Faye followed her colleague into Kostas’s room. It was the first time she had been back in here since that night they had spent together. It wasn’t her job to clean the rooms unless they were very shorthanded or it was the beginning or end of the season and things needed to be prepared or wound down, so this felt like an invasion somehow. And every corner seemed to hold a vivid memory. The sofa – she had straddled him on there. The small kitchenette island – he had sat her there, pushed her legs apart and pleasured her with his mouth. The mirror on the wall opposite the bed – she had looked at their reflection as they’d moved together in perfect sync and the visual had lit a fire inside her.
‘Faye! What are you doing? We have to be quick in case he comes back.’
For some reason Faye had her hand on a T-shirt that was hanging over the back of a chair. She let go and crossed the room to join Katerina at the table.
‘I did not believe it when Maria told me what she had seen. And when I came to check I could not see it. Everything had gone black and I did not want to touch it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Faye said. ‘You need to explain it slowly. From the beginning.’
Katerina sighed in agitation. ‘I cannot do it slowly! It is breaking my heart! It cannot happen again! It cannot! The worry of it scared my mother so much she did not sleep for weeks! I want this to be not what it is!’
‘Katerina! Tell me what Maria saw. Tell me what I am meant to be seeing.’
‘It was on the laptop. Plans. Photographs. And Maria, she is not that bright, you know. She should have taken photos of the photos, but she was in shock to see it. She is still shocked now. She has to have triple espresso.’
‘Plans of what? Photos of what?’ She would deal with the privacy aspect of Katerina wanting to take photos of someone’s personal information in their room later.
‘Of Avlaki. Of Erimitis. Of the area where they were going to rip up the nature, carve into the earth and destroy everything that lives there.’
A chill ran up Faye’s spine, a million thoughts flipping through her head like someone had opened a thick book and was flicking the pages at the speed of light. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No,’ Katerina said. ‘I was not sure. I was more sure that Maria must have fallen somewhere in here and hit her head.’
‘Then—’
‘So, I decided to investigate myself,’ Katerina continued. ‘I came here, but the laptop screen was blank, and I did not want to leave my fingerprints, but then I found these.’
Faye’s gaze went from the laptop to papers Katerina was now picking up and unravelling like they were huge world maps. She was spreading them across the table and Faye could see there were drawings, like something an architect might do with measurements and scales.
‘Look! It is gigantic! Just like this plan is taking up half this room! And look! Here!’ Katerina jabbed a finger at the map. ‘This! This is where Erimitis is!’
Faye looked, squinting to see better. ‘Is that a… marina?’
‘Yes! And it says there are two hundred rooms and three swimming pools and the marina is giving berth to many, many big boats.’
It was hard to take this in. This ‘vision board’ of destruction, all these numbers and square metres of this and that; the area was unrecognisable, as it would be if this became a reality.
‘And if this is not enough? Look! Look here!’
Now Katerina jabbed at the paperwork even more furiously than ever. ‘That is Hotel Margaritári! Or that is where the hotel is now. Here it is gone! Turned into… a piece of whatever they are calling a “vagus nerve therapy space”.’
Faye looked at the plans, wanting to know everything, but equally not wanting to know at all. Was this really why Kostas had come to Corfu? He had mentioned business; he had not mentioned slicing through the natural habitat and obliterating everything she loved about this area of the island including her place of work and her home!
‘Is this the plan of Kostas Petsas, Faye?’ Katerina asked, almost accusatory. ‘Did you know all about this?’
‘No!’ Faye exclaimed. ‘I mean, I don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen any of it before and I can’t explain it, so no, I did not know.’
But she did know that Dimitria was planning on selling the hotel and that an offer had been made. But she couldn’t say a word to Katerina about that. And this new revelation, she needed to stop this news going any further around the hotel and definitely halt its gossip into the village and beyond. For now. Until she had concrete facts. And there was only one person she needed to get those from.
‘I thought he was someone to respect and admire but he has come here not to see the children who think he is their hero. He has come here to destroy the places they call home.’
As Katerina’s tears started to fall, Faye put her hands on her colleague’s shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Katerina. Who besides Maria knows about this?’
‘I… do not know… Maria, she could barely speak, but after espresso I cannot guarantee that?—’
‘You need to go to her,’ Faye said seriously. ‘You need to tell her not to tell anybody about this. And you can’t tell anyone about this either.’
‘Why? The sooner we tell people the sooner we can begin to fight. Like we did before. We should tell everybody, and we should tell the news pages so that everyone is ready against this before it goes any further.’
