“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.
33
Georgie tried to go on sunbathing. But the sun was getting low in the sky, and she felt a bit guilty that her nakedness had obviously upset the cleaning person. She pulled the towel around her and went back to the house to put some clothes on. Just as she reached the door, though, it opened, and her clothes came out. They were in her open suitcase, which was being carried by the cleaning person.
“Oh, thank you!” said Georgie. “How sweet of you! And you’ve even folded everything up and put it away for me!”
The cleaning person said nothing, and the clothes marched straight past Georgie without stopping. She turned and watched, still holding the towel around her. The cleaning person was taking the clothes back to the lounger for her to get dressed. No, to the pool … And was tipping them in … was shaking the bag over the water to make sure she had got every last item out of it … was throwing the bag itself into the pool … was wiping her hands on a towel … was turning back to confront Georgie …
For a moment they stood facing each other, both too surprised to move — Georgie by the fate of her clothes, the cleaning person by Georgie’s renewed and even more brazen effrontery, because, as the clothes went into the pool, she had stretched out her hands in a remote and ineffectual gesture of dissuasion, which had let the towel she had been holding around her fall to the ground. The standoff lasted only a moment. When Georgie took in the expression on the cleaning person’s face she saw that the situation had somehow got beyond discussion or explanation, and that the only possible action was to get out of her way as fast as possible. She turned and fled. Back to the house, grabbing the fallen heap of mosquito netting on the way and dragging it round herself, the cleaning person right behind, shouting something in what was presumably Greek, was certainly abusive, and was almost certainly obscene.