“Not quite.”
Sal said nothing for a few beats. Skye could hear the sounds of a busy school in the background, chattering voices, the bang of a door—echoes of her past, a time when happiness had been more than a glimpse on some far-off horizon.
“He did say one other thing,” Sal said.
Skye went very still.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Tell your friend’—not ‘Skye,’ he didn’t use your name, but ‘your friend’—‘that I know what she did and that time is ticking.’ Then he tapped his finger on his wrist. Honestly, it was a bit sinister. I laughed it off to his face, but afterward, I couldn’t stop shaking, not for ages.”
“I’m sorry,” said Skye, her words redundant, useless, flat.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Sal argued. “I let him sit with us that first night at the opera house bar, I encouraged you to trust him, talk to him, let him into your life.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“No, but I—”
“Sal, please. This isn’t on you, and it’s not on me, either—it’s on him.”
The dawn was beginning to show itself, casting the village in an uncertain bruised light, smoldering below the mountains. From somewhere down the hill came the soft, sorrowful bleat of a goat, a sound that seemed to echo the weight in Skye’s chest.
“I have to go,” Sal said. “Will you be OK?”
“Of course.” Skye forced the words out, shaping them into a smile, willing them to be true. But deep in her gut, colder and heavier than fear, two other words had settled.
He knows.
Nineteen
The watch Skye had taken from Martyn was a Rolex Daytona Platinum, its recommended retail price sitting somewhere between £65,000 and £78,000.
She had sold it for less.
The man at Sable & Steel had questioned this, had also wanted to know why speed of sale was such an overriding factor, and Skye had been sure to have her story ready.
“It’s an unwanted gift,” she’d told him as he studied the paperwork. “My husband and I are using the proceeds to begin our IVF journey, and we don’t want to wait.”
“In that case,” he’d said as he made the transfer into Skye’s brand-new account, “I wish you all the luck.”
She had read somewhere once that in order to lie convincingly, a person should stay as close to the truth as possible. The Rolex had been a gift, though not to her, and it certainly wasn’t unwanted, although Martyn had only worn it once. The woman who’d given it to him—a passenger of extreme wealth who’d claimed to have bought it for her son-in-law only for him to rejectit—was nobody special to him, and the timepiece carried no sentimental value. To him, it was simply a prop; to Skye, it represented the possibility for escape.
After ending the call with Sal, she went back to scrolling through her inbox. There were ten emails from Martyn, the most recent of which had arrived while she was still on the phone.
“You can run,”he’d written in the subject line, adding in the body of the message,“…but you can’t hide forever.”
Scare tactics—a ploy by him to make her believe he was close to tracking her down. Skye deleted the email, then opened one from her mum, skimming the lines of text through narrowed eyes. Demands and histrionics, further attempts at coercion. Her finger hovered for a second over the trash can symbol, then she relented, firing off a reply saying she was fine and not to worry.
Back at Joy’s, she tiptoed into the bedroom and retrieved her clothes, dressing in the bathroom and brushing her teeth. It was not yet six a.m., and out on the hillside, all was quiet, the houses blossoming pink below a reddening sky. All at once, she was bombarded by a slew of conflicting emotions as dread fought with relief and loneliness battled remorse. Movement helped, and so she walked, heading north through the village until she reached the Serfiotiko Beach trail. Skye had yet to hike along it, though Victoria had been several times, as had Joy, and each had been effusive in their praise.
The path was rough and dry, littered with stones that tumbled away beneath her sneakers. She managed to maintain a decent pace, spurred on by the unfolding scenery and the promise of the sea at her journey’s end. The land on either side of the trail was scalloped by terraces, fields that were smudgy green in the emerging daylight. She drew in a breath, tasting nothing but cool stillness on her lips. Had Katerina from her letters taken this same route? Had she stared out across the water, waiting for her lover toreturn, condemned to live in perpetual fear that he would not? Their love for each other had been fierce and passionate—that much was clear from the words “S” had chosen to use, from the yearning he’d expressed with such eloquence. Skye’s own experience with love had been lackluster by comparison: the feelings she’d had for her first boyfriend, Charlie, adolescent, those she developed for Martyn grown from a heart too broken by grief to feel much of anything. She’d allowed herself to be carried along by the intensity of his adoration, telling herself that she would catch up, that in time, her love for him would flourish. What a foolish notion that now seemed.
Ahead of her, the trail tapered off, dropping from view over the cliff’s edge, where it would lead down to the beach beyond. She crested the hill, a surge of pleasure expanding her chest as the glittering carpet of sea came into full and glorious view. With a spontaneous burst of energy, she covered the remaining few yards at a run, sidestepping a stack of pale stones before coming to a stop in the shade of a bristly pine. On the far side of the shallow cove, two squat buildings sat derelict, framed by tamarisk trees. Military lookouts. Skye wondered if it had been the Greeks who had constructed them or their occupying aggressors. How much of the war had reached these parts, and how many scars had it left on the island?
She turned away from the weather-beaten structures to stare instead at the water, squinting as the tepid sunlight turned the cresting waves diamond bright. There was a small boat not far from the shoreline, seemingly abandoned, but as Skye drew nearer, she saw the top of a dark head emerge from beneath the surface.
The figure heaved himself up over the side, pulling off his snorkel and flicking back his hair. He was tanned and broad-shouldered, instantly familiar. The moment she recognized him,he looked up. Their eyes met. Andreas raised a hand in greeting. Then, without waiting for a response, he dived over the edge of the boat and swam toward her, cutting through the expanse of shimmering blue as gracefully as a minnow. Skye averted her gaze as he stood, but not before admiring the lean lines of his body, the taut stomach and strong thighs, the way he strode boldly across the sharp-edged rocks as if they were sponges.
