’re not used to it,” she sympathised as she put a glass of water on the table in front of me.

  “Have you got a car?” I gasped out the all important question between sips of water.

  “Oh no, they’re too expensive nowadays. I couldn’t afford to run one.”

  What hell was this? “How do you manage?”

  “Muriel takes me to bingo. Lorna picks me up to go to the supermarket on Thursdays. My friends are very good at giving me a lift. And there’s a
lways a taxi if I need it. There’s a local one I use, I’ve got his card somewhere…”

  I pulled Addi’s card from my pocket as Aunt June made to get up and look for the number. “This?”

  “Why yes,” my aunt told me, as if I had been very clever. “He’s very good.”

  “When you say a car is too expensive, just how bad is it round here?”

  Aunt June’s face seemed to go a little red. “You can get a secondhand car quite cheap, they last longer here, the warmer weather. I just haven’t got the money for…” Her voice tailed off.

  Right. Another quick glance around the room made me realise things were a lot more dire than I’d realised. Aunt June hadn’t neglected the villa because of advancing age, it was a shrinking wallet.

  I didn’t want to embarrass her by pressing any further, so I just patted her hand. “I was going to get a job anyway. To help out a bit.” It was possibly going to need to be more of a job than I’d anticipated. “I was thinking of maybe teaching English? What d’you think?”

  “Who to?” Aunty asked, looking confused.

  “The locals.”

  “They speak better English than we do.”

  I thought about the only two locals I’d come across so far, Addi and the girl in the cake shop had spoken English fine. “Ah.”

  “They learn it in school here and they get some English television programmes on satellite.”

  Double ah.

  So, not only has my paradise been lost, my aunt appears to be broke and I have no means of supporting us. This wasn’t quite the new life I’d hoped for.

  “Well, I’ll have to get a job doing something else,” I told her, trying to sound more optimistic than I felt.

  “I could ask Jackie to find out if they want anyone at the shop,” Aunt June said.

  I tried not to wince. Not to sound like a snob, but I didn’t see myself as ‘shop’ material. I’d been an administrator at a small engineering firm until recently, and, after handling that kind of responsibility, felt I was now above such things. Unless it was working at the cake shop.

  “…I know her cleaner left a few months ago,” Aunt June continued.

  A cleaner? It just got worse and worse. “I’ll have a look round tomorrow,” I told her.

  “I don’t know how you’ll get to a job without a car.”

  The same thought had occurred to me and I’d already reached the conclusion that I might have to dip into my meagre savings. Even without a job to think about, that hill alone would probably have brought me to this step. “I’m going to buy one.”

  Aunt June was up and out of her seat faster than I would have credited her for. “I’ll give Frank a ring, he’ll know the best place to get one.”

  “O-kay.” My savings wouldn’t go far, so it was a big leap I was taking. Paradise or not, it looked like I was already putting down roots.

  If I’d known then what was to come, I may not have been so hasty.

  3 (Don’t Fear) The Reaper

  There I was, a couple of days later, driving around in a battered old fiat Aunt June’s friend, Frank, had assured me was a good buy. Luckily, my UK driving licence allowed me to drive here. Better yet, Cypriots also drove on the left, so there was less likelihood of me pulling out in front of a truck like that time in France a few years ago (which my mother will not let me forget).

  Aunt June had suggested a celebration jaunt down to Kythios where she stocked up on firelighters and enormous tins of olive oil. Next, she insisted on showing me some of the nearby countryside, including the lovely village of Agios Geros which is where, she told me, by sheer co-incidence, she gets her vegetables, and proceeded to buy a sack of onions and one of potatoes. Weighed down by this on the journey home, I was reminded of my idea that I could start a taxi service should teaching English fall through. Well, it had and I now owned a car… Was it fate?

  Only if fate came in the form of a sheep.

  That’s what hit me as I rounded the corner of a vicious bend at the bottom of our hill. The sheep had definitely been moving, and had hit me as much as I hit it, I’d insisted to the policeman at the station, but I don’t think he’d believed me. The sheep had lived, thank goodness (its abundant wool giving it some bounce), so I felt insisting I provide a statement was excessively heavy handed.

  My mention of a licence to operate a taxi produced a derision-like smirk from the police officer. I guess my driving hadn’t impressed him. He told me I would need a police certificate of good character to start with, and I could tell it wasn’t going to be forthcoming. Probably lucky really, as I hadn’t been entirely honest about the spelling of my name with the officer (I’d decided it might be prudent to try to fly under the radar here, for fear of certain events back home catching up with me).

