Faye smiled. He was definitely flirting with her and she started to wonder just how much talking Dimitria had done about the lack of romance in her life while she was discussing the potential sale of her property. ‘That’s very thoughtful.’
‘So?’ Alexandros said, producing his mobile phone from his jacket pocket.
Gosh, he was keen. But was she? She didn’t know. Why didn’t she know? She needed to say something.
‘Erm… how about you give me your number and I can call you if I… see anything I like.’ Her phone was sat there on the table. She couldn’t have worded it any worse…
‘Do you?’ he asked, leaning a little closer. ‘See anything you like?’
Now she felt something and it was definitely somewhere between ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. And it didn’t feel right.
‘The cocktail menu,’ Dimitria said, arriving back at the table and passing them around.
Suddenly Faye’s phone erupted and she looked to the screen. Saffron. Her heart leapt. Not because there was a text from her daughter but because she suddenly realised she hadn’t even looked at those messages Matthew had sent yesterday.
‘Sorry,’ Faye said, picking up her phone. ‘Do you mind?’ She looked to Dimitria. ‘It’s Saffron.’
‘Read it,’ Dimitria ordered. ‘Hopefully it will be a message saying she is coming back to us soon.’
Faye opened the text and almost fell off her chair. ‘Oh God!’ she gasped, catching her balance and getting up.
‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’ Dimitria asked, hand to her chest.
‘She’s at the airport! Here! In Corfu!’
‘Fandastika!’ Dimitria exclaimed.
‘No, notfandastika.’ Faye was already picking up her bag and checking around her seat to make sure she had all her stuff. ‘She said Matthew texted yesterday to ask me to pick her up and?—’
‘Go!’ Dimitria ordered, shooing her hand in the air and ordering Faye away.
‘Are you sure?’ Faye asked. ‘I could ask her to get a taxi but it’s expensive. And why didn’t she text or call me herself?’ She was asking the universe that question rather than anyone sat at the table.
‘Please leave, Faye. Now. Alexandros can take me back to the hotel. I can tell you everything later.’
‘OK, I’m going,’ Faye said. She took a step away but then turned back. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Fýge!’ Dimitria ordered.
With the ‘go away’ ringing in her ears, Faye rushed off to the car.
20
IOANNIS KAPODISTRIAS AIRPORT, CORFU
Kostas sat on his motorbike outside the airport doors, an ice-cold freddo cappuccino in his hand. When he’d woken up this morning to a text from Stathis telling him his flight arrival time he’d been all set to order a taxi, but then he’d thought about his journey on the motorbike when he’d arrived. He’d liked it. Relished it even. Zipping around those tight bends, breeze in his hair, the engine vibrating through his body. It brought back memories of riding alongside his father. Good memories outweighing the bad for a change. He sipped through the straw in his drink then checked his watch. Stathis had texted when he had landed; he just needed to make it through the terminal to the exit. And then suddenly his motorbike bumped forward, shunting him in the seat. He whipped his head around. It was a car. ‘Éla maláka!’
Next, the driver got out of the car. He couldn’t believe it. Faye. He got off the motorbike but he knew, from her stance, from the look on her face, something was more wrong than the shunt to his bike.
‘Faye, what’s happened?’
She looked at him, tears in her eyes. ‘Kosta.’ She was panic-breathing. ‘What are you doing here? Oh God, was it your bike I hit? I didn’t see it and?—’
The tears were falling, involuntarily. She was functioning but not really. ‘Hey,’ he said, taking her arms. ‘Fuck the bike. Tell me. What’s going on?’
He watched her swallow, trying to regroup, arrange thoughts before words. It was something he recognised from personal experience. Being brave. Keeping those feelings locked in. ‘Tell me,’ he repeated.
‘My daughter… she’s supposed to be here. But I was late and she texted me that someone was giving her a ride to Avlaki… but she doesn’t know anyone here that I don’t know and she didn’t tell me who it was… and she has anxiety and that makes her vulnerable… and now she won’t answer her phone and I’m trying to get her location but it’s not working and?—’
