Read an extract from Ruins by Amy Taylor

Three lives, one summer and an affair that will change everything. Read an extract from Ruins by Amy Taylor and find out why Hollywood has already come calling.

Ruins by Amy Taylor hits bookstores in July but it is already making waves with Miramax snapping up the film rights with Vanessa Kirby and Sebastian Stan signed on to star.

A simmering, provocative novel about a couple whose summer affair with a young Greek woman threatens to crack their relationship wide open, Ruins delivers the drama of a modern Greek tragedy while exposing the tensions between privilege, power and desire.

Read on for an exclusive extract from Ruins by Amy Taylor.

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The passengers on the early evening flight from Athens to London Heathrow Airport were waiting impatiently. The plane, having landed half an hour before, was sitting idle on the tarmac while a delay of some kind kept the cabin doors closed.

The sudden flurry of activity brought on by the landing— the unclicking of seatbelts, the retrieval of phones and bags— had subsided, and most of the passengers had now settled into a reluctant stillness, puncturing it only with the occasional sigh. In the middle of the plane, a man stood in the aisle, stooping as he attempted to entertain his restless and exhausted toddler. An older woman stood behind him, smiling at the red-faced child while her husband contorted himself in an effort to rummage through his belongings. The space the older couple took up prevented the woman in the window seat of their row from also standing in the aisle to stretch her legs. She glared ahead with annoyance.

In the row behind her, a young couple remained seated, scrolling on their phones. For rows and rows behind them, more people fidgeted or sighed or stretched. The mood was melancholic. Their summer holidays were over and their optimistic, carefree attitudes had expired. The colour the sun had imparted on their faces— ham pink, mostly— now looked peculiar, like a fancy-dress costume worn the day after the party. Frowns tugged at the corners of their mouths at the thought of the responsibilities they’d temporarily escaped, which now awaited them when they unlocked the doors to their flats.

At this point, the joyful memories of their holiday were inaccessible. It would only be days later, when a colleague or friend inquired about their trip, that they would begin to

recall the holiday in rosy, selective vignettes; a form of voluntary repression that enabled them to silence the creeping, regretful notion that perhaps they should have chosen to spend their yearly summer holiday in Sardinia or Mallorca, instead of an island in Greece.

After forty minutes of waiting, an attendant’s voice crackled over the intercom to announce the names of two passengers and request they report to the officer who was waiting for them after they disembarked. The announcement sent a surge of re-energised murmurs through the cabin.

‘Did they just say a police officer is waiting for them?’

‘I think so.’

‘Well, you don’t hear that every day.’

‘Do you think they’re in trouble?’

‘Could be.’

‘Does sound like it, doesn’t it?’

‘I wonder why.’

Heads swivelled to locate which passengers the announcement concerned. Catching the scent of a good story, the older woman turned her attention away from the child and back to

her husband, who was patting his pants pocket to confirm the presence of their passports.

‘I wonder what happened,’ she said, unable to conceal the

excitement from her whisper.

‘Not a clue,’ he answered, now searching his jacket pocket.

‘But it sure sounds like their holiday didn’t go too well.’

********

ACT I

‘ Marvellous things happen to one in Greece—

marvellous good things which can happen to one

nowhere else on earth.’

Henry Miller,

The Colossus of Maroussi

CHAPTER ONE

Three months earlier

It was the sound of a child laughing; a sudden peal that pierced through the layers of sleep and delivered Emma back to the surface.

She peered into the darkness of the inside of her sun hat and then slowly lifted it from her face, allowing her eyes to adjust to the blast of white sunlight. Julian’s towel was empty next to her, his novel lying splayed and abandoned. She located him in the ocean directly ahead of her, where he floated serenely on his back.

The child squealed again, and Emma turned in the direction of the sound.

A family was setting themselves up on two of the deckchairs nearby. The mother had long blonde hair arranged over one shoulder, and she wore an elegant red one-piece bathing suit and a large pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses. A sleeping newborn was slung from a piece of beige fabric fastened around her torso. Emma watched the woman as she moved

in a business-like manner, unpacking a tote of toys, snacks and water bottles, before battling with the umbrella to adjust the shade covering the chairs. Meanwhile, the father walked their

giggling toddler across the sand, growling theatrically, before grabbing the child and inciting another shriek of laughter. The mother, now spreading towels over the two chairs, had taken her sunglasses off, and even with the distance, Emma could see the deep, dark rings of total exhaustion underneath her eyes.

