As it soon transpired, there was nothing about the house that Andreas did not already know, having spent weeks inside prior to her arrival, laying cables and digging trenches for pipes. Once satisfied that Skye’s new fridge and oven were in place and fully functional, he joined her in the back garden, where Skye had escaped to while the two men worked.
“There is a lot of space,” he mused. “Perhaps, you would like to have a plunge pool.”
“A what?”
“Many of the villas and apartments in the main town of Chora have one of these things. A place to cool off at the end of a long day.”
“I think I’m all right for a plunge pool.” She eyed him sideways. “At least for now.”
“Or,” he went on, seemingly unperturbed, “perhaps an extension along the wall there, a place for guests to sleep when they come to visit.”
“I’m not planning on many of those,” Skye told him.
“Éla, surely your friends from England will come to see your new home?”
“Nope.”
“Your family?”
Again she shook her head.
“Are you on the run from the law?” he asked, his tone jovial. “A fugitive?”
A rush of heat washed over Skye.
“That’s right,” she said lightly. “I’m one of England’s most-wanted criminals.”
He laughed good-naturedly, and they both turned as Joy came out into the garden.
“There you are,” she said. “Been having a pokey around the place. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You won’t have been the first,” Skye said with a pointed look at Andreas. “We were just discussing the merits—or not—of building a pool out here.”
“A pool?” Joy brushed a sweep of frizzy curls off one shoulder and fanned her face with a hand. “Hadn’t you better see to the bloody floors first?”
“Ah, yes,” Andreas said, reanimated by the mention of potential construction. “I have some things I must do this afternoon, some materials to collect, but perhaps I could come back in the morning and together we can make a plan?”
Skye looked past him, up at the windows with their broken shutters hanging loose, the stained whitewashed walls, and the roof peppered with gaps where tiles had long since been taken by the wind and by the passing of time. She thought of the money she had, the contract she had signed agreeing to restore the house to traditional standards. Like her, it needed patching up, rebuilding, a second chance at a better future.
“What do you think?” Andreas asked hesitantly as Joy picked her way over the cascade of stones below the wall.
“I think,” Skye said slowly, her gaze sliding back to meet his, “that tomorrow morning would be perfect.”
Six
They began in the front yard, Skye clutching a chipped mug of coffee that was doing little to temper her headache—a result of the three beers pressed on her by Joy the previous evening. Returning home from her new neighbor’s house long after dark, Skye had attempted to prepare a meal of eggplant pasta using the single, burned frying pan donated to her by Andreas and had not been successful in her efforts. Eventually, she’d had no choice but to gnaw on the remaining chunk of bread, which had become so tough that even soaking it in olive oil made little difference to the texture.
The morning was bright, luminously so, with a lively wind that twitched through the coarse patches of grass and flattened the damp strands of Andreas’s hair. He was in his coveralls and boots, the former unbuttoned to reveal a paint-flecked T-shirt bearing some kind of logo. Skye squinted at it through her sunglasses, but all she could make out was a fish.
“Is there something on me?” Andreas asked, his chin squashing against his chest as he attempted to look down.
“No,” she said. “Sorry, I was— Ignore me.”
“It is early for mosquitoes, but sometimes they will hunt during the day if they are hungry enough,” he said, saying the last part with a flourish of gleeful menace.
Skye, who had woken to find three new bites on her left ankle, frowned as she sipped her coffee.
“I hate them,” she said.
