‘What do you do?’ Kostas asked her. ‘Send messages through the trees with scops owls?’
‘You make fun of me,’ Kyriaki said, ‘yet I am the one with knowledge.’
He smiled, shaking his head. Without any further hesitation he chose a seat covered by a pink crocheted square and sat.
‘So, what is in your box of things I do not need?’ Kyriaki asked, pouring coffee into two small cups.
‘Things I thought you might like,’ Kostas said. ‘Things that might make your life easier.’
‘I see.’
‘Gifts.’
‘Ah, gifts.’
He frowned. ‘Why are you saying “gifts” like these are bad things?’
‘Is it my birthday?’ Kyriaki asked, handing him one of the cups.
‘No.’
‘It is my name day?’
‘No,’ he said again.
‘Then the summer is over and it is Christmas?’
‘No.’
‘Then I do not need gifts, Konstantino.’
‘Let me help you,’ Kostas stated, cradling the tiny cup with one hand.
‘I do not need help from you, Konstantino. But I think you might need some help from me, no? That is why you bring me… I do not know… a television or maybe a fancy coffee machine.’
He sat up straight. How did she know that those were the exact things in the box at the bottom of the rope?
‘I do not need things. I will help you because I am your grandmother and I love you. That is all we need between us. So, you tell me what you have done that you want to fix and I will help you try to fix it.’
Kostas breathed deeply, let the little chair support the small of his back. ‘How do you know that I need help to fix something?’
‘It is written inside your eyes, Konstantino, like it always is.’
* * *
He told her everything about his Erimitis land project. She was the only person he had told it all to. Because although Stathis knew the extent of the scale of the luxury resort and some of his idiosyncrasies with regard to how he wanted things created, he didn’t know the full family history and his motivations. And now he had laid it all bare for his grandmother. This resort was to show everyone on this island that the Petsas family did not associate itself with Kerkyra or its people, because the people of the island had led to the ruination of his father and his family. He hadn’t been giving to Avlaki, he had planned to strip it away. His vision had been to ensure that no one on Corfu would be employed by him – not workforce, not staff for the hotel or marina – and that the villagers, who he blamed for his father’s death, got to look out at this sleek, modern, nothing-like-the-traditional buildings around it every day and remember as it took the richest tourists away from theirtavernas.
Kyriaki wasn’t saying anything as he concluded, and her expression was just as static.
‘Please,yiayia, say something. Say anything. Shout at me. Say that I am stupid, that I am one of those rich people who doesn’t care about anything or anyone and lives in a million-euro bubble.’
Kyriaki shook her head. ‘Why do I need to say any of that?’ She got down off her stool. ‘What would be the point? You have just told me exactly what type of person would drive a stake into the very heart of the nature of this island. A person who has lost his values, a person who has surrounded himself and tried to support himself with weak things.’
Kostas swallowed. He couldn’t deny she was right. And shame wrapped around him like a traitor’s cloak.
‘But this is not entirely your doing. We are all responsible in some way. Your father definitely, your mother too, although she most probably did not even realise it, and some of the blame has to fall on my shoulders.’
‘Yiayia, this is not?—’