‘It’s beautiful in there.’ Julian sighed, collecting his book before dropping onto his towel. Emma could feel the lingering cool of the water radiating off him the way heat would.

‘Are you going back in?’

She nodded. ‘I think I’ll have one more dip.’

He located his sunglasses before lying on his back and closing his eyes. The heat was already drying the salty water into chalky lines on his skin.

They’d arrived in Palaiokastritsa, on the island of Corfu, four days before, and already Julian’s brown hair had bleached itself under the sun, resembling the kind of sought-after balayage that would cost hundreds of pounds in a salon back in London. To add insult to injury, he’d also developed a deep, consistent tan, which made him look younger and healthier— carefree, even. Emma’s own pale skin did not take to the sun so willingly; it

was provoked and antagonised, and in response, it spread brown freckles across her chest, face and arms as if in defence, the numbers increasing daily. Her cheeks were perpetually florid. She’d taken to applying bright red lipstick when they went out for dinner in the hope that, by comparison, the colour of her cheeks would appear more like an innocent, peachy flush.

On their first day, as they followed the sloping streets down to Agia Triada beach, Emma realised she’d left her hat in the room. The price of that mistake was a burnt scalp that hurt whenever she brushed her hair. It had begun to peel too. Just that morning she’d extracted a disturbingly large scale of skin and held it in between two fingers, staring at the tiny pinpricks through which her hair had once grown.

‘Look at this,’ she’d said to Julian, who was reading an article on his phone in bed.

‘I just pulled this off my scalp.’ She walked over to him and held the piece of skin close to his face. He narrowed his eyes as he looked, and when the realisation dawned, he recoiled.

‘Oh, gross,’ he groaned. She laughed and threw it at him.

The mother called out to her husband in a language that sounded like German, and Emma saw Julian turn to look over at the family. She watched his lips unconsciously pull into a

small smile as the father hoisted the child over his shoulder and returned to the deckchairs with his squirming, giggling captive. Emma felt a small, hard rock of dread in her stomach,

like the pit of an apricot. The dread wasn’t new; Julian’s smile had just reminded her of its constant presence.

Before they discovered that Emma was pregnant, they’d had no desire to have children of their own, a mutual agreement they’d established early on. The matter was closed and never reopened for discussion, not even as they progressed into the first half of their thirties— Emma trailing two years behind Julian— and watched the couples around them introduce children to the world. Even then, they would smile and embrace these new members of their life, feeling a love for them that was immediate and intense, as if they were simply an extension of the people they loved already.

It was a shock then when the test was positive. Slowly, as they contemplated a new and different future, Emma watched Julian realise that, yes, actually, he did want this for himself.

He took charge, walking excitedly ahead into this new territory as Emma apprehensively followed behind, unable to feel the same certainty that they were going in the right direction.

Glancing back now at the family, she saw the woman was breastfeeding the newborn, grimacing as she did so while attempting to entertain the restless toddler who, at that inconvenient moment, was demanding to sit on her lap and was growing increasingly hostile against her redirections. Meanwhile, the father was looking at his phone. Emma stood and walked toward the water, not stopping when she reached it, nor when the cool water hit her knees, and then her thighs, and eventually her stomach. She dived and re-emerged, pushing her hair out of her face and allowing the shock to bring her firmly back

into her body. She mimicked Julian and floated on her back for a moment, feeling the strange sensations of muted sound and warm sunlight as the water covered her ears and the sun shone down on her face. She tried to remain firmly present in the corporeal sensations, but in her mind, she saw the hopeful yearning on Julian’s face as he watched the young family.

When, at eleven weeks, Emma had a miscarriage, she and Julian were left adjusting their image of the future back to its original vista. It was then that she realised Julian was struggling to return. Of course she could sympathise with him; it was as if their names had been called out, and they had been ushered into a new room, only to be informed of the mistake and told to return. She suspected that for him, the room they returned to, and had never previously been dissatisfied with, suddenly felt small and stifled, lacking in mystery and in a depth of feeling he’d only glimpsed and yet now missed.

From that moment, he understood that he wanted to have children, and he’d simply assumed that Emma felt the same. He seemed to take for granted that they would try again, mentioning it here and there and watching young families with an open longing. Unsure of how to delicately approach this discussion, Emma had passively allowed his belief to grow. Soon, she surprised herself by wondering if having a child with Julian

would actually be easier than ripping the root of his hope from

the ground.

