‘You’re basically a clothing angel.’ Lily smiled at him.
Before long, Felix was telling Lily all about the end of his last relationship before Alfredo and how Alfredo had pulled him back from the edge, emotionally, and Mattknewthat soon – almost in return – she’d tell him lots of amusing personal – but not actually emotional – anecdotes. As in, this was morphing into another one of Lily’s close friendships where, if youknew, and you thought about it, which he clearly never had done in the past, you could see that, yes, she wasn’t giving much at all away about herself while Felix was. And that relationship could and would work very well for both of them, unless Lily everneededto talk and then felt she couldn’t. Although, of course, she had her three best friends.
It was like she painted a picture of the person she wanted everyone to think she was, with her childhood and miseries erased or hidden.
Which didn’t make him love her any less. The picture she painted was a lovely picture and she made everyone around her happy. And she was a great friend. He hopedshe’dbe happy too.
She and Felix were sniggering about some very risqué jokes and Alfredo was beginning to laugh too, Carole was honking with laughter now, and even Norm was chuckling a little.God, Matt wished he and Lily could have worked things out. Except, they couldn’t. And so this was torture.
‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’ Carole went very late into a corner and they all lurched to the left. ‘I’m thinkingpartytonight,’ she continued when the car had righted itself and they’d all stopped squawking in terror. ‘I already had a little gathering planned, but we’ll get a few more of the neighbours over, do a barbie, get the pool lit up and do some midnight dipping.’
‘Ow,’ Alfredo said.
‘Sorry.’ Matt had involuntarily jerked at the mention of midnight dipping – the memory of last night with Lily – and had jabbed Alfredo in the ribs with his elbow. ‘I might have to give the party a miss, Carole. Bit tired.’
‘You can sleep on your journey tomorrow.’ Carole threw the car round another corner and they all lurched again. ‘No-one’s party-pooping at my house.’
Two hours later, after hiding – frankly – in his room under the guise of working, Matt was in the garden with the others, plus the ‘few’ – actually a good fifty – neighbours who Carole had invited over for what was already a raucous party.
They were all in the garden next to the very fancy infinity pool. The whole area was lit up with fairy lights wrapped around trees and bushes, and, seemingly from nowhere, Carole had magicked up several men – clearly assiduous gym-goers – in very tight t-shirts and jeans, who were weaving their way amongst the guests, plying them with very large bright-coloured cocktails and very small snacks.
Lily was with Felix and Alfredo in the middle of a group of other men and women their age, seemingly having a great time, laughing and chatting away.
And Matt basically had the option of joining them, or chatting to Carole and her friends, or Norm and his friends.
Lily’s group looked a lot of fun.
Several of Carole’s friends seemed to be in the Penelope camp when it came to men, and were all-out ogling the waiters.
And Norm’s friends were in a huddle smoking cigars and, from what Matt could hear, moaning about everything from the weather (too hot, like if you chose to live on a Greek island you’d expect snow in July?) to the state of the local golf course (they’d changed things around and made the holes too hard plus there were too many women there now) to Brexit (some were for, some were against, but they all agreed it made it much harder to come by imports of British food you couldn’t live without like Marmite and cream crackers and blue cheese).
Matt glanced over again and caught Lily’s eye and simultaneously felt his breath catch and his stomach contract at the sight of her beautiful, laughing face. From which the laugh fell when she saw him looking at her.
He looked over at Carole, and one of her friends gave him an exaggerated wink and did a little shimmy with her nearly bare shoulders.
Norm’s group it was.
Eventually, around midnight, the perfect escape excuse presented itself. Matt was now in a bigger group because Carole had brought her friends over to join Norm’s. For the past half hour he’d been squeezed on a sunlounger between two of Carole’s neighbours, both women in their sixties and both women who liked a younger man, it seemed.
‘Time to swim.’ One of Matt’s sunlounger buddies stood up and wriggled her sundress down to display a remarkably tiny bikini before jumping straight into the pool.
She was followed by several of the others, at which point Matt said, ‘Great idea. I’m just going to go and change into my trunks.’
He left, doing his best imitation of someone who really was going to get changed into swimming kit and come straight back, the cackles of various women telling him he was welcometo swim nude ringing in his ears.
And within ten minutes, he was in bed, trying to forget the sound of Lily’s laugh that had carried to him on the still night air over everyone else’s as he’d left, and trying to resist the temptation to sneak a look through the slats of his shutters at what she was doing. When he saidshe, he obviously meantthey; it wasn’t like he wasonlywondering about Lily. Oh, who was he kidding? It was a huge struggle not to obsess about her.
He was very much looking forward to leaving tomorrow.
The next morning, they were all up bright and early – or not so bright in the case of Felix in particular, who, in his words, had gone too large last night – to get themselves going on finding a way back to Athens airport for their London flights.
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Carole told them, still in her dressing gown. ‘No rush. No one gets up at the crack of dawn on Paros, especially on Sundays.’
‘Ferries are off for at least another couple of days. Maybe all week. Maybe a fortnight.’ Norm was chomping away on toast and liberally applied Marmite, clearly not suffering as much from Brexit import issues as some of his friends. ‘Better try the airport.’
‘It won’t be a problem.’ Carole wasn’t eating this morning; she and Felix were both just mainlining espressos. ‘Don’t let possible ferry strikes ever put you off visiting. Or any of your I’m sure very lovely friends when we have our holiday let business up and running. There are lots of flights to Athens. We’ll have you sorted in a jiffy. Everyone ready to go in twenty minutes?’
‘We’re going to have the place to ourselves,’ Carole told them as they hurtled down the road to the airport just after eight.
