Wish You Were Here

Alice caught a little bus from the centre of Kethos Town which headed up a road into the mountains. She’d shown her leaflet of the Villa Argenti to the driver and he nodded in understanding and Alice sat on the back seat and prepared to enjoy the journey. As long as it took her as far away from Stella as was possible on a tiny island, that would suit her.

Alice took a deep breath. She was going to push all thoughts of Stella out of her head and enjoy her surroundings and, looking out of the bus window, she gasped as she noticed just how high they had climbed. The road had twisted its way high up into the mountains and the drop back down gave Alice goosebumps but the view was spectacular. She could see so much of the island all at once from this vantage point and she could just make out the large curve of the coastline that made up one part of the heart shape that the island was famous for.

It was about twenty minutes later when the bus stopped and the driver nodded and pointed along a little road. Alice looked down it but couldn’t see anything.

‘Villa Argenti?’ she asked.

He waved his hand and nodded again and Alice hopped off the bus. She was the only one to do so and she watched as it rounded a bend in the road and disappeared.

Suddenly, she was alone and it was totally silent. She looked down the road the bus driver had pointed along but she couldn’t see anything other than trees and hills. Was there really a magnificent villa tucked away there? She took the leaflet out of her handbag but it didn’t help very much so she set off at a smart pace in what she hoped was the right direction.

The sun had climbed high in the sky and Alice soon felt she’d been walking for hours but consoled herself with the fact that you couldn’t go far wrong on an island. Then, as she rounded a bend, she saw a large white sign with the words ‘Villa Argenti’ on it. She sighed with relief and followed a tree-lined driveway until she came to a pair of large gates which stood open in welcome.

What now? she wondered. There was nobody around to take her money and she suddenly felt shy about entering the garden but she had come all this way to see it and she didn’t want to miss out now.

‘Hello?’ she called but there was no reply. She looked around. She really was the only soul about and, if that was the case, surely a quick look wouldn’t do any harm.

She followed a neat brick path and descended some steps and, suddenly, it was there. The Villa Argenti. It was a large wedding cake of a building with pillars and balconies and enormous doors and sweeping steps. Alice had never seen anything like it in her life. Its honey-coloured stone glowed warmly in the sunshine and Alice had the peculiar feeling that the house was actually smiling at her and she smiled right back at it. It had every right to smile too because it had the good fortune to be in one of the most beautiful settings Alice had ever seen. Completely surrounded by gardens which Alice couldn’t wait to explore, the villa was also positioned high enough to have one of the best views along the coastline of Kethos.

What a pity the house was not open to the public, she thought, although there was plenty to see in the garden.

Leaving the house behind her, Alice walked down yet more steps into a world of green. There was an immaculate emerald lawn that looked as if no human being had ever dared to walk on it and Alice was loath to now but there were no signs to tell her not to so she walked as quickly and delicately as she could, crossing to a little path lined with low walls which had been planted with flowering shrubs. It was one of those times when you needed at least three pairs of eyes to take everything in so Alice slowed her pace because she wanted to see everything: each tree, shrub and flower, and every pond, fountain and temple.

Alice had always wanted a garden. Their family home had a long strip of uninspiring grass which had never been very well tended and her little cottage only had a tiny enclosed courtyard. She’d bought a plastic chair and a terracotta pot in which she grew a rose bush but it wasn’t the stuff of dreams.

But this garden was the stuff of dreams. It was laid out in wide terraces which ended in a large stone wall on top of a cliff which plummeted down to the sea. It was a dizzying vista and Alice stood on the terrace, daring to lean on the iron railings that were the only thing preventing her from tumbling onto the craggy rocks far below.

Gazing out across the coastline, she suddenly felt sad and couldn’t help wishing that her dad was there with her. He would have loved to have seen the villa and the gardens. She would have to send him a postcard or two so that he could at least appreciate it all from afar.

