‘She has handled so much, my darling,’ says Christos. ‘Let me take over now. Please.’
Dan wants to join India and Keera at the acropolis, where they’ve gone with some iced lemonade and sun cream. But he thinks Rose is going to be onto him again for not doing his homework, so he goes back to his room, finds his blasted notebook and picks up a pen.
He still loves Julia but she’s mercurial, if he’s honest. Her moods change in the blink of an eye and what she wants changes all the time.
He wanted to marry her and she said she didn’t want to be tied down. It had nearly killed him. He’d felt wounded, rejected.
Dan had spent a very long time thinking about the right sort of ring. In the end, he decided upon an antique one he spent ages tracking down. Julia loves emeralds, and it was a 1930s ring: one long emerald baguette with tiny diamonds lined up each side of it.
Julia had said that she loved the ring, thank you very much, but not the engagement thing.
‘It’s a bit old school for me, sweetie,’ she’d said, admiring the ring she’d put on her right hand, the wrong hand.
His sister had been enraged at the time.
‘She takes you for granted, uses you,’ Vicky said. ‘You mop up her messes and give her undying devotion without asking for anything in return. I understand her far better than you, big bro. She needs you and you need to be needed.’
For a long time, Dan has denied Vicky’s claims.
But despite himself, he can see that she’s right.
Co-dependency is the word, according to Rose. Dan hates this word, hates that his and Julia’s beautiful love can be described with this tawdry word.
When he and Julia met, she saved him from his insecurities and his introversion. But now, he saves her from herself.
He spends lots of money on her because she’s never had a career as such.
‘I’m a professional party girl!’ she likes to say, when she’s off to Glastonbury with the expensive wellington boots she acquired mysteriously, long tanned legs and a coolly torn green Barbour, also mysteriously acquired.
People in big houses often lost things when Julia came to stay but nobody said anything: it might be seen as rude.
Sometimes she wears a cowboy hat, sequinned shorts and a vintage tee that says it’s from a Jimi Hendrix gig, which seems unlikely.
She always has a beaten-up Dior tote bag for her belongings. Dan bought her that from Vestiaire, so he knows it’s not stolen. Her tangled necklaces are half junk and her hair is always tangled, bleached blonde and falling over eyes with pupils enlarged due to the post-festival joint she’s smoking.
Dan had only been to Glastonbury with her once. He hated it: the early drug-taking and the fact that most of their crew are out of their minds by four p.m. He hates camping too. It’s only a reasonable proposition when the campers are totally stoned. He never is.
‘You’re no fun!’ Julia said teasingly, but soon everyone was saying it.
He loves music and tried to get in the mood by drinking beer but it was impossible to catch up with the true partygoers who were in another sphere entirely.
Dan didn’t judge them: he’s known many of Julia’s friends for years and he’s fond of some of them, but he doesn’t adore them. Neither does he adore the new friends who keep enlarging the circle. New partygoers when the old ones fall prey to getting married, having kids, having to make money with actual jobs.
Julia works to live rather than lives to work.
As for Dan’s career in science, she never asks about it.
She’s everything he’s not: extrovert, thrill-seeking, careless with money.
They are as different as two people can possibly be.
Dan closes his notebook.
He’s not sure what he feels right now.
Happy that he understands things at last or sad that his main relationship in life has been held up to the light and found wanting? Has he wasted his life?
Back on the terrace, Rose finishes her coffee. She’s suddenly exhausted. She’d forgotten how much this kind of work takes out of you. She has to find Dianne, who’s not in her room, and discuss why Dianne has skipped out of the morning’s sessions.
