My mother’s voice had grown louder now. She would have sensed my waking up and would be finding some excuse to make noises outside my door.
‘Maria,’ she turned to me, her eyes shining, affecting a casual air as I stepped into the kitchen. I noted the apron, her greying hair pinned neatly into a bun.
‘Are you hungry?’
I looked behind her, through the terrace doors at the laden table.
‘Coffee?’ My mother turned to the stove, too quickly. I heard a yelp as she placed one hand on the counter to steady herself.
‘Hey.’ I stepped towards her, but she pushed me away, her grip still strong.
‘I’m fine!’
‘For God’s sake, Mum, you’re not fine.’
‘I am fine,’ she hissed. I took the coffee pot from her hand and began to fill it under the tap.
As the steam started to rise from the stove, I took a seat at the small circular table in the corner of the kitchen, which was still exactly as it always had been, the low wooden counter stretching along the wall, beneath it everything hidden from view behind a blue and white curtain.
The basket of lemons by the door, which only my father ever took from, was still there, as if she needed the constant reminder of what she had been subjected to.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t go to work today.’ I tried to keep my voice casual.
Athena ignored me, scuttling between the washing-up bowl and neatly stacked shelves above the counter.
‘Clive relies on me. I can’t just not turn up.’ Her voice was clipped. Was she actually in pain or was this all part of her effort to show me how hard her life was?
‘Mum!’
‘Why do you keep on, Maria, as if we have a choice? We have no choice – your father made sure of that.’ Her words hung in the air, pointed like arrows.
‘Oh, come on, how much longer are you going to keep this up? It’s too much for you now. You don’t need the money that badly …’
My mother turned towards me, incensed. But I pre-empted her.
‘Mum, I don’t like you working for him.’
There was a pause, a momentary truce between us, and then she nodded slowly. ‘I see.’
‘That man … have you forgotten?’ For a moment I thought my words might stick, but the scornful smile at the corners of her mouth told me otherwise.
‘My dear, I think it is you who forgets. Who is it that has paid for this family ever since your father—’
‘My father? Your husband.’ I said it before I could stop myself, something inside me snapping with a ferocity that surprised even me. ‘My father who was never quite good enough for you. Never quite rich enough; never quite enough like Clive …’
There was a sharpness to the silence while we observed the line that had just been crossed. Until now I had chosen never to acknowledge openly that my mother had lusted after her late friend’s husband for years. But the rumours in the village were simply confirmation of something I had always felt, but been unable to name.
Reading my mind, her lip curled. ‘That’s it, isn’t it, Maria? You blame me for your father leaving. It’s always the woman, hmm? Men, they leave. They can just up and leave and it’s never their fault. No one ever questions it.’
‘Oh, please, Mum, don’t make this about you as the victim again. This is about the fact that you were in love with Artemis’ husband for years, and everyone knew it, and still, even though he has made it patently clear that he wants nothing to do with you, still you can’t stop protecting him. Even though he’s a murderer.’
The heat had intensified in the room so that the air suddenly seemed to vibrate with it, until my mother’s cackle cut through it like a scythe.
‘Murderer? Clive?’ It was as if I had told her the sun only came out at night. ‘Oh Maria. I know you loved your father, and Artemis. And I know that blaming Clive for Artemis … for your father leaving … I can see why that would be appealing. But speaking like that about the man who is the only person in this world who cares about us – who makes sure we have everything we need?’
‘The man who bought our silence …’ I spoke under my breath, but Athena caught every word.
‘How dare you?’ She was trembling with rage now. ‘Since Artemis died, we are the only people Clive has, other than his own son, to remember his wife by.’
After that, what else could I say? Clearly, on one level at least, she believed her own lies.
‘Anyway, I can see you won’t be interested in his offer,’ her voice was quieter now.
Imperceptibly, I lifted my head. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘He was asking after you, as he always does, and I told him about your plan to study in London for a year and—’
‘Mum!’
‘What? I happened to mention it while I was on my break and he said straight away that you can stay at his flat for as long as you like.’
I swallowed as Athena turned to take the coffee pot off the stove.
‘It’s just an idea, Mum. For God’s sake, why are you telling people – why are you telling him?’
She carried on as if I had not spoken. ‘He won’t be there much. He’s working abroad for months and when he is there, you would have your own room, of course. Oh Maria, it’s so lovely. He showed me pictures. Right in the middle of Central London, on this grand square. The apartment is beautiful.’
‘And what does he want in return?’ I tried to keep my voice steady.
‘Maria, he doesn’t want anything. What more does he need? He is a rich man, and we are like family to him.’
I snorted, turning my head towards the door. My mother chose to ignore the sound, taking a step towards me, lowering herself so that she was kneeling in front of me. I moved to offer her my chair but she held me there.
