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  The two Syrian boys had disappeared quickly. As I had suspected, they were attending lessons because they had to, although one of them had shown a good grasp of the language.

  The rest of us had strolled down to the promenade and I’d taken them to Maria’s Taverna. I knew very few people on the island as yet, and Maria, if not her sullen husband, Spiros, had become a friend.

  We’d sat outside to watch the sky slowly deepening and the sea, so dark it was navy blue, shimmering under a low rising moon. Maria had bustled out to take our order. She knew Cathy and me, of course. It was at the taverna that I’d met Cathy and she told me about the classes. ‘Anna, Cathy, it is so good to see you. Welcome to my taverna.’ She’d grinned at the two men accompanying us and gave me a wink. She knew I hadn’t spoken to a man other than for business reasons for weeks, and I knew she wouldn’t give me a break from now on.

  ‘Kalispera, Maria,’ said Leo, and he’d ordered local wine and some small plates of feta, stuffed vine leaves and olives for all of us. Mr ‘I’m in charge’. I wondered if that would annoy Alex. But he was fine about it, in fact he gave me a little smile as Leo ordered. I liked that he didn’t feel threatened by the American’s brashness.

  ‘So, Anna,’ Leo had said, pouring me a glass of red wine and blocking out the others, ‘what’s your story?’

  I hadn’t wanted to say that I had just escaped from a messy divorce to a difficult man, so I left that bit out and talked about my business.

  I didn’t get much chance to talk to Cathy or Alex for the next hour as Leo took centre stage that first night, charming us with tales of his life in America and his plans for a restaurant and casino business in Crete. He patted the top pocket of his shirt whenever somebody asked him about permissions and licences. Was he indicating that he had cash to bribe the officials? Blimey. I didn’t much fancy his chances if that was the plan.

  I drank wine and nibbled cheese and felt more at home than I had since I arrived. At last I’d started to meet people and make friends.

  I had no idea then how much that little group of people would change my life over the next few weeks.

  2

  Nikos Kokorakis stirred sugar into his breakfast coffee and gazed out across the plain towards the sea. Behind him, he could hear Delphine moving around in the bedroom, getting ready to go out again, no doubt. The balcony was cool in the early morning sun, and he liked it best this way, before the burning heat of summer came. He tapped the spoon against his teeth. The arrival of this English girl, Anna Georgiou, what did it mean? How could his mother have left her house to a stranger? It was upsetting, and took him straight back to the day forty years ago, when his family had split forever. Could Anna Georgiou be a Kokorakis? Theo’s daughter, perhaps? He’d gone to England. All his brother would have to have done was to change his name, and who could blame him for that? Theo’s wife was related to the old woman who lived next door to his mother. Had his mother kept such a secret from him? Had she been seeing Galena and Theo all along, and did they have a child that he knew nothing about?

  Delphine came out and placed a cool hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s too chilly out here for me, I don’t know how you stand it. I’m meeting a friend for coffee and going shopping in Chania. The spring collections will be in all the shops.’ He didn’t respond. She kissed the top of his greying head, sighed, and flopped down into the chair next to his. ‘What? What is it? You’ve been moping around for days.’

  He raised bloodshot eyes, the legacy of too many late nights and too much work, and gave her a sad smile. ‘It’s nothing, nothing,’ he said.

  She growled at him, ‘Just tell me. How bad can it be? Have you shot someone?’

  He gave another little smile. ‘I cannot…’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Niko, you are like a bear with a headache. It’s impossible for me, and for the staff. We can’t say anything right anymore. Please, just tell me. It will be okay, I promise. Share the burden. I am your wife after all.’

  Kokorakis let out a huge sigh. ‘I will tell you, but you won’t want to hear it. I will understand if…’ He stopped and cleared his throat.

  Delphine sat up straighter in her chair. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I have never told you about my brothers, Delphie.’ He took her hand and rubbed the palm with his thumb. ‘I will tell you now, if you will listen. It is time.’

