‘We won’t need a taxi. We’re being met at the airport by Barney’s holiday rep friend Nita Davies.’
‘Oh? When did you hear that?’
‘Friday, I think it was. Barney rang to tell me and, I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy since then that I forgot to tell you.’ Jude wondered whether that was strictly true, or was it just that she’d deliberately blanked the memory of that disquieting phone call from her mind?
‘Well, that’s very kind of her,’ said Carole. But she wasn’t sure about the news. While it appealed to the budgeting part of her mind because it would save the price of a cab from Dalaman Airport to Kayaköy, it also faced her with the prospect of meeting someone new. Carole Seddon always got worried about meeting new people, and she wished she’d had a bit more notice about meeting Nita in a few hours’ time. What kind of English person, she wondered, chooses to spend her life in Turkey? And what kind of English person would get married to a Turk?
To the hovering waiter, Carole said she’d have a coffee. When offered the variety of coffees available, she said she’d just have an ordinary coffee.
‘Regular filter?’ asked the waiter.
‘If that’s what it’s called, yes.’
‘And nothing to eat?’
‘No, thank you.’ Though a croque-monsieur had just been delivered to an adjacent table, and it did look very tempting. But no, she’d had her five o’clock bowl of muesli. Ordering a second breakfast would be self-indulgent. It would, in fact, put her right on the edge of the slippery slope. And her path through life had seemed to have slippery slopes at every juncture. It wasn’t easy being Carole Seddon.
When she’d mopped up the last bit of egg yolk with her last bit of toast, Jude called for the bill, which arrived almost instantaneously (the staff in the Gatwick Café Rouge were clearly used to people being suddenly summoned by flight boarding calls). As she drew out her credit card, Carole said, ‘I should pay for my coffee.’
‘I think I can afford to stand you a coffee.’
‘Yes, but it’s a matter of principle. If we’re going to be spending the next fortnight together we must work out how we divide the bills.’
‘I have thought about that,’ said Jude. ‘We should have a kitty.’
‘A kitty?’
‘Yes. I’ve even brought a special purse for the purpose.’ Jude produced a purple leather one from her knapsack. ‘We each put the same amount of money in here and use that to fund mutual purchases, like meals and food shopping.’
Carole was dubious. ‘But what happens when that money runs out?’
‘Then we put in more,’ Jude explained, as if to a five-year-old. ‘Again, we both put in exactly the same amount.’
Carole mentally – and sceptically – tested the proposal. And, to her surprise, couldn’t find anything wrong with it. ‘Well, that might work,’ she conceded.
‘It does work,’ Jude asserted. ‘It’s what I’ve always done when I’ve gone on holiday with other friends.’
Carole didn’t like having brought to her attention that she was just one in a sequence of friends with whom Jude had been on holiday, but she curbed her instinct to say anything. Nor did she argue further about paying for her regular filter coffee.
‘Right.’ As Jude gathered her belongings together, she looked at her watch. ‘Let’s just check there’s no further delay to the flight.’
‘Oh, do you think there might be?’ asked Carole anxiously.
‘We will only find out by looking at the departures board. And once we’ve done that, I’m going to hit the duty-free.’
‘Why?’ asked Carole.
‘Because that is how one kills time at airports.’
‘It’s how they want you to kill time at airports,’ said Carole sniffily. ‘It’s a blatant ploy to separate you from your money.’
‘Well, with me it’s a blatant ploy that usually works. I almost always end up buying something.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know until I see it, do I?’
‘But is there anything you really need?’ asked Carole.
A line from King Lear came unbidden into Jude’s mind. ‘“Oh, reason not the need,”’ she said. Carole’s puzzled expression showed that the line hadn’t come up in a Times crossword recently. ‘Duty-free shopping,’ Jude continued, ‘is just an essential part of the airport experience.’
‘Is it?’ asked Carole. ‘Well, I’ll come round and look at things with you. But I’m not going to buy anything.’
‘Fine. That is your prerogative.’
‘Yes, it certainly is.’
‘For me, it’s part of going on holiday.’
‘Is it?’ repeated Carole, feeling once again dubious about the whole enterprise. Though she been Jude’s neighbour for quite a long time, there were occasions when she felt she didn’t really know her at all. And if their attitudes to the idea of duty-free shopping were so different, who could say what other points of variance might be discovered over the next two weeks?
There was no further delay to their flight registered on the departures board, so they ‘hit the duty-free’. Jude picked up a perfume tester. Gucci Guilty.
‘Is that what you usually buy?’ asked Carole.
‘No, I thought I’d try something different.’
‘Oh,’ said Carole, who had been using Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass for as long as anyone could remember.
Jude sniffed the spray on her wrist. ‘Ooh, yes, I like that.’
‘It’s very expensive,’ Carole observed, ‘even with the duty off.’
‘Yes, but I’m on holiday,’ said Jude, once again prompting her neighbour to wonder how she ran her financial affairs.
Jude also bought a huge slab of fruit and nut chocolate and a bottle of Laphroaig malt whisky. ‘For those balmy Turkish evenings.’
‘Huh,’ said Carole. And then, in spite of her earlier assertions, she also picked up something to buy. A small teddy bear sporting a pair of Union Jack shorts. Carole’s attitude to buying things for her granddaughter Lily was completely different to how she considered buying things for herself.
The flight was uneventful, though a wait on the tarmac meant the plane actually left two hours and forty minutes after its scheduled departure. And Carole was extremely hungry by the time they were served their lunch. Which was minimal and not very nice.
While they were flying, Jude embarked on one of her trashy novels for a while, then after the meal she slept. Carole sat beside her, tense as a stick insect, and concentrated on that day’s Times crossword. To her annoyance, there was one clue in the bottom-right corner that she couldn’t for the life of her work out, and her irritation was increased by the knowledge that she probably wouldn’t be able to get a paper the following day and check the solution.
Her mood was not improved by observing the other people on the flight. She saw tattoos and Union Jack T-shirts, which for Carole raised the spectre of the troubling word ‘common’. Were the only people who went to Turkey lager-swilling yobs, she wondered.
And then she felt guilty for having bought Lily a teddy bear with Union Jack shorts. Was the national flag as ‘common’ on a teddy bear as it was on a T-shirt? This and other equally troubling questions circled round Carole Seddon’s mind and, still unable to get the final clue, she tried to concentrate on the piece in The Rough Guide to Turkey about Lycian tombs. There were good examples of them at various sites, notably in the cliffs by the river at Dalyan, at Patara, Tlos, Fethiye and Pinara.