The Honey Farm on the Hill: Escape to sunny Greece in this perfect summer read!

by Jo Thomas

  ‘Kostas, get the villagers!’ Maria commands, then she turns to me. ‘Moped keys!’

  I toss them to her, and she throws them to Kostas, who gets on the moped and starts it up. Mitera climbs on the back.

  ‘What shall I tell them?’ he asks.

  ‘Tell them the fire is moving down the mountain. Tell them to hurry,’ Maria instructs. ‘The last time we had a fire like this, it swept all the way down to the town. We nearly lost our homes. It only just missed the farm. Maybe this time we won’t be so lucky.’ She wrings her hands in anguish, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘Tell them I’m sorry.’ I can’t think what else to say. ‘But tell them to come. The mountain needs them. Georgios needs them. Tell them to bring buckets.’

  ‘What if they won’t come?’ He looks at Maria, who shakes her head and shrugs.

  ‘Ask them who they think has been protecting the mountain.’ My voice is hoarse. ‘If the dittany disappears altogether and the mountain loses its protected status, the holiday company will build an all-inclusive resort.’ I look at them, hearing the crackling of fire, the wind whipping up and fanning the flames. ‘Georgios has been keeping the developers away, stopping their plans to build. If they do, the town will die. And if we don’t hurry up, so will Georgios!’

  Kostas opens up the throttle and swings the bike on to the road with Mitera clinging on for dear life, dropping her teeth as he goes. Maria dashes into the road, picks them up and pockets them and then runs back to me.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Pray to the gods, Maria, pray for rain . . .’

  Handing Angel to Maria and telling her to look after her, I run to the mountain path and start to climb, but the smoke pushes me back, filling my lungs, stopping me from breathing. I’m hot, sweat gathering over my top lip and running down between my shoulder blades. I hold the back of my hand to my mouth and cough and cough. I look up. There’s no sign of him. It’s like all my nightmares finally coming true. Just like the nightmares I had when I first got here. The fire, not being able to get to the one I love. Georgios; I love him! I realise, like a great big wave crashing over me. I have to get to him and save him.

  ‘Georgios!’ I shout with all my heart.

  I race back along the path past Georgios’s house and up the longer, wider route. The fire doesn’t seem to have taken hold there. I start to run up it, like a kri-kri goat myself. Once the road peters out, I’m hopping over stones.

  How could this have started? How? I was so careful. I checked for overhanging branches, arranged stones round each of the fires and put each one out with water. I know I did!

  I pull my T-shirt over my face and put an arm up to cover my eyes. The fire is coming this way, but there is still a clear path if I’m quick. I push on, climbing, leaping nimbly from rock to rock. I don’t look down. I don’t look back. I have to keep moving forward. I have to get to him. The smoke is thickening as the wind whips it up.

  My heart is banging in my chest. How could I have caused even more hurt to this community? First Stelios and now this! What kind of a fool am I? One who was doing her best for the people she cares about, a small voice in the back of my head replies. I was just trying to do my best, because I do care, I realise. For Stelios’s family, for Maria and Kostas, for the town. For my daughter’s family.

  The smoke is choking as I run through the first cave and reach the valley. Beyond and up high I can see the kri-kri goat.

  ‘Run!’ I shout. ‘Run! Shoo!’ And as if understanding, it dips its head and runs off, over the mountain path, hopefully to safety.

  My heart lurches. The route to the secret valley is utterly blocked by thick smoke. I can’t see any way to get to it. ‘I’ll do anything,’ I say to whatever god Maria talks to. ‘I promise I don’t want anything more from him, but just keep him safe.’

  ‘Georgios!’ I shout. ‘Georgios! But the smoke catches in my throat, making me cough. Then I hear it.

  ‘Nell!’ he shouts back, and like the eagles cruising on the thermals, my heart dips and then soars and swoops.

  ‘He’s alive,’ I shout to absolutely no one. ‘Thank you,’ I mouth up to the heavens.

  The smoke begins to clear and I see him scaling down the side of the mountain, the new monument he’s been carving for Stelios gripped under one arm.

