‘My friends have a villa there,’ Dominic says.
‘Is very…how you say it? Far away. Yes, Pelagia is very far away from here. From anywhere. In stormy weather you cannot leave.’ He catches my anxious expression. ‘Please don’t worry. No stormy weather ahead. Not till next week, anyway.’ He winks. Realising he’s joking, I smile back weakly.
Traffic is heavy but we finally reach the port and Yorgos turns onto a wide quay. To our right are half a dozen red sightseeing buses. To our left is the sea.
‘There’s the hydrofoil,’ Dom says, and I follow his gaze to a blue and white vessel moored nearby. It looks tiny beside the towering cruise ship behind it.
Dom shakes Yorgos’s hand and is slipping a twenty-euro note into the driver’s shirt pocket when a cry reaches us from the water’s edge. I look up, startled, to see a woman in a huge straw hat and Jackie O sunglasses windmilling her arms like she’s flagging down a runaway train. Next to her, a man with his back to us holds his phone aloft, trying to find a signal.
‘Dom! Over here!’ the woman shrieks.
‘Is that Victoria?’ I ask.
Dominic nods. ‘Come on. I’ll introduce you.’
My stomach clenches as we heft our cases across the quayside but I tell myself not to be silly. These are Dom’s oldest friends. They’ll welcome me with open arms. I have nothing to worry about.
Victoria’s voice carries as we approach. It is both plummy and hectoring.
‘Barney, can you please put that bloody phone away? We’re supposed to be on holiday. I’m sure the office can survive perfectly well without you for a few days. No one is indispensable.’
He mutters something back and slips the phone into the pocket of his perfectly pressed chinos. When Victoria greets us the bossy tone has disappeared and her voice is pure honey.
‘Dominic, darling. It’s so good to see you. It’s been too long.’ She hugs him, then turns to me. ‘And you must be Amy.’
‘Amber,’ I say, letting go of the strap of my suitcase so I can shake hands. Despite the stultifying heat, her palm is cool and dry, and I immediately wish I’d wiped mine on my not-very-white trousers first. ‘It’s lovely to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you both.’
‘Have you?’ Victoria glances at Dom. Hidden behind her sunglasses, her expression is unreadable. ‘How funny. Because we’ve heard precisely nothing about you.’
3
AMBER
The boat has barely left the port when Dominic announces he’s going to get drinks. I jump up and offer to help but he pushes me gently back down onto my seat.
‘I can manage. You stay here and get to know Vic and Barney.’
Once he’s gone, Victoria, whose forehead seems to be permanently set in a deep frown, asks half-heartedly about our flight, then cocks her head and assesses me with her clear blue eyes.
‘So, tell me, Amber, where did you meet our golden boy?’
‘Oh, um, it’s a bit of a cliché, I’m afraid. It was at the gym. Dom asked me for a coffee after boot camp one day. I wasn’t sure at first, to be honest, because what if it all went south and we still had to work out together? It would be totally awkward. But you know how persuasive he can be.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Anyway, coffee turned into lunch, and lunch into dinner, and we realised we had loads in common?—’
She arches an eyebrow. ‘You do?’
‘Well, the gym, for starters. And we both love cooking, action movies and country music.’
‘Right.’ She pulls a compact from her bag, flips it open and carefully repaints her lipstick. I imagine her drawing two plum-coloured lines across each cheek like war paint, because I have the distinct impression that, despite Dominic’s assurances to the contrary, she does not like me.
I employ a tactic I’ve perfected with tricky customers at the call centre. ‘Killing with kindness’, Nessa calls it. Laying on the charm so thickly that even the grumpiest of customers end up making an order.
‘I’ve been so excited about meeting you all. Dom’s always talking about you guys.’ This is a lie. The first time Dom mentioned any of them was when he asked if I wanted to come to Greece, but it softens Victoria’s sharp features for a second and so is worth it.
‘So you’ve seen photos of Simone?’