‘I’m telling you, Maria, I know you don’t want to believe it, but Clive Witherall is a good man. Artemis …’ She breathed in sharply. ‘Artemis wasn’t well when she said those things. Do you understand me? Anyone who can do that to themselves … To her son … Well, she wasn’t right, in the end. She was sick.’
My mother cupped her hand under my jaw. I felt her breath on my face. ‘Maria, Artemis was my best friend and I loved her like a sister, but the woman was paranoid.’
CHAPTER 20
Maria
Did I imagine it, the picture I have of my father, his features strained through the gauze of sleep, the morning he left? It was Easter Sunday and I was seven, that much I know. In my mind, I see him lingering in the doorway of my bedroom, his fingers tracing the form of my face, from a distance; the creak of a floorboard decompressing as he lifted his foot, for the last time.
If he left a note, my mother never shared it. That man, she would call him from that moment on, the disbelief lodged in each syllable. Your father.
He is a giant, in my memory, a figure of almost mythological proportions. But when I saw his picture, smiling in the background of a wedding photo Yannis has framed above his bar in the port, I realised that he was no different from any other man; his features weaker than I remembered them. Whenever I went to the bar after that, I kept my eyes from straying to that frame.
The months after my father’s departure haven’t stuck in my memory; they are a free fall of feelings, snippets of conversation that don’t involve me. Before my mother’s mood finally settled into a low hum of embittered disdain, she had battened down the hatches against the outside world; the two of us barricaded inside that tiny house. My only escape was the daily walk to school, along the mountain path, the sea sweeping back and forth at the bottom of a vertiginous drop.
Artemis’ arrival that summer saved us, or at least it saved me; her melodic voice lifted the air as she moved through the rooms of our house, pushing open the shutters that for months had been pulled tight. Her hand squeezed mine as she spoke to my mother using words I couldn’t hear.
‘You, Maria.’ She lowered herself to look me in the eye. ‘You’re coming to stay with me and David, just f
or a little while, while Mama gets some rest. What do you say?’
Her eyes were bright and reassuring and I didn’t say a word as she led me to the bedroom, pulling out a handful of clothes from the small wooden chest and placing them in the bag on her shoulder.
David was waiting for us as we walked out of the house, the shine of the sun too bright against a cloudless sky; the cicadas cheering me on as we made our way down the path.
‘David, you remember Maria, don’t you? You played together last summer.’
‘Mum, I don’t understand when you speak Greek.’ David’s voice was sulky, as if he felt threatened by a rival for his mother’s attention.
Artemis gently rolled her eyes, but she continued in English, placing a hand lightly on both our shoulders.
‘I said, Maria is going to stay with us for a few days. That’s fun, isn’t it? Now, who is hungry, or shall we go straight to the sea?’
Only years later would I recognise the note I heard in her voice that day, the sound of someone trying too hard to pretend that everything was going to be OK.
Any immediate resentment David had felt towards me that morning dissolved as we spent the following weeks on the beach, running in and out of the water, moving in unison, gradually becoming each other’s shadows.
Artemis, her face partially obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, spent hours at a time on the shore, encased in her own private world, her eyes fixed on the sea.
My basic school-learnt English and David’s refusal to engage with Artemis’ mother tongue meant our conversations were limited, but we were young enough that we did not need language as a common bond.
I only remember one time that words passed between us that whole summer, as we lay in adjoining beds, the stars just visible through the crack in the curtain of his bedroom window.
It was me who initiated it. ‘Where’s your papa?’
There was a pause before David answered. ‘He’s in London, working. He is always working. But he is flying out next week to join us. Where’s yours?’
It was the first time I had allowed myself to process the thought and my answer took me by surprise, ‘I don’t know.’
David’s hand reached for mine, our tiny fingers entwined as sleep finally took hold.
In the days after Clive arrived on the island, something in Artemis changed. Her movements, once soft, tightened somehow, her eyes skittish as if constantly on the lookout for danger.
A week later, she drove me back to my mother’s house.
‘Things will be OK,’ she said, her hand holding mine too tightly as she guided me back to the front door.
Even then, I could feel she was wrong.
CHAPTER 21
Maria
By the following summer, everything had changed, my mother having settled into the role of abandoned woman, playing on it when she spoke to neighbours in the street – ‘Well, you know, now that it’s just the two of us …’ At this distance, it was a role that seemed to fortify her, give her new meaning.
When Artemis arrived from London, sometime in July, she was jumpy, distracted in a way that in hindsight I recognise as a woman who feared for her life.
‘Why don’t we see Artemis and David any more?’ I asked my mother one morning as we walked back from church, the dust of the mountain path rising at our feet. It was August and since their arrival a month earlier, we had only seen them once.
My mother’s voice was matter-of-fact. ‘Artemis isn’t well, she needs to rest. Clive is very worried about her.’ She was not the kind of woman to soften her language for a child.
The next time my mother and I saw her was the night of the storm. We had no idea then that it would also be the last.
