âMu-um! Have you read this?â
My mother looked up from her reading with one of her intentionally vague expressions.
âUmm â guide book, yes â no⦠Not sure. Think so.â
âYou canât have. It sounds ghastly. Listen to thisâ¦â
I put on my official travel guide voice and read:
âThe islandâs relative fertility can seem scraggy and unkempt when compared with its neighbours. These characteristics, plus the lack of spectacularly good beaches, meant that until the late 1980s very few visitors discovered Lexos. The tiny airport which cannot accommodate jets still means that the island is relatively unspoilt. Not that the island particularly encourages tourism â itâs a sleepy peaceful place populated mainly by local fishermen.
âUnusually for a small island, Lexos has abundant ground water, channelled into a system of small lakes. These make for an active mosquito populationâ¦â
Mum cut in. âWell, it sounds fabulous in this â listen. âLexos â undiscovered paradise of the Aegean.â Smashing picture too.â
I leaned over her shoulder. She was leafing through a glossy tourist brochure. She thrust the cover under my nose.
âItâs only a pot of geraniums and a bit of blue sea. It could be anywhere.â
âWell, Iâm intending to enjoy this holiday Lucy â whatever.â
I sat back in the airline seat and put my Walkman on. âUndiscoveredâ â typical. I reckon sheâd done this on purpose.
Neither of us had actually said anything, but we both knew it was going to be our last holiday together. By all rights I would have gone inter-railing with Migs and Louisa â three girls off round Europe together, what a laugh. Thatâs what Iâd intended to do. But just when weâd got all the arguments over our itinerary sorted out, Mum had this phone callâ¦
Dad was getting married again.
I donât know why it got to her so much, theyâd been divorced for years â five years at least. Everything had settled down. Sheâd seemed perfectly happy. But after the call she got this sort of thin-lipped look on her face, like I remembered from way back, when they separated.
âYou know what you need â a really good holiday,â I said.
âYes, youâre right. I do. I know I do. Why donât we go somewhere right away from it all?â she said.
âWeâ. I hadnât actually fixed anything with Migs and Louisa. I mean, we hadnât booked the tickets yet.
She looked at me, all kind of bright-eyed and expectant. So I nodded and left it at that. I hoped sheâd forget about it. But then, a day or so later, she came up with this plan. She wanted us both to go to the Greek islands just around the time Dad was due to get married. I had no intention of going to the wedding anyway. I didnât like Sue, Dadâs âpartnerâ much. And Mum seemed so set on the idea, so I hadnât the heart to refuse.
But I didnât expect it to be this far away from it all.
Lexos was really off the beaten track. We flew to a larger island first â Kos. And then we had to travel on by ferry. Dad said Iâd love Greece. It was the furthest Iâd ever been from England. He said it was the first place where you actually felt the influence of the East. Dad was really into the East. Heâd gone overland all the way to India and back when he was young, and heâd kept a ratty kind of embroidered Afghan coat in the loft. I used to dress up in it when I was little. It smelt like a dead goat.
But he was right about Greece. It did have a sense of the East. As soon as I got off the plane I could feel it in the warm dry heat of the sun, soaking into me.
We hired a taxi to take us from the airport to the ferry port, and the driver played this kind of clattering Eastern music on his radio. We drove past little whitewashed churches with strange round domes, and all the old women were dressed like witches in long fluttering black dresses. They held scarves up to their faces to keep out the dust. And the air smelt different. Hot and perfumed with herbs and pine and something sweet and kind of musky. And now and then there was just the odd whiff of dead goat smell. Maybe that was what made it feel Eastern to me â by association with the coat.
The boat trip took hours. We had to queue to board with all these backpackers who looked as if theyâd been in Greece all their lives. I couldnât help noticing that some of the guys were gorgeous. Their skins were a deep bronze and their hair and clothes bleached as if theyâd been left out in the sun for months. I felt really self-conscious with my white skin and my brand new jeans and T-shirt â and I was with my mother too. Pretty humiliating.