  Delphine’s eyes widened. ‘You have brothers? But…’

  ‘Just listen. We were three sons of Andreas, not one, as I have always pretended. But my father, always a cold man as you know, wanted no trouble when it came time to take over the family business. So…’ He hesitated, face turned away.

  ‘It’s okay, Niko, you need to tell me,’ said his wife. ‘It will be good to get this out at last. It’s been burning you up.’

  He rubbed his hand across his eyes. ‘It’s hard to tell it though. I’m ashamed.’ He huffed out a sigh. ‘I was twenty-one, Theo was eighteen and Stephanos only sixteen. Father stood us in front of the old oak table and said I was to inherit everything, and the other two had to leave the island and go abroad, never to return, on pain of death for them and their families.’

  Delphine gasped. ‘He couldn’t do that, surely?’

  ‘He could. You could make that threat after the war, when everybody owned guns. It is traditional for the eldest son to inherit.’ He shrugged. ‘Delphie, there are so many bodies buried in these mountains that nobody has ever found, and anyway, we believed his threat. We were terrified of him. He drank and was vicious to our mother and hard on us. There was little love in the family from him, it was our mother who kept us together. He gave my brothers money to set up their new lives abroad and three days to get out.’ He looked up at his wife. ‘He took their family, their home, their friends and their mother away from them forever. It was so terrible, I have never been able to talk about it until now.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘Mother sat behind father, crying out “You’re breaking my heart, Andreas, breaking my heart” but he would not relent. To him it made perfect sense. There would be no messy family stuff to interrupt business. And the worst thing is, Delphie, I stood with that evil old brute, and let him destroy my family. That is the kind of man I am. It’s why I’m ashamed.’

  Delphine clasped a hand across her mouth and stared at her husband.

  Into the silence that followed, Nikos wiped his eyes with one meaty fist. ‘They cried, they yelled, but it made no difference. Theo went to England, Stephie to America. I have never heard from them since. My mother left that night, too, and went to live in the little house in the village next to her friend. She never spoke to my father or me again.’

  Delphine gripped her hands in her lap. ‘Niko, that’s awful, to have never heard from your brothers again. And your poor, poor mother. No wonder she left her home. I could never blame her for leaving your father, odious man, but I never knew about the rift in the family…’ Tentatively, she placed her hand on his knee and squeezed. ‘I’m glad you told me. It’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not okay, Delphie.’ He raised his voice, anguish spilling over into rushed words. ‘I should have said no to him. All three of us could have refused to do what he said and fought him. We could have killed him and buried him in the mountains. Or we could all have walked away, and left him with nobody.’ He gulped down air. ‘But I didn’t. I’m weak, and you know I am. We were so scared of him.’

  He wiped his eyes again and calmed himself with deep breaths. ‘Don’t do that shushing thing with your hands. Yes, I run a profitable business, and I have respect, but did I ever contact my brothers and make amends, invite them back to share in all this? No, I let it be. I got rich.’ Tears rolled down his face, unchecked this time. ‘And now, what does it mean that the girl is here? What does it mean, Delphie? Can I ask for forgiveness now?’

  Delphine found tissues in her pocket and passed them to her husband, but she didn’t speak. Instead, she looked out over the tops of the houses towards the sea, dark and endless blue.


  ‘See, you can’t even look at me, and why would you? I am cursed. You know that is true. That is why we could not have children of our own.’ He looked at her again. ‘It was never you, my darling girl, even though I pretended it was. It made me feel better to blame you. God cursed me for my cowardice, and soon enough he will take all this away from me, as I have no family to leave it to. Unless…’

  Delphine latched onto the tiny thread of hope. ‘Unless you can make the girl your heir? If she is your niece, you mean.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Let me find out a little more about her.’ Slowly, she rose and turned away. ‘I need to think about what you have said. I’ll be back later.’ She straightened her shoulders and tugged down the hem of her dress. ‘You should clean yourself up, Niko, you have a meeting at noon.’

