Chapter 35
Standing at a short distance from the others, Oxana is wrapped in her thoughts.
There’re only a couple of days left of the cruise, so assuming that it takes a day to return to Athens, it follows that tomorrow is the day of reckoning.
The day which will blast away the pretences of the last week and reveal her for who she is.
Or more accurately, who she isn’t. Either way, there will be no more sleepy, sun-dazed days.
No more starlit nights. This is the last of them, and conceivably her own last on earth, a prospect Oxana regards with equanimity until she thinks of Eve and is pierced with sadness.
Getting her back is not going to be easy.
I can’t help thinking of the famous quote in The Leopard, a book I read at the suggestion of my beloved Anna Leonova.
‘If things are to remain the same, everything must change.’ And everything must change.
I see that now. I must stop, as Eve so eloquently puts it, being such a little cunt.
Andreas has excelled himself. We start with white asparagus cream with coconut and almond dust, paired with white Santorini wine which smells of orange blossom.
Then lobster tail glazed in rose and saffron, matched with a luminous Chateau Miraval.
I miss out the next course, a wild mushroom risotto served with truffle shavings, because since Buse said the unsayable truth, which is that truffles actually taste of shit, I haven’t been able to get the thought out of my mind.
So I sit in silence, gazing up at the inky Aegean sky, picking out the handful of constellations that I recognise, and watching for the tiny blue-white streak of Perseid meteors.
It’s magical, and the knowledge that I might die any day now only makes it more so.