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“YOU KNOW, IN ALL MY thirty-one years of life I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a fig.”
“Date,” says Ethan.
Max squints in the bright Mediterranean sunshine as he munches on the fruit. “Nineteenth of July.”
“What?”
I start to laugh as I realise we’re heading headlong into classic Max-gets-it-wrong territory.
“It’s the nineteenth of July,” he says as he pops another sticky brown fruit into his mouth.
I don’t have the energy to explain it to him, and it appears Ethan, reclining on a sun lounger, can’t be bothered either. We’ve been waiting for Kenneth Ives to arrive for the past hour, and I am too hot and uncomfortable. I’m also ungrateful and whiney, because who in their right mind would be unhappy sitting outside a luxurious villa on a beautiful poolside terrace with an actual freaking olive grove in the back garden?
I rummage through my bag and pull out a hairband. My hair feels like it belongs on the back of a camel. I sigh as I scrape the frizzy mess into a ponytail just as an icky river of sweatiness runs down my back. Ugh, why was I so excited to film here? Sun and heat are two of my least favourite things. Along with snow and cold. I realise this makes me the most difficult-to-please person in the entire world when it comes to the weather. I grab my bottle of body mist out of my bag and start spritzing like I’ve never spritzed before.
Max coughs, then chokes. “Jesus Christ, Violet, what the hell is that?”
“Pomegranate and watermelon body mist.” I put the bottle back in my tote bag.
“It smells like old ladies’ underwear.”
Ethan looks at him from beneath his Armani sunglasses and grins. “You know, Max, I’m enjoying today far too much, and the answer to the question could ruin it, but still I can’t let this pass. How exactly do you know what old ladies’ underwear smells like?”
Max shakes his head wearily. “I have a grandmother. Obviously.”
Ethan sits bolt upright and pushes his sunglasses on top of his head. “Max, what do you think I’m going to say next, hmm? It’s like you exist solely for my amusement. Why are you the way you are?”
Max shrugs. “Are you telling me your grandmother’s knickers didn’t smell of perfume?”
“If they did, how the hell would I know?”
Luckily, the conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Kenneth Ives and our Greek film crew. I met Kenneth for the first time earlier this week. He’s a leathery-skinned man in his fifties with a huge smile crammed with the biggest, brightest and whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. As founder and former COO of Lovett Ives, the advertising agency Stella teamed up with to build Tribe, Kenneth used to be a big name in the City. Ethan told me he was instrumental in producing the very first website banner ads in the UK, but for the past decade he’s mostly been living in the Med, devoting his time to Helios Villas. With luxury holiday homes in Greece, Spain, France and Italy, Helios Villas features heavily on many a celebrity’s Instagram account. And when I say “celebrity”, I mean A-list types, not soap opera or reality show types. He’s the real deal.
Kenneth introduces the Greek crew, all of whom have ridiculously long names comprising a jumble of Ks and Ss, which I’m going to have to try very hard to remember and pronounce correctly. Stavros Alexopoulos is a film producer hired from Vista Worldwide, which is as it sounds – one of the world’s largest multinational ad agencies. Stavros has bright white hair, tanned skin and a rugged square jaw. Ethan pulls him aside immediately to run through our creative brief. Also from Vista are Darius Doukakis, who looks like he’s raided my make-up bag for mascara and eyeliner, and Tony Zorbas, a young guy with a curtain of long caramel hair swinging around his shoulders. Our models for the shoot are Nico Konstantinou, a local actor who I think is a bit too hairy, and Athina Papadelis, who is very beautiful but has even paler skin than me.
We have brunch on the terrace, then Stavros and Darius set up a number of shots at Villa Atlantis, which is the jewel in Helios Villas’ crown. The ten-bedroom villa has spectacular views over Oia, a picture-postcard village carved into a volcanic caldera and painted in brilliant white, cream and sky blue. I’m not going to lie, the setting is more than beautiful, but I don’t seem to be able to take my eyes off Ethan for long enough to fully appreciate it. We’ve only been here one day, but the sun has already bleached gorgeous streaks of gold into his hair, and his body looks amazing in form-fitting navy blue shorts and a loose white shirt. I find a comfy spot in the shade and work on my voiceover script, but every five seconds I break my concentration just so I can look at him.
“How long do you think it’ll take for Ethan to bang the Greek goddess?”
Could he be anymore insensitive? He doesn’t know Ethan and I are together, but I did tell him I have feeling for him. “What makes you ask?”
Max looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “Erm . . . reason one, hot model, and reason two, Ethan.”
