So here they were, the tiny Greek island of Aegos. They’d left behind the tourist hustle and a strip of noisy bars as they drove west from the airport. Now the road had emptied and narrowed, carrying them over a scrub-lined hillside where the music came from the tinkling of goat bells and a donkey braying in the lengthening shade of an olive tree.
She’d told Bella that she wanted to spend the weekend lazing in the sun, reading, swimming, and eating. Bella had nodded earnestly for about two seconds, before the corners of her lips curled upwards and she wiggled her eyebrows, meaning she had other plans entirely.
Bella was saying something to the driver now, gesturing expansively while he quaked with laughter. Lexi smiled. God, she loved this woman. Bella was her yes person. The one who you could call day or night and pitch any outlandish idea, and Bella’s voice would sparkle as she’d say, Yes!
Fen – Bella’s girlfriend – was the calm to Bella’s storm of energy. She was gazing from the taxi window, wind fingering her razor-short, bleached hair. The small tattoo of a swallow on the back of her neck looked so crisply drawn that it, too, might take flight. Her brow was furrowed and a ball of tension worked across her jaw. It was an expression so at odds with her usual relaxed, easy smile that Lexi touched her arm, asking, ‘Fen? You okay?’
Fen startled. The tension slid away as she smiled. ‘Fine. Sorry. Miles away.’
Lexi had sensed an atmosphere between Fen and Bella at the airport, something weighted in the pauses before they responded to one another. She’d ask Bella about it when they were alone.
‘Thank you again for letting us stay in your aunt’s villa,’ Lexi said.
‘It’s a good excuse to return to Aegos.’
‘Bella said your aunt designed the place.’
Fen nodded. ‘Originally for a client. Halfway through the project his finances imploded. He couldn’t fund the rest. She was so in love with the place by then that she bought the plot from him.’
‘Has she lived here?’
‘For a couple of years, but she found the winters hard. The villa is very isolated. There are no neighbours or even passing roads. She prefers to come in summer, bring a crowd. I think the remoteness unnerved her.’
Fen’s gaze returned to the window as the road unwound ahead of them.
There would be six of them staying at the villa. The second taxi carrying the other hens had detoured into town to stock up on provisions. Lexi had offered to go with them, but Bella said she’d do no such thing. ‘It’s your hen party.’
Lexi had a feeling she’d be hearing those words more than once this weekend.
‘Almost there,’ the taxi driver said, changing into a lower gear as the tarmac gave way to a stony track.
Lexi gripped the door as they bounced over rutted ground, tyres kicking up clouds of dust. They swung wide around rock-strewn potholes, as the track drew them closer to the edge of the island.
When they crested a hilltop, for a moment Lexi could see nothing but the glittering blue kiss of sea. Then suddenly the villa appeared, stone-white with a Greek-flag-blue roof. It stood like a crown on the clifftop, reigning over a tiny, jewelled cove below.
Lexi could only stare.
Bella clapped her hands together. ‘Oh! Wow!’
Dust billowed behind them as the taxi descended steeply, brakes complaining. Lexi leaned forward, peering through the windscreen as she caught the climbing tangle of bougainvillea framing the side of the villa in a riot of pink.
The taxi came to a halt, engine ticking.
In a low whisper, as if speaking to herself, Fen said, ‘This is it.’
Lexi pulled down her sunglasses, then stepped from the taxi. Even this late in the day, the heat was something solid, weighted, pressing against her skin. She took in the whitewashed villa with its fastened blue shutters. She could smell the first notes of the sea: salted and clean.
Stones crunched beneath sandals as the three of them fetched their cases from the boot of the taxi. Bella waved away Lexi’s attempt to pay the driver, and she made a mental note to slip some money into the kitty in a quiet moment.
As the taxi pulled away, Lexi, a hand on a hip, turned on the spot, breathing in their surroundings.
Cliffs; ocean; mountainside.
Not another building in sight.
She caught the plaintive cry of a mountain goat somewhere in the distance.
Lexi felt a strange flutter of apprehension in her chest. She told herself it must be the anticipation of the weekend to come, a sense of pressure knowing that her friends had come all this way for her. Yet, as her heart rate began to gather speed, it felt like more than that, as if she were unnerved by the very villa, or its remoteness, or the occasion itself.