Date Diares is a new Grazia series chronicling the anonymous adventures of those involved in the ever complicated and increasingly unbelievable world of modern dating. To submit your story, fill out the form below.
This week, Rochelle, a heterosexual, 33-year-old PR director based in Milton Keynes, tells all about the Summer she worked in Cyprus...
When you work on European party islands for as long as I did, you develop a false sense of security when meeting new people. There’s something about that holiday atmosphere that makes everywhere feel safe. That’s why when I met Ryan and he told he wanted to ‘take me home but to bring my passport with me’, I didn’t have any reservations.
I was working at a nightclub called Black and White in Ayia Napa at the time, promoting it on the door and then raving it up inside whenever I could. I was doing the latter when Ryan walked passed me on the dancefloor. ‘You’re alright you know’, he said. He was fit, so that’s all it took for me to go outside with him for a chat.
After a long, drunken conversation we ended up going for burgers together and stayed up until 7am talking. I’m the type of person that can talk to anyone about anything, but there was something in particular about Ryan that made me feel like I’d known him for years. Everything was easy, we had the same sense of humour and taste in music – we’d even grew up not far from each other in London (although, we had been ten years apart – I was 23 at the time and he was 34.)
When the sun was rising and it was time to call it a night (a morning?) he asked me what I was doing later. ‘I’ll probably be working this evening,’ I told him, but he had other plans for me. ‘I want to take you where I live, you’re going to need your passport though’.
Now, I know I know, this is probably the part where I should’ve run screaming. A random man ten years my senior telling me he wants to take me back to his home, a home that is potentially outside of the country? It sounds like the beginning of a Liam Neeson film.
It’s not like we used smartphones back then either. No safety tracking apps, no constant status updates – phones were for calling people and that was basically it.
But like I said, you’re in holiday mode when you work abroad. Everything feels safer, and life is all about having fun. I barely gave it a second thought – it would be an adventure, a bit of banter to tell my work mates about the next night. So, I agreed. But I had one cheeky request.
‘Do you have a washing machine?’ I asked him. He did. ‘I’ll come then, but I’m bringing my laundry.’ Finding a free washing machine as a holiday rep is like finding a pot of gold.
That afternoon, he picked me up for the date. I wasn’t nervous at all, it felt like meeting up with a friend. But as we started driving further out of Ayia Napa, away from the places I recognised, I did begin to question my judgement a bit. He hadn’t told me where he lived, and the further we drove the more I started to worry.
Then, we arrived at a border and he finally told me where we were going. ‘I’m taking you to the Turkish half of Cyprus’, he said. It turned out, he was half Greek Cypriot, half Turkish Cypriot and his family owned a house in a little town called Famagusta. His parents were pretty old, so he spent 9 months out of the year there looking after them there, the other three at their home in London.
Famagusta is one of those towns your average Joe would never know about. ‘Most people will never come here,’ Ryan said to me, ‘you have to know someone like me who can take you across the border.’
It was a world away from Ayia Napa. White sand beaches, clear blue water and abandoned city ruins everywhere. Almost no one spoke English, it was like this secluded little city that was just ours. We spent the day walking the ruins – after I’d put my washing on at his house of course – and he gave me a history of the town, took me to parts of the ruins you weren’t allowed to go and ended up on the beach. From the pictures I got, it looked like we were in the Caribbean.
That evening, we went into the town for food. Part of the ruins from an old castle had been converted into a beautiful little restaurant where we had dinner. Clearly, I wasn’t going to work that evening, so I stayed, met his friends, ate and drank all night. None of my friends or family knew where I was, I didn’t even know where I was, but I knew I wanted to stay here for as long as possible.
At the end of the night, we went back to his house and I stayed the night. In the morning, as he drove me back to Ayia Napa, I remember feeling like I’d been on a mini-holiday. There was not one part of the day that felt awkward or uncomfortable – if anything it felt like a dream.
Now, I look back 10 years on and think, ‘what the hell was I thinking leaving the country with a man I barely knew?’. But actually, we’ve kept in touch all of these years. That summer, we’d had a holiday romance and I ended up spending every few days in Famagusta with him. But I knew it wasn’t built to last. I was going home in a couple of months and I was way too young to enter into a long-distance relationship. Even if I had of wanted to, there was no way I was spending every year holiday repping in Ayia Napa for the rest of my life.
Despite being the perfect date – and it definitely was the most memorable of my life – it was the start of a friendship rather than a romance. But then again, it's a decade long friendship which is a pretty perfect outcome. Yes, maybe marriage or love or kids would be ideal, but considering how wrong it could’ve gone – I think I did pretty well.
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