Seeking some other thread of thought, she opened her eyes and began to tread water, tracing the shelf of land that ran along the left of the Agios Spiridon beach and curved around to shelter it. Where the cliffs met the water, a group of people were taking turns leaping from the edge. Their laughs and shouts were carried to her by the breeze. She watched as the small figures of their bodies dropped into the water, some controlled, others flailing, and all of them, she thought, landing far too close to the rocks below. She recalled the grim story of a boy she’d attended sixth form with who’d gone cliff jumping in Malta. On one descent, he failed to break the water’s surface tension with his feet, landing instead on his coccyx and shattering his spine. His vertebrae, so the story went, had been like a line of fast-moving traffic, and it was as if the car at the front of the line had slammed on the brakes.

Emma watched as one jumper seemed to almost tumble from the cliff, waving their arms and legs as they fell. When they connected with the water, a sharp slapping sound ricocheted around the bay. Emma gasped, unable to stomach the moments before they either did or didn’t surface, and turned away.

Later, when the sun crept lower in the sky, and the bass from the surrounding bars and restaurants began to hum, they packed up their things and followed the dusty path that traced the bends of the road back to the small family-run hotel where they were staying,

To get to their room, they first had to walk up a steep driveway, past the pool and the pool-side bar where Nico, the owner’s son, could often be seen watching something on his

phone when he wasn’t being ordered around by the elderly couples who spent all day camped on the pool chairs drinking beer and eating peanuts. They waved to him as they passed, receiving a smile in response.

‘Spiridon today? Or Triada?’ he called out, tapping his phone screen and removing his headphones. They’d asked him for advice on where to swim on the second day, and since then, he’d taken to inquiring about their beach experiences each day.

‘Spiridon,’ Julian replied.

‘Busy?’

‘It was pretty quiet, actually.’

'Good.’ He beamed. ‘Going out for dinner tonight?’

‘We’re going to that taverna you recommended.’

Nico’s phone vibrated in his hands, drawing away his attention.

Emma imagined some other Greek teenager sending Nico flirty messages and provocative photos from another island where they would be spending the summer holidays with their

own family.

‘Enjoy your dinner,’ he said without taking his eyes from his phone.

****

Back in their room, they showered together, taking turns holding the shower head up, which was attached to the wall by a rubber cable and had nowhere to be hung from.

After they changed, they returned once more to the driveway and made their way back to the gravel path, tracing through the olive groves toward the beach and restaurants. Emma followed behind Julian as they walked. He wore a white linen shirt and brown pants. His hair, still damp, was slicked back, and his face gleamed. It was now golden hour and the sun’s slow departure had relieved them of the day’s harsh and dry heat, allowing them to float comfortably through the thick air and to admire the soft, pastel colours the sun left in its wake. It seemed to Emma that she and Julian transformed into the best versions of themselves when they were free to swim in the ocean, siesta whenever they desired, and reach for each other’s bodies upon waking in the morning and sometimes again in the afternoon, after the sun had sapped any energy for anxiety and blunted their minds into contentment.

She wondered whether it was possible for them to exist like this permanently, or whether the charm of the circumstances only existed because of its novelty.

They found the taverna Nico had recommended: a lively, homely place with paper tablecloths and photos on the walls of smartly dressed people who Emma assumed owned the place. Their arms were over each other’s shoulders in the photos and they were standing in front of the bar at the back of the room.

It was a shinier, more vibrant restaurant than the version they sat in now, the passage of time having stripped the space of its youthful glamour but still left it warm and inviting. They

ordered octopus, swordfish and some sort of stuffed tomato dish paired with a jug of wine. The wine was called retsina and was infused with a form of pine resin. It was a pale, translucent yellow colour and often tasted as though it could probably be used to remove nail polish, but the ambience of the soft light reflected on shimmering water and the unassertive breeze that surrounded them made enough astringent mouthfuls surmountable

until they acclimatised.

The food arrived and Emma squeezed the juice from a lemon wedge over it all. Back in London, she would buy a lemon if a recipe demanded it, only to use a quarter of it before leaving the rest to shrivel in the fridge. She had never truly appreciated the sharp, acidic cut, but now, on the rare occasion a lemon wedge didn’t arrive on the plate, she missed it, each lemon-less mouthful playing out like a song stopped just before its chorus.

‘Alistair emailed to explain where the key is,’ Julian said, placing his glass back down on the table. The echo of a grimace caused by the wine was still present on his face. ‘He’s left it with the staff at the pharmacy near the apartment building.’

