by C. A. Larmer
SARISI
Millie spotted Nicholas striding through the courtyard of the Casa Delfino, apron around his waist, and felt a stab of disappointment. If Nico was back at his post, waiting tables tonight, that meant Effie must still be in Athens.
She tried to find her smile as she approached. She liked Nico more than she cared to admit, but she had bigger fish to fry. Fortunately, Nico was in a world of his own and didn’t notice her close in or the way her eyes widened as he yanked the apron off, dumped it in a flower bed, and swept out of the courtyard and away.
“Nico!” she called out, but he had his head down and didn’t hear, so she strapped her bag tight across her chest and chased after him.
It wasn’t until he had reached the far end of the esplanade, the southern end of the beach where the fishing boats bobbed about, that she was able to catch up.
“Hey, Nico! Wait up!” she yelled this time, almost out of breath.
He swung around and stopped, looking surprised to see her. Hesitated for a moment, then started back towards her.
“Hey, Millie,” he called out.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. No. Not really.”
She smiled. “So is that a yes or a no?”
Nicholas did not smile back. “Bloody Effie!” he said and she nodded.
“Still in Athens?”
“What? No, she’s back.”
“She’s back?”
“Yes, but she hasn’t brought Theo with her. I could kill her!”
Millie could tell he wasn’t joking, was barely holding his anger in check.
“She’s left him in bloody Athens for the weekend, can you believe it?”
“He usually returns on weekends?”
“Yes! But she’s just been over there, says she’s already caught up with him so what’s the point of dragging him home? Like what am I? Chopped liver?”
“Um…”
“Don’t I deserve to see Theo? Didn’t I give up my whole life for that kid? She was so worried about him. Said he had few friends, no father figure, so I moved from the other side of the world, but she’s forgotten all that now! Why else does she think I’m here? For the fishing? To work like a galley slave in her stupid bloody restaurant?”
“No, I’m sure, she—”
“She is a selfish cow is what she is. She doesn’t need me anymore. Theo’s happy at school, so my needs… pft!”
“He’s a teenager, Nico. Maybe he wants to hang in the city for the weekend?” Millie said trying to draw him down to a nearby bench seat, but he wasn’t having it, was striding backwards and forwards now, gesticulating with his hands, his temper growing. “Maybe he had some plans over there?”
“We had plans, Theo and me! We were going to watch a game this weekend, with Kos, it was all booked in, a boys’ weekend. She’s just jealous because she wasn’t invited! She’s jealous because he loves me and she can’t handle sharing him!”
“That can’t be true,” Millie said. “She asked you to come here, didn’t she? She obviously wanted you to have some input.”
“Then why leave him in Athens? I’m furious.”
Millie could see that. “Listen, why don’t you come back with me and we’ll get something to eat, grab a bottle of wine, maybe drink it on the beach?”
“Nope, sorry. I-I need to get home. I’m too bloody angry.”
“Fair enough. If you change your mind or you just need to talk, you know where to find me.”
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered, turning away.
As she watched him go, Millie felt a strong urge to follow, to somehow ease this man’s pain, but she had to shake the urge away and focus on her mission, the reason she was on the island in the first place.
She swivelled around and turned back towards the Delfy.
***
The Greek woman had barely changed. Sure, she was a good deal heavier, but her legs were still impossibly long, her hair still thick and unwieldy, although shorter now, like a curly black helmet on the top of her head, and as she barked instructions to someone at the door to the kitchen, Millie could see she still had the fire in her belly, the bossiness in her manner.
She waited a beat, then said, “G’day, Effie.”
Effie’s back stiffened for a moment, and Millie thought she must have imagined it as the Greek turned to face her with a wide, warm smile.
“Oh my God! Miss Australia!” she said, striding the two paces to draw her into an embrace. “I thought I had missed you! I was so worried!”
Millie smiled and hugged her back. She wanted to believe that, she really did.
There were no words for a few minutes, just a long, trembling cuddle, then Effie said, “Come, sit! Just… just give me one minute,” and she strode back to the kitchen.
Millie wondered whether she was going to run away again but scoffed at herself and selected a seat by the window. Surely she was just being paranoid.
After what seemed like ages, Millie’s paranoia now setting in, Effie did return, this time with a bottle of ouzo, two shot glasses and a bowl of olives and dolmades. She dumped them on the table, then scraped a chair back and sat across from the Australian.
“You look good,” she said, pouring them both a shot.
“So do you.”
“Nah, I’m fat girl now! Stealing too much food from the kitchen.”
Millie smiled. “Well, it suits you.”
Effie held her glass up and said, “Yamas!” then waited until they had both drunk before pouring them another. She laughed. “Remember when Aggy caught us in the chapel? With Father Karpathakis’s wine?”
Millie laughed too. “God, she was so angry! At the time I thought she was a party pooper, but bloody hell, Effie, we were pregnant! No wonder she was cranky! We shouldn’t have been drinking!”
Effie’s smile deflated and she stared at her glass. “I didn’t think you were ever coming back. You said you would never return.”
