‘Yeah, right, after you’ve had a few on the nineteenth hole, you’ll forget I exist,’ she tells Nick, who places his hand on his heart and protests.
‘And I don’t keep tabs on how many times you go away you know, as long as it’s not every weekend.’ He winks.
‘As if I would.’ She reaches up and kisses him on the lips.
‘You never said you had been invited out with your work friends,’ I say as we head off into the airport.
‘Oh, I know, but it was aMagic Miketribute thing for a hen do. I’m past the age of watching gyrating men thrust their pelvis in your face.’ She laughs.
‘Did you ever enjoy that sort of thing?’
‘Not really,’ she admits. ‘I always thought it looked rather unhygienic, rubbing cream on their bodies and asking women to lick it off.’ She gives a little shudder.
I’m not surprised by her comment as this is a woman who used to take her own bottled water into restaurants, such was her fear of germs. ‘You never know, they might fill bottles with tap water and charge for it. I can’t take the chance, not with my delicate stomach,’ she would say in her defence.
Many a time we had to make stops so she could use a loo somewhere, the rest of our taxi passengers sighing inwardly – and not always inwardly – due to her anxious tummy, each time vowing she would never drink again.
She seems a lot better these days, but that was after several years of having every test known to man performed by her GP, who concluded she was a picture of health. One or two friends at the time even dared to suggest she was a bit of a hypochondriac.
‘It’s anxiety,’ I told her one evening when she had been to the loo twice before the starter had arrived in a restaurant. ‘It must be if there is not actually anything medically wrong with you.’
‘Do you think so?’ she asked, wiping down the table and the arms of her chair with an antibacterial wipe.
‘I do.’ I raised an eyebrow as she put her wipes away, the air suddenly filled with the vague scent of pine, which I hoped the waiter didn’t think was my perfume.
‘You think I’m a nutcase,’ she’d said, and I told her no, she just needed to do some more relaxation and stop thinking about it so much. Mind over matter. But, of course, it is never as simple as that. Thankfully she discovered swimming and enjoyed it so much that she magically was able to build up her stamina and was overjoyed when she could manage over sixty lengths without shitting herself in the pool. It was an epiphany. From that day on, she was – almost – cured.
‘I’m shattered. These early mornings are a thing of the past for me at the weekend,’ says Evie as we board the plane and settle into our seats. ‘I’m usually only climbing out of bed at ten thirty, about the same time as the girls.’ She laughs.
‘Better than getting up in the middle of the night with babies, hey?’
‘No kidding,’ she says, yawning. ‘And I don’t think the girls were too happy being dragged out of bed so early either, but they’re young, they’ll survive.’
I can’t ever imagine waking during the night for an infant, surviving on only a few hours’ sleep, but then can anybody? I guess when the time comes, you just get on with it and I like to think a good audiobook would get me through the night feeds. If that time ever comes for me.
An hour into the flight, Evie is dozing and a while later, it seems so have I, as the captain is soon making an announcement about making the descent into Corfu Airport.
‘Wow, that went quick, have I been asleep?’ asks Evie, before tying her long blonde-highlighted hair into a ponytail.
‘Asleep? The rest of the passengers had to put their headphones on to drown out the sound of your snoring.’ I shake my head.
‘You’re joking!’ She looks mortified.
‘Nope.’
She fishes her sunglasses from her bag and places them on, maybe in the hope no one will recognise her in the airport terminal, whispering and laughing at the snoring woman.
The handsome guy at the passport kiosk spends several seconds looking at me, and I resist the urge to give him a sultry look, or even a wink. Then I remember that my embarrassing passport photo bears no resemblance to my current look. These days I wear a long, layered cut and not a slightly out of control perm.
Stepping outside the airport building, the hot sun seems to work its way upwards, massaging my legs before landing on my face that I turn towards the sun, relishing the heat.
‘Oh, it’s good to be out of the UK, isn’t it?’ I sigh, putting all thoughts of the dreary weather back home out of my mind.
‘It is. I’m so sorry I never got the chance to paint that ceiling though. Not!’ Evie giggles as we go and collect the car, a nippy little Fiat Uno. We skirt through part of Corfu Town, taking in the hustle and bustle of traffic, and resolving to return to the Old Town and amble though its maze of streets, until we are out on the highway, that soon gives way to a coast road.
‘I can’t believe I’m here again.’ Evie fiddles with the radio and the sound of Greek music fills the air. She makes me giggle as she sings words she has no idea of the meaning of, with real feeling.
‘I’m thinking you should watch Greek TV if you want to learn the language,’ she advises me. ‘I once saw a travel programme where this guy in Syria said he learned American purely from watching movies.’
