PS Olive You. Lizzie Allen

like a rickety old shed turned out to be a fully equipped potter’s studio complete with wheel and kiln.

      Urian a potter. Who would have thought? I could picture us together in this room, his Patrick Swayze to my Demi Moore, our thighs straddling the wheel, our intertwined hands rising and falling gently across the expanding ball of clay. The Righteous Brothers would be playing softly in the background and he’d spin me off my feet, clenching rhythmically at my buttocks and nuzzling gently into my neck.

      ‘Ah ha, ahem hem.’ Theodora cleared her throat from the doorway.

      ‘You must really like pottering?’ she asked, suspiciously peering at the sweat beading on my top lip.

      I quickly withdrew my hand from the wheel where I’d been caressing its silky surface.

      ‘Erm, yes, yes, I absolutely adore pottery, in all its forms, and all the…creative arts.’

      My voice trailed off as I examined the rows of finished work lining the walls. Bowls, cups, vases. His style was extraordinary. Everything was glazed white, except the edges, which were serrated and ragged. The result was that all the vessels lining the shelves looked like the delicate shards of prehistoric hatched eggs. It was exquisitely worked, paper-thin to the touch.

      The studio walls were lined with a collage of photos. Family members and friends smiled out at Urian as he worked.

      One girl appeared more frequently than the others. A mischievous brown-eyed imp whose life story from flat-chested tomboy to arcane temptress was played out in a pictorial narrative across the walls, more telling than any verbal account could be. Disturbingly, the girl also featured in a strange little shrine on the windowsill – a statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by red candles. The statue’s open hands fell to her sides in supplication and seemed to point to photos of the girl, aged about eighteen, framed by rosary beads.

      It all seemed so intensely personal that I suddenly became aware of how I must look in Theodora’s eyes, snooping through all Urian’s things with voyeuristic fascination, indulging myself in that peculiar freedom to intrude that the act of house-hunting affords potential buyers. I’d looked in his fridge, poked through his bathroom cupboard, smelled his aftershave and even lain on his bed.

      The earlier transgressions I committed while Theodora was on the phone, but now that she was in the room watching me I felt like a right grubby old stalker. The only saving grace was that Urian wasn’t home to witness my shameful intrusion into his privacy.

      No sooner had I thought this when I heard the distinctive buzz of his motorbike coming over the hill in the distance.

      ‘Right, thank you Theodora, I think I’ve seen enough,’ I said, hastily pushing past her to the sunshine outside.

      ‘But you haf see the bitch,’ she said authoritatively.

      ‘Bitch?’

      ‘Beeeeeeeeech.’

      ‘No, that’s quite all right, thanks, although I’m sure it’s lovely.’

      I hurried through the glass doors leading into the sitting room where I’d left my bag. The distant buzz had already turned into a throaty roar and soon I could hear the bike idling to a standstill outside.

      ‘Fuck,’ I muttered as the contents of my bag clattered across the floor.

      Seconds later Urian stooped through the front door and stood over me. Without looking up I hurriedly crawled about the floor picking up eyeliner, hair clips and a stray tampon.

      ‘Yaso’ came his gravelly voice.

      ‘Yasus,’ I mumbled in return.

      Where the hell was Theodora? Alone in his house, I looked like some kind of deranged stalker. Not that crawling around through the dust balls on all fours was helping. It couldn’t get any worse!

      A pair of large feet in dusty mules appeared in my peripheral vision. Long and sinewy like the rest of him. Toes not too hairy. How could feet be so sexy? I wrenched my eyes away and made a hopeless pretence of peering under a dresser for a lost lipstick. The feet came closer until I was virtually bowing to them in supplication. This was getting embarrassing. Slowly I rose to full height until we were eye to eye. Well, eye to collarbone really – he was so bloody tall. A breathless sigh escaped my lips.

      We were standing about a foot apart. I could smell him. Musky sweat and pheromones with a hint of fabric conditioner. Up close he was even more gorgeous than I realised. His burning charcoal eyes were softer than I thought, more chocolate than volcanic rock. My friend Kate back home would have said they were too close (never trust a man with close eyes), but his full black eyebrows drew them upwards and outwards and gave him a permanently quizzical look, which I found charming.

      Straight cheekbones and nose.

      Strong jaw.

      Rounded velvet lips.

      Despite my blushing shame, my eyes caressed his olive skin, unable to pull away. He stared back at me with equal intensity although his emotions were unreadable. Was he angry to find me in his home? Did he know we were even coming?

      For once I felt relieved to hear Theodora’s enormous high heels clattering in from the patio door.

      ‘Urian!’ she shouted in her high-pitched voice, shattering the tension between us.

      She prattled away at him in Greek and he replied in monosyllabic grunts, eyeing me derisively every so often. In an effort to broker the deal, she soon reverted to her pidgin English.

      ‘Urian, this eeez Missus Fay. I tell you on phone. She like buy your house maybe’.

      He’s dark eyes fused onto my face, their expression broody and filled with emotion. A kind of hostile longing.

      After a while he sighed and said flatly: ‘Lemonade?’

      ‘Pardon,’ I blushed.

      ‘It is hot. Do you like drink lemonade?’

      ‘Yes, yes. Very good,’ replied Theodora, slapping her huge hands together. For good measure she turned to me and added: ‘Made in the home with Greek lemons and honey. Also Greek.’

      Urian went to the kitchen and returned with two tall cool glasses of smoky liquid.

      ‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating towards the sitting room.

      We obediently took our drinks and sat down amongst the treasure trove of possessions I’d just nosed my way through. Urian sat in front of us looking strained and uncomfortable, his big brown eyes meeting mine from time to time with an imploring look. Bizarrely he didn’t pour himself a drink. Just sat there watching us drink ours.

      Theodora drained her glass first and said: ‘Bravo, bravo. Verrrry verrry good.’

      I downed mine, shuddering at the brain freeze that followed, and then hastily added my own stuttered string of compliments lest I seemed rude.

      ‘Oh yes. Delightful. Citrusy. Um, fresh.’

      After that strange little ceremony was over, we were permitted to leave. Urian escorted us to the car and I shook hands clumsily before descending into the strawberry fog of the sauna-like vehicle. Theodora fired off a few sentences in Greek before revving the engine and scudding out across the rutted road with the same bolt-rattling haste we arrived in.

      In the rear-view mirror, the tall lonely shape of Urian shrank into the distance.

       -Chapter Five-

      Being in Urian’s house had a profound effect on me. Up until then my crush on him had been no more than an indulgent teenage fantasy to fill the time, but after I’d entered his personal sanctum, something about the way he treasured things, valued memories and people, made me fall in love with him amongst the polished bric-a-brac and tenderly weeded herb