My blood starts to boil, and I have to order my brain into gear before my mouth leads me to a place I won’t be able to return from. “I don’t know, Max. It’s possible he isn’t interested in her.”
“Are you kidding me? When has Ethan Fraser not been interested in banging a hot model?”
It’s a valid question. And my insides know it’s a valid question, hence they’ve decided to tie themselves up in an angry knot of irrational insecurity. “Maybe he doesn’t like her.”
His eyes squint into pinholes. “She has two breasts, a vagina and a heartbeat.”
For fuck’s sake. Just when I’m convinced I have the best boyfriend in the world, Max has to slap me square in the face with a huge dollop of reality. I look over at Ethan and the crew, and my anger turns to rage because of course Ethan would choose this precise moment to adjust the straps on Athina’s bikini.
“There you go,” says Max triumphantly. “He’ll have her out of that bikini and all over his face by the end of today.”
“Haven’t you got any work to do?”
“Yes, and I’m doing it. I can talk and outline at the same time.”
“Well I can’t talk and write at the same time, so either be quiet or go away.”
Max makes a “humph” sound from the back of his throat, then he shuffles up his papers and iPad and takes himself over to the cushioned wicker loveseat.
I spend the next couple of hours with my head down, petrified of what my brain will do to me if I see Ethan do or say anything remotely flirtatious in Athina’s presence again.
* * *
“Hey, Vi, get your things together,” Ethan calls from the poolside. “Kenneth wants a couple of shots at the beach.”
My heart plummets to my feet as I look up from my notepad. “Beach?”
Ethan laughs as he walks up the few steps to where I’m sitting. “Yeah, I know. It’s a bit of a long shot given there’s no sand on a volcanic island, but he still thinks romantic shots of Nico and Athina in the sea would look great. I can’t be sure until we get down there, but he’s the boss.”
A typhoon-level swirl of panic takes hold of me and claws at my throat. “But, you said . . .”
“What is it?” asks Ethan, concern lining his face and giving his voice an edge.
“I . . . I . . . can’t.”
His eyes search mine. “I don’t understand. Talk to me.”
I bite down on my lip as my pulse drums in my ears. “You said we’d be shooting here. You said we wouldn’t have to leave the villa.”
“I know, but Kenneth just came up with the idea. If it’s your copy you’re worried about, I don’t think you’d need to change too much, if anything at all. We’re just after a couple of romantic ambiance shots – splashing around in the sea, canoodling on a rock, that kind of thing.”
I take a deep breath to try to calm my spiralling emotions. If I’d thought there’d be a chance I’d have to work on a beach, then I’d have taken steps to prepare myself. “I’m sorry, Ethan. It’s just . . . ever since Laurel died, I haven’t been able to go near the sea.”
He pulls out a chair and sits down next to me. “I’m sorry, I’m so dumb. I should have realised.” He rests his hand on my knee and gives it a squeeze. “You don’t need to go down there, so just stay here.”
“I can’t stay behind. Kenneth’s a senior partner, and our host, and our client. It would look like I don’t give a shit about his ad.”
He looks at me with so much compassion in his eyes that it’s all I can do to stop myself throwing my arms around him. “I’ll tell him the truth.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t want anybody to know about Laurel or what happened to her. As soon as people know you have baggage like that in your past, they treat you differently.” I start gathering up my things. “I’ll be fine. I have to be.”
* * *
It took over an hour to find the perfect spot. Santorini’s rocky coastline lends itself perfectly to romantic scenes, and the small inlet we found has just a tiny amount of pebbled beach, so we aren’t overrun by sun-worshipping tourists.
Darius and Tony haul themselves up onto a rock to film from the best possible angle, Nico and Athina try to act as naturally as possible kissing and canoodling in the waves, and Kenneth watches Ethan work with enthusiasm and encouragement. This is where Ethan is always at his best – ensuring his vision makes a smooth transition from brain to camera. In a few months he’s going to step into the role of Tribe’s creative junior partner. I wonder if he realises this could be his last shot as advertising rock star. A few months from now, other people will be filming award-winning ads while he goes to meetings wearing a suit.
Oh god, my heart. I wish that soul-destroying thought hadn’t entered my head. Not for the first time I find myself wishing we could have our old life back. My mind drifts away to memories of when Ethan and I first started working together, then onto the great times we’ve had over the years. A few months ago we won an AdAg award for Best Advertising Campaign of the Year, and I think I’m yet to process how leaving our old agency and setting up Tribe will be like stepping into a different universe for us. I don’t think I’m prepared for the change.
