Skios

32

As Spiros swung the taxi at reckless speed, hairpin by hairpin and pothole by pothole, up the mountainside, Oliver was flung back and forth and up and down like a shirt in a washing machine. He was too busy thinking about the forthcoming encounter to notice, though. If the potential rapist was still camped outside the bathroom door he was going to have to confront him. He didn’t fancy his chances of doing anything too egregiously brave; he was being quite brave enough by simply showing up. Calming words seemed a more plausible option. “Perhaps we could sit down and talk about this over a drink.” It might help if he was a psychiatrist. He had done very well as whatever Dr. Norman Wilfred was. There was no reason why he shouldn’t go on to become some sort of mental health professional.

And if the man had already broken down the bathroom door …

“Still faster, if you possibly can,” he said to Spiros. “Life and death.”

And then, in either case, there was the question of the explanation he would have to give Georgie as to why he hadn’t got her messages earlier. This needed a bit of work. Phone out of range, of course. Battery run down. But then how had he eventually managed to get the messages? Moved within range. Oh, sure. Recharged the battery. It was all a bit too plausible. In his experience an explanation really needed to have a touch of the outlandish, even the impossible, if anyone was going to believe it. Phone snatched by wild goat. Stolen by Albanian bandits. Yes, this might be one of those rare occasions when it was necessary to assist fairly actively in the encouragement of misunderstanding.

It was so unfair, though. Whatever explanation he came up with, it would be ungentlemanly to reveal what this dash to her rescue was costing him — the once-in-a-lifetime chance of delivering a learned lecture on a subject that sounded as if it might be important, and to do it before an audience consisting of some of the richest and most influential people in the world. Still less, of course, could he tell her that it meant giving up his one hope of a night with Nikki. Unless he could think of some good reason why he had to return to the foundation. Left his passport behind, perhaps. He felt his pockets. Yes! It was actually true! He had left his passport behind!

There was another taxi coming down the mountainside towards them. As it drew level both drivers stopped, wound down their windows, and exchanged a few words in Greek.

“Keep going!” said Oliver. “Keep going, keep going!”

“Stavros,” said Spiros, as they resumed their climb. “My brother. You thank God you not got him drive you. You go fast with Stavros? You’re a dead man.”

Three hairpins and nineteen potholes later they stopped again.

“Now what?” said Oliver.

Spiros gestured at the roadway ahead of the car. An open suitcase lay facedown in the dust, with a muddle of what appeared to be old clothes stretching away beyond it up the track.

“Yes, but don’t stop!” said Oliver. “Come on! Keep going!”

Spiros began to squeeze the taxi past the remains of the suitcase.

“Stop!” said Oliver. He was gazing through the rear window of the taxi. Something about the suitcase …

“Wait!” he said.

“Wait?” said Spiros.

Oliver got out and walked back. The suitcase had a red leather address tag on it. He lifted the flap. “Annuka Vos,” it said.

Yes. It was his. His missing suitcase.

* * *

Annuka had found needle and thread, and tried to repair the shredded mosquito netting. She was still too angry with Oliver to give the work the patience it demanded, though, and in the end she simply bundled all the stuff up to go in the dustbin. Which was presumably outside the back door.

She opened it, and there in front of her was the rippling, glittering blue you expected to see outside a Greek villa. Beside the pool a swing seat, a barbecue, loungers already spread with towels. And on one of them a naked brown body, facedown.

She felt a familiar double shock of anticipation and irritation. How absolutely like Oliver not to have been here when he should have been, and now to be here when she had got used to his not being!

“Oh, so you are here,” she said. She held up the mosquito netting accusingly. “You seem to have wrecked the place already.”

Oliver raised his head sharply. So sharply that two substantial breasts appeared, squeezed between the arms supporting him. Something very strange had happened to him. Even his face had altered out of all recognition. He was no longer Oliver. No longer even he. He was she.

But if not Oliver … “Who?” said Annuka. “You! Who are you?”

“So sorry!” said not-Oliver. “I’m Georgie. We’re staying here. Me and Oliver — me and Mr. Fox. We’ve borrowed it from these people he knows.”

She nodded at the mosquito netting.

“Are you the cleaning person?” she said.

* * *

How his suitcase had got itself onto a dirt track halfway up a mountain Oliver couldn’t easily imagine, nor why it was broken open, and all his possessions scattered. He hastily shoveled them back into the bag, guilty at delaying his mission of mercy by even two short minutes. Another thing he found difficult to understand was why, as he now noticed, he seemed to have brought a pair of silver diamanté high-heeled shoes on holiday with him. And a silk nightdress. And a long flowered evening skirt.

“We go on?” said Spiros. “Life and death?”

“Wait,” said Oliver.

He was standing transfixed, gazing at the skirt. A horrible thought had come to him. When it said “Annuka Vos” on the label, it couldn’t possibly mean, could it, that this was a suitcase that belonged not to him at all, but to…? Oh, no!

* * *

Of course, thought Annuka, as she stood there with the mosquito netting in her arms. Of course! This is why the house was full of discarded tangerine knickers! This is why Oliver had had a bad night! This is why he had been thrashing about in bed!

How could she not have seen it at once, at the first glimpse of tangerine? After she had had seven months to learn what he was like!

She flung down the mosquito netting, ran back into the house, and snatched up her phone.

* * *

And if, thought Oliver, as he stood there in the middle of the track, his hands full of flowered silk and his head full of gradually dawning implications, if there was a suitcase belonging to Annuka Vos on the island, then possibly there was also—

His phone rang. He looked at the name that had appeared on the screen. Of course. As if hypnotized, he pressed the button and put the phone to his ear.

“The cleaning person!” said the familiar voice. “Yes! That’s me! The cleaning person! I don’t believe this! Even from you! Because it’s so absolutely typical! As soon as my back’s turned! And here, of all places! You bring her here! I borrow a place where we can quietly be together for a week! I borrow it, not you! Because it doesn’t belong to some people you know! They’re friends of mine, thank you very much! You’ve never even met them! And there you are, rolling around their bed with her great fat boobs flopping everywhere in her orange knickers! And before you know where you are you’ve smashed the place to pieces! And then you expect me to clean up after you! And you’re not even here! So where are you? And don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know, I don’t care where you are! Just so long as it’s not where I am! Drop dead, all right? And show your face here if you dare! The cleaning person? Right, then, I’m going to finish the cleaning!”

Oliver had drawn in a good supply of breath for the reasonable and pacifying reply that he would surely find himself uttering as soon as he had thought what it would be, but before he could convert any of it into words the phone had gone dead.

He threw the long silk skirt back onto the track.

“OK?” said Spiros, getting back into the car. “We go fast now?”

“Wait,” said Oliver.

“Wait?”

Oliver was thinking.