Skye checked the time. It was nearing eleven.
“We haven’t got much time,” she said. “I could try to makehim admit it, perhaps record him confessing and use it as leverage? He’s unlikely to fall for that, though.”
“Perhaps all you need to do is mention your suspicions?” her mother suggested. “Might be enough to get him to back off.”
“But if he is a thief, we can’t let him get away with it,” Skye protested. “What about the future customers of Sky High and the next woman he charms into trusting him? He needs to be stopped.”
“You’re right.” Her mother closed the laptop. “But how?”
“I think,” Skye said cautiously, “I have a plan that might just work. But we won’t be able to do it alone.”
“OK, so do you know anyone who might help us?” she asked.
Skye gave in to slow smile.
“Oh yes,” she said. “I know a few people.”
Fifty-one
December 1941
Leni was at the stove when she fell.
She had been wilting horta to serve with the snails that Dafni had collected that morning. The older woman had returned with a small pail and dirt beneath her nails. Katerina, who was no longer able to stand up without first bracing herself on an item of furniture, reached her sister too late to catch her.
“The food,” Leni croaked. “Do not let it burn.”
Katerina tutted.
“You are more important,” she said. With some difficulty, she crouched down, slipping her arms beneath Leni’s. They were as thin as twigs and coated with soft downy hair. Katerina settled her into a chair before lifting the pan from the heat.
“This,” Leni said, her skeletal hand coming to rest on Katerina’s bump. “This is the most important thing.”
They were the same words her sister had used on that awful day. Katerina had returned home under duress, forced back by curfew, driven to her bed by fatigue, and had found Leni waiting.
“How could you let him do that to you?” Katerina had hissed.“He beats me half to death and you let him touch you, let him defile you? It is sick. You are sick.”
“He brings me food,” Leni said simply. “If I did not let him do these things to me, we would starve.” Her eyes had strayed down. “There are things more important than my body. It is not my soul. He will not have that.”
Katerina could only weep.
“Do not worry,agápi mou.” Leni pulled her close, stroked her hair. “In those moments of violence, I close my eyes. I go elsewhere, to when the war is over and our husbands have returned. I picture your child. I see their smile. I believe in that future.”
“But why does it have to be you?” Katerina cried.
“It has to be somebody,” Leni said, her voice becoming harder, firmer. “Would you want that I let him rape Phaedra? She has children, and I…There is less risk for me.”
Katerina had not raised the issue again. She’d written about it, though, putting into words what she could not say aloud, talking to Stefanos on the page as if he were there beside her.
Leni leaned back in her chair, eyelids fluttering.
It had been raining almost every moment for the past four days. Katerina slipped as she hurried outside in search of Dafni. The older woman was standing at the boundary wall, staring into the middle distance. Her once gray-blond hair was almost white, and tendrils blew around her face as she turned.
“Come quickly,” Katerina said. “I need your help.”
It took some convincing, but eventually Leni agreed to let them carry her into the bedroom. She barely seemed there at all, ribs and collarbones rising like peaks beneath the weight of her shawl.
“When was the last time she ate?” Dafni asked as they returned to the kitchen. Katerina filled a cup with water and cast around for a lemon, finding nothing but a few dry rinds.
