The Girl Below(112)

I glanced up the beach toward the revelers and, reasoning that if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me, stripped off to my underwear and ran in after Pippa. She was right; the water was dreamy—warm and refreshing at the same time—and after a few minutes under, I felt revitalized, clearheaded, albeit still a little tipsy. I watched Pippa thrash out toward the middle of the bay—swimming the last six months out of her system—and floated on my back with my eyes closed. Held by the water, my body relaxed, each bone letting go of the muscle that surrounded it. The tinny Eurobeats had been replaced by an even cheesier tune that I recognized, a club hit from the nineties. For a minute or so, I flashed back to that time, and to the emotion I had associated with the record, a kind of chafing isolation that had always gnawed away at me in social situations. Then, just as quickly, the emotion passed and I settled back into the present, realizing, with some relief as I did so, that I no longer felt like that all the time.

“Christ, I needed that!” said Pippa, striding out of the water in her birthday suit and getting dressed on the sand.

I paddled back to the shore to join her. “Me too. You were right about the water. It was divine.”

“Cooped up in that villa,” she said, “I’ve been thinking the most awful things about everyone—especially Mummy—but it’s only because I couldn’t breathe.”

My dress was damp from doing the work of a towel, but it was a warm night, and the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. Halfway up the beach I realized I needed to pee. I told Pippa and she led us toward a building site, some tourist apartments that were going up in the lee of the cliffs.

“No one will see you in there.” She glanced up the beach. “But I’ll keep watch if you like.”

Among the slabs of concrete masonry and twisted iron cables was a perfectly concealed space, and I squatted there, trying not to pee on my feet–or the emerald boa.

“Are you done yet?” called Pippa from the lookout spot. “I think someone’s coming.”

I remembered the teen revelers and tried to hurry but had only just put my dress back in place when Pippa came round the corner, covering her mouth to suppress laughter.

“What is it?” I whispered.

She pulled me behind a concrete block wall and, still stifling giggles, pointed to the cliffs behind the building site. Squinting into the shadows, I heard sucking noises, and quiet sighs, and made out a nebulous pair of figures. They were kissing and frantically groping, trying to find a level spot in the dunes where they could lie down. For a second, they were swathed in moonlight and I saw Caleb, shirtless, with his hand between a pair of long, nut-brown legs.

“I knew it,” Pippa said, unable to contain her delight. “I knew he’d eventually run off with one of Yanni’s sisters. I just didn’t know which one.”

“You’re pleased about this?”

“I’m relieved,” she said. “He’s been in so much trouble lately, hanging out with the most awful gang of brutes—drinking, smoking, stealing, lord knows what else—and I just knew he’d lose interest in them once he found a girlfriend.”

“She might not be his girlfriend,” I said, realizing, and then cringing at, what a horny teen Caleb had been all along. “It might only be a casual fling.”

“Do you think so?” said Pippa, very interested. “I don’t think Athena would put up with that.”

“Not like me,” I wanted to say, but I had already said too much. I could never tell Pippa, or anyone else, what had happened. I’d not had a secret before that had to be taken to the grave, and I saw how, over the years, it would lead to many casual, well-intentioned lies. I would lie to protect Caleb and myself and I would also lie to avoid hurting Pippa.

Knowing that, ahead of time, made me feel crummy, and for a second or two, I saw that I was not the decent person I’d always imagined myself to be. I was flawed, just like everyone else. Just like my father. I did not think I could ever forgive him for abandoning my mother and me, but I could sort of understand why, once he had abandoned us, he could never look back. Starting afresh, not repeating the same mistakes, was sometimes the only way to make amends for what you’d done.

We had walked up the steep hill from the beach to the town, but Pippa was reluctant to return immediately to the wake. Instead she suggested we stop at a pint-size taverna in a narrow, cobbled alley for coffee and a slice of baklava. My arm did not need much twisting, and we were soon settled at an outside table, alongside a pair of toothless backgammon fiends. “By the way,” she said, suddenly looking up, spoon in hand. “I’ve a bone to pick with you.”