The gentle, rolling hum of the waves crashing against the rocks and the feeling of the sun burning my skin draws me out of that daydream and into another one. Before I know what’s happening, it’s twelve years ago and I’m back at a different beach – the one that changed my life forever. A dull ache balloons in my chest as I try to stop my mind carrying me away. I try to shut out the sound of her laughter. I try to shut out her calls for help as the sea tore her from me. I try to force the despair, the pain and the grief out of my body and concentrate on the here and now.
I’m not on the beach. I’m not near the sea. I found a secluded space in the shade, far enough away from where they’re filming, but close enough that we can see each other. So I’m safe. I remind myself I can swim in a swimming pool so I shouldn’t be afraid of the sea anyway. It’s been twelve years after all. But fear is hard to reason with – especially when the fear stems from the death of someone whose life gave meaning to mine. I lost Laurel to the sea on a beautiful sunny day in August. That was the day I started to run, and in some ways I still haven’t stopped to catch a breath. That was also the day I screamed, cried and wanted to die. It was the day I learned how to hate and the day I became hated, and I’m sure the grief will never leave me.
I made a promise to the sea that day: if you give Laurel back to the world, you can have me instead. Maybe that’s why I’m so afraid. Maybe the sea remembers.
“Budge up.”
Max nudges my shoulder and jerks me out of my thoughts. I thought he was down at the beach with the rest of them. I move along the bench so he can sit next to me. “Have you put sun cream on your head?” His bald patch has turned a very angry crimson colour.
He pats his forehead. “Yeah, of course I have, but it does feel rather hot. Am I red?”
“You look like a matchstick.”
He grimaces. “And you look miserable. What’s up? You were weird earlier, and now you’re sitting here like Greta Garbo’s lonelier, gloomier twin sister.”
The only person I’ve ever told about Laurel is Ethan. I should tell Max, but he gets so protective and emotional at the best of times I’m afraid of how he’d react. At a guess he’d be pissed I haven’t told him before, he’d be pissed Ethan knows when he doesn’t, he’d be pissed Ethan allowed me to come here . . . the list has so many scary, unpredictable unhinged-Max possibilities that I can’t bear to think about telling him the truth.
“I really don’t like the heat. Plus, I think I’m hormonal. You know, time of the month—”
“Say no more,” he says, eager to stop our conversion heading down a very dark road labelled “woman stuff”. Menstruation excuses never fail to terrify the men in my life. “Well, as long as you’re okay, I think I’ll go for a swim to cool my head.”
He pulls his t-shirt off and I start to fear the worst. “Have you brought swimwear with you?” Oh god, please don’t let him be planning on skinny-dipping. I couldn’t cope.
“I’ll be okay in these,” he says, referring to his slightly below-the-knee shorts.
“Max, denim isn’t great for swimming.”
“You think the colour will run?”
“I don’t think anybody will be washing their whites in the sea, so you’re good, but wet denim is uncomfortable. There might even be some chafing . . . in that region.” I point at his groin.
“Oh, do you think I should swim in my underpants?”
“Oh, hell no.” I feel my eyes pop. “Max, the last thing the people of this beautiful island want to see is you strutting around in your undercrackers. Go back to the villa and get some swimming shorts, for goodness’ sake.”
He appears to think about it for a moment, but then he tosses me his t-shirt. “I can’t be arsed.” And off he goes. I watch him head down the little path to the beach and tiptoe over the pebbles as if they were red-hot coals.
I return to my notepad with a smile on my face, but I still can’t concentrate. God, why is my brain torturing me like this? I replay my earlier conversation with Max about Ethan. Under normal circumstances I’d be the first to joke about Ethan’s inability to pass a beautiful woman without luring her to his bedroom. We’ve only been together – secretively and not officially – for just over a month, but all day I’ve been feeling like a complete fool for thinking his past wouldn’t impact on our future. When I watched him with Athina earlier I felt something I didn’t like. It was a visceral reaction that went far beyond jealousy. It cut straight down to the bone, making my skin burn and my pulse race. Have I fallen in love with Ethan so hard that I’ve overlooked all of this other stuff? As far as I’m aware, he’s never hurt anybody whilst enjoying his no-strings-attached lifestyle. Which – again – is more than I can say about my past relationships.
I push all my worries out of my mind as Ethan approaches with his arms full of files and notepads. “Hey,” he says with a gorgeous soft tone to his voice.
“Hey.”
“So, how are you doing?” He looks over his shoulder to check we aren’t being watched, then he reaches for my hand. “I’ve been thinking about you all afternoon.” He gives my hand a squeeze and my fingers lock against his, giving me lovely butterfly feelings.
“I’m okay,” I say as his fingers play against mine. Jesus, are we really doing hand sex in public?
