‘Ella. Ella!’
The boat was rocking. Waves, huge waves, were crashing over the open deck and threatening to throw her overboard, pulling her exhausted body from side to side.
‘Ella, wake up!’
She sat up in bed, panicked and utterly disorientated. A fat, middle-aged man with the hairiest forearms Ella had ever seen had both his hands clamped on her shoulders. Her face was dripping in water, so cold it had her gasping for breath.
‘What … who are you?’ she wheezed at the gorilla, who smiled back at her broadly, revealing two rows of heavily yellowed, cigar smoker’s teeth.
‘I am Nikkos. And you are late!’ he beamed. ‘But that’s OK. You are a woman and this is Athens. Hari ka pousas gnorissa.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re pleased to meet me! You just threw water in my face!’
‘I couldn’t wake you,’ he shrugged apologetically. ‘You were snoring. Like this.’
Throwing his round head back so it lolled on his neck, Nikkos did an impression of Ella, opening his mouth wide and emitting the most appalling, pig-like grunting noises.
‘I’m sure I didn’t sound like that,’ said Ella, drying her face and trying to suppress a smile. There was something warm about him, an instantly endearing quality that made it hard to maintain one’s anger. ‘How did you get into my room?’
He raised an admonishing finger and made a ‘tsk’ sound with his tongue. ‘Very very easy. You didn’t double-lock. You must take more precautions, OK?’
Before Ella could say anything he was up and pacing, clapping his pudgy hands like a jovial drill sergeant. ‘Come, come, hurry up, we must be at the restaurant. Very quickly and right now. We have much to discuss.’
‘OK,’ said Ella, dropping the towel she still had wrapped around her from the shower and walking stark naked, and apparently quite unconcerned, into the small dressing room. ‘Just let me change. I’ll be one minute.’
Nikkos blushed to the roots of what was left of his hair as she bent down to pull some clean underwear out of her suitcase. Who was this crazy woman? The boss had warned him Ella Praeger could be ‘eccentric’ but he hadn’t expected this.
‘I will wait in the car. Outside,’ he called out, belatedly averting his eyes.
Dinner turned out to be at a bustling taverna right in the center of Athens’ tourist district at the foot of the Acropolis, in the shadow of the famous Parthenon. Although not more than two miles from the hotel, Nikkos drove them on such a circuitous route it took almost forty minutes to get there.
‘Are you worried about being followed?’ asked Ella, taking a seat at a corner table and perusing the delicious-looking Greek menu.
‘Not worried!’ Nikkos assured her. ‘Worrying is a waste of time. But prepared? Yes, always.’ Lighting up a fat cigar, in clear defiance of the ‘No Smoking’ signs posted on every wall, he flagged down the waiter and immediately started ordering for both of them. Gavros tiganitos, plates of tiny deep-fried fish, slabs of feta cheese smothered in olive oil, tomato and kalamata salad, pan-fried octopus in garlic, and dolmathes, vine leaves stuffed with savory rice and onions. Waving away Ella’s objections, he followed this up with a request for a large bottle of retsina and some bread and olives ‘to begin’.
‘Do you usually choose the food for your dinner companions?’ Ella asked, not angry but a little bemused. ‘Because I don’t think I can eat a fraction of that.’
‘Not with another man, no, no of course not,’ Nikkos explained hastily. ‘But with a woman, yes. Naturally, the man will choose the food that he pays for. This is the way in Greece.’
‘But what if the woman doesn’t like what the man chooses?’
‘You don’t like the food?’ He looked hurt.
‘I’m sure it will be delicious,’ said Ella. ‘It’s just, well, don’t you think your attitude is rather sexist? I mean, what if the woman pays?’
Nikkos threw back his head and laughed heartily at this idea. As he did so, an attractive middle-aged woman a few tables away suddenly turned and stared at him.
‘Oh dear.’ Nikkos blanched, hastily stubbing out his cigar as the woman made a beeline for their table, and began loudly and dramatically berating him, first in her native Italian and then in Greek. Even without her trusty Babbel tapes, Ella would probably have gotten the gist of the conversation from the woman’s furious expression and wildly gesticulating hands. As it was she distinctly heard the words pseftis (liar), apateonas (cheat) and choiros (pig), were all repeated several times. Nikkos defended himself as best he could from her verbal, and occasionally physical blows, cowering like a berated dog while the waiters arrived bearing plate after plate of the feast he’d just ordered, apparently oblivious to the drama. At last the woman burned herself out and, like a tornado, whirled back to her own table, where she continued to look daggers at her hapless former flame.
‘I apologize for that person’s very rude behavior,’ he mumbled to Ella, heaping both their plates with a mountain of food and pouring two brim-full glasses of the ice-cold wine, one of which he drained almost completely in a single fortifying gulp.
‘She did seem rather upset,’ Ella observed, spearing a polpi tentatively with her fork.
‘She’s Italian,’ Nikkos asserted, as if this explained everything. ‘I speak very good Italian,’ he added boastfully, his natural ebullience already returning, like the tide. ‘I am polyglot.’
Try as she might, Ella found it impossible to dislike this man. He seemed to her like an unreliable, greedy, generally badly behaved Santa Claus.
‘She’s upset because you cheated on her,’ sh