Dimitria put her hands on Faye’s shoulders, pausing in her steps. ‘And now breathe.’
‘I don’t have time to breathe,’ Faye said. ‘Please don’t add breathing to my already full list.’
‘You give everything to this job, Faye,’ Dimitria began. ‘You have always given everything to this job.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Faye asked. ‘You gave me everything when you gave me this job.’
Dimitria shook her head. ‘I gave you what I could because you deserved it. And, what? You work yourself into the ground forever because you think you are in my debt? I may, theoretically, be your boss, Faye, but I am your friend first, no?’
Faye let go of a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding on to. Sometimes she felt a little like, in her own mind, she was still trying to earn her place on the island. But she’d work as hard as she had to to prove to anyone that Kerkyra wasn’t a passing fancy to her. Corfu was her life, her permanent home, and she was so very grateful for that.
‘It does not escape anyone’s attention that I am getting older,’ Dimitria continued as they walked again. ‘Even my cats are beginning to wonder if today will be the day I fall over and do not get back up. I see the way they look at me. They are more sorry for me than I am for them. Either that or they wonder which leg they will gnaw on first.’
‘Dimitria—’
‘Ochi. No. I do not look for sympathy. I speak only of facts. And, as I need to think of my future, you need to also think of yours.’
‘I do,’ Faye said. ‘When I have time to think about anything but this current summer season and?—’
‘Make time, Faye.’
Faye baulked a little at Dimitria’s tone. She hadn’t heard her friend talk that way for a while. The last time, worryingly, had been during a health scare…
‘Dimitria, is there something I should know?’ Faye asked as they stopped again. ‘You’re not… unwell or anything?’
‘No! Is that what the grapevine is saying?’
‘No, not at all, I just didn’t know what you meant,’ Faye said.
‘I asked you to make time. Because, in the end, that is all we really have.’ Dimitria sighed. ‘And no one ever knows how much.’
Now Faye was really worried. She went to speak again but Dimitria beat her to it.
‘Please, make time for Kostas, Faye. He has paid a vast sum of money to stay here and I have yet to fully work out why but, for the time being, I would like to keep him happy. Whatever work you cannot handle you will pass on to Katerina. She is a bright girl, and she is always looking for more than bar work. Perhaps we give her a trial.’
A shiver ran up Faye’s back at the thought of Katerina having even thirty seconds in charge of spreadsheets instead of bed sheets.
‘Take that look off your face. We both know no one is going to be as conscientious as you; however, also no one expects you to be a martyr. Especially not me.’
‘Dimitria,’ Faye said. ‘Please tell me what’s going on with you.’
‘Tipota. Nothing,’ she answered, her fingers curling around a frond of lavender springing from the flowering border. ‘But perhaps I am concerning myself a little with the organisation of the time I have left. Ah! Kosta, you are here. Please, let Faye take you to a table with our perfect view.’
And as Kostas arrived, white porcelain plate overflowing with a mixture of food items from the breakfast buffet, there was nothing that Faye could do apart from what she was told.
9
‘Egg?’ Kostas asked, offering Faye the plate where he had four of them sat together next to feta cheese, olives, tomatoes and hunks of bread. There were also strawberries. It wasn’t often he ate breakfast but this morning, waking up to the sunshine, blue sky, the smell of countryside not city, it had made him want to embrace these new beginnings on this island. That was, after all, exactly what he was here for.
‘No, thank you,’ she replied.
‘I have ordered coffee. Katerina is bringing it out to us. I didn’t know if you liked sugar and milk so I asked for everything.’
‘You don’t know that I like coffee either.’
He laughed. ‘You live in Greece. Everyone likes coffee here.’
She smiled. ‘That’s a fair point. However, apparently a vast number of people also like basketball and I’m not one of them. So, apologies, I had no idea who you were when you arrived.’