“Kenneth has arranged for caterers to serve dinner back at the villa tonight. It’ll be fabulous no doubt, but I wish we had some privacy. How about we sneak out once everyone is asleep?” He laughs and the corners of his eyes crinkle.
“We tried that last night, but Max was far too clingy, remember?”
We both laugh. At one point in the evening Max found a chess board and challenged us to a game. I don’t know the rules, so they played while I watched. When all you want to do is take your secret boyfriend to bed and screw his brains out, there is nothing more frustrating.
The crew finish packing up all their equipment and head back to the villa. I break his hold and sigh. “I wish we could be together properly. I know it’s selfish of me, and I know I’ve never been one for sharing how I feel, but for the first time in my life I have something worth sharing with the world.” I bring my hand to his face and gently stroke his cheek. “You.”
His face lights up with a breathtaking smile as I let my hand fall away. “I know it’s hard, but it won’t be forever. Stella put a non-fraternisation clause in my contract to protect the agency and to force me to tone down my behaviour. I promise I’ll tell her about us once Tribe is up and running and I’ve earned her trust back.”
I know he’s right, and although I want to tell the world how much I love him, a big part of me doesn’t want our new bosses to think the only reason I have my job is because I’m sleeping with a partner. I’m only twenty-eight, which makes me one of the youngest creative directors in the city. Sure, my portfolio would go some way towards dazzling Saatchi, but with only five years as a copywriter behind me, I’m unqualified on paper. Plus, everybody knows I have the people skills of a potato.
“You’re right, we have to wait. Tribe is your dream, and you deserve it.”
“You are my dream, and I wouldn’t have achieved a single thing if I didn’t have you.” He smiles again and my heart melts. “Now let’s get our things together and follow the guys back to the villa. We’ve a couple of hours before dinner, and I plan to spend that time plotting a very hot, but clandestine, after-hours encounter.”
“Oh really, who with?” I say teasingly.
He wraps his arm around my shoulders and kisses my forehead. “You. It was always you,” he says, taking my hand.
As we walk back towards the villa, I’m suddenly aware of the sea again. The waves crash against the pebbled beach in a rhythm that jars my nerves. I pick up pace, keen to get away, but the feeling intensifies. I stop dead still as the panic spreads from my gut to my chest. “Where’s Max?”
Ethan looks back to the beach. “I can’t see him now, but the idiot kept swimming into our shot half an hour ago so I told him to get lost. Maybe he’s gone back to the villa already.”
My pulse races. I start walking back to the beach, my eyes leaping frantically over the waves, desperately trying to spot him. What if he got into trouble like . . . just like Laurel?
“Vi, it’s okay. He’ll be at the villa irritating the shit out of everybody.”
“I would have seen him leave.” I feel his hand take hold of mine, his fingers gripping tightly. “He wouldn’t have gone back alone, Ethan. I have his t-shirt – he’d have come for it.” I try to pull back the panic, but I can’t. I must sound like such an idiot. I take a few deep breaths to try to slow my heart rate down.
“I’ll call the others.” Ethan takes his mobile out of his pocket. “He’ll be fine. Just try to relax.”
I nod in agreement, but my body is shaking and I don’t know how much longer my legs will be able to hold me up. And I feel even worse because I know my out-of-control behaviour is totally irrational, yet I can’t stop it.
“Hi, Kenneth, are you back at the villa yet? Um . . . I don’t suppose you’ve seen Max? We seem to have lost him. Okay, give me a ring if you see him.”
He ends the call with a grave expression on his face, and my stomach dives into the pits of despair. “I can’t bear this, Ethan. I’m sorry. You must think I’m a lunatic—”
He cups his hands around my face and looks at me with so much understanding that my body chokes on a sob. “Hey, don’t be silly. This is my fault, I shouldn’t have let you come down here.” He rubs a stray tear from my cheek with his thumb. “It’ll be okay. This is Max we’re talking about. He disappears all the time. Remember that conference in Glasgow? He missed the entire thing because he got himself locked inside the hotel housekeeper’s storeroom.”
I force myself to smile. “God, I was so mad at him that day.”
“Me too, but see, he does this all the time. Right now he could literally be anywhere, and I bet he’ll have a bullshit story when he does resurface. I don’t believe for one second he got accidentally locked in that storeroom after screwing a hot Romanian maid. It’s far more likely he was in there because he was stealing hotel shower gel. He’s obsessed with the stuff.”
“Ethan, I know you’re right, but I can’t help feeling . . . and I hate feeling like this. I don’t want to feel like this. It’s like I’m losing my mind.”
