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“It doesn’t look much like a sunset,” he observes, peering at the bright pink liquid.
“No. Taste it though, and tell me what you think.”
Toby takes a sip and I see his mouth wrinkle in disgust.
“Ugh, what the hell is in that?” he asks, after swallowing hurriedly.
“I have no idea. I can’t even work out whether it’s better or worse than the pretend gin and tonic: they’re both foul. I think I’d rather pay and have a drink I recognise.”
Once Toby has finished his beer, we saunter down to the restaurant to sample the dinner offering. It looks much like the lunchtime one, except the Greek hot dishes have been replaced with a moussaka and some grilled pork. Toby goes to get some wine and I secure the same table we sat at earlier.
“Don’t expect much from this,” he tells me, handing me my glass of red. “It’s chilled and it came out of a dispenser.”
“That’s a classic way of toning down cheap, rough wine,” I tell him. “Serve it cold and it mutes the flavours. If you served this at room temperature it would probably dissolve the lining of your mouth!”
The wine is rough but, unlike the drinks at the pool bar, it is just about drinkable. We leave our glasses as a marker that the table is occupied and explore the buffet. After his experiences at lunchtime, I’m not surprised when Toby reappears with a plate of Spaghetti Bolognese and some chips. I decide to be brave and opt for moussaka with a side helping of Greek salad.
“This isn’t too bad, actually,” I tell Toby, after a mouthful of moussaka. “It’s not hot, but it’s a lot warmer than the chicken you had at lunchtime. How’s the spaghetti? Does it go well with chips? Seems like a carb overload to me.”
Toby sighs. “I seem doomed in my choices. The pasta is all sticking together, and I have a nasty suspicion the Bolognese is made from dog food. The chips are OK though.”
The next morning, Toby is up early. I’m used to this now; I know he likes to catch the light, so I don’t think anything of it. I squeeze my way into the shower and I’m just about ready for breakfast when he returns with a mischievous glint in his eye.
“What have you been up to?” I ask him.
“I’ve been laying on a bit of entertainment,” he replies. “I was up at the top pool, taking some photos at around six o’clock, and all these people appeared, laid out their towels on the sun loungers, and then disappeared again. There are lots of signs saying that you can’t reserve sun loungers and that towels will be removed, but nobody was actually doing it, so I did. I piled them all up by the bar. Should be fun later.”
After breakfast, we make our way up to the top pool. Sure enough, there is a pile of towels by the bar, but more people must have been up here since Toby, because most of the loungers have towels on them again. We settle down on two of the few remaining free ones and watch to see what happens. We don’t have to wait long before guests are removing the new towels and replacing them with the originals, or having heated arguments with the new occupants of the loungers they thought they had reserved.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Toby admits, after an hour or so of chaos. “I think it’s bloody selfish to reserve loungers if you’re not actually using them. Shall we go to the beach now?”
“It wouldn’t be such a problem if the hotel provided enough for everyone, though, would it?” I say as we start walking down the road.
“Yes, I thought that too, but they don’t have the space to do that around either pool, do they? I guess that’s a limitation of building a hotel on the side of a hill.”
We spend the rest of the morning very pleasantly on the beach, and Toby practically begs to have lunch at one of the tavernas. Given his poor luck with the offerings in the hotel restaurant, I take pity on him and allow him to choose. We end up having a very successful lunch of calamari, souvlaki and baklava to finish, all washed down with ice cold Mythos beer.
“That was much more like it,” Toby declares as we make our way back onto the sand. It feels odd to me to be spending a whole day on the beach. Normally I’d be out trying all the various excursions but, as I’ve been here before and I’m going to be writing this up as one to avoid, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point. I do make a note of the name of the restaurant where we had lunch; I’ll include that as an alternative to eating in the hotel. In the evening Toby suggests we try a bar he saw on his early morning explorations. It’s certainly popular; most of the outdoor tables are already occupied when we get there. Toby has another beer and I order a negroni as a treat. The cocktail is a delight after the dubious offerings from the hotel bar, and I savour every sip.
Toby is on good form, and his eyes sparkle with enthusiasm as he tells me about work he’s got coming up. The studio is a great success, unsurprisingly, and he’s also got plenty of weddings and other shoots booked in over the summer. He tells me that he’s also finished decorating the flat, and how delighted he is to have his own space.
“And how about the love life?” I ask.
“Nothing happening there,” he replies. “I’m totally focused on work at the moment, anyway. What about you?”
“Nope. As I said before, I’m tired of meeting promising-looking men who subsequently turn out to be hopeless. All of them seem to want someone who can be a mother figure, a housekeeper, or a nymphomaniac at the flick of a switch. None of them, not one, seemed remotely interested in what I might want.”
“Maybe we should have some sort of pact, like this couple did in a film I watched once,” Toby says, suddenly. “They set a date in the future and, if neither of them had found ‘the one’ by the time the date came, they agreed they would marry each other.”
“And how did that work out?”
“It was a RomCom, how do you think it worked out? They realised they were madly in love with each other and it all ended happily.”
“Mm. I don’t think that sounds very realistic, do you? Anyway, I wouldn’t want to get married out of desperation: that’s tragic. I’d rather stay single.”
“Don’t you get lonely sometimes, though? I know I do, even though I’m flat out busy. Sometimes I just want someone to share my day with, or talk stuff over with.”
“But that’s what friends are for!” I counter. “You’re more than welcome to ring me up anytime and talk to me about stuff. You know me well enough by now that I’ll tell you frankly what I think about most things.”
“You are certainly the most, how shall I put this, ‘direct’ person I’ve ever met,” he laughs.
“Would you rather I was all mysterious and coy, and you never knew what I was thinking?” I ask him.
“No, not at all!”
“Good, because what I’m thinking right now is that you should buy me another one of these delicious negronis.”
