Chapter 12
12
TAVERNAKI, KASSIOPI
What was Molly doing? Waiting for a guy who was already ten minutes late. She hated lateness. If there was anything she prided herself on, it was punctuality. There was no excuse for not being on time if the date meant something to you. Appointment ! Not date! She fanned her dress away from her body a little. It was hot and she was standing in a rapidly decreasing square of shade. But she had got some great photos of her products sat on a little painted-green iron bench next to a row of yachts gently butting up to each other with the movement of the sea. That would be put on Instagram at the next best suggested time to catch the majority of beauty-product-loving people.
‘ Kalispera , Molly.’
She jumped at the sound of Christos’s voice so close. How had he got so close when she had been keeping a lookout?
‘You’re late,’ she snapped, perhaps a little bit too harsh.
‘What is the time?’ he asked, looking to his watch. Was that a Rolex he was wearing?
‘It’s almost quarter past.’ Could she have sounded more British?
‘Then I am early,’ he answered. ‘In Greece you should allow at least an extra hour on top of the time you have arranged. Sometimes, with builders, even an extra day.’
‘In that case, I have no idea how anything here ever gets done.’
‘ Sigá , sigá . Slowly, slowly.’
He had said all the words slowly too and, for some reason, it was like an instant balm for her spiky, sweaty demeanour.
‘But, I apologise, if you feel I was late. And I hope that you have not been waiting in the heat too long. It is intense tonight,’ he continued.
‘I’m glad you said that. I thought it was just my British genes.’
He looked slightly confused. ‘You are wearing a dress.’
‘Oh! Ha! You thought I meant jeans!’ She laughed. ‘It means something else too. Like your DNA. What you’re made up of. It’s built into Brits that we don’t deal well with the heat… or people who don’t know how to queue.’
‘Or Greeks being late.’ He raised an eyebrow.
Sexy . She swallowed, feeling very Siobhan in this moment. ‘Shall we find some more shade?’
‘And order some cold white wine?’ he suggested. ‘Please.’ He held his arm out, indicating the entrance to the taverna.
Their table for two was in the corner, but still overlooking the harbour, slightly set away from the bigger parties already enjoying burgeoning plates of fresh fish, bread and dips Molly didn’t know the names of. The ambience was giving relaxed, laid-back, warm energy and it was as intoxicating as this first sip of the semi-sweet white wine.
‘The rumour is,’ Christos began, holding his glass out and observing the liquid inside, ‘if you drink enough of Greek wine it becomes part of your DNA.’
She laughed. ‘Is that so?’
‘We can take my godfather Vaggelis as an example of that. Perhaps that is all that is left of him now. Or, maybe, 70 per cent wine and 30 per cent cigarettes.’
‘That doesn’t sound like a healthy lifestyle,’ Molly remarked, taking another drink.
‘And that is likely why he is dead.’
Wow . Blunt . And the white wine was suddenly losing its appeal.
‘You did not have a good relationship with your godfather?’ Molly asked him as she put down her glass.
‘Oh, no, we had a good relationship. He was the one man in my family… the only man in my family that I could count on.’ He smiled. ‘But, you know, we Greeks are perfect but also realists.’
‘I suppose if you didn’t get on he wouldn’t have left you most of his estate,’ Molly mused aloud.
‘Fifty per cent, as you keep reminding me. He also left you 50 per cent and you say you did not know him at all.’
Yes, that was a very good point and one she couldn’t ignore the bones of forever. She needed to grill her mum about the depth of her relationship with Vaggelis, get her to open up without being too obvious he was in the could-be-my-daddy pool. But she still wanted to know more about the man before she shared any of those thoughts with Christos. Because, right now, she was a stranger with no possible genetic connection to his family. But if Vaggelis ended up being her blood relative, a blood relative no one knew existed prior to now, there was a chance that her right to inherit, as part of succession law, could override any will if she contested it. Obviously it wasn’t her intention to try to take more than she had been given even if this was the case, but she didn’t think a little research would hurt. Currently, the Baros family were wondering what right she had to inherit at all. However, even a sniff of that could make Christos close up fast when she needed as much intel as she could get.
‘Maybe I was just a very endearing child eating spaghetti with my fingers.’ She smiled.
‘Or maybe Vaggelis is your father.’
Shit . Molly knocked over her glass of wine and leapt up from the table to try and fix the mess with napkins. Everyone had heard the crash and all eyes were now on her, shaking salt and pepper pots of dripping liquid. Why had he said that? Why was she dabbing at paper with paper and hoping for resolution?
‘It’s OK,’ Christos said, as a waiter came to their aid. ‘We will order more.’
‘I am so sorry,’ Molly said as things were rapidly wiped and removed or replaced, and everyone else in the restaurant got back to concentrating on their own fine-dining. ‘I’m not usually so clumsy.’
‘You were shocked by what I said,’ Christos told her, pouring more wine into her glass.
‘Not shocked,’ she answered, hoping she was exuding a lot more calm than she felt. ‘Just thinking there is a reason you said that, and wondering how many other children in nappies Vaggelis has photos with. Or… perhaps there is another will leaving things to other strangers.’
‘What can I say?’ Christos asked. ‘Vaggelis liked the attention of women.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘He was a good-looking man when he was younger. That boat was a lot more seaworthy then. And I am sure it saw a lot of action with the motion of the ocean, shall we say?’
She was cringing thinking about her mum having any motion whatsoever with this man in a captain’s hat. But no one wanted to imagine their parents getting up to anything, did they? She swallowed. She needed to maintain calm.
‘Well, I can categorically say that he wasn’t my dad,’ Molly stated with gusto. ‘My dad was an oil-rigger called Simon.’ And that was what she had said for years if anyone asked and she didn’t want to admit the truth that she had no clue who her father was.
‘He has passed?’ Christos asked.
‘Oh, you mean died? No. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never met him.’ Usually most people didn’t want any other questions after her one line. But, apparently, Christos Baros was not ‘most people’. And now her response was going to lead to more unless she followed it up quickly and with confidence.
‘You never met your father?’ Christos asked. Too late.
‘No, well, my mum wasn’t with him for that long, well, you know, just long enough I guess, kind of a common theme, not that she’s not a great person but she definitely has commitment issues and, well, he worked away a lot on the oil rigs and I guess he didn’t want a baby and she didn’t want him so… here we are.’
And that had sounded so tragic. Except without the addition of fictional Simon it was all so close to the truth…
‘I can relate a little,’ Christos answered. ‘My father was not around a great deal. That is why I had a good relationship with my godfather.’
‘Did your father work away? Like… my father on the oil rigs?’
‘Something like that.’
It was obvious, from him dipping his head slightly and picking up his glass of wine, that this was all the elaboration she was going to get. What was the story there? She broke the elongating silence.
‘I don’t think it matters how you are related to good people in your life. It only matters that they are good people in your life.’
‘Agreed,’ Christos said with a nod. He raised his glass a little. ‘To good people in our lives. And to our joint good fortune.’
She gently knocked her glass against his. ‘Our joint good fortune.’