‘He is still showing that handsome but dishonourable face I see,’ Katerina remarked.
‘He is still a guest, Katerina, and we have to be professional,’ Faye said.
Although right now she did not want him and Matthew in the same space as it felt all kinds of awkward for so many reasons. There was also one thing she didn’t understand. If Kostas had all these plans for changing the entire coastline, why wasn’t he the one who had made an offer on the hotel? She directed her attention to Matthew then, watched him chatting with their daughter. And what was he thinking? He couldn’t really want to buy the hotel, so did he truly think there was a chance for reconciliation? And did Saffron know this was his plan all along? Since she had arrived on Corfu? She needed to get to the bottom of that too, softly, but leaving her daughter with no doubt that the divorce was final as far as she was concerned and there was no going back.
‘Do you think Kostas will make a complaint?’ Katerina asked. ‘Because we looked at his private things in his room? I mean, I do not want to lose my job while I still have a job.’
Faye turned back, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘If he does make a complaint, I will say it was all me.’
And then Kostas looked right at her and, despite everything, the eye contact somehow stung soul-deep. But she didn’t have time to react because then Dimitria entered the restaurant and greeted him. A few moments of conversation and he was following her from the room.
‘Maybe she has told him he is not welcome here,’ Katerina mused.
‘Maybe,’ Faye replied. ‘But we don’t have time to wonder about that. Can you make sure Fani’s eggs are on point and I will bring out more clean glasses for the juices.’
64
‘It is another beautiful day, no?’ Dimitria asked him as they strolled through the grounds of the hotel.
‘It is,’ Kostas agreed. He put his hands in his pockets. He was coming to the conclusion that the hotel owner was a bit of a chameleon, adapting herself to different situations with relative ease. One minute she gave off the energy of a sweet companionable grandmother figure, the next a crocodile, ruthless in the pursuit of sustenance for her and her loved ones. He wasn’t sure which one he was going to get. He deserved the crocodile…
‘Let us not waste a moment of it,’ Dimitria said. ‘I know your plans for the headland and beyond. The complex you wish to build.’
He nodded. ‘Faye told you.’
‘No,’ Dimitria said. ‘Faye did not tell me. But it is inconsequential how I found out. I just want to understand what good you think it will do.’
‘Good?’
‘Yes, when you were coming up with this idea, what did you think it would achieve?’
‘Many things,’ Kostas replied. ‘But none of them were ever about “good”.’
Dimitria flapped her arms and a passing butterfly weaved out of the way and landed on a shrub. ‘You admit this?’
‘I do not think very much of my life has had “good” in it for a long time. I am hoping that is something I can change.’
‘By creating something offensive that everyone will fight against and, if God forbid the fight is lost, everyone will hate?’
Kostas stopped walking and took a deep breath.
‘The heat of everything has got too much for you?’ Dimitria asked.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I have never backed away from external conflict. Internal conflict… that is another matter.’
They had reached a seating area that overlooked a small pond with a fountain, and Kostas pulled a chair out for Dimitria and she sat.
‘You knew my father, right?’ he asked as he sat too.
‘I knew who your father was,’ Dimitria replied. ‘But I did not know him.’
‘I feel the same since I have spent some time with my grandmother.’ He sighed. ‘It is amazing how you can believe things so freely when they are told to you by someone you love. And then you realise that the person you loved told many different things many different ways to many different people. And then those words they told you, the words you wholeheartedly believed for your entire life, they become weightless and empty.’
‘You speak about your father.’
He nodded. ‘And, you know, I wasn’t the only one he told empty words to. My mother, she believed those words too and she believed them also so strongly that she reinforced my belief in them.’
‘Oh, Kosta, you know I knew your mother a little. She was a sweet, caring person and I got the feeling that she would do anything for her family.’
