Page 4 of The Little Greek Guesthouse

‘Ouch, switch the light off,’ Nina grumbled.

‘Wow, you are a hot mess,’ Heather said, ignoring her and plonking down on the bed. ‘Your dad was not exaggerating. Come on, you need some friend therapy from circa twenty-ten.’ She produced two plastic tumblers, a giant bag of cheese puffs and a bottle of pink wine from her rucksack.

Nina sat up and sniffed, wiping her nose and running her fingers through the tangled mop of her hair. ‘Thanks.’ All this crying had left her exhausted, and this blast from their shared past was just what she needed, reminding her of the evenings they’d sat as teenagers in this room, drinking wine and dreaming of Harry Styles and feeling oh-so-sophisticated. That was before Heather confided that her preference was actually for Avril Lavigne.

‘My god,’ Heather said as she tutted and handed Nina a tumbler of wine. ‘See the state of you; I haven’t seen you without makeup since the great hangover of twenty-twenty-one. No wonder Theo called for reinforcements. And this isn’t helping, either.’ She carefully pulled up the arm on Nina’s record player, causing Stevie Nicks’s powerful rendition of ‘The Chain’ to come to an abrupt halt.

‘Hey!’ Nina protested. ‘What are you doing? That’s my favourite band. I love their music. It’s poetry.’

Heather pulled a face. ‘Miserable, that’s not going to do you any good.’

‘Better than all that Maroon 5 you listen to.’

‘Those boys are geniuses, I’ll not have a bad word said about them.’ Heather grinned, and Nina couldn’t help but smile in response. ‘Tough week, huh?’

Nina had already messaged her with a blow-by-blow account of her life falling apart, but she knew that Heather would sit and listen, nodding and rolling her eyes sympathetically as she went through it all again. Nina showed her Sam’s Instagram, and once again went through every possible scenario of what was going to happen between him and Mags. As she was running through the possibility that they were setting up home together, Heather stopped her.

‘You do know you’re well shot of him, right? That arrogant bottom-burp.’ Heather, a preschool teacher, had got into such a habit of toning down her language that she now found it impossible to utter the mildest swear words, even when the situation clearly warranted it. ‘And I never liked her, either.’

Mags and Heather had only met a few times, and had instantly disliked each other. Mags, originally just a work friend of Nina’s, had been horrified by Heather’s tattoos and the shaved-side haircut she sported, and Heather’s verdict on Mags was, as she reiterated now, ‘Vacuous and stuck up.’

‘I thought she was my friend,’ Nina said, still reeling with disbelief at such a betrayal. ‘And I thought he was the one.’ Nina felt tears prick at her eyes once again.

Heather snorted. ‘What, Sam? Come on.’ She stuffed a handful of cheese puffs into her mouth and continued talking, the words slightly muffled by chewing. ‘I mean, I know he’s pretty but that’s all there is to him; he was so busy working out and working his way up the career ladder he barely noticed you at all. You deserve better than that. He’s just a fluting narcissist.’

‘But he –’

Heather held up a hand, her expression serious. ‘Nina. He cheated on you. You deserve better. Now drink some wine, get it out of your system and move on.’

Nina opened her mouth to argue, but found she had nothing to say. Heather was right. Sam was a worthless, cheating waste of time. Not to mention a few other choice words that she couldn’t say in front of her swearing-avoidant friend. She drank instead.

‘So,’ Heather said. ‘What’s all this Theo tells me about you going to Kefalonia with him for the summer?’

‘You know those things are basically poison, don’t you?’ Nina said as Heather shoved another handful of cheese puffs into her mouth. ‘No nutritional value at all. They’re not really food, just a bunch of chemicals and salt.’ Nina was strict with her diet. The most sinful thing that had passed her lips recently was a piece of homemade cereal bar, if you didn’t count the current boozing, but these were exceptional circumstances.

Heather grinned, showing an orange mush in her mouth. ‘And they’re blooming delicious.’

Nina lifted a lip in disgust, trying to ignore the watering of her mouth as she breathed in the smell of chemicals and salt. She gulped her wine instead, and Heather refilled their cups.

‘Tell me something,’ Heather said as she carefully placed the bottle on the bedside table, leaning in with a serious expression. ‘When was the last time you had fun?’

Nina was stung. ‘I’m fun!’

‘When you let yourself be. When was the last time? The great drunken night of twenty-twenty-one?’

‘Hey! I do fun stuff.’

Heather raised an eyebrow. ‘Like what?’

‘Work.’ The word popped out of her mouth before she could stop it. ‘And – and I go to bars. And the gym.’ Lame, she knew. She was about to start listing the hairdressers and nail salon, but somehow she had a feeling that that wouldn’t do anything to shift the sceptical look from Heather’s face.

‘My god. We missed the chance for an intervention, didn’t we?’ Heather sighed. ‘Look, I love my job too, and I know yours is more glamorous than mine, I mean anything’s more glamorous than wiping cute little snotty noses all day, right? But it’s not fun, Nina. And those bars you went to were all at Sam’s work dos.’

‘Still counts.’

‘Does not.’

Nina sighed, gulped her wine and eyed the rapidly diminishing cheese puffs. Her life had been good, hadn’t it? She’d worked so hard to make it that way. She’d progressed at work, she had excellent taste; she’d had a handsome, successful boyfriend. She looked good, she went to the gym and kept up with beauty appointments, she ate well; her body was a temple.