Alistair was an old friend of theirs. They were leaving Corfu the day after tomorrow and would be housesitting his apartment in Athens for three months while Julian worked on his research paper. Emma had met Alistair a few times when he’d come to stay on the couch of their London flat. He was a short and solid man with wispy, receding dark hair. When Emma thought of him, she remembered his habit of biting his thumbnail when he thought no one was looking or the gesture of him running a finger back and forth over his top lip as he

pondered what someone was saying around their dinner table.

He was currently writing a text on Gorgias, the ancient Greek sophist, and had been invited to spend a few months in Lentini, Sicily— the native home of the philosopher— to

work on it.

‘Is he excited about Sicily?’

Julian brought his eyebrows together and frowned thoughtfully.

‘He is. It will be good for his work, but he admitted to me that the move was partly motivated because Andre is back in Athens.’

‘Is he the married man Alistair was in love with?’ Emma asked.

‘Yes, well, arguably still in love with.’

Emma pictured Alistair in her mind, he was not a conventionally handsome man, but he had a sort of intellectual energy, a deepness of thought, that Emma could see someone

desiring. He was exactly the type of man who was only capable of desiring someone if he could not easily have them.

The waiters began to clear space close to the bar; those seated nearby were politely requested to stand and help move their tables out of the way. The music was turned up and some of the diners began to dance in the space that had been cleared.

The two waiters then brought trays covered with small glasses of ouzo around, dispensing them to everyone. Emma and Julian accepted theirs, smiling at each other before tipping the liquor back and wincing as the aniseed taste burned away the taste

of the wine.

‘No, no.’ The waiter returned to the table. ‘To drink slowly— to enjoy,’ he explained, pointing to their empty glasses.

‘Oh.’ They laughed. The waiter tutted and served them two more. This time, they sipped them.

More and more patrons were recruited to the floor. An experienced older couple twirled each other around with their eyes trained on each other. Some sort of colourful disco light was set up and the waiters continued to hand out small glasses of ouzo. Emma appreciated the business intelligence of the transformation. Rather than the patrons paying their bills and the restaurant closing its doors until tomorrow night, some would now stay, buying more and more drinks and doubling, even tripling their bill. And the whole scene would entice more people walking by on the street to join in the fun.

Julian looked at Emma with a smile on his face, ‘Want to dance?’

The second glass of ouzo encouraged her, and she observed the other tourist couples who were laughing as they attempted to join in the dancing. ‘Yes.’ She grinned.

They had no idea what they were doing, but they managed to fall into some sort of stumbling, swaying rhythm, accompanied by the occasional twirl and broken in parts as they laughed into each other’s ears.

After the song finished and another began, a woman approached them.

Emma had noticed the woman greeting people to the taverna earlier with the air of welcoming them into her home. Now she stood before them, holding her hand out to Julian and proposing a dance. Julian laughed, suddenly shy, and looked to Emma as if for permission or perhaps rescuing.

She nodded to him in encouragement, and after the woman dragged him away, she moved from the dance floor to stand by the bar and watch. The woman, possibly in her fifties, had a thick, strong-looking body. She took hold of Julian, and Emma laughed at the sight of him being led through the dance like an obligated teenager at a wedding.

He was blushing, leaning his body away from hers as she pulled him tighter against her. She appeared to know the song well, moving her body expertly in time. Emma almost

felt as if she should look away to give them some privacy, but she couldn’t. The woman’s face was calm; a knowing smile was held on her lips, and her eyes were locked on Julian’s.

Emma could envision the younger version of the woman, her long dark hair, her handsome features, a beautiful siren luring men to the dance floor, mesmerising them with the control she held over her body and the pleasure she derived from moving it. Rather than feeling jealous of the sight of Julian being flirted with, Emma felt envious of the connection the

woman had to her body, of the way she remained so present.

It seemed to give her a certain power.

The woman moved Julian’s hand, placing it on her lower back and drawing him closer still. It was then that Emma was surprised to find herself slightly aroused. She laughed to hide her embarrassment. If she were not standing in a restaurant filled with people, she felt she would have been free to use herself for the singular and selfish act of her own pleasure. She enjoyed the idea of being present yet invisible.

She liked the idea of not being the focus for once.

When the song ended, Julian disentangled himself, thanking the woman and making his way back to Emma.

‘Wow,’ he said, flustered. ‘What just happened?’

Emma laughed and kissed him, his lips still tasting of aniseed.

‘Let’s get the bill,’ she said and pulled him by the hand.

An extract from Ruins by Amy Taylor - available in all good bookstores on 1 July

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Ruins

by Amy Taylor

A simmering, provocative novel about a couple whose affair with a young Greek woman threatens to crack their relationship wide open.

FIND OUT MORE