Theo stepped through the open door into a kitchen bright with sunshine, light with the perfume of cut flowers and wood polished with beeswax.
‘Aunt Sofia!’
She answered him at once, and came to kiss him on the forehead, beneath the line of his short, short hair. She had, it seemed, abandoned widow’s black, and wore instead a dress of lime and yellow; her nose was dusted with powder from a compact, and on her cheeks, she’d rubbed a smudge of rouge.
‘How are you, Theo?’ she asked. She made him sit, and sat beside him. Reaching out to touch his face, she said, ‘You don’t look very good to me, my love. I’ll make some tea.’
‘I don’t want tea.’ A fly settled on his forearm, and for a moment he let it remain there. ‘I’ve been thinking I might go away. Just for a while. A change of scene.’
‘What a good idea,’ she said. ‘Why not? Your feet are not chained to this island, to this rock. There are cities, and other islands. There are other countries, if you were brave . . .’
‘It would cost money,’ he said. He brushed the fly from his sleeve. ‘It’s money that I’m lacking.’
A silk handkerchief, laundered and pressed, lay on the dresser shelf, and on the handkerchief lay the business card of a lawyer based in Athens.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I’ve come into a small inheritance, and I’ve been thinking of a little trip myself. So if you thought you’d like some company – the world can be such a lonely place, sometimes – maybe you and I could go together. We could go far away from here, Theo. We could go anywhere.’
She placed an arm around him and pulled him close, as she had done to heal his hurts – cuts, bruises, insults – when he was just a boy.
He let his head fall to her shoulder.
‘Laugh at me,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid to go. This place is all I know. It made me what I am, and now it’s made me, it’s saying it has no place for me. It’s telling me to leave, but the leaving will be exile, and every day I am away, I know this wretched place will call me home.’
Sofia kissed the top of his head.
‘Then you and I shall miss the place together,’ she said, ‘and when we’re really homesick, we’ll call your mother, and she’ll tell us all the gossip and the scandal. And one day, when time’s moved on, maybe we’ll come back here, and call it home again. But now – you’re right – it’s time for us to go. We’ll have each other, Theo. And more than that, we’ll have some kind of future.’
From the port, the horn of a departing ferry blared a single, sombre note.
‘So go and pack your bag,’ said Sofia, ‘and say all your goodbyes. When the next boat leaves, you and I will sail with it. Trust me, agapi mou. We’ll find somewhere we are welcome, even though we are unknown – somewhere no one knows the lives that we lived, once.’
Acknowledgements
For their enthusiasm, advice and careful reading, thanks to Chris and all the team at Christopher Little, and to Arzu Tahsin, Holly Roberts and Emily Sweet.
Thanks to Julie and Ian Kidd for their highly practical support.
And special thanks to my son Will, who put up with a lot.
ANNE ZOUROUDI was born in England and has lived in the Greek islands. Her attachment to Greece remains strong, and the country is the inspiration for much of her writing. She now lives in the Derbyshire Peak District with her son. She is the author of four other Mysteries of the Greek Detective: The Taint of Midas, The Doctor of Thessaly, The Lady of Sorrows and The Whispers of Nemesis.
First published in Great Britain 2007
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Anne Zouroudi 2007
Map on p. vii © John Gilkes 2007
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc,
36 Soho Square,
London W1D 3QY
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 9781408822838
www.bloomsbury.com/annezouroudi
Visit www.bloomsbury.com to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters
to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers
The Messenger of Athens Page 26