  ‘Stay there,’ he calls.

  ‘Pass it to me!’ I shout back, reaching out for the olive trunk. ‘Pass it to me!’

  He stretches out, but he’s not close enough. The smoke is pouring into the gorge.

  ‘I’m going to throw it!’ he yells over the wind and the noise of the fire and, in the distance, the sound of voices shouting. ‘Put out your arms.’

  I do as he says. He turns, and with one hand scoops it from under his arm and throws it. The smoke is making my eyes smart and sting, no matter how hard I try to blink it away. Blindly I reach out both hands, but no sooner has it landed in my arms and I’m forming the words ‘Got it!’ like a greased goose it bounces from my grip and out again. I try to grapple for it, knocking it, missing it, dropping it, and it falls from my arms, bouncing, crashing through the smoke-filled valley, way down to the silver snail trail of the river below.

  ‘Oh God!’ I make a move to try and go after it. But it’s useless. I know that.

  ‘Leave it!’ Georgios instructs. ‘It’s not important! We have to get down from here, now.’

  ‘But it is!’ My heart is thundering.

  ‘It’s not. What’s important is that you came back. It means you don’t hate me.’ Or at least I think that’s what he says. I can’t be sure. Because, as if our pleas have been answered by the gods, there is suddenly an almighty lightning bolt across the sky, and with it a crack of thunder, and just like that first time I climbed up this mountain, determined not to be put off, the heavens open. And as the fire starts to hiss, sizzle and spit, we smile, then laugh, and finally hold our faces to the rain.

  ‘I could never hate you, Georgios. I hate the fact that I’ve found you and we can’t ever be together,’ I say. And my heart rips open all over again.

  ‘I think it would be a good idea if you told us everything that has been going on, Georgios.’ We are back at the restaurant with Stelios’s family, getting dry, and Stelios’s father is the first to speak.

  The line of water carriers from the town was disbanded as soon as the heavens opened; using their buckets and tin baths to protect them from the deluge falling from the sky, they trooped back to Vounoplagia, glaring at me as they went and muttering words I haven’t yet learned in Greek.

  ‘They’re saying I started the fire,’ I tell Stelios’s father.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Georgios says earnestly. ‘You were careful. I know you wouldn’t have let that happen.’

  ‘But I must have done. How else could it have happened? I started the fires to scare off the poachers. I must have left one of them smouldering. I burned the mountain!’ I hold my head in my hands, unable to take in what I’ve done.

  Yannis appears from his small apartment upstairs, rubbing his wet hair with a towel.

  ‘Yannis!’ his father says. ‘Where were you? We have been putting out a fire on the mountain.’

  ‘Sorry, Baba.’ He gives his hair a final rub. ‘I had no idea. I was in the shower . . .’ He looks around at the group of us there, but doesn’t meet my eyes. ‘I’ll get some coffee for everyone,’ he says, turning back to the kitchen.

  ‘I must go,’ I say. ‘My daughter needs me. I have to go to her. I have to get to the airport to see if they will change my booking for today.’

  ‘You will never get the flight now,’ Georgios tells me. ‘Leave it until tomorrow. Demi is a young woman. She will understand.’ He’s right. Of course she’ll understand. I’ll be home soon enough, and there are things I need to put right here before I leav
e.

  ‘Stay just for one more night,’ he implores me with those green and gold eyes, and I can’t help but feel another pang of longing. If only I could. I trusted that he was free to be with me, but he isn’t.

  ‘Join us, Nell. We are all family here.’

  But someone is missing, I think. Not Stelios . . . Demi. This is Demi’s family and I can’t keep it from her any more. She has to know.

  I pull up a chair at the family table next to Georgios, making sure my leg doesn’t touch his, and finally Georgios tells them everything – all about the secret valley, and keeping the dittany safe and delivering it to those in need.

  ‘So you see, it was for the best,’ he says when he has finished.

