by C. A. Larmer
Then she ended the call and strode swiftly towards a group of women who were chatting merrily at the pickup zone.
“Hello, ladies,” she said. “Want to do a little detective work?”
SARISI
As the boat approached Mikro to tie up for the second time that day, Nicholas could tell that Zoe had done a job on Millie. She had seemed so happy, so hopeful when they’d dropped her off, now she looked like one of Zoe’s monstrous portraits. Her cheeks were pale, her eyebrows wedged together, her arms wrapped tightly around her torso, her thick hair flying loosely about her face.
“Everything okay?” he asked as he secured the boat at the jetty and helped her jump across.
“Yep. Fine,” she mumbled, then edged her way to the mouldy seat just behind the skipper. There she turned her whole body away from the islet to face the sea.
Whatever had happened on the island, whatever Millie heard, it was not what she wanted to hear, that much was obvious, and Nicholas felt like leaping back onto the jetty and chasing the old witch down. Demanding she take it back, whatever it was she’d said or done.
But the truth was he blamed himself. He should have warned Millie about Zoe. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned the crazy coot in the first place. Why did he bring her here? He’d heard so many stories about the so-called witch of Mikro as Kostas jokingly dubbed her. But he didn’t believe in that nonsense. Until now.
The Aussie woman looked like she was under some kind of nasty spell, and it was clear that whatever she had heard about her friend Agnetha, it wasn’t good either. She looked miserable and he gave her some space, first helping Giannis get the boat away, then settling at the port side this time, legs dangling over the edge. He didn’t bother to fish now, simply watched the wake below his feet, now dark and frothy.
The weather had turned and the journey back was even slower and rockier, the wind now howling, making conversation virtually impossible. It wasn’t until they’d cleared Coso Point that the wind dropped back and he decided it was now or never. He clambered to his feet and shuffled up the deck towards Millie, who gave him a reassuring smile as he approached.
He took it as a welcome sign and said, “Didn’t go so well, huh?”
Her smile deflated, and for a moment he thought he’d overstepped, but then she said softly, the wind nearly swallowing the words away, “Agnetha’s dead. I should’ve come earlier. My bad.”
She gave him a chin-up grin, but he wasn’t buying it. Millie looked crushed. This Agnetha must have been a very important person once, a very dear friend.
“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about Zoe,” he said. “You can’t take anything she says seriously. She’s put noses out of joint all over Sarisi. That’s why she hides out here. Even she knows we can only handle her in small doses.”
“Oh Zoe’s fine.” She tried to smile. “Let’s talk about something else!” She tried again, this one more convincing. “So, how long have you been here then? On Sarisi?”
“Two years, give or take.”
“If you don’t like fish, and you’ve got such a big family back in Melbourne, why do you live so far away?”
“Well, there’s Theo.”
“Theo?”
His eyes lit up. “One very mischievous teenage boy.” He chuckled. “Bit of an oddball, but that’s what I like about him. He dances to his own beat, that one, could care less about ‘fitting in’. Whip smart, too, and can pop a soccer ball into a net from midhalf without even trying.”
Millie knew nothing about soccer, but his tone told her everything. “He sounds terrific.”
“Ooh he can be a nightmare, too, when he sets his mind to it. But yeah, he’s a good kid.”
“And his mum? Is she…” Her voice was swallowed up by the wind, and he misunderstood the question.
“Effie? I wouldn’t call her good. Cranky’s more apt.”
“Effie?” She was doing some mental backtracking.
“Yeah, Theo’s mum.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise you were together. Oh, right.”
Millie stopped and blushed deeply, and he watched her confused for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“No! Effie and me, we’re not—” He laughed some more. “She’s my cousin. Jesus don’t wish her upon me!” Then he quickly added, “Theo’s not my son if that’s what you thought.”
Millie’s shoulders dropped as the penny dropped along with it. “Sorry, it’s just the way you spoke about him, I thought…”
“Well, we’re close. Real close in fact. His old man has never really been on the scene, and now that Theo’s getting older, Effie wanted a male role model about. So she dragged me out from Melbourne to help.”
Like it took any convincing. He couldn’t get on the plane fast enough. Had first met Theo as a toddler on a brief holiday to Sarisi and been smitten from the start.
“And have you?” she asked. “Helped?”
His eyes lost a little of their sparkle. “Theo’s currently at school on the mainland, stays with his yaya in Athens most of the time, so what does that tell you?” He forced himself to smile. “What about you? Any kids?” He was too scared to ask about a husband and wasn’t sure why.
Millie hesitated for a moment before saying, “Just one. A boy, a beautiful, beautiful boy.”
“Really?” He hadn’t been expecting that. “Is he gonna join you out—?”
“Not sure yet,” she said, cutting him off. “I want to hear more about Theo. He sounds pretty cool.” She had memories of another cool teenager, a young woman with a wild mop of black curls and a mischievous wink, a woman whose very nature had helped her heal. “How often do you get to see him now?”
“He’s back weekends. Effie grants me that at least.”
“So if Theo is now away at school, will you still hang around? Or will you go back to Australia?”
