Bought and Sold. Megan Stephens
went back to the apartment. I fell asleep thinking about the guy I hadn’t spoken to, and maybe Mum dreamed about the bar owner, who had clearly been attracted to her and whose attention had made her giggle like a schoolgirl.
The next day, we went to the beach again, ate our lunch sitting in the sun outside a café, and then returned in the evening to the same bar, where the same three guys were sitting at the table they had been sitting at the night before. As soon as we sat down, Zef, the guy who had danced with us the previous evening, came over and asked me – again by the use of mime – if I wanted a drink. And after he had bought me a coke, he introduced me to his two friends.
All three of the men were in their early to mid-twenties. One of Zef’s two friends was called Veli; the other shook my hand and then held it for a few seconds while he looked directly into my eyes and told me, in broken English, that his name was Jak. Although I didn’t think for a moment that someone like Jak would ever fancy someone like me, I felt my knees go weak.
Mum had also had a reason for wanting to go back to the bar that night, and while I was sitting with Zef, Veli and Jak, she was talking to the Greek bar owner, Nikos. In fact, she was having such a good time I think she barely noticed when we left the bar at around 2 o’clock in the morning to go down to the beach. I knew Zef wanted me to go on the back of his motorcycle, but although he was obviously a nice guy, his faltering eagerness didn’t appeal to me the way his friend’s self-confidence did. So I went with Jak.
For the next couple of hours, we sat on the still-warm sand smoking cigarettes and talking. Then they dropped me back at the bar and Mum and I walked together up the road to the apartment. The chaotic life I had been living in England suddenly seemed a very long way away.
The days and nights developed a pattern after that. In the morning and afternoon, Mum and I would swim and lie on the beach. Then we would go back to the apartment to shower and get changed before having our dinner in a café or at one of the restaurants that lined the square in the centre of town. And then we would go to Nikos’s bar. I loved spending time with my mum, lying on the beach, laughing, talking and relaxing as the warmth of the sun eased all the tension out of my muscles.
Mum had made quite a few friends at the bar among both local people and tourists. So she was happy to leave me to do whatever I wanted in the evenings, which was mostly to sit on the beach with Jak and his friends. She did have one concern though. ‘I don’t like Jak’s eyes,’ she told me. ‘There’s something dead and cold about them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile, have you?’
‘Oh, Mum,’ I replied, groaning and raising my eyebrows.
‘Well, I’m just saying,’ she said. ‘There’s definitely something dodgy about him – whereas Zef seems like a really sweet boy, and he’s obviously keen on you. I’d stay away from Jak if I were you, and think about Zef instead.’
I wonder if any parent has ever managed to persuade their son or daughter to ‘stay away’ from someone they’re attracted to and to transfer their affections to someone the parent thinks is more suitable. Somehow I doubt it! And I wonder how many of those sons and daughters look back later on a specific piece of advice their parents gave them and think, ‘If only I’d listened.’ But you don’t listen to anyone when you’re young – expect perhaps to your friends, whose ideas are likely to be as half-cooked as your own – because you think you know it all. For me, in this particular instance, it was too late anyway: I was already smitten with Jak and I completely ignored what was probably the best piece of advice my mum has ever given me.
By mid-week, Jak had started coming to find us on the beach during the day. He only spoke half a dozen words of English, so we communicated – surprisingly well – using a sort of sign language. What he did say quite clearly one day though was, ‘Baby, I love you,’ and when he kissed me I thought I was going to pass out. We were together almost constantly. He had already told me several times that he didn’t want me to leave, and when he cried on our last evening, it almost broke my heart. The thought that he even ‘approved’ of me, let alone might be attracted to me, made me believe that there might just be a possibility that my life wasn’t to going to end up being the disaster I had begun to think it might be.
At the airport the next day, both Mum and I were very quiet. Things had been going really well between her and Nikos too, and I knew she was as miserable as I was. We had checked in for our flight and were walking across the concourse towards the entrance to the departure area when I stopped, put my hand on her arm and said, ‘Please Mum, can’t we stay? I don’t want to go home. What have I got to go back for? Please, just think about it.’ I began to cry, but Mum just sighed and said, ‘I know, Megan. I feel the same way. But we don’t have any choice. Come on, love. We’ve got to go.’
‘But, Mum …’ Not many days earlier, I would probably have thrown a full-scale tantrum and have had to be dragged to the plane kicking and screaming. This time though, the thing I wanted – which was not to have to leave Jak – really mattered to me and I knew instinctively that a fit of teenage temper wasn’t the way to get it.
‘But, Mum …’ I sniffed pathetically and looked at her with what I hoped was a sad and at the same time sympathetic expression. ‘How can you even think of leaving Nikos when he loves you?’
‘What do you mean?’ She sounded almost embarrassed, and there was a wistful look in her eyes as she added, ‘Nikos doesn’t love me.’
‘Yes he does!’ I said, feeling like a fisherman must feel when there’s a small but definite tug on his line. ‘He told me so last night. He said he didn’t want you to go, but he didn’t know what to do to stop you.’
‘Did he?’ When I saw the tears in Mum’s eyes, I don’t think I could have felt any worse if I had actually hit her.
‘Yeah, he was really upset.’ I couldn’t look at her as I said the words.
How could I have lied like that to my mum? It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times and it still makes me cry when I think about it today. It was selfish and, as it turned out, incredibly stupid from my own point of view. Because if I hadn’t said what I said to her as we stood in the airport in Greece that day, we would have gone home, my broken heart would have mended itself in time, and although the rest of my life might not have been particularly happy or exciting, I wouldn’t have had to endure the six years of hell I had just opened the door to.
I could tell that Mum had made a decision – she had that look on her face children have when they’re going to do something naughty. And when she said, ‘Come on then,’ and started striding purposefully back towards the check-in desk, I scuttled along behind her with my heart racing.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told the woman at the desk. ‘But we’ve decided not to go on this flight after all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said, ‘but it’s too late. Your bags have already gone through.’ She flashed a frosty smile at Mum that said quite clearly, ‘I’m exerting a huge amount of self-control to prevent myself addressing you as “Stupid”.’
‘Please.’ Mum appeared oblivious to the woman’s disdain. ‘Isn’t there anything you can do? My daughter and I need to stay here, just for another week. Please.’
I don’t know what it was that made the woman change her mind. Perhaps she wasn’t really as tough and indifferent as she seemed and she felt sorry for us, huddled there, tearful and pathetic, at her check-in desk. Whatever the reason, she did manage to stop our two large suitcases being loaded on to the plane, and a few minutes later we were standing in the heat outside the airport wondering what to do next.
Mum had spent all the money in her bank account in England, and wouldn’t have any more until her last wages were paid into it. So we couldn’t even afford to get a taxi. In the end, we walked a short distance down the road, hid our suitcases in some bushes – having agreed to work out later how we were going to get them back – and then tried to hitch a lift. It wasn’t much of a plan, but we couldn’t think of a better one. And we were lucky, because someone did stop to pick us up