Turning her back on the sea for a moment, she spotted an ornate white bench underneath a fig tree. Sitting down on it a moment later, she closed her eyes, her face drinking in the warm rays of the sun. She wasn’t sure how long she was sitting there for or even if she nodded off for a few blissful moments but, when she opened her eyes, a young man was approaching her. He was tall and had dark hair and olive skin and he was wearing khaki trousers and a dark grey T-shirt. If Alice had worn such colours, her complexion would have drained away to nothing and her sister would have berated her for her bad taste but, on him, they looked wonderfully masculine.

‘Hello,’ he said in English as he pushed an ancient wheelbarrow in front of him.

‘The gardens aren’t closing, are they?’ Alice asked, fearing she was being rounded up and pushed out. ‘I’ve lost all track of time.’

‘This place can do that to you,’ the man said. ‘But, no, they’re not closing. Not for a few hours.’

‘Good,’ she said, liking his gentle accent. ‘I don’t think I’m quite ready to leave yet.’ She looked up into his smiling face. ‘Do you work here?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I just like coming and pushing a wheelbarrow around the grounds from time to time.’

She blushed. ‘Sorry – it was a silly question.’

He grinned at her. ‘No, I’m sorry. And, yes, I do work here. I’ve worked here for a very long time.’

Alice smiled. ‘It must be a wonderful place to work.’

‘It is, yes,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.’

‘You’re very lucky.’

‘I am,’ he said simply and then he put his wheelbarrow down and sat on the bench beside her.

Alice shuffled up a little, not used to having handsome men sitting so close to her.

‘And where do you work? You’re here on holiday, right?’ the young man asked her.

Alice nodded. ‘I’m here for a week – with my sister.’

‘And your job? You have a job back in England – right?’

‘Yes, I’m from England and I do have a job but do you mind if we don’t talk about it? I wouldn’t like to spoil this beautiful place by talking about something so dreary.’

The man nodded. ‘I’m sorry to hear that it is dreary. That is a great shame.’

Alice nodded again. ‘I don’t really know what happened. I mean, you never plan these things, do you? You don’t grow up thinking, I want a really dreary job when I grow up. I want to be bored out of my skull and fill my days doing meaningless things that don’t seem to add anything worthwhile to the world.’ She gave a little sigh. ‘But I said I wasn’t going to talk about it and I wouldn’t want to bore you.’

‘You’re not boring me,’ he said, his dark eyes warm and attentive and, all of a sudden, Alice was talking – talking like she’d never talked in her life because nobody had ever really listened to her before except her father. She told him about her job and her boss and how bored she was there and how nobody ever seemed to notice her or care about what she thought.

She told him about her father and how worried she was about him even though he always said he was all right and that she shouldn’t worry. She told him about her sister and how cross she made her and how she’d thought this holiday would change things between them.

‘Gosh,’ she said once she’d finished, ‘I didn’t mean to say all that. I’m not quite sure where it all came from.’

‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘You needed to talk it all out of you.’

She smiled at his funny phrasing but still felt horribly embarrassed at having unburdened herself to a complete stranger and so stood up and started looking for an escape route and then she remembered something. ‘I – er – I haven’t actually paid to get in,’ she said. ‘There was nobody at the gate.’

The young man waved his hand dismissively. ‘There’s no need.’

‘But this place must cost a fortune to keep going.’

‘Yes, but the owner has plenty of money. He doesn’t need yours.’ He stood up and followed her along a footpath and there was a moment of silence between them as their feet crunched along the gravel.

‘Did you come to see Aphrodite?’ the young man said at last.

‘Pardon?’ Alice said, surprised by his question.

‘The statue of Aphrodite – over there by the fountain. Most tourists come here to see her. Perhaps you missed her.’

‘I think I must have,’ Alice said, annoyed with herself. She thought she’d seen everything.

‘They say she grants wishes,’ the man said with a little smile.

‘Do they?’ Alice said.

‘If your wish is for love or beauty, it will be granted.’

‘I don’t believe in wishes,’ Alice said.