He shrugged and turned his eyes out to sea. His mum wanted him back desperately. So did his five sisters, imploring him through regular phone calls, Facebook messages and WhatsApp, which were becoming increasingly urgent, increasingly annoying.
His duty was with them, they told him. He was supposed to be their male role model, but he’d never felt that. For starters, they were all married; there were plenty of males about. And it wasn’t a role model they were after, if they were being honest. They wanted their beloved Bubba back. Used to dress him up in dolls’ clothes when he was little, fight over who was going to sing him to sleep. They loved him deeply and he loved them just as much, but it was not enough and too much all at the same time. Both suffocating and unsatisfying.
When Bubba hit forty, it came to a head. He felt like a fraud, like he was still playing the role of the baby brother and not living his own life, an adult life. The problem was he hadn’t worked out what his own life should be. He was all over the place, floating on the wind, could stick at nothing and no one.
Until Sarisi. Until Theo.
“You’re really fond of him aren’t you?”
She was reading his mind, and he nodded but knew it was much worse than that.
He loved him like his own.
“You know how it is?” he said flippantly, and she blushed and turned away.
Not exactly, she might have said, but she wasn’t yet ready to do as Zoe had suggested and face the beautiful, brutal truth.
By the time they returned to Sarisi, Millie was exhausted. She thanked the two men and headed straight back to the castle. She needed a rest. A “nanna nap” as her mother would say.
Kostas was at his post at the front desk and looked up surprised when she entered, like she had been a mirage, a figment of his imagination. She pointed upwards and he nodded.
Once upstairs she made her way straight to bed, slipping off her shoes and settling under the covers. She wanted to sleep, to forget what Zoe had said, but the brutal reality was hitting her now and she tossed and turned and could not doze off.
Agnetha was dead.
The other sisters had dispersed.
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How was she going to find him now? How would she ever get some answers?
She thought of Nico then and felt her heart lighten. Another man on a boat but this one a very different man, a very different journey. Then she remembered what he’d said about nuns and she burst out laughing. The sound echoed across the walls and down the stone staircase towards Kostas, who looked up from his account-keeping with a start.
“KKK indeed!” she said, twisting under the sheets. “What a cheeky bugger!”
Agnetha would be horrified to be compared to that lynch mob, was the antithesis in fact, but still, it made Millie chuckle. The truth was she had been a little terrified of the nuns in those early days.
“Up, up!” Agnetha had snapped one day, her patience waning with every fading bruise. “We can cry and we can wallow, but that will get us precisely nowhere except wet and friendless.”
She spoke perfect English for a local, as did all her flock, another seven sisters who must have all had names and personalities of their own, but for the life of her, Millie couldn’t remember any of them. They all seemed like one universe orbiting around Sister Agnetha.
But young Millie was feeling morose that day. She was scared of the old lady, she remembered that clearly, but she was also still hurting, still bitter and angry, and those were the stronger emotions. She wanted to wallow, couldn’t care less about making friends. Friends had got her exactly nowhere to this point.
Agnetha was persistent.
“Come on, Miss Australia, you have to earn your keep like the rest of us.” She shoved a bristly scrubbing brush in Millie’s hands. “You can start at the top of the stairwell and work your way down.”
Millie stared at her, scowling. Surely she was too battered, too traumatised for idle housework? Then she noticed the girl from the next bed, the one with the magnificent curls and the mischievous smile. She was standing at the end of the dormitory, straw broom in hand, watching her.
She had been in an even worse state when she came in, sobbing into her pillow day and night, but was now working like a Trojan.
The girl caught her eye and gave her a wink.
“Come on, Effie,” Agnetha said. “Let’s get this lazy bones up!”
The girl giggled and dropped the broom, then skipped across the room and grabbed one of Millie’s long, bony arms while Agnetha took hold of the other, and together they pulled her up.
And through that one simple gesture, the healing had begun.
EVE
As she raced up the marble stairs of the ornate art gallery, leaving lower-heeled women struggling in her wake, Monty thanked the Lord for Fleur and her bottomless fashion cupboard. After a momentary panic attack—goodness she looked a mess!—the fashion editor stepped in and helped her select just the right outfit for the last-minute event, a black, body-hugging dress with a high neckline and a plunging back, high-ankle pumps, and a strappy silver handbag. It was sexy yet classy, the two things she remembered most about Angus Tower.
Fleur had also helped her repair her face and swished her unwashed hair into a knot at the top of her head that looked cool but carefree—more Angus traits—and the exact opposite of how she felt as she teetered her way towards the front desk where a beaming PR girl and a set of name tags beckoned.
“Welcome to Tower Global Solutions! Name and title?”
“Monty Brennan, Eve magazine.”
The woman searched the tags, frowning, so Monty added, “I’m the art director, standing in for the editor, Amelia Malone.”
“Oh. Right. Great.” The woman’s chipper tone barely masked her disappointment.
Monty knew how these things worked. It was always better to get the top dog along to your publicity events, not a lowly staffer, even if you were the top dog’s BFF. But no PR girl worth her weight in gift bags would ever let on. She reached for a blank tag and scribbled Monty’s name down, then handed it across.
