Wish You Were Here

Chapter 5



Milo Galani had lived on the island of Kethos for all of his twenty-six years. His brothers – all three of them – had left for the mainland years ago but there was no life there for Milo. He couldn’t imagine living anywhere that wasn’t completely surrounded by the sea and the idea of a city gave him nightmares. He’d once stayed with his eldest brother in his tiny flat in Athens for a whole week and it had nearly killed him. He’d been kept awake all night by the sounds of the city: the police sirens, the drunken party-goers and the incessant mopeds.

When he’d returned to Kethos, he’d vowed he would never leave again. The bruising, bustling city might suit his three brothers but it didn’t suit him. He would rather walk through an olive grove than a crowd and he preferred a rocky mountain track to a shop-lined pavement. The island was like an extension of himself and he knew every field and every cove and he loved them all, especially once the spring arrived, like now.

There were some islanders who objected to the arrival of spring because, just as the island was reawakening after its winter hibernation and the first of the year’s flowers were emerging, the first tourists would arrive and the island would be wrenched from the residents and hauled back into life. There were some residents who lived up in the hills who had nothing to do with the tourists at all. They led solitary lives and were happy to do so. They believed that the island belonged to them and them alone and that the outside world had no business intruding upon it.

Luckily, the objectors to the tourists were in the minority and Milo certainly wasn’t amongst them. He welcomed the new injection of life which the tourists brought – he liked talking to them and hearing about the places they came from and the lives they lived there. It was his way of travelling without actually having to leave his beloved island.

He loved watching the boats chugging across the sea from the mainland and he couldn’t help but stare at the holiday-makers as they disembarked. What had brought them to his little island, he wondered? Were they in search of peace and solitude? Did they come in search of Greek myths and legends?

He was watching them today after doing a spot of shopping in Kethos Town. It wasn’t a large crowd – they would come during the busier summer months – but there was enough to fill a couple of tavernas. He spied an elderly couple who were linking arms. The man looked a little pale after his sea crossing and the woman was patting his hand as if to reassure him it was all over. There was a young family with two children who were tugging their parents along as if they couldn’t possibly wait a moment longer for their holiday to begin.

Then, his eye was suddenly caught by a young woman whose face was full of wonder as she stepped off the boat, her eyes large and searching as if she was trying to take everything in at once, and that made him smile. She looked so thrilled to be there – as she should, of course, but he’d seen some really miserable faces coming off that boat in the past. Like her, he thought, staring at a young woman who was following the smiling girl. She was beautiful with her shoulder-length golden hair and her perfect figure encased in a lacy dress but her face was as grim as a stormy day at sea. There was no joy to be found in it and Milo found his gaze returning to the smiling girl once again. She didn’t have the golden hair or knockout figure of her companion but there was something rather special about her and Milo couldn’t help but wonder if he would see her again. Maybe she’ll come to the gardens, he thought. Yes, let her come to the gardens.

He didn’t have time to hang around the harbour. He had to get to work and, for Milo, that meant a short moped ride to the Villa Argenti high up in the hills on the other side of the island. His boss was leaving the next day and wanted to go through some things with him and that always meant trouble. The sooner he left, the better, Milo thought, and then he would have the place to himself again.

Cedric Carlson was an American businessman who did something in technology. Milo wasn’t quite sure what it was, exactly, but it was obviously something that made a lot of money because Mr Carlson had homes in New York, Los Angeles, London and Milan as well as the Villa Argenti on Kethos where Milo was the groundsman.

Milo loved his job at the villa. He had a team of three part-time gardeners working for him but, most of the time, he had the gardens to himself and that was exactly how he liked it.

When Milo clocked in for work, Mr Carlson was sitting on the veranda with an enormous newspaper obscuring the view and covering almost his entire body. How could he be bothered with such things? Milo wondered. Couldn’t he sit back and luxuriate in the sun and enjoy the view for once? But perhaps that was the difference between the two of them – Milo might be able to enjoy the views that the Villa Argenti gave him but he’d never own them. Owning them took hard work, endless work. There was no time to just sit and stare at things.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Mr Carlson said as he spotted Milo.

‘Yes, sir,’ Milo said, running a hand self-consciously through his dark hair. He’d been told to address Mr Carlson as ‘sir’ on his first morning of employment seven years ago and woe betide him if he ever forgot.

‘I’m leaving for New York in—’ he paused and looked at the very expensive gold watch he was wearing, ‘thirty-eight minutes precisely.’

Mr Carlson liked to be precise and his chauffeur would be fired on the spot if he ever failed to match his boss’s precision.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I’ll be gone for a fortnight.’

Milo nodded.

‘I’ve left a list of things I want doing. It’s all quite straightforward.’

