Chapter 50
‘Peace offering?’
Akis held out the bottle of Yellow Donkey beer to Horatio as he found his friend leaning against the railing of the superyacht looking out to sea.
‘Where did you find that?’ Horatio asked. ‘Because I thought beer was too good for these people on here.’
‘Like a good miracle, I turned water into local beer. What can I say? I feel the gods are with me.’
Horatio took the beer and guzzled.
‘Listen, Horatio, I am sorry for what I said earlier. I know you were not thinking of the show. It was a stupid comment to make and?—’
‘Forget it,’ Horatio said. ‘I have made more than enough stupid comments in my lifetime and I should not have stormed off like a pubescent thirteen-year-old.’
‘It was a little like that,’ Akis agreed.
‘Hey!’
Akis smiled and took a sip of his beer.
‘So, tell me,’ Horatio said, back against the railings now. ‘Did you know that Cara could sing like that?’
Akis sighed, standing alongside him. ‘She told me, but, you know, I did not think it would quite be like that.’
‘I have never heard anything like it before,’ Horatio said.
‘Yeah,’ Akis said. ‘There is a lot about her that is nothing quite like I have experienced before.’
‘So why are you going to give up the potential of that for a life in black robes?’
He sighed. ‘Perhaps I should not think of it as giving things up, but more as deciding on a different path. It is an opportunity, no? To help people, to be there for my community, to do something noble.’
‘Noble? That is what you want?’
‘Well, what is my life right now, Horatio? The orchestra did not work out, we work for a few days a week in the summer, then through the winter it is work wherever I can get it.’
‘Aki, do you remember why you left Notos for Corfu Town in the first place?’
‘Because I could not stand living with my mother any more?’ Akis suggested.
‘And you think when you are always in that tiny chapel not far from her house it will be any different?’ Horatio asked. ‘You came to Corfu Town for freedom. And that is absolutely what you would be giving up if you do this.’ He took a breath. ‘I’m obviously not telling you what you should do, you get enough of that from everybody else, but think hard, Aki. I do not want you to have regrets.’
His phone started to quake in the pocket of his jeans and it was the rumble of a phone call not a simple message. Slipping it out he saw it was Anastasia. Immediately he was worried. Usually, she would type a lengthy text rather than make a call.
‘Ya.’
‘Aki,’ Anastasia said, her voice strained, panicked even. ‘You need to come back. It is Yiayia.’
His sister’s voice broke then, emotion taking over and Akis felt like someone had dropped a boulder of Santorini rock on his chest and it was crushing his body.
‘Anastasia, what’s happened?’
‘She is… dying.’