  Delphine cancelled coffee with her friend, drove the car down to the seafront and sat outside Maria’s Taverna with the engine running. The spring rain pelted down. Nikos might have admitted his weakness to her, but to him, face was everything. There was no way he could be seen to show weakness in front of the people he employed. She’d known in her heart for years that he was infertile, not her, and still she’d stayed until it was too late. She’d been seduced by the life of a rich man’s wife, and had to pay the price. Everything had a price.

  Maybe, if this girl was his niece, then all the worry about succession would be answered, and she might get back a little of the Nikos she used to know. Maybe.

  She peered into the taverna, trying to see through the steamed-up windows. She had asked Spiros to text her next time the English girl went in and he had, a few minutes before. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see much. She growled in frustration. Well, she could either go in, or go away. If she went in it would cause huge amounts of gossip and chat – why would Delphine Kokorakis be in a cheap little taverna down at the beach? She couldn’t exactly travel anonymously here; everyone knew who she was.

  No, she thought, accelerating away, she needed to find a way to bump into Anna Georgiou. She had assumed the girl was related to Nikos’ mother’s side of the family because of the family name, but she could well be Theo’s daughter. There was no law to say he couldn’t change his name. Why would he want to keep it? His mother hadn’t. And that could mean that old Nyssa had kept in touch with her sons after all. Or at least with one of them. Interesting.

  Delphine was not a woman given to flights of fancy, but a small flutter in the pit of her stomach told her that this arrival could be something good. If Nikos faced up to his fears and met with his brothers, that would surely end a long and bitter separation, and this girl could be the catalyst for that change. In the meantime, she would enjoy having a husband who had lost his usual swagger and was being honest for the first time in thirty years. There may be other children too, perhaps born to the other brother, who could also inherit all that Nikos had worked for.

  The priest was next on her list for a visit; he was a Georgiou. She turned towards the centre of the town, and the church at its heart.

  Father Georgiou looked up in amazement as Delphine Kokorakis slipped into his small office behind the church and closed the door behind her. He pushed back his chair and stood, shaking the table and rocking the pile of papers he’d been studying. ‘Please, Mrs Kokorakis, take a seat. I never expected you to come to me; you know I will always come out to the house if you have a problem…’

  Delphine perched on a wooden chair that creaked even under her tiny weight. She stayed on the edge; ready to leap to her feet should it prove unsafe. ‘I have a question for you, Father,’ she said. ‘I wondered if you have had the time to speak to the young woman who has set up home in the house of my husband’s mother?’

  Georgiou’s face adopted a familiar puzzled frown and Delphine sighed. ‘Do you even know who I’m talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course, but she is English, and not a member of the church, so why would I go to see her?’

  ‘Because she is a Georgiou, Father. She’s Greek. She could be related to you, couldn’t she?’

  Georgiou pulled at his beard. ‘I see what you mean. But can I ask why she is interesting you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I wondered if she had family on the island, that is all. Do let me know if you go and see her, won’t you? I’d be keen to know if she has relatives here in Kissamos, and very grateful to the church.’ She gave him a tight smile, and pulled a fifty-euro note from her purse. ‘For the collection,’ she murmured, dropping it onto the desk. ‘I’ll see myself out. Thank you, Father.’

  Father Georgiou watched her slip out through the door and rubbed his beard. Of course he knew about Anna being on the island, but he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to tell the Kokorakises anything about her. He shifted his bulk out from behind the desk, pocketed the note, grabbed his hat and walking stick and went to see his mother.

  3

  I stretched out on the sunlounger in my walled back garden and listened to birds finding a mate, and cars driving up the road, and the chatter of two women as they carried home their shopping, and relaxed. A few weeks into my new life, and I was working physically harder than I ever had, but in my head all was calm for the first time in ages. In fact, I didn’t think I’d actually relaxed properly for years. My legs poked out from under my cropped jeans and, although I do take a tan really well, at this time of the year they were that peculiar shade of pale blue that afflicts most Brits in winter. Ah well, that would soon be remedied when the sun did its job.

