Page 11 of After the Accident
Emma:I went back to my cottage after the incident with Daniel at the pool. Mum had asked me to look at flights off the island, but there didn’t seem much point, considering Dad was still unconscious.
I didn’t want to spend time around the pool because it seemed like Daniel and Liz were camped there for the day, plus I wasn’t in the mood. I decided to go for a walk instead.
We’d visited the resort enough times when I was younger, so I had a good idea of where everything was. I also wanted to see how things had changed in the nine years since we’d last been.
Since we’d landed, it had been one thing after another and I thought it might help clear my head.
Julius:I don’t know what happened to Emma later that morning.
Emma:I remember the first ever holiday I went on. I was about five and it was in a caravan at the seaside. Dad drove and Julius and I were in the back of the car. Julius would have been about ten or eleven and couldn’t sit still. We were giving it the full ‘Are we there yet?’ treatment and we’d play I-Spy or these made-up games about spotting number plates, or certain colours of car. It felt like the journey went on for most of the day, but it was probably a couple of hours at most.
I don’t remember much more about the holiday other than that everything felt really cramped in the caravan. We’d all be climbing over one another whenever we had to move around.
When I got back to school, people asked about where I’d been on holiday. I told them about the caravan and everyone laughed.
…
Maybe not everyone, but that’s how it felt. These girls would be talking about how they’d been to France, or Italy. Someone had been to Switzerland and I didn’t even know where that was at the time. It sounded like a made-up country.
I suddenly realised that we were poor. Before that, I obviously knew that some kids had things that I didn’t – but I don’t think I ever understood that the big divider was poor kids versus rich kids.
It feels like something so distant now. Sometimes I wonder if they are false memories – but I know they’re not. That was my life at the beginning.
It must have only been a year on from that when everything changed. I’d not done anything, but I was suddenly one of the rich kids. It was all because of Dad. I didn’t understand what he’d done for a while, other than that it was something to do with buying houses.
Then we came to Galanikos for the first time.
The hotel was the first major building in the resort and we were one of the first visitors. The iron curtain had come down and flights were starting to get cheaper. The other rich kids at school were still talking about France or Italy – but now I had something on them. I had this exotic place, far away from anything any of us could imagine.
It felt like this island wasmyisland.
Mum and Dad came here every summer and so did I for a long time. I missed a few trips when I was in my late-teens and went away with my friends instead – but I was here for most of them.
… That all stopped nine years ago, when Alan went off that cliff. He and Dad were in business from back when they started putting their money together to buy run-down houses. Maybe twenty years? Something like that.
There was a big fall-out after that last trip and I never thought I’d see this place again.
I didn’t think I wanted to be on the island again – but then I walked out of the hotel on that morning after Dad had fell – and I was that little girl again.
Galanikos was suddenly this place of wonder once more.
I thought about going down to the village itself but wanted to save it as a treat. Instead, I walked around the side of the hotel out towards the cliffs. There’s an amazing view where you can stand near the edge and stare out across the ocean. There’s nothing in the way: no trees, no rocks, no other islands. It’s like the view goes on forever, with the blue of the ocean driving deep towards the horizon and then disappearing into the sky.
The sun rises on that side and, if you get up early enough, you can watch the night turning purple, orange and red before it fades to blue.
…
I say: ‘If you get up early enough’ – but the only times I’ve seen that is when I stayed up through the night. I was younger then…
Julius:I’ve watched the sun rise on that cliff – I think most tourists have. If not there, then you can see the sun set from the beach on the other side. It’s one of the top-ten things they list in the guidebook for people to experience. But once you’ve seen one sunrise, you’ve seen them all.
Emma:When I saw what was on the clifftop that morning, I almost laughed. There was a single traffic cone sitting close to the edge. That was how they’d marked the place where Dad had fallen. I thought about all the people who complain about health and safety culture in the UK – and what they’d make of it. Would even the solo cone be too much for them?
There was a man standing close to that cone with his back to me. I could see the smoke from his cigarette drifting away and assumed it was someone from the hotel who had snuck out for a smoke. It was only when I got across to the cliff edge that I realised I knew him.
I honestly think he was wearing the same black trousers from nine years before. They were the sort you’d wear to an office – but way too baggy on him. He had on this plain white shirt but had sweated through the sides and it was all so familiar. The same man wearing the same clothes – but nine years apart.
Jin turned to me, looked me up and down, and then spun back to the ocean. ‘Ms McGinley,’ he said. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