David had not left his father’s side, the morning of Artemis’ funeral, a year later. His eyes were set slightly above the open coffin, focusing on the window just above our heads.
I tried to catch his attention as my mother and I settled ourselves on one of the pews near the front of the church, but his mind was somewhere else. Throughout the service, which was short and perfunctory, a dustpan neatly brushing away the crumbs of a life, I watched him silently squinting against the glare of the sky, which had settled in streaks of dark grey and angry blues, following the storm.
His hand instinctively reached for his father’s as the service came to an end, but it was unnoticed by Clive as he turned to embrace the handful of mourners who bowed their heads over his wife’s corpse.
May her memory be eternal.
The words echoed through the empty church, lodging themselves in my mind.
I found David later that afternoon, a tiny figure crouched under a tree in the cemetery. He was ten years old, two years older than I was, but even to me, from where I stood, just out of the line of sight, he looked small and lost.
‘What are you doing?’ I didn’t know what else to say as I pulled my skirt over my grazed knees, settling onto the ground beside him.
‘They wanted to burn my mum’s body.’ He spoke thoughtfully, almost without emotion, as if mulling over a confusing spelling.
‘Why?’
He didn’t look at me.
‘But Daddy wouldn’t let them.’
He turned to me, apparently reassured by his own answer. With a flutter of unease, I felt his hand moving along the ground towards mine, this time his fingertips gripping my own.
Clive had taken David back to London the day after the funeral. He hadn’t wanted to come at all, I heard him tell my mother at the wake; the funeral had only taken place on the island because this was where Artemis had requested it must be, in her will.
‘You know what she’s like,’ Clive confided, quickly correcting himself. ‘Was like. She did what suited her, never mind the rest of us.’
Clive paused, closing his eyes. ‘Forgive me. I shouldn’t talk about her like that, to you, her best friend. It’s … but I’m angry, you know? I don’t know how she could have …’
My mother took Clive in her arms. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me. Oh, you poor man, and that boy … She never recognised what she had. What was she thinking? My dear friend … She was always selfish, but this?’
My mother and I had been in the shop at the top of the hill when we heard the news that the Witheralls were back on the island, the year following Artemis’ death. The village was still quivering with the drama of it all, the lingering sense of shame.
Sensing my resistance to the idea of an unsolicited visit, Athena had attempted to lure my nine-year-old self there with the promise of using the pool.
‘They might be busy. Should we not ring first?’
‘Oh, come on, Clive is never too busy for us, Maria. I told you, we are the closest they have to family now. Artemis and I, we were …’
She stopped, an expression I could not read passing over her face, and then she paused to rearrange herself, pulling a tissue from her pocket and dabbing it across her brow.
‘She was like a sister to me.’
It was the hottest day of the year so far, but a coldness rippled down my arms as we approached the house. By the time we arrived at the gates proffering a basket of freshly baked bread, David and his father had no choice but to let us in, though at just nine years old even I could sense a degree of hesitation that my mother was either blind to, or chose to ignore.
‘Maria and I, we are … As you may know, Yannis left us penniless. Until now, we survived, but, well, I think I will have to sell the house … Unless I can find work …’ My mother’s voice carried across the garden. Quivering with embarrassment, I tried to blank out her words as David and I sipped on ice-cold juice, dipping our toes in the water, his skin pale against his red swimming trunks.
The pool in those days was a smaller, less opulent version of what it would be replaced with once Clive’s business really took off. It would be years still until the diggers arrived, tearing up the home Clive and Artemis had built, brick by brick, replacing it with the lavish veneer that gradually took form as t
he summers rolled by: a slick, glossy polish to cover the cracks.
CHAPTER 22
Maria
The storm blew across the island like dragons’ breath the night Artemis had come to the house.
The power was out across the village and from my child-size bed I watched the lightning fork through the window, ripples of light tossed across the Mediterranean Sea like shattering glass.
At first, I mistook the banging on the door for the sound of the wind, but when I poked my head out a few moments later I heard her voice, possessed, at the kitchen table. My mother held her friend by the shoulders as if, should she let her go, one of them might break.
‘He’s going to kill me – Athena, you have to believe me …’
The outside world seemed to be beating at our door, the elements whipping furiously at the path leading to the house.
Still, my mother was unstirred. When she replied, her voice was too quiet for me to hear the words, but her tone was calm, firm. Artemis threw back her head in response, her voice a hiss.
‘You have to believe me, Athena, I know too much! I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. The way he talks about me, as if I’m mad or … Please just promise me that if anything happens to me you will remember what I told you.’
At that moment a branch cracking outside the house caused the women to turn and see me, cowering in the doorway, my favourite stuffed rabbit hanging limply by my side.
My mother’s face was fixed in a look I did not understand; her friend’s eyes were black holes, wide with dread. As I stared back at her, something in Artemis’ eyes reached into my own and held on with a certainty I knew even then that I would never shake.
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