  As we left the police station, I noticed Aunt June looked excited, which I thought particularly inappropriate. Before I could ask her what she was so happy about, she thrust a piece of paper under my nose.

  “Look, they’re advertising for an admin assistant in the police tourism unit, I heard they were expanding the force now we’re getting a lot more holidaymakers. There’s a job for you.”

  I looked at the advert. Admin assistant was certainly something I could do, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to work for the police service if that policeman’s attitude was typical of the people who worked there. More importantly, there was also a small matter of events back home which I wouldn’t want to draw police attention to. Not wanting to go into this with my Aunt at that moment (or ever), I tucked the ad away wordlessly and braced myself for the drive home.

  No more ovine accidents occurred and I felt relieved when we arrived safely. Aunt June looked thankful too, I noted. “I just need a bit more practice on these roads,” I assured her.

  “Course dear,” she said, but her movements as she shuffled into the house looked a little shakier than usual.

  Step one in the ‘Cyprus’ campaign down (the car), I just had to work on step two (the job). It was never an option to think of returning to England. For a start, the mess I’d left behind would still be there. It had been a blissful few days being away from it, not looking over my shoulder (much), not having to explain myself to people. I was in no hurry to return to that. Plus, there was Aunt June to consider. Now I knew things weren’t going well for her, I couldn’t just abandon ship so… job hunting it was. (Okay, the wonderful blue skies and warm sunny days also helped.)

  The new Kythios was something I had quickly gotten used to. How naïve I’d been to assume this place would be exactly the same as when I’d left it. I sat on a bench overlooking the bay one morning on an outing to purchase the local paper, and realised that, even with the extra tourists and buildings, this was still a wonderful place. How amazing to live somewhere where you feel permanently on holiday. Suitably heartened, I opened the paper and turned to the employment page.

  There were a (very) few job adverts. Most were looking for experienced waitresses willing to work for below the minimum wage. That seemed to let me out on both counts. Two were for shop assistants and I got application forms for both (unfortunately neither of them in the cake shop). My completed forms looked hopelessly inadequate though.

  “I don’t speak fluent Greek,” I pointed out to Aunt June when she told me to include that. “I can’t write that down.”

  “Conversational Greek,” she insisted.

  “Yes, so long as the conversation consists of only ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’! I’ll never get away with it.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll practice in the evenings, you’ll soon pick the language up.”

  She clearly hadn’t been in my French lessons at school or she wouldn’t be so confident.

  There was also the small matter of providing references. My ‘problems’ in England meant requesting a reference from my last employer would be extremely inadvisable. I explained this to my aunt by lying that my last boss had died.

  “Put me down as a referee that will be fine.”


  “Aunt June, I’m pretty sure they’ll find out you’re a relative.”

  “Not till after you’ve started the job. By then, who’ll care?”

  Who was this lawless person and how could she be related to my family? I was starting to see why the rest of my family always shook their heads when they spoke of ‘Aunt June’.

  I handed the application forms in with little hope. Fortunately, Aunt June with her thirty-five years standing in the area knew the family that owned one of the shops and called in a favour, otherwise I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten an interview. So, despite not being keen on the idea, I found myself a few days later, off to claim my role in the retail world.

  Entering the shop confidently, I marched up to the counter and announced that I had an interview with the manager. The woman behind the till replied in Greek, and I felt a sense of doom forming over me. Through a series of mimes, we quickly established that I spoke little of the language and she swapped to English.

  “Have you worked in retail much before?” she asked. She seemed to be starting with the tricky questions.

  “I worked in a shoe shop when I was a student.”

  “We sell a few shoes here but not many lines. You are familiar with the European sizes for shoes and clothing?”

  Another tricky one. The answer would have to be: “Er, no.” Eloquently delivered though, I thought.

  “Have you had any customer service training?”

  Oh dear. Clearly there was a bit more to this shop assistant malarkey than I’d imagined. “Er, no.”

  And just like that, I was back on the street again, having been turned down, politely, for a job I’d thought was beneath me. Served me right, really.

  Not wanting to face my aunt right away, I stopped at a café opposite the seafront to lick my wounds, and ordered their cheapest coffee. At least the sun was still shining, despite my aunt’s warning of the changing seasons. Sitting in the shade of a palm tree, watching a boat speeding across the dark blue waters of the bay, I felt life wasn’t quite so bad, after all.