Never Ending by Martyn Bedford

Author:Martyn Bedford [Bedford, Martyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781406340051
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 2014-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

Kyritos

The day after she danced in the street with Nikos, Shiv was eating with her family on the patio. The sun hung over the bay like a great golden balloon. Its slow descent would mark another day apart from Nikos, another day of failure to meet in secret.

Dont worry ill think of something, his last text had said.

Monday evening. They were going home on Friday morning.

Shiv had little to say at dinner, her pasta lay mostly untouched. Mum and Dad were reminiscing about a previous holiday when a knock at the door interrupted them.

“It’ll be the concierge,” Dad said, going off to investigate. “Concierge” was what other, less expensive, holiday agencies called a “rep”.

“Can I fill in the evaluation form?” Declan asked.

“No,” Mum said. “Not after last year.”

“Hell-o.” Dad; too loud, too friendly. “Kalimera, kalimera.” Then, two sets of footsteps approached on the path that ran down the side of the villa. Dad was the first to appear. “We have a visitor.”

And there was Nikos.

For a nanosecond, Shiv must have done the cartoon-shock thing: dropped jaw, raised eyebrows, eyes on stalks. Then she got a grip, composed herself, acted like Nikos’s arrival was the least surprising event in her entire life. She speared a pasta shell and popped it in her mouth. It tasted of rubber.

“Oh, sorry.” Nikos gestured at the table. “I’m interrupting your meal.”

“Not at all, Nikos,” Mum said, with her warmest smile. She tapped the dish. “There’s plenty left, if you’d care to join us.”

“Can we spare it?” Dad said, laughing. “Dec hasn’t had his third helping yet.”

“Dad.” Her brother looked cross.

Nikos smiled politely. “It’s OK, thanks. I ate already.”

He was standing awkwardly, clutching a brown paper parcel in both hands like someone had just given it to him and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“So, young man,” Dad said, “to what do we owe the unexpected pleasure?”

Shiv tried to catch Nikos’s eye, to flash him a warning. If that parcel was for her, if he’d turned up to make some kind of declaration (I realize you may not approve, but your daughter and I…) she would just crawl under the table and die. But he wasn’t looking at her, hadn’t looked at her the whole time.

“I just came by to give this to Declan,” he said.

It was her brother’s turn to look panicked. Confused.

Nikos handed him the parcel. “You said how much you liked mine, so I figured you’ll like one of your own.”

Shiv recalled Dec complimenting Nikos’s shirt the other day, in the pick-up, then blushing fiercely. He was blushing now as he pulled out a green-and-gold vest. For once, he was at a loss for words. Shiv couldn’t tell if he was pleased or mortified.

“Actually, it’s an old one I grew out of,” Nikos said, when Mum protested that he really shouldn’t have. “Clean, of course.”

“Nikos, it’s very kind of you,” Dad said. “Isn’t it, Declan?”

Her brother looked up, startled. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thanks.”

“I hope it fits,” Nikos said.

“It looks perfect,” Mum said, when Dec clearly had nothing else to say.

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