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Chapter 6
I’m up at four the next morning to drive back to the airport. Things get off to a bad start when there’s no sign of Toby at the easyJet check-in area where we’ve agreed to meet. I try to call him, but his phone goes straight to voicemail, so I text him an angry “Where are you?” message instead. I know he can’t have checked in already, because I’ve got his boarding card, which I printed off just before going to bed. I can feel my stress levels rising. I’m used to travelling alone, and this sudden reliance on another person, over whom I have no control, is making me uncomfortable. By the time he arrives, slightly out of breath, I’m positively annoyed.
“Sorry I’m late,” he pants. “I had to wait ages for a bus. It said there was one every few minutes when I booked the parking, but I must have been there for at least a quarter of an hour.”
Amateur. Everyone knows there are hardly any buses this early in the morning, as they’re still running the night schedule. The bus only comes round every few minutes during peak times. I’m trying not to be cross with him, but I’m failing. If I’m being purely rational, I know there is still plenty of time to check in and get to the gate, but I feel aggrieved that he’s managed to upset my routine before we’ve even got through security.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” I snap, probably more fiercely than he deserves. I see the surprise flash in his eyes.
“Sorry. I always turn it off when I’m driving, and I hadn’t got around to turning it back on.” He reaches into his pocket, fishes out his phone, and makes a display of turning it on.
“Well, you’re here now,” I say, forcing myself to be more gentle. “Shall we?”
As we’re queueing up to drop our bags off, I feel my phone buzz in my back pocket. Worrying that something might have happened with Charley and Amelia, I fish it out, only to see that Toby has replied to my “Where are you?” message.
“Don’t look now, but I’m right behind you,” he’s written. I can’t help but smile. I type “If this were from anyone else, I’d be worried that I was being stalked by a pervert, but I don’t think I’m your type, so I’ll let it go,” and press send. There’s a brief pause before he sends back a smiley face. My annoyance starts to fade, and I turn and smile at him. He’s looking at me quizzically, as if trying to work something out.
“Sorry I was grumpy,” I say to him. “I’m used to travelling alone, so this is unfamiliar and a little stressful.”
He smiles. “I’ll make sure I allow more time next time, if there is a next time.”
“There has to be at least one next time,” I tell him. “You’ve got to experience the delights of the Bellavista in Corfu with me.”
Our conversation is cut short by the process of dropping our bags and making our way through security. I’m pleased to see that he’s organised enough to have his carry-on liquids already in a see-through plastic bag; I’m always amazed by the number of people who seem to be caught out by that, or try to take more than the allowance through.
I pass through security with no issues, but Toby has to have his bag searched. When he’s finally allowed to proceed, he zips it up and walks over to me.
“Would you believe that happens pretty much every time?” he says. “You would think they’d never seen a camera, or lenses, before.”
“Have you ever been through security at Tel Aviv?” I ask him, as we set off in the direction of the gate.
“No, why?”
“This is a walk in the park compared to there. They would probably have dismantled your camera, and they would definitely have swabbed every nook and cranny. I took a simple battery-powered alarm clock through there once in my hold baggage, and they went berserk. They swabbed the poor thing so much it never worked again. Israel is an amazing country though, you should go.”
“Is there anywhere in the world you haven’t been?” he asks.
“Oh yes. Quite a lot of the Middle East, for example. I wouldn’t feel very safe as a woman travelling on my own there, although I’d love to go to Jordan and see Petra. I’ve also never been to Russia, China or Japan. I’ve seen quite a lot of the rest of it, though. You must travel quite a lot with your work too? All those bikini clad girls on beautiful white sand beaches are hardly shot in Bournemouth, are they?”
“Actually, I have done a few bikini shoots in Bournemouth,” he replies. “With photography you don’t have to be in the Caribbean to make it look like the Caribbean, if you get my drift. You just need a nice beach with a blue sky; careful lighting and Photoshop help with everything else. So I don’t actually do as much travelling abroad as you might think. Also, if a magazine like Voyages Luxes wants stunning pictures of, say, New Zealand, they can just hire a photographer who lives out there and get the images sent across. Much cheaper than paying for me to go there.”
“I guess I never really thought about it like that,” I reply.
“What about you? Do you ever have to fake it?” he asks.
“Of course! If the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, I don’t want to be there all day,” I say, before bursting into laughter as the realisation of his double-entendre dawns on him and he blushes furiously.
“Sometimes, when I was just starting out, I’d research a place on the internet and then try to write about it as if I’d been there,” I tell him, more seriously. “Nobody will fund your trips up front when you’re new, so either you have to fund them yourself and hope someone will commission your article, or you have to find a way to write convincingly without actually doing the travel. For me it was a mix of both in the early days. I did fall foul of one editor, because it turned out he had actually lived for a period in the place that I’d written about and he therefore spotted all the things I’d got wrong. The funny thing was that he was so impressed that I’d managed to get so much of a feel for it just from internet research that he became one of my first regular clients. For the first couple of years, he would always demand to see receipts as proof that I had actually been to the places I was writing about, though.”
We settle into a couple of seats near the gate and a companionable silence descends. From the number of our fellow passengers kitted out in thick, brightly coloured puffer jackets I deduce that most of them are also heading for the ski slopes. Outside it’s still dark, but the first glimmers of dawn light are creeping over the horizon. I pull my laptop out of my bag and start reading the famil pack from the Mirabelle. Unsurprisingly, they want us to try the restaurant, which I’ve already booked for this evening, and the spa.
“So,” Toby asks, suddenly, “tell me more about the Bellavista. Why do we have to go there?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Earlier, when we were at the bag drop, you said I had to experience the Bellavista in Corfu with you. What’s that about?”
I explain to him about the mismatch between my review and TripAdvisor, glossing over the part where Mark was about to drop me, and tell him how it inspired me to come up with the idea of doing incognito visits.
