The Perfect Holiday

On Jack’s second birthday since his death – he would have been fifty-eight – Jessica went for a walk on the pier near her home.

What astonished her was that everyone else looked so normal. People laughed. Small dogs still ran madly after seagulls. The seagulls still appeared to taunt the dogs. Mothers pushed huge pushchairs and toddlers still roared to get out of the pushchairs. Once they were out, they yelled to get back in.

Life was going on. Jessica felt huge rage against the whole world for enjoying itself. Didn’t they see? Her life was over because her beloved Jack was gone. How could life continue? There simply was no life without Jack.

She had started to cry and she could barely see as she rushed back along the pier to her car. It was Jack’s old car. Soon, it would be an antique, Marty joked. They’d never had much money. Jack had been a carpenter and they’d always had food on the table, but there hadn’t been money for luxuries.

At home, she sat in front of the big family picture taken the day Marty had got his place in veterinary college. It was hard to remember such happiness. They’d been in the garden beside the old apple tree. Jack loved the garden. They’d bought the old council house he’d grown up in and his father had planted the tree when he was a kid. The family had grown vegetables. Jack’s pride and joy were his raspberries. For such a gentle man, he’d waged a fierce war against the birds to stop them stealing his precious fruit.

Sarah and Stavros grew fruit alongside flowers in the garden at the back of the hotel. Jessica had wandered there one day and had found Sarah on her knees weeding a flower bed that was set in a sunny area between the lemon trees.

‘This,’ said Sarah, pulling on a wild green stalk, ‘is like a virus. Once it gets in, you can’t control it. It destroys flowers and vegetables.’

‘The soil seems hard,’ Jessica said, for want of something else to say.

‘When I came here first, I couldn’t believe how hard it was to grow things. It’s tricky when you’re always thinking of how to water everything,’ Sarah went on. ‘So different from home.’

Jessica sat on a cracked stone bench under the nearest lemon tree. ‘How long have you lived in Corfu?’ she asked.

‘Thirty years. Can you believe it?’ Sarah wiped her hands on the apron around her comfortable waist. ‘It’s home to me now.’

‘Did you stay because you fell in love with Stavros?’ Jessica couldn’t believe she’d just asked such a personal question. She rarely spoke to people any more: clearly she’d lost the ability to have normal conversations. ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘That was very personal…’

‘No, I prefer that. I hate those “pleased to meet you, isn’t the weather lovely?” talks,’ said Sarah, smiling. ‘Life’s too short to waste on such rubbish. Stavros came back to England with me, but he never settled. Norfolk is very pretty but it wasn’t Greece. His heart wasn’t in it, although he’d have stayed for me.’

She paused and bent to pull up another bit of weed.

‘What happened then?’

‘His mother became ill and we came back here to run her hotel. At the time, I was afraid I was making the biggest mistake of my life, but now look at me: I love it. You never quite know what’s around the corner, do you?’ Her shrewd gaze seemed to look into Jessica’s very soul.

For the first time in a long time, Jessica didn’t feel annoyed at another human being stepping into her mental space. Sarah was a bit like Diana, the counsellor: both women were interested in helping, rather than interested in watching a widow fall apart.

‘You don’t know what’s around the corner,’ Jessica said. ‘You hope it’s a winning lottery ticket, but sometimes, it’s a ten-ton truck.’