“And I wasn’t going to. But something happened. I needed to come.” Millie shook the dark memory away. “Anyway, how have you been?”
“Me? Good! Never better.”
“And your boy?”
Effie shrugged. “He is at school. In Athens.”
“So I hear. Getting a good education, that’s great.”
She shrugged again, helped herself to an olive.
“I remember when I first met you Effie, you were pregnant with him. You were so defiant, so proud. So…” She smiled sadly. “Well, so different to me. Did you ever go back? To Paros? To Theo’s dad?”
“No.” She reached for her glass and poured them another shot, her lips wedged downwards as she did so. “He was no good. Bad man. I stayed here, worked with Aggy for a bit, then I took over the Delfy.”
“I know,” Millie said as she glanced around the room. “You’ve done so well. The place looks amazing. I remember it used to be a bit of a dive.”
“Thank you.” She held her glass up and said, “Yamas!”
They drank again and then Millie said, “Don’t you miss him?”
Effie wiped her mouth. “Who?”
“Your son, Theo. Athens seems so far away.”
“It’s only a ferry ride.” She dropped her glass on the table and got up. “I must get back. Dinner rush starts soon.”
Millie took a deep breath.
It was time. Hell, it was long overdue.
She called out: “I need to see him, Effie.”
The woman was midway to the kitchen and stopped in her tracks. She did not look back. “See who?”
Millie smiled. “You know who I’m talking about. I need to know where he is. You need to tell me.”
Effie swung around, but this time there was no smile. “Why? Why you need to do this?”
“I just… I just need it, Effie.”
“It is bullshit!” She strode back and leaned down towards Millie’s startled face. “You think seeing him will help? How it help? It can’t stop what happened. It c
an’t make it all good for you.”
“No, but it might help me get some closure; it might help me move on.”
Effie stared at her for a long while, then straightened up, her voice lighter, almost a whisper. “Don’t do this, Millie. It will only break your heart.”
“My heart’s already broken, Effie, you know that.”
She nudged her lips downward and collected the glassware from the table. “Anyway,” she said, almost flippantly, “I don’t know where he is.”
“But…”
“Only Aggie knows, and she is dead now, so you waste your time. You need to go home.”
“I’m not going anywhere until—”
Effie slammed the ouzo bottle back down. “Even if I did know, I would not tell you! It will not help!” Millie looked at her aghast. “It is for your own good, Millie. You don’t understand this now, but it is good for everybody. Just leave it alone!” Her voice softened again. “Please. Everything has settled now. You will only hurt him. You will only hurt yourself.”
Then she left the bottle and fled into the kitchen, leaving Millie gasping in her wake. That had not gone at all as she had expected. She couldn’t understand Effie’s aggression, her reticence.
She was once so brave and strong. Now she was acting like a jittery child, and it didn’t make an ounce of sense.
***
Nicholas stood on the other side of the restaurant door, perplexed.
What the hell was that about?
Having circled back soon after running into Millie, wanting to apologise and take her up on her drink offer, he found her deep in conversation with his cousin, and it all sounded very obscure. Wasn’t she here to find some nuns? If so, who was this bloke she was suddenly asking about, and what if anything did he have to do with Effie?
More tellingly, why did Effie sound so terrified?
He heard a chair scrape across the floor, so he ducked back through the courtyard and down the side of the taverna to the kitchen.
Perhaps it was time to confront his cousin.
EVE
Alex was left floating in the wind.
As the deputy editor made her way home from the Eve office that Saturday, she couldn’t help hearing Monty’s words like a grand denouement at the end of a long and exhausting mystery.
“Brutally assaulted.”
“Nearly died.”
“In a coma for weeks.”
It wasn’t the explanation she was expecting. It wasn’t the answer she wanted. Now everything was out of balance. She didn’t know how to steady the ship or where to go from here. Her loathing of the editor had sustained Alex for so long, had driven her on, despite herself, despite what her husband said. Now… Well, how could she continue to loathe a woman who had been treated so badly? A woman she was now supposed to sympathise with? And how could she forgive herself for all she had thought and said about the editor?
How could she forgive her husband?
When she reached her house, Tony’s white van was back in its usual spot. She gave it a wide berth, like it was a loaded weapon, then strode to the front door, took a few steadying breaths, and let herself in.
“Hey babe!” Tony called out, the TV blaring from the living room. “Kids are asleep, there’s leftovers in the oven.”
She stepped across to him and tried to smile, tried to thank him but the only words she could think to say were, “How could you?”
He glanced from the TV screen to her, eyes wide.
“What?”
“It was you, wasn’t it? At Amelia’s place last Saturday morning. I wondered what took you so long.”
She had avoided this conversation for days, but the way his eyes didn’t quite meet hers, the way his jaw began to tense, told her everything.
“What were you trying to achieve?” she said. “What were you going to do? Bully her into being nice to me?”
Tony reached for the remote control and switched off the television, then turned in his chair to meet her head-on. “I paid her a quick visit after that emergency call-out, that’s all. I just wanted a chat, a face-to-face.”
“Why would you do that? What did you say?”