  ‘But you should have told us.’ Stelios’s mother brings more plates of mezédhes from the kitchen, mouthfuls of moreishness: thick chopped country sausage and smoked pork, fried zucchini flowers, meatballs in tomato sauce, soft aubergine baked in olive oil, garlicky hummus sprinkled with paprika, and vine leaf parcels. ‘We could all have helped.’

  ‘It was safer this way,’ Georgios explains. ‘All the time the dittany still thrived in the hidden valley, the mountain maintained its protected status. No one could build on it. The bees managed to survive. The future of the mountain is safe. That’s why I’ve had to keep it secret. That’s why I had to deliver the dittany anonymously to those who needed it.’

  Maria, Kostas and Mitera arrive at the restaurant gates and Stelios’s family wave them in. I can hardly meet Maria and Kostas’s eyes. Not after seeing the look on Maria’s face – the look that said ‘traitor’ – when she realised I’d lit the fires. I stand up and offer Mitera my seat as Georgios starts his explanation again for the benefit of the newcomers.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says when he has finished. ‘I have no idea how the fires restarted. We thought we had been so careful.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Stelios’s mother stands up and reaches for the empty water bottle.

  ‘No, let me.’ I try to smile. ‘We are family.’ And she smiles back and lets me go to refill it.

  As I step through the kitchen doorway, Yannis jumps and shoves something away with his foot. The look on his face reminds me of Demi when she’s hiding something, doing something she shouldn’t. I frown.

  ‘What’s that, Yannis?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he says quickly, again just like Demi.

  ‘Let me see.’ I push him to one side, and he sighs and moves away from the sink, where he’s standing in front of a bottle of what looks to be . . . petrol.

  ‘Well, are you going to tell them or am I?’

  As I march Yannis into the restaurant, he has a smug, self-satisfied look on his face. He knows that no one is going to believe me.

  ‘You sold out the mountain,’ I say, staring at him. ‘You gave away the mountain’s secret. Tell them, Yannis.’

  ‘Nell!’ Maria scolds like the older sister she has become.

  ‘Nell, we’re all upset . . .’ his father says.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you? Tell them, Yannis. You knew about the dittany and where to find it!’

  He folds his arms defiantly.

  I march back into the kitchen and pick up the petrol bottle, and the rags and matches I found by the sink. I return to the restaurant and hold them up.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s for the car . . .’ Yannis says, but there is a slight hesitation in his voice. His mother’s eyes narrow, and at her stern glare he suddenly crumples.

  ‘I only told the man that was here, that Harry guy from the holiday company, that if he found the kri-kri goat, he would find the dittany,’ he says, throwing his hands up as if I’m being ridiculous. ‘That’s all! He and his workers came in for lunch a few times, when I was here coping on my own!’ He scowls. ‘He told me they had plans. That they needed to check if there was dittany on the mountain.’

  ‘Pah!’ I say out loud. I don’t believe for a minute that that’s the full story. I’m a mother, after all, I know when I’m having the wool pulled over my eyes.

  We all stare at him, mouths open. Mitera’s teeth drop down but she catches them and pushes them back in quickly. Yannis is looking very uncomfortable. Suddenly he goes to make a run for the main restaurant door, but in one quick move – not bad for a man with a damaged leg – Georgios jumps up and steps in front of the door, blocking his way. Yannis looks at him and for a moment thinks about challenging him. Georgios lifts his head and his chest swells. He stares at Yannis and then says, quietly and slowly, ‘Did you start the fire, Yannis?’

  Yannis pulls his glare away from Georgios and stares at the floor, saying nothing.

  ‘Yannis!’ Georgios snaps, making me jump. ‘Did you start the fire?’ He speaks even more slowly this time.

  Yannis looks away and throws his hands up in the air again, higher this time, as if addressing a huge amphitheatre.

  ‘You . . .’ his mother says slowly. ‘You would do this to us? You would kill off the mountain and put us out of business?’

  ‘Just tell us, Yannis, was it you?’ I’m desperate for him to admit it.

  He drops his arms abruptly to his sides and glares at me.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for you. All this is your fault.’ He’s back to performance mode. ‘You come back here, and my family embraces you like some long-lost relative, but really it’s all your fault!’

