CHAPTER 27
I really don’t know where that year went, but the school holidays were soon on us and so was our boy’s first ever trip abroad. We had taken a load of pictures of him, trying to get something suitable for his passport, and in the end the best we could manage made my son look rather like a white Malteser.

We flew from Cardiff this time, meeting the others at a coffee shop before check-in. It was slightly odd, as I remembered Vicky from the trial, but had never really got to know her husband Kevin, and then there were two hyperactive children to engage with, Tara Elaine and Kevin Twm. Bags dropped, kids supplied with amusements, queue through Security, and then sit and wait, then wait some more.

Finally, we were on the plane, three of us struggling with booster seats and other child-safety delights, and then we waited some more as the plane itself shuffled along in another queue. It was already nearly nine o’clock in the evening.

The airline wasn’t a certain Irish-themed affair, so we ended up sat as family groups, which made life so much easier, especially when Rhod started to yell as the engines finally would up for take-off. To my delight, once the acceleration kicked in his wails turned to giggling, the giggles turned into inspection of his feet, and as Tara demanded to use the ‘loo in the sky’ for some odd reason of perverse fascination, we were able to settle back and graze on our sandwiches as Rhod simply fell asleep. It needed no telepathy on my part to pick up the silent thanks of the passengers around us. The thought of being stuck in a metal tube for four hours as one or more children had a nuclear-grade meltdown was not an attractive one.

I was actually asleep when we banged down at the airport, Blake having quietly tightened my seat belt, and when I say ‘banged’ it was indeed quite a thump. It set Rhod off again, but that didn’t last, and as Kev had booked a transfer with a local driver we had very little to do apart from find our man and load his minibus. I had a flashback to the trip from Marco Polo airport, with added lumpy scenery and hairpin bends, but the driver was actually a lot more careful, perhaps in deference to the presence of three smaller people.

“Where exactly is this place, mate?”

Kev laughed at Blake’s obviously unexpected question.

“I told your missus, butt! Didn’t she keep you in the loop?”

I gave a Charlie-sniff.

“Keep this one in the loop? My Dad’s bad enough with buying guidebooks and stuff, and this one puts him in the shade. I wanted to leave enough room in the luggage for more important stuff, like the kid’s clothes!”

Elaine and Siân were giggling away like schoolgirls, and that was heart-warming, especially after Lainey’s near collapse. There was still that edge, though, as they watched the little ones, who had finally crashed and burned with exhaustion. The villa was on the edge of some town called Kardamaina, and I didn’t see that much of anything until I woke the next, or rather same, morning, brilliant sunshine streaming through the curtains and Rhod demanding his breakfast.

We had a pool. We had sun-loungers. We had odd toilets with a bin for the paper. We had a beach a short bus ride away. We had swimming cossies and sun-block. And we had a fully-fitted bloody kitchen for some of us to make breakfasts in while certain others just went ‘splash’ into the water, the bastards.

To be honest, it wasn’t that bad, as Lainey had somehow managed to surface early and found a local grocery, so breakfast was cold meat and cheese with fresh flatbread, some odd pastries and a lot of fruit juice, and I found myself wondering whether there was an ice-cream stand doing English Soup.

That thought didn’t last long, because this was so different to Venice. That trip had been a family holiday, of course, but this was our first holiday as our own family. The roles were clearly established, Vicky being pure Mam in the way she handled her two, while her husband was happier being silly with them. I did my best to Mam up, and Blake seemed able to resist Kev’s silliness for a large part of the time, but I couldn’t miss the wistfulness on the faces of the other two women, poor girls.

I found Elaine one afternoon idly watching a lizard wriggling along a wall, and she smiled as she felt my stare.

“Sar would love this place, Di”

“What? Micro-kini and outsize shades?”

“Na, not at all. She’d be off walking over the hills, binoculars ready. You’d have a full list of every bloody bird on the island by day three, aye? Then she’d be off looking for somewhere to hire a bike, either kind”

I shook my head at that one.

