Standing in front of a huge desk was a good-looking man in his forties, wearing a navy polo shirt and white jeans that were just a little too tight.
‘Welcome! You must be Grace. Our new recruit.’
Giannis was what her long-divorced friend Sofia would call ‘a walking willy’. Catnip to most women. Not her type, he reminded her a bit of a Greek Danny Dyer, the actor whom a lot of women apparently wanted as their guilty pleasure.
‘Yes, that’s me. Pleased to meet you.’
Grace held out her hand and Giannis came towards her, took it and brought it up to his lips, but not until he’d given her a full top-to-toe once-over, lingering over her chest area a few seconds too long. She couldn’t believe she’d be his type either, she was twenty if not thirty years too old, but he obviously just couldn’t help himself.
‘Enchanted.’
Grace hid a snort with her own hand. Definitely not to be trusted. She already felt protective towards Elena, who wasn’t much older than her eldest daughter. Maybe it was all for show, and he was a devoted husband underneath, but she wasn’t convinced.
Giannis lost interest almost immediately, which was fine with her, and ambled off into the corridor. Elena went to pick up Grace’s case again.
‘No, please let me carry it.’
She didn’t want to give Elena the impression that she’d need help with anything.
Elena nodded and indicated a set of stairs. Four flights up, Grace wasn’t so sure it had been one of her better ideas, and she had to hold onto the wall behind Elena’s back to give herself a breather. She considered herself to be fit, but she wasn’t used to the heat, and although only June, it was already in the low twenties. She prayed her room had air conditioning.
Elena opened the door with a flourish.
‘You are the first of the new teachers to arrive, so I’ve given you the best room.’
‘Thank you.’
The white walls and tiled floor were all fairly standard, but a pretty yellow throw on the bed and stunning framed shots of the Aegean dotted around the room helped no end, as did the large air-con unit.
Grace bobbed her head into the bathroom to show willing and murmured her appreciation. But it was the view beyond the French doors she was truly desperate to see. The bright blue shutters, the colour of the stripes in the Greek flag, were shut against the sun.
Grace pointed towards the port. ‘Can we…’
‘Of course.’
Elena opened the shutters and Grace watched how she did it very carefully, having once had an old shutter disintegrate on her as soon as she twisted the metal handle at a gite in Brittany. Phil had laughed and accused her of being cackhanded, and the ‘Grace is clumsy’ tag had become part of family legend. The thought that no more family legends would be created by their little gang of four made her stomach contract a little.
But the view outside was all she hoped for and more. A cute balcony with two white chairs and a table overlooked the port in all its glory. Grace stood for a moment and watched a big old ferry coming in, engines churning and port police in their smart navy uniforms blowing their whistles for all they were worth. She was going to enjoy spending time out here on her balcony, people watching.
Elena obviously had better things to do than watch the world go by as she was almost at the door.
‘I’ll leave you to it. We only have two major rules. The first is…’
‘No boys after lights out?’
Grace wasn’t sure why she’d said that. It took her back to a school trip to Paris aged eleven, when she and her friends had been caught with the deputy head’s thirteen-year-old son hiding in their bathroom.
Elena frowned. ‘What you do in your own time is your own business.’
Obviously, that hadn’t translated well. She was probably overtired.
‘The first is that it’s not a good idea to drink the water from the tap. There’s a small fridge here, with bottles of water that you can replenish anytime from the kitchen.’
‘OK, thanks.’
‘And…’ Elena twitched her nose. ‘I know this will be strange for you. But there is no paper allowed down the toilet. The plumbing on the island is’—Elena stumbled on the right word—‘kaka… rubbish.’
Kaka indeed. Another Greek word she could put in her little book.