  ‘Yannis!’ his mother reprimands, but he’s in full flow.

  ‘Yes! Yes, I started that fire. I knew it wouldn’t harm anyone.’

  ‘It could have killed Georgios! We don’t need any more sorrow. Why did you do it, Yannis?’ His father slaps the table and Yannis looks up at him slowly. ‘Why?’

  ‘For money. For a new start. To see the world. It’s not like I’m ever going to meet anyone here. No one under the age of sixty, anyway.’

  ‘What?’ His father is aghast.

  ‘Vounoplagia is dead on its feet. There are no tourists, Baba. I’ve always said something needs to happen here. When the new resort comes, which it will, this place, along with every other business in the town, will finally die. A whole new world will be born and this restaurant won’t be a part of it.’

  ‘But this is our family business . . .’

  ‘When Stelios was here!’ he says. ‘It was Stelios who loved Vounoplagia. Not me. I never wanted this. I wanted to go to London, remember? Or America, or Australia. Anywhere but here!’

  ‘You love this place.’ His father stands shakily.

  ‘Only as my home. I never intended to stay here. I want to travel, like other young people. But they all went a long time ago and I have been left to keep the restaurant limping along on my own. I never wanted to stay. If it hadn’t been for her . . .’ He turns and points at me, the accused, and I move my hand away from where it’s resting against Georgios’s.

  ‘Yannis! Enough!’ His mother stands up.

  ‘You leaving like that! If Stelios hadn’t followed you that night . . . All this is your fault! Everything changed for me when Stelios died.’

  No one says a word.

  ‘That developer friend of yours wanted to know where the dittany was. I told him to follow the goat. But then he came to me with the idea of a fire. He said there had been a couple of small ones, but he wanted one big one to wipe out the wild herbs, in return for this . . .’ He pulls out an envelope from under the till, and opens it to reveal a wad of euros. We all gasp.

  ‘How could I refuse? This place is going to die anyway. It’s my fresh start . . . away from here.’

  ‘Enough!’ It’s Demetria’s turn to stand. ‘I have heard enough. This is all my fault. I was the one who told Stelios he would be better off with a local girl. We didn’t want him to leave, you see. That day you came to speak to him, when you rowed, I told
you to go; I said that if he loved you he would follow. This is all down to me.’

  ‘You remember,’ I say quietly. I can picture it as if it was yesterday. I remember being here, meeting the family, feeling nervous. And the day Stelios and I rowed. I was so cross and unsure of what to do. It was his grandmother who convinced me to leave.

  ‘I am deeply sorry.’ Demetria walks over to me and holds both my hands in her bony ones. ‘Please forgive me. I was a fool. I thought I was doing the right thing but I know now that I was very wrong. No one can tell where you’re going to find love, and when you do, you must hold on to it tightly and treasure it.’

  I can feel the heat of Georgios’s body next to mine and it feels so wrong and yet . . . so right.

  ‘Yannis.’ Demetria turns to her grandson. ‘You have been foolish. But we are all guilty of that in our lives, listening to our heads instead of what’s in our hearts. This was not the way to make your brother proud of you.’

  Yannis hangs his head in shame.

  ‘You should have said something if you were so unhappy here,’ his mother scolds. ‘We didn’t want you to feel trapped or pressured to live a life you never wanted. We could have run the restaurant, we would have found a way. We thought we were giving you a future.’

  ‘But this was a shameful way to act,’ his father adds, voice shaking. ‘Shameful! You no longer work here. I will take over whilst you make your plans, whatever they may be . . .’ Yannis leans his arms on the table, muscles twitching, head hanging. ‘Nell is part of our family too. We will not protect you and let her take the blame. You must own up and tell the town what you did.’

  My heart leaps at the thought of being part of this family, but I feel truly sorry for Yannis as I watch him run from the restaurant to his apartment. A door slams and a moment later Britney Spears blares out at full blast.

  ‘Thank you,’ I tell his father.

  ‘I’m sorry for what he did,’ he replies.