  I scraped paint out from the underside of my fingernails with the tip of a screwdriver. The house was coming along beautifully. I’d kept the old dresser and highly-carved cupboard with all of Grandmother’s china and precious things in, and the scrubbed pine kitchen table scratched with many years’ worth of knife marks, but much of the other stuff, all her old bed linens and clothes had had to go. I’d put papers and other personal objects I’d found into an old wooden box that had always lived in the cupboard at the top of the stairs. I would go through it when I had time and find out more about my grandmother.

  I stopped what I was doing and stared off towards the trees. Sometimes the smallest thing can take me back to my life in my designer house with Will. It was the screwdriver. In the ten years we were together, I never saw him use a tool. He paid for everything to be done. Manual work was beneath him, apparently. Now, I was relishing getting my hands extremely dirty in my own little house.

  A loud banging on the front door brought me out of my reflections. I ran through the kitchen and living room to greet Mr Andreiou at the door.

  ‘At last, I thought you weren’t coming,’ I said.

  Mr Andreiou’s bushy brows rose and fell, in an imitation of sadness. He reached out and clipped his apprentice behind the ear. ‘Pah, late, always late. Sorry, Miss. We’re here now, so…’ He gestured towards the little staircase, and I stood back, swallowing my irritation. Getting a modern shower into the bathroom was my number one priority. It took forever to fill the ancient cast-iron bath, even though it was the most luxurious thing to sink into when a bath was needed. I led them upstairs, closed off the bedroom doors and stood back. The pair had sorted out the electrics downstairs, putting in a modern electric hob, washing machine and fridge. Their work was good. They were just late. Always.

  Once the demolition was finally underway, I took a glance around my beautiful, plain-white living room, with its dark oak furniture, comfy sofas, throws and bright cushions. It was perfect. I knew I could be happy here. But not just yet, I thought, as the hammering began right above my head. Time for a walk and a visit to the taverna for lunch.

  Kissamos Bay is over in the western corner of Crete. It’s a deep bay, with long arms on either side stretching out into the sea, protecting boats and sailors once they are inside its reach. At this time of the year, I had the beach of narrow, shingly sand almost to myself. I passed an elderly woman slapping a squid repeatedly onto a rock, rinsing it in seawater, then slapping it again until she deemed it tender enough to cook. S
he grinned at me toothlessly and waved as I shouted, ‘Kalimera!’

  Striding out, I spotted dark clouds moving in swiftly from the west over the White Mountains and remembered I didn’t have a coat with me. I gauged the distance to the taverna, realised I wouldn’t make it, and broke into a run anyway.

  Drenched and shivering, I staggered up the steps, shoved open the taverna door and slammed it behind me. The place was heaving; every window was steamed up and there was nowhere to sit. Market day. Maria waved me over to the bar, where she shoved her husband off a stool and sat me down.

  ‘Spiro, run upstairs and bring Anna the shawl on the back of the bedroom door.’

  Spiros gave her a look meant to pierce steel, but did as he was told.

  ‘Thanks, Spiros,’ I said, then corrected myself, ‘sorry, Spiro.’ I was going to have to get to grips with using colloquial language properly, and leaving the ‘s’ off men’s names when talking to them was only the start of a minefield of difference.

  Maria rubbed my cold arms with her warm hands. ‘You need to be ready for rain in the spring, Anna!’

  ‘I know. I used to live in Manchester – it rains all the time there. Should have known better.’

  Minutes later, wrapped in Maria’s wool shawl, hands warming around a mug of her mother’s recipe mountain tea, I felt human again. ‘Thank you so much, Maria, it’s so cosy, and I love this tea.’ I had come to enjoy the savoury flavour of sage and other herbs taken straight off the mountainside, dried and made into a herbal tea that was reputed to cure anything.

  ‘Good. Drink. It will warm you up.’ She gave me a sly look and hugged herself. ‘Of course, what you really need to warm you up is one of those very handsome men you brought here…’