“I wanted to appeal to her as a human being, babe! I wanted to show her pictures of our kids, to show—”
“Pictures of our kids? Are you crazy?”
He had grabbed Alex’s hands and was dragging her to the ground in front of him now, his eyes imploring, his tone desperate. “I wanted her to understand where you were coming from, that’s all! Why you couldn’t go in that day. That you weren’t being slack or lazy or whatever she thinks, that you have other commitments, that you have a life!”
“Oh Tones…”
“It’s just that you seem so sad and angry all the time, and it’s all my fault. Don’t look at me like that! It’s true! I know you want to do the right thing by her, that you want to go in and do your bit, but it’s because of me that you don’t. I wanted her to see that, to understand, to stop blaming you!”
“Tony, you’re not the reason—”
“I’m the one who moans every time you get home from work late, and I’m the one who bullied you into staying back on weekends. I’m as bad as Amelia!”
She was shaking her head. “But you were right, Tony. I shouldn’t have to work weekends to get the work done.”
“You went in today.”
“Because we’re down one person, one very crucial person I might add, and extremely behind. But if I ever ended up editing a magazine—and I’m not even sure I want to anymore—but if I ever did I would make sure I had enough staff, that we worked hard enough during the hours we have to get the magazine done. I would incentivise my team, not intimidate and bully them into doing overtime.”
“See! Listen to you! You’re amazing.” Tony looked at his wife with awe. It was the kind of look she had never received from Amelia. “That’s what I wanted to tell her! I wanted Amelia to understand that.”
“I’m not amazing, Tony, I just differ to her, that’s all. We have different ways of working.” Different motivations she learned today. “That’s why we clash. That’s all it is.”
She pulled herself up and into his lap, and they hugged for several minutes, then she released him and nudged her eyebrows together. “What did she say? When you said all of that. How did she react? She must have gone ballistic!”
“No, that’s the weird thing. She said, ‘You’re right. She’s a good mum.’”
“Really?”
“Yes! She was actually quite nice, damn her! I was expecting a monster.”
Alex smiled. Bloody Amelia. Trust her to charm the husband.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I was out of line. But she was cool with it. We spoke for about ten minutes, and then she said you’d get your chance and I should stop worrying.”
“Hang on, what? My chance?”
“Yeah! I wanted to tell you, but then I’d have to admit I’d gone to see her. But yeah, she said, ‘Alex will be an editor before she knows it’ or something like that. And I didn’t… well, I didn’t know that she was going to piss off like that, leave you in the top job…”
“She didn’t just piss off, Tony, she’s vanished. Everyone’s extremely worried.”
He sat back and could barely meet her eyes again.
“She hasn’t been seen since last Friday. You saw her on Saturday. Did she say anything? Give any indication that she was going away?”
“No, nothing.”
“And what was she like when you left her?”
“I didn’t do anything to her! I promise. Nothing happened!”
She stared at him aghast. “Of course nothing happened! Jesus, Tony.” Did he honestly think she believed otherwise?
He looked panicked. “It’s just… shit, Alex. I could have been the last person to see her alive. Maybe they’ll try to pin it on me.”
“We don’t even know if anything’s happened to her yet, Tony.” Do we?
He was watching her and h
e sensed some doubt. “What if she doesn’t show up, or worse, she turns up dead? I could be in big trouble! I know some old woman saw me at her house, some neighbour. They could think I had something to do with it!”
“They? Who is this ‘they’?”
He faltered. “You!”
She pulled him towards her and kept him at her breast as she patted his hair down and made soothing sounds. “Oh, Tones.” She sighed. “No wonder you’ve been weird lately. How can you possibly believe I could ever suspect you of hurting anyone? Even my boss? Stop being so silly and get that out of your head!”
As she continued stroking his hair and felt his body melt into hers, Alex wondered about what Tony had said and tried very hard to stop the doubts that were indeed creeping up.
Like: What really happened when Tony met up with her boss? And did Amelia simply smile and agree that Alex deserved to be the editor? If that was true, then Amelia had had a personality transplant.
Alex held her husband tighter and tried to shake those doubts away.
Of course Tony had nothing to do with it.
He wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Would he?
TOM
Tom would not have recognised her if they had passed in the street. Oh, she still had that pointy nose and the flyaway hair, but now it was dyed an extreme cherry-red colour and she had a stack of makeup on. Her clothes were grander, too, her heels ridiculously high, and she was clearly someone important because she had a posse of younger things at those heels, racing out of the elevator and towards the foyer with her. No, behind her, following like she was the Messiah.
“Monty,” he said simply and she stopped and looked up, like she’d heard a ghost.
She swung around, causing her apostles to almost stumble at her feet.
He was standing just on the other side of the security desk. Had waited three hours for her to appear, and he wasn’t going to let her vanish again.
He called out, louder this time, “Where is my wife?”
The young things looked across at him with concern, so he quickly added, “What have you done with Amy?”
Monty’s expression morphed from curiosity to surprise to what looked a little like fear, and her mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, while the minions stared from Monty to this new invader and back again. Who was this madman who had caused such a stir in their otherwise unflappable leader?