‘Because I do not want visitors. Is that not obvious? From everything you have just said.’
‘If you could?—’
‘Stay still,’ she ordered. ‘I will bring you up.’
‘What?’
His grandmother disappeared but, shortly after that, he heard a whirring sound and, from below him, a small wooden crate-like object was rising from the ground. A lift? He shook his head in surprise, but his body was grateful that assistance was coming, whatever form that took.
Within a few minutes he was climbing through the window like he had done so many times – sometimes undetected in the middle of the night if needed.
‘You have electricity!’ Kostas declared like it was a sin his grandmother had committed.
‘Not in the way you think before you ride a high horse,’ Kyriaki said, setting thebrikito warm. ‘I have some things working with solar energy. We are in the twenty-first century now, do you not know?’
He smiled. ‘I know. I am still deciding if it is a good or a bad thing.’
‘Pa!’ Kyriaki exclaimed. ‘It does not matter what you think it is, the world will turn just the same. Sit down. You are too big now to be standing in this space. You make it look small with your long arms and everything wide.’
Kostas did as she asked, dropping down onto one of the wooden chairs covered by a crochet-cushioned seat pad. Everything here was so characterful, so homely, so full of old-fashioned hope. All the things he shied away from.
‘So, you have come to me because of the photographs?’ Kyriaki asked, sitting on her favourite tall stool that now made her higher than him.
‘What?’
‘I have a mobile phone, Konstantino. Not the latest model. But when I lay a certain way in my bed and point it to the east I can pick up the unsecured Wi-Fi from one of the villas. So, the press again want to pick apart your private life and try to ruin beautiful things. It is no surprise.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Because they have been doing that most of my life.’
‘And you knew that would happen when you signed for the big team and you played for your country and you advertised milk for vegans.’
‘I didn’t come here for an analysis of everything I have done wrong so far.’
‘Then why did you come?’
There were so many reasons. So many. But before he could get to dealing with any of them, he knew there was something he had to do first.
‘Na se akoúso. To listen to you.’
He looked up at his grandmother, waiting for a tight retort or reprimand, but nothing was forthcoming. He wrapped his hands together and toyed with his thumbs.
‘Then let me finish making the coffee,’ Kyriaki said, slipping down off the stool.
45
‘Look at you there! So goofy! Thank God the advertising people did not get this photo!’
‘Hey, we all go through a bad haircut era,’ Kostas told his grandmother as they sat together at the table and she revealed page after page of pictures, newspaper cuttings, magazine interviews, anything relating to his career.
‘Your mother did it, if you remember,’ Kyriaki said with a tut. ‘It would have been better if she put a bowl on your head and cut around.’
‘She tried her best,’ Kostas stated, soberly.
‘Yes,’ Kyriaki agreed. ‘She always tried her best.’ She sighed. ‘Do you know why she cut your hair and did not take you to the barber?’
He swallowed. ‘She told me she could not afford it.’
‘Did she tell you why she could not afford it?’ Kyriaki tutted again. ‘I do not know why I am even asking. Of course she did not tell you! Well, you said you wanted to listen so perhaps we begin here. She could not pay for your haircut because your father spent the money at OPAP.’
