Poison Summer by Elle M Keating

Author:Elle M Keating [Keating, Elle M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

19

This Is The Right Time

By the time our chain-smoking taxi driver from the airport had lurched around hairpin bends at terrifying speed, I was regretting the vodka. He’d merrily steered in and out of the path of several oncoming vehicles, launching us like crash test dummies when he’d randomly slammed on his breaks, so we were relieved to see the resort finally come into view.

Peeling my shaking legs from the hot leather seat and thrusting a handful of Drachma at him, we watched him speed away, a rosary chain waggling from his rear-view mirror. We were now standing in the centre of Lathos, just below the balcony of our new home where Elaine was hanging over the railings, waving frantically and yelling our names.

‘Hey,’ she bellowed, running down the steps to help us, and soon we were all sat around the kitchen table, staring awkwardly at one another and making polite conversation. In the glaring afternoon sunlight, the kitchen looked just the same as I’d remembered, yet also slightly different. It was like going into neighbours’ houses as a child; a suspicion of grounded familiarity in the shape, size and layout, yet everything interlaced with a foreign atmosphere and the alien smell of someone else’s home.

With Elaine’s discarded sunglasses on the kitchen table, her flight bag lying open on the floor and her sweatshirt slung over a chair, it felt like she’d already stamped ownership on what I’d come to think of as mine. I flicked my eyes over the clothes spilling out of her bag. It was hard to accept we were all going to be living together; that, by default, two women who had been complete strangers a few months ago were now my closest support network, my new best friends. We had become a family.

‘Have you been here long?’ I asked her.

‘About an hour,’ she said. ‘Sakis picked me up earlier in the truck. He’s gone to get cigarettes.’

I’d forgotten about Sakis, our largely unwanted house guest. All previous thoughts of him had vanished like a hangover after aspirin, but now I was only too aware he and Elaine came as a package.

‘I thought you’d like that one,’ she said to me, pointing at the room I’d had last year. I was greatly relieved as I really loved its double aspect balcony doors and blue wooden shutters. It already felt like home, as it had so many memories of me and you.

‘We’re in here.’ Elaine pointed at the one next door, the smaller room with twin beds and one balcony door as I prickled inwardly at her saying ‘we’. Her suitcases were already open on the bed. The only good thing about that room in my opinion was the huge wardrobe, but I seriously doubted Elaine would have all that much use for it as I eyed what she’d laid out regimentally on the bed covers: shorts, t-shirts, sensible sandals and hiking boots. Sakis seemed to only wear the same top and shorts, or jeans. That wardrobe was wasted on them.

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