‘He’s not a nice man? Why would you?—’
BEEP.
‘Your taxi that you don’t need is here.’
If I survive the next week, I think we may become friends. I drag my heavy case outside. The reedy-looking taxi driver takes it while I try not to stare at his one tooth as he talks to me in Turkish. He’s dressed in a stained smock-type garment that looks as though he’s peeled it off the body of a dead fisherman.
It’s only when I’m in the taxi and we seem to be driving away from the sea that I wonder if Banu was right about it being quicker to walk. Oh God. We are definitely heading away from the water. I hope he doesn’t think I want to go to the airport just because I have a suitcase. What do I say? How do I check?
We pass a road sign that clearly says Dalaman on it. That is where the airport is. I should know. We went round the roundabout there many, many times while the coach driver waited patiently for me to make a decision on which exit to take (I chose the wrong one in case you’re wondering).
All too quickly, we seem to be leaving the main road (if you can call it that) and driving down a dirt track behind some craggy rocks and wasteland. My heart begins to thump wildly. My mother’s frequent warnings about kidnappers float through my increasingly worried mind. After ten excruciating minutes, as I try and fail to convince myself that he knows what he’s doing, I lean forward to speak to the driver. He turns towards me and grins, his tooth a yellowish brown. Oddly shaped. Like a lone rock poking from the ground at Stonehenge or Easter Island or somewhere.
I drag my eyes from it to focus on the task at hand. My imminent kidnapping. ‘Erm… the boat? We go to the boat?’ I make panicky hand gestures (in all honesty, not as easy as you’d think). First, I look like I’m driving a car, then flying a plane, manning the telescope of a torpedo-laden warship… before I start rowing frantically. ‘BOAT! BOAT!’
He looks puzzled before he turns back to the road, and just as well, as there is a massive sinkhole in the ground coming up. He swerves around it, clipping the edge, which causes the car to dip as one tyre bangs against the mound of dirt. I cross my fingers that we haven’t just burst a tyre because it would have been all my fault for distracting him with my terrible miming.
The driver says something in Turkish that I can’t understand. I glance worriedly out of the window as I’m being hurled about on the back seat. Not a seatbelt or security feature in sight. The track becomes nigh on non-existent as we off-road in a vehicle more suited for scrap metal.
‘The beach,’ I say frantically as we hurtle away from the sea. ‘We go to the beach. Not airport!’
‘Airport?’ he mimics.
‘No! Not airport. Not airport.’ I am literally going to have a heart attack. ‘Beach. We go beach.’
‘Plage,’ he says, nodding.
Plage? Beach? My mind is quickly making word associations. I recall someone at one of the interviews saying some Turkish words sound very similar to French and send up a quick silent prayer that we are making our way to the gulet boat and not to the airport or the location of my murder. While I’d hate to prove my mother right, she really doesn’t deserve it on this occasion. She’s done nothing but try to protect me all my life. I get a sudden pang to hug her and apologise for every time I’ve ever been difficult.
Suddenly, just as a single tear rolls down my cheek, we swing round a small mountain and there below us is the sea shimmering away.
‘Thank God for that,’ I say, a little too loudly. Sweat is pouring down my face even though a hot breeze is whooshing against it, thanks to the one remaining open rear window; the other seems to have already fallen out.
The driver turns to me with a thumbs up.
‘Yes. Thank you,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to be late for the boat.’
‘Late?’ he repeats. I can see him mulling over the word. ‘Ah. Vroom, vroom?’
I nod enthusiastically, repeating ‘vroom vroom’. And immediately wish I hadn’t as we freewheel our way down the winding track at breakneck speed. I clutch tightly to the seat, terrified. Even the glorious sight of a huge gulet boat looming into view does nothing to quell the tide of panic. While I’m very grateful to see the boat and that the driver is making every effort to get me to it, I’d like to arrive in one piece.
The air blasts around me, creating a wind tunnel that is stiflingly hot. However hard I try, there is no way to clamp my hair to my head against the G-force at play as we hurtle towards the group of reps standing neatly dressed, talking to a man wearing a cap and uniform who must be the captain. We screech to a halt beside them, skidding on the dirt to send an arc of dust spraying into the air. By way of a discreet entrance, I’d have to give myself nul points. Minus points in fact. The reps turn to look, shaking dust from their sleeves as I clamber out, war-torn, stressed and extremely sweaty. The sniggers do not go unnoticed.
‘Where have you been?’ asks Shaun, eyeing the clapped-out vehicle. ‘Baghdad?’
‘I, erm, I got a taxi from the hotel,’ I say, retrieving my case and bags from the taxi driver. I fish out some notes to pay him. They all look the same and have a ridiculous number of noughts. The exchange rate is 50,000 Turkish lira to the pound. As I dither, he plucks one from me, says something that sounds like it could be ‘I’ll just help myself because I haven’t got all day, and you obviously have no clue’ and drives off.
‘But aren’t you staying at the Hello Tropicana Banana Sunshine Aparthotel?’ Shaun looks around the group, grinning. ‘Why didn’t you just come out the back way?’ He points to a small side street. I follow his finger to see a huge sign for the aparthotel just yards away. ‘It’s much quicker to walk.’
Sodding hell.
Fortunately, the captain invites us to kick off our shoes as it is time to board the gulet. He has a clipboard with our room allocations on it. While he is checking the list, Garry loudly claims to have a touch of ‘pharaoh’s revenge’ and hurries on board ahead of us. ‘Best give it a few minutes!’ he yells, winking at us before disappearing below deck.
‘What does he mean?’ I ask, dreading the answer. Surely he wouldn’t be that unprofessional.
‘You sure you want to know?’ Shaun grimaces.
Vile.
