Wish You Were Here

Chapter 40



Alice looked down the long length of wall. She’d come all this way and she wasn’t ready to give up yet. There must be a way inside. There must. It was then that she saw the tree.

‘Milo – look!’

‘What?’

‘The tree.’

The olive tree looked centuries old and was good and sturdy. Alice ran over to it and Milo gave her a leg-up and she was hoisted into its silvery-green depths. Its bark was ridged and gnarled and felt rough against Alice’s legs and she wished she hadn’t worn a dress but had chosen something more practical to wear.

‘You okay?’ Milo said, climbing up the tree after her.

Alice shimmied her way along a thick branch towards the top of the wall. ‘Nearly there,’ she said, releasing the hem of her dress from where it had caught on a rough bit of bark.

Finally, she made it to the wall and positioned herself on its top, gazing down at the ground beneath her. She took a few steadying breaths before launching herself into the air and landing with a great thud that she felt sure would start another earthquake. It was much more of a drop than she’d thought and she wondered how on earth they were going to climb back up and get out but she wasn’t going to worry about that just yet.

A second later, Milo thudded to the ground next to her. ‘Well, we’re in,’ he said, dusting himself down. Alice looked at him and he gave her a little smile and then they began walking towards the villa, careful to go round the side that was furthest away from the dog.

‘Gosh, there’s acres,’ Alice said a few minutes later as they surveyed the grounds.

‘Don’t worry. We’ll find her,’ Milo said as if reading her mind.

‘What if we don’t?’

He looked at her. ‘You’ll just have to get used to being irresistible to men for the rest of your life.’

‘That’s not funny, Milo,’ she said.

‘I can think of worse fates.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got to do this.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Look, the sculptor’s bound to have kept the statue close to the house if he was going to try to repair it. There must be a workshop somewhere. She’s probably in one of those.’

Alice nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said hopefully.

Skirting the villa, they soon found themselves in what was obviously a stonemason’s yard. It was full of pieces of rubble from tiny fragments to great boulders but there weren’t any statues around.

Milo nodded towards a strange sort of outbuilding that looked like a cross between a garage and a church. It soared up from the ground and its great arched wooden doors stood open. They approached it slowly, almost reverentially, their footsteps hushed as they entered. They allowed their eyes to adjust slowly and, when they did, they saw the most amazing sight. They were completely surrounded by statues. They were everywhere, making a semicircle of stone around them.

‘Why do you think they’re lined up like this?’ Alice asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Milo said. ‘Maybe Mr Karalis likes to stand in the middle and look at them for inspiration. It’s a bit like a museum, isn’t it?’

‘It’s more like a strange sort of charnel house,’ Alice said with a shudder. ‘You know – where they keep skeletons that have been dug up from graves?’

Milo nodded.

‘Look – not one is complete,’ Alice said.

They gazed with a mixture of wonder and horror at the statues. There were the usual missing arms and noses but some didn’t even have heads and some were just bare torsos on plinths.

‘Poor things,’ Alice said, as if the statues were alive and might actually be missing their various misplaced body parts.

‘Hey!’ Milo said, nodding towards the far side of the room. Alice followed his gaze and that’s when she saw her – Aphrodite, her beautiful broken body lying on the floor of the workshop.

‘She looks so sad,’ Alice said, walking over to her and placing a reverential hand upon her.

‘What are you going to do?’ Milo asked.

‘I don’t know. How do you undo a wish?’

Milo shrugged. ‘I have no idea,’ he said.

Alice knelt down on the floor beside the statue and took a deep breath. ‘I’m not quite sure what to say,’ she said.

‘I’ll give you some space,’ Milo said, walking out of the building. Alice watched him go, his figure silhouetted in the arched doorway by the bright sunshine, and then she turned back to Aphrodite.

‘Hello,’ she said, and then smiled to herself. It felt funny talking to an inanimate object, especially a broken one, but wasn’t that exactly what she’d come so far to do? A part of her couldn’t help thinking that the whole thing was ridiculous. What if this didn’t work? What if Milo was right and Alice was completely mad? But she hadn’t imagined it all, had she? How else was she to explain all of the male attention she’d received? No, this statue had a lot to answer for and Alice was jolly well going to put a stop to it now.

She placed her hand on Aphrodite’s right shoulder and closed her eyes.

‘I don’t know what to say to you but I’m hoping you can help me,’ she began. ‘I made this wish to be noticed by men and I realise now that I didn’t want that at all. It was a silly thing to do and it was nothing but a nightmare so can you undo the wish? I wish to be just me again – just the Alice Archer who arrived here on Kethos before making the wish. Is that all right? Can you do that for me, please?’

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Had it worked? Had things returned to normal? She wasn’t sure and guessed she wouldn’t be until she ran into a few men but, kneeling there on the floor next to Aphrodite, Alice felt the urge to keep talking.

‘Do you grant other wishes, Aphrodite?’ she asked in a voice little above a whisper. ‘I think it would be greedy of me to make another wish and I know I really shouldn’t but I can’t help wishing that I could stay here on Kethos. I’m not going to wish that Milo falls madly in love with me – that would be wrong – but I wish I knew how he felt about me. As soon as I saw the island again, I felt so happy. I love it so much – the colours and the smells and the light and the air. I don’t think I want to be anywhere else and I’ve been thinking – really thinking – that I could make a go of things here. I mean, I’m not sure what I’d do yet but I’ve got some money now and I’ve got some time to work things out, haven’t I? I’ve never done anything adventurous in my life and I can’t help wanting to change that. I keep thinking of my father and how happy he was to spend all his life in the same place but I no longer think that’s right for me and – no, I’m not going to keep wishing. I—’ she paused. ‘I’m going to go now.’

She lifted her hand from Aphrodite and stood up. For a moment, she looked down at the beautiful face and couldn’t help wondering if her words had been heard. ‘I do hope so,’ she said to herself before leaving the workshop.

Blinking in the bright sunshine as she stepped outside, she looked around for Milo and saw him standing next to a low wall that looked out across an orchard. He turned round at her approach.

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘How did it go?’

Alice shrugged. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘Do you think it’s worked?’ he asked.

‘I hope so,’ she said and part of her was desperate to ask him if he still found her attractive but it would be too awful to ask him such a question. Besides, she seemed to have her answer when his gaze moved from her to the orchard.

‘Look at the size of this place,’ he said. ‘Just imagine the garden you could make here.’

Alice looked around her. Beyond the orchard, the land rolled away into a boulder-strewn hillside which tumbled towards an azure sea. It was stunningly beautiful and she tried to picture it through Milo’s eyes with borders filled with flowers and herbs and pretty pathways leading to secret fountains.

‘Well,’ he said a moment later, ‘I suppose we’d better get out of here before we’re caught trespassing.’

Alice nodded. She’d forgotten that they were on private property and that they’d climbed over a wall to get in.

Sneaking back around the villa, they retraced their footsteps and Milo gave Alice a leg up the wall before managing to clamber up it himself, hooking his fingers into the crumbling brickwork. They eased themselves down the olive tree and ran back towards the car, instantly waking the dog who gave a volley of vicious barks.

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ Alice said once they were safely inside the car. ‘I’m sorry I put you through all that.’

‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ he said with a little smile and then a strange silence fell between them. Finally, Milo cleared his throat. ‘I guess you want me to take you to the ferry now?’

There was a pause before Alice answered. ‘I guess,’ she said in a voice that was barely audible.

‘Okay,’ he said and he started the engine.