“There’re drinks and nibbles inside, Monty. Speeches in twenty.”
Monty thanked her and made her way in. She recognised lots of faces, mostly from their editor’s letters or other shindigs she’d accompanied Amelia to, some she knew well enough to stop and air-kiss, but she didn’t stop for long.
She was on a mission.
It wasn’t until Monty had wrestled her way to the front of the makeshift bar and was waiting for the harried barmen to notice her that she spotted him in the middle of the crowd. Monty’s breath caught in her throat. Her stomach clenched, she felt a blush creep up her neck and wished now that she wasn’t revealing so much flesh.
Angus Tower. The Sydney business student they had met in Rome.
The one who had fallen for Amelia.
The one she had secretly adored.
He was standing in a gaggle of girls, women really, but the way they hung on to his every word, eyelids batting, glossy lips parted, reminded her of herself many moons ago. He still looked amazing, debonair now with his slicked-back hair and exquisitely tailored suit. Sure, the good life had caught up with him a little and he was carrying a few extra kilos, but the aura of awe still hung around him, helped considerably by the giggling girls.
Angus glanced up and towards her then, and before Monty could look away he had caught her eye and frowned for a second, as if trying to place her, then turned back to the women around him and continued talking.
She didn’t know whether to be relieved he hadn’t recognised her or offended.
“What can I get you?” a barman asked, returning her attention to the bar.
“A wine thanks.”
He looked at her deadpan. “Shiraz? Semillon? Sparkling wine? Prosecco—”
“Prosecco, thanks.” As he reached for a champagne glass, Monty wondered whether it would be a little lush-like to ask for two.
She needed a few drinks tonight and not just to face her past. It was the future she was struggling to get her head around, one where she was no longer working beside the indomitable Amelia Malone. If she was honest, there was a sliver of relief in the thought, but her sense of outrage was clouding that vibe. All she felt was an intense anger at Amelia, a deep sense of betrayal. And a feeling, too, that she had somehow brought it upon herself, if only she could work out what the hell she’d done.
None of it made an ounce of sense, not really, she thought as she was handed her glass. Not Amelia’s disappearance, not Monty’s posting to another magazine, not the simple, strange fact that it had all happened without a hint. Not so much as a whisper to her boss or parents or, most cutting of all, her best friend. Because wasn’t that what they were? If you stripped away everything else—the job, the past—they were each other’s rock. And now Amelia had dislodged herself, flung Monty to the highest bidder and then skipped away like a pebble across the bay. Just like that infamous ferry ride. Except Monty had been given no warning this time. No chance to try to grab the pebble back.
“Monty Brennan, well, well, well.”
The art director took a deep breath when she heard the familiar voice, the one that could still make her stomach flutter, and slowly turned to face him.
“Hello Angus,” she managed.
He leaned in and kissed her on both cheeks. He smelled of something subtle and expensive, still had that certain something she could never quite articulate. Just being in his radius was electrifying, even now, after all these years, even with the heavier jowl and the slightly thinning hair.
“God, how long has it been?” He had stepped back and was running his eyes over her, his smile widening.
She smiled back. Thirteen long and lonely years. “Ages!” she replied.
He stared at her then, smiling, clearly flirting, and she rushed to fill the silence, rushed to distract him from the blush that was creeping along her cheeks and ruining her makeup.
“So,” she said, glancing around, “you made your millions then.”
His smile turned into a look of bemusement.
“You always said you’d make your first million by the age of t
wenty-five.”
“I did?” He stared at her for a moment longer, then belly laughed. “Christ I was a bit of an arrogant tosser, wasn’t I?”
She laughed too, enjoying the release. “I think we were all a bit cocky back then.”
“No, no.” He was shaking a finger now. “Not you, Monty Brennan. You were always a little shy, a little behind Amelia’s enormous shadow.”
He laughed again, oblivious to the dagger he’d just stuck in her heart. She didn’t remember it that way.
“So where is she?” he said, looking about.
“Amelia? Oh, she’s, well, she’s having some time off. On holidays.”
Lizzie had sent her a simple text as she rode the cab to the event: Not a word about A. She is just on “holidays.” And for a moment Monty had felt a rush of relief. Amelia must have called and explained her absence to Gerry. Then she slumped as she noticed the inverted commas. She might not be an editor but she knew what they meant. It was a PR exercise for them, a cover-up.
“Holiday? That doesn’t sound like Amelia—from what I’ve heard.”
“Well…”
He tilted his head to one side. “Come on, ’fess up.”
Her eyes narrowed. Oh shit, the news was out.
“It was something I said, wasn’t it? Was I too frank last time?”
She stopped, smiled, stammered, “Sorry?”
“I knew I’d offended her. Please tell Millie I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intention. We’ll blame it on that last martini, which she talked me into, by the way.”
“Oh.” Monty’s smile was waning. “I didn’t realise you guys were still in touch.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, although I was hoping we could rekindle something, that’s the reason for the invite.” He paused, sensing her confusion. “She didn’t tell you? That’s how this all came about. We ran into each other at the new iPhone launch about ten days ago. I don’t usually attend that crap, but they’re too big to ignore.”