Can you become someone completely different on holiday? Maybe, according to Amy Taylor’s new book

“It seemed to Emma that she and Julian transformed into the best versions of themselves when they were free to swim in the ocean.”

This is an edited extract from Amy Taylor’s new book, Ruins (Allen and Unwin), on sale Tuesday, July 1. Find a copy here.

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.

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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.

They laughed and leaned into each other as they wound their way back along the side of the road to the hotel. They passed the pool, where the moonlight was casting abstract silver shapes across the dark water. Early the next morning, the older guests would spread their towels over the pool chairs, cordoning them off for the whole day while they roasted their dark red skin in the sun, but for now, the space was quiet and peaceful. Julian took a seat on the edge of a chair, pulling Emma by the hand to sit with him. ‘Let’s stay for a moment,’ he said.

Emma knew what was coming: some form of sentimental, earnest soliloquy about how lucky they were, how they should cherish these moments. It was a habit of Julian’s that Emma found both endearing and exasperating. Sometimes, she wished to just enjoy the moment without acknowledging the grim reality that it would pass by and become a memory that she would long to return to later. It made her feel that without constant conscious appreciation, life was never truly lived, only anticipated and then remembered.

She found some irony in the way Julian wanted to retreat from the moment and view it objectively from a distance in the hope of getting closer to it. She understood that he desired these moments of conscious gratitude because he spent so much of his life yearning: yearning to finish his paper, yearning for an indifferent and distracted world to sit up and pay attention to his ideas, yearning for recognition.

Emma believed she inhabited the present more frequently than he did, and so thinking about the present this way – as a transient moment that never really existed before it became the past – made her feel like her whole life was slipping away. It made her chest begin to tighten, and her breath become shallow.

‘Look at this exciting life we live,’ Julian began, placing an arm around her shoulders. ‘We’re so lucky.’

Emma leaned her head against his shoulder, and they stared beyond the pool at the dark shapes of the hills in the distance and, further still, the stars in the sky above. ‘Yes, very lucky,’ she replied before letting the silence hang so that Julian could enjoy his moment.

When she felt she’d looked at her life for long enough and wished now to return to feeling it, she stood, reaching for his hands and pulling him up off the chair.

She began to dance against him coyly, copying the movements of the woman at the taverna. ‘I much prefer it when you do that.’ He laughed.She smiled at him, swaying her hips and trying to remember how it felt to watch. Then she turned around, pressing her back against his body. As she moved, his energy shifted to something more serious, more hungry. She lifted her arms above her head, slinging them around his neck, and he breathed into her hair.

She turned back around and they kissed. Emma used her body to guide him back to the pool chair and climbed on top of him. She removed his glasses, placing them carefully on the table next to them. The simple act of taking off Julian’s glasses had, through repetition over the years, become an aphrodisiac to them both, and every time she performed this ritual, she moved slowly and theatrically to draw out the effect.

They kissed again. Emma desperately wanted Julian to lift her dress and touch her, but he seemed to be awaiting a signal from her. This was a new pattern that had developed over the last couple of months. One that frustrated Emma. It seemed that Julian was overly conscious of some newly formed boundaries, places where he stopped and waited for permission to proceed. He was cautious with her, as if there was something broken within her and he was being careful not to damage her further. She lifted the hem of her dress up to her thighs, taking his hand and placing it on her.

With each movement of her body, Emma imagined what they would look like right now: Julian’s loafers still on, his pants now undone and bunched around his ankles. He untied her dress, which wrapped around her body and fastened on the left of her waist, so that it now hung open like a coat, exposing her chest and body to him.

It was the thought of what they looked like that led to another, the thought of what Julian would look like with another woman on top of him, and it was that image that sent a tremor of pleasure through Emma. She closed her eyes, imagining the woman from the taverna in her place. Her body moving with the same certainty and control she had on the dance floor. Emma moaned, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye.

She turned her head and glimpsed the skinny ankles and scuffed white sneakers of Nico as he quickly stepped out of the light and into the darkness at the top of the stairs.

‘Was that the pool boy?’ Julian asked. They stopped moving. ‘I think so.’

‘He saw us?’ ‘I think he did.’

‘Uh-oh.’ They laughed guiltily and looked at each other for a moment before laughing again. ‘Maybe we should go to our room,’ Julian said. Emma began to tie her dress back up.

Afterward, Emma lay in bed, her mind hovering in the realm just above sleep. There was an enjoyable, peaceful silence in between the sound of the wind passing through the olive trees by the room and waves cresting in the distance. Julian was breathing softly beside her, and though he was silent, she knew he was not yet entirely asleep.

Her body had surprised her this evening. She hadn’t felt that level of intense arousal in a long time; it recalled the visceral, pleading desire that had consumed her when she and Julian had let their urges – over the course of their first four dates – reach boiling point before they finally relented to them.

The genesis had been watching the woman in the taverna dancing with Julian, the inspiration which Emma had taken and fashioned into the idea of another woman being with Julian. Why? She wondered. Or at least, why now? And where did the limits lay? She imagined Julian with an older woman, then with a younger woman, then with a woman she knew – an ex-colleague. She flashed images across her mind: an endless stream of scenarios, women. Her body responded, the urge returning surprisingly quickly and intensely.

She reached her hand across the bed and found Julian again, imagining once more that it wasn’t her hand but another woman’s. Julian reacted immediately, crawling under the sheet and pressing his mouth against her wordlessly. When she cried out, she was imagining herself floating above their bed, hovering and watching.

Find more from Amy here.