He swallows me up in his arms. My head fits in the crook of his neck. His white cotton shirt is slightly damp against his body, and I love how warm he feels. “It makes total sense you feel like this, and when I find Max I’m going to kick the shit out of him—”
“What the fuck for?”
I jerk out of Ethan’s arms and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Then I do a double take. Max is wearing different shorts, and he seems to have acquired a baseball cap, ugly red-rimmed sunglasses and a double-scoop chocolate ice cream that is rapidly melting all over him.
“Max, where the hell have you been?” yells Ethan.
Max just stares at him open-mouthed. “Shopping.”
“You’ve been shopping? Where the hell are the shops?” he says, mirroring my own thoughts.
“When you told me to fuck off out of your sight earlier, I swam down the coast and found a beach shop. I went back to the villa, changed my shorts, got some money and went shopping.” A splat of sludgy brown ice cream lands on his foot. He shakes it off and licks his hand clean of even more drips. “What’s the big deal anyway? And more to the point, why were you two hugging?”
We look at each other. Ethan’s eyes flash with guilt and my stomach churns.
“What’s going on?” Max’s tone is laced with suspicion.
“Nothing’s going on,” says Ethan.
“Bollocks,” says Max. He takes another huge lick of his ice cream. “Look at your face. My cat had that exact same expression after he did a poo in my bed.”
Ethan’s laughs loudly. “Please tell me you found the poo before you went to sleep.”
“I was pissed and I was high. I found it all over my face when I woke up the next morning.”
Oh god, I’m going to throw up. Made worse by the fact that Max’s face is currently smeared from ear to ear with brown ice cream. A torpedo of bile soars into my throat, and it’s all I can do to swallow it back down again. “Oh my . . . god . . .”
“Tell me about it. That night marked the last time I ever fed Gunther sardines for his tea.” My stomach lurches again and I clasp my hand over my mouth. “But you’re changing the subject. Let’s go back to you two hugging like you’re a couple of lovesick . . . oh no . . .” His face blanches. Even his lobster-red bald patch blanches. “I bloody knew it. I knew this would happen sooner or later. You’re banging her, aren’t you?”
“No, of course I’m not banging her,” says Ethan. “That would be . . . um . . . gross.”
What the fuck? Did someone replace my gorgeous boyfriend with an idiot?
“Well, what is it then? And don’t lie to me. I know something is going—”
“I was worried about you,” I say quickly.
“Eh?” Max screws up his face. “Why?”
I rub my forehead. It’s late afternoon, but the sun is still beating down as if it were midday. I don’t know if my blossoming headache is due to stress or exposure, but what I do know is I don’t want to unleash an outpouring of Max Wolf hysteria into the mix. I can’t tell him about Laurel. “I hadn’t seen you for ages, and the sea looked rough and . . .” He’s looking at me as if he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. “Okay, if you want the truth, here it is. I’m afraid of water.”
“Eh? You were swimming in the pool yesterday.”
I’ve always found lying quite easy compared to telling the truth, but clearly my superpowers are starting to wane. “I didn’t mean water, I meant the sea.”
“Erm, okay. I smell bullshit, but okay.”
Ethan steps forward. “It’s a phobia, Max. You know, like the one you say you have about peaches.”
“I do have a peach phobia,” says Max, taking a huge bite out of his waffle cone. “And it has a proper name – fructophobia – and it isn’t a laughing matter. In fact, it’s debilitating. Navigating the fresh fruit aisle of my local Tesco can be a traumatic experience.”
“In case a peach armed with an assault rifle jumps out at you?”
“That’s a disablist comment.” Max puts his hand on his hip. He takes another, angrier, bite of his ice cream cone. “You wouldn’t be laughing if I accidentally touched a peach and went into anaphylactic shock.”
“That happens with allergies, Max. There’s no risk to your health from an encounter with fuzzy-skinned fruits.” Ethan flips his shades over his eyes and picks up my bag for me. “But now you’re here, we can all head back to the villa. Kenneth has caterers arriving for dinner at eight. I hope I don’t have to tell you to dress smart and don’t make a play for the Greek model. She’s already told Kenneth that you keep leering at her.”
“I do not!” says Max as he follows us up the narrow path that leads back to the villa. “Besides, everyone knows you’re the one who’ll be making a play for her tonight. You even assigned her the room next to you.”
“Firstly, I had nothing to do with assigning bedrooms, and secondly, I don’t fancy her. She laughs through her nose and she doesn’t speak a word of English.”
“Do I need to remind you about Kiki the cleaner?” says Max.
“That was the old Ethan.” He nudges my shoulder and gives me a wink. “Junior partner Ethan has changed.”