“Not me. Ad… Annie told me all sorts of horror stories about people who hire mopeds in this sort of place. Go off riding with their lid unfastened, wearing shorts and a vest, then hit some gravel and pick it all up with their flesh. I’ll stick to sunburn, me. Fewer scars. Where’s the missus?”

“Siân? Tara’s been helping her with the sun block. Not fair, is it?”

“Uh? What do you mean?”

Elaine grinned, and it was most definitely a dirty one.

“Look, your Blake, aye? You lie down on the lounger, he dollops some cream onto you, rubs it in nicely…”

“Ooh yeah!”

“Yeah indeed. And there’s my wife needing primer, undercoat, topcoat and sealant before she can even GET to a sodding sunlounger!”

“Ah. I take your point. TARA! STOP DROWNING YOUR BROTHER!”

Vicky howled with laughter from the other side of the pool.

“Oh, these born-to-be-a-Mum women! Lainey, Him Indoors has done the legwork, and we have a taverna located and booked for tonight. You like Greek food, Di?”

“Bit late if I don’t!”

“Point taken. Just don’t do the silly thing, and decide you like the wine so much you just have to take some home. It’s never the same, trust me. Tara Elaine, let your brother breathe or you get no sweets today”

So it went. We went to the local beach, and worked a shift system with the kids in the water and on the shore, where my man and I took turns to chase the fish in the clear blue sea. Little Kevin and Tara had Nets on Sticks for finding Stuff, as Vicky put it, the capitalisation evident as she spoke, and when I took my time to look around our group, it left me smiling almost as broadly as the children.

Lainey and Siân both favoured one-piece costumes, Siân’s more often than not covered with some gauzy long thing to keep some of the sun off her porcelain skin. Vicky, by contrast, went for the full bikini, in a clear mood of not giving a shit about two kids’ worth of stretch-marks and a relaxed tummy area. Our two men were in simple shorts, and very distracting just as they were, athletic and solid respectively. Tara had her own bikini, and I found myself wondering how much extra drag all the applique flowers and smiley sun-faces would cause if she actually swam rather than romped. The two littlest spent most of their time absolutely naked, though I did make sure Rhod had a hat as well as a lot of ‘down time’ under the huge beach umbrella the villa owner s had left for us.

Sun and sea, with the evenings either eating some odd mixture of self-cooked food sourced from the local shop or sitting outside the taverna Kev had found, eating stuffed vine leaves and lamb, and drinking strongly-flavoured white wine before carrying three sleeping children back to their beds. It wasn’t Shirley Valentine, it wasn’t Venice, but it was just as nice as far as I was concerned, and that sound of waves on a shoreline steadily lost its associations. This was most definitely Bridget’s life lived well.

I was sitting by our pool on the last morning, Elaine helping as I sliced tomatoes and buttered bread for our interpretation of ‘continental breakfast’ when she mentioned our friend once more.

“Busy time when I get back, girl”

“Yeah?”

“Next month. Annie’s wedding”

“Oh. Shit. Um”

She looked up at me, eyes narrowed slightly.

“You still don’t quite get it, do you? Still seeing him rather than her, aye?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to words just then, and Lainey smiled, taking my hand.

“Trust me, girl, you see her with her people, see her in her own world, you wouldn’t be confused at all. She is most definitely Annie. I remember Adam… We were both at that RTC of hers, aye? The one with the kiddy? The first I aw of Adam-as-was they were sitting on a crash barrier, helmet off, sobbing their heart out. I was double-crewed with Kev that day. Not a story I would really want to re-visit with him and Vicky listening in, though. That’s Annie: heart the size of Canada, and it’s what Steph said, I think: how the hell she is still with us after all she’s been through, I really cannot grasp.

“Her wedding, aye? Big thing, big day for all of us. Mam and Dad, our family, they are all going as well. I could always ask, girl, see if they have some spare seats?”

It was tempting, but I realised it would not have been fair. I remembered that day in the café, her smile as he arrived, his courage there as he saw her face. I offered Elaine my own smile.

“No, love. Let her live her own life”

Let it be lived well.