Rose takes a cup and sits to wait.
She needs to plan her next moves.
Chapter Forty
When Rose makes it back to the hotel, focused on her final evening session, Adriana is waiting for her with an anxious look on her face.
‘What’s up?’ asks Rose, bracing herself for more bad news.
‘It’s Keera’s mother,’ Adriana whispers with a backwards glance towards the office.
‘Is she in there?’ Rose whispers back.
Adriana nods.
‘Was it Alexei and the champagne? Please tell me Alexei didn’t behave inappropriately with her?’
Adriana shakes her head and hisses ‘No!’
‘Phew,’ mutters Rose in relief.
Rose, Adriana and Christos had warned him to keep the Alexei power sheathed around the hotel and their guests.
‘He knows you’d murder him in his sleep,’ Adriana says. ‘Plus, he is a good man. So, early on in the afternoon, Bobbi went with Keera up to the acropolis. I have no idea what happened but Keera vanished and Bobbi stormeddown and went straight back to the bar. Stacy and Jimi were on duty and she ordered a lot of cocktails. We tried to settle her in a room but she’s restless and is looking for you.’
‘She needs to give me a piece of her mind, I daresay,’ says Rose.
She hands the Magic Tea to her sister. ‘Can I have a cup of this while I deal with her?’
‘You can have two cups if you get her out of the office,’ says Adriana brightly. ‘You don’t have much time – you’ve got the beach before dinner.’
‘Where’s Julia?’
‘Christos put her in a taxi to Casa Siren, the Airbnb we booked for her.’
‘That’s something,’ says Rose.
‘Christos says Dan will be back in the morning to do the last session and check out. He’s staying in Corfu Town tonight.’
‘I should have promised I’d murderhimin his bed if he went missing again,’ Rose says ruefully.
‘No one ever thinks you can be so scary,’ says Adriana fondly. ‘You look so serene. But I know better.’
They hug.
‘When you’re happy, I’m happy,’ says Rose.
The hotel office is just about big enough for three people sitting at desks and answering phones but there’s nobody there now.
Bobbi is sitting on the most industrial-looking of the office chairs, the one Christos uses.
When she arrived at Villa Artemis, Bobbi looked glamorously made-up in a pink-gingham linen shift dress that highlighted long, tanned bare legs finished off with spectacular gold sandals.
Now she’s barefoot, her wedge sandals are splayed on the floor, and she’s playing with a pack of cigarettes. Her mascara has moved south and the chunky gold bangles she wore on her elegant wrists are on the desk beside her.
Rose thinks that Bobbi’s probably younger than her, somewhere in her late forties at most, but now, she looks worn down.
Rose’s need to help people reasserts itself.
