Chapter 44
THE TREEHOUSE, KERASIA
When Kostas arrived there was rope all around the wooden stairs that led up to the home in the trees, barring the way.
It was wound around the branch handrail on one side and tied across the steps.
Was this his grandmother’s doing? Or had something happened?
Already his gut was leaping to the very worst conclusion, and it took him a second to stop his mind from racing to that particular finish line.
He looked at the rope around the steps again.
These knots were the work of his grandmother.
If something bad had occurred there would be red-and-white tape.
There was only one thing to do… He headed to the other side of the tree.
‘Yiayia!’
This was harder than it had been when he was younger. Had he got weaker or just heavier? Suspended above the ground, just below one of the treehouse windows, he felt like a monkey who had forgotten how to swing.
‘Yiayia! Voitheia! Help!’