One Summer in Santorini
SANDY BARKER
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Sandy Barker 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustration © Shutterstock
Sandy Barker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008354343
Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008354336
Version: 2019-05-28
For Ben, my very own someone
Table of Contents
I woke suddenly, and even though I was forty thousand feet in the air, I already felt jet-lagged. You know that unique mix of queasiness and exhaustion? That.
I hate long-haul flying. Wait, let me correct that, I hate long-haul flying in economy. Flying across the world when I’ve been upgraded to business class is awesome – I highly recommend it. But this wasn’t one of those times.
I checked my watch. I had slept for five hours – if we’re calling it ‘sleeping’ – more like ‘dozing upright’. Either way, I felt achy and groggy. I yawned a big, ugly yawn, the kind I usually reserved for solitary moments – one of the few benefits of sitting in a cabin full of people I’d never see again.
I stretched my neck from side to side and pushed my palms into my eye sockets. My eyes wanted to be anywhere else, and I didn’t blame them. I dug around in the seat pocket for my eye drops, tipped my head back, and irrigated my eyes with soothing coolness. Resting my head against the seat, I longed for a bed – any bed. I just wanted to lie flat so I could stretch out my stiff muscles. I certainly didn’t want to be cooped up with all those strangers, sitting in a ridiculously uncomfortable seat, breathing that stale, nasty air.
Yup, I’d definitely woken up on the wrong side of the plane.
Still, irritable was better than anxious. For weeks, I’d been fighting mini panic attacks about the trip, and that wasn’t like me. I’d travelled quite a lot and was more than capable of handling whatever catastrophe came my way. In fact, catastrophes had become such a regular part of my travels, I was starting to wonder what I’d done in a past life to piss off the travel gods.
One flight to Melbourne was cancelled outright. A flight out of Chile was delayed for so long I had to sleep on the airport floor. There was a hotel reservation in Florence that disappeared, and while I was arguing with the manager, my iPad was stolen from my bag. Not forgetting the time my whole suitcase somehow vanished between Sydney and Auckland. On the next trip, my new suitcase emerged a mangled mess on the baggage carousel – hello LA and, yes, fellow passengers, those are my knickers, thank you very much. And I barely recovered from a raging case of malaria in Peru. Okay, so it wasn’t actually malaria. It was salmonella, but it still knocked me on my bum for five days when I was supposed to be hiking the Inca Trail.
I looked out the window at the passing clouds. Maybe all the panic was because I hadn’t travelled in more than a year; I’d lost my mojo. Still, I should have been excited. After one night in London, I was flying to Santorini. Yes, the Santorini – of Greek Island fame.
Even though it was only for a night, I was really looking forward to London, as I was seeing my little sis and I’d missed her like crazy. Catherine – Cat – had moved to England years before. Actually, we’d moved there together, but she stayed and I moved back to Australia. We only saw each other in the