Milo had no doubt that it was. He was used to the lists; his life was dominated by them. Not only would he be handed them by Mr Carlson each week but he would find them all over the gardens too: inside temples, taped to tree trunks and once on the inside of Milo’s favourite wheelbarrow. That had been a classic. It had read:

1. Take this wheelbarrow to the tip.

2. Replace with new one.

3. Store new wheelbarrow away each night.

Milo had ignored it. What Mr Carlson didn’t understand was that an old wheelbarrow was a good one. Its handles were almost a part of the user’s hands because they had worked in perfect harmony for so long. It might not always move in a perfect straight line but that didn’t mean it was ready for retirement. No. Mr Carlson should stick to things he knew and keep out of the garden whenever possible.

Milo listened to the rest of his instructions although there wasn’t really anything new and he nodded politely. He said ‘Yes, sir’ wherever appropriate then wished his boss a good journey and got on with his day’s work, walking down the long straight path lined with trees that was known as ‘The Avenue’. He was going to get on with some work in the kitchen garden today. It was one of the few areas that wasn’t open to the public and was hidden behind a large wall which harvested the best of the sunshine and produced bowlfuls of fruit on the trees grown against it.

Milo loved the kitchen garden because it was private and he was rarely disturbed there. In the other parts of the garden, he was always at the mercy of the tourists with their questions and their cameras. If he had a euro for every photo he’d taken of tourists, he could probably afford to buy the Villa Argenti himself, he thought.

But, before he could reach his sanctuary, he saw a figure half-hiding in the shadows of a wall and he instantly knew who it was. Sabine – ‘The Pushy French Girl’ – as he had come to think of her. It wasn’t really her fault. She was sixteen and was on holiday with her family and bored out of her mind. She’d been visiting the gardens with her parents one Tuesday afternoon and had taken one look at Milo and decided that she’d spend the rest of her time on Kethos trying to seduce him. It wasn’t bad as fates went, Milo thought, and goodness only knew that he’d had his fair share of holiday romances with tourists. There was obviously something about being a gardener, he’d decided, that attracted women. Perhaps they liked men who worked with their hands in the great outdoors and it was certainly more original to fall for a Greek gardener than it was a Greek waiter.

He took a deep breath and walked towards her. Be brusque, he told himself.

‘What are you doing here, Sabine?’ he asked as he continued walking. He spoke in English in which she was also fluent.

‘Keeping you company,’ she said, running to catch up with him, her long blonde ponytail swinging about her bare shoulders.

‘I don’t need company. I’m very busy. How did you get in, anyway? We’re not open yet.’

‘I climbed over the wall.’

‘Where?’

‘I’m not telling you. You’ll fence it off.’

‘That’s right,’ Milo said. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’

‘But the gardens are open to everyone, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, but not you,’ he said.

‘Why not me?’

‘Because you should be with your family.’

‘Oh, they’re so boring!’ she said, puffing her cheeks out and sighing dramatically. ‘They do nothing all day!’

‘That can’t be true.’

‘But it is!’ Sabine said. ‘Dad sits around reading his boring books and Mum just sunbathes.’

‘I thought you were going to the museum?’

‘Oh, God! That was even more boring than sitting around the pool.’

Milo frowned. The little museum on Kethos might not be able to rival anything on the mainland but Milo was very proud of it and he objected to people who made fun of it. So it might only have two rooms but it housed a very interesting collection of coins and pottery.

‘Well, what do you want to do all day?’ he asked and then realised that he shouldn’t have.

‘I want to be with you,’ she said, her green eyes large and wide.

‘But I’m at work.’

‘There’s nobody around,’ she said, still running to keep up with him.

‘Sabine!’ he said sharply, stopping in the middle of the path so abruptly that she crashed into him. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said coyly, fluttering her obscenely long eyelashes at him and smiling prettily. She really was very attractive. She was tall for her age too and her figure was full and—

Milo stopped. She was sixteen years old and, although that might all be legal and above board, she was still a child. She might have the body of a woman but she behaved like a petulant teenager and he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. It was courting disaster.

‘Sabine,’ he tried again.

‘Yes?’ she said, tilting her head to one side and giving him her full attention.

‘You have to go.’

‘Oh, not yet!’

‘Yes, you do. I really have to get on with my work and you can’t come with me.’

She pouted at him. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But say something in Greek first.’

‘What?’

‘Say something in Greek – anything! Go on!’

‘Sabine!’

‘Go on!’ she pleaded.

‘And then you’ll go?’

‘Yes,’ she promised with a nod.

Milo took a deep breath and told her – in Greek – that she was a spoilt young girl who should really know better and that he didn’t want her getting him into trouble.

‘Oh!’ she said once he’d finished. ‘That’s so romantic!’

He shook his head at her and then pointed towards the exit.

‘All right, I’m going,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Sabine – no!’ But she’d trotted off and pretended not to hear him. It was Milo’s turn to sigh. Why, oh why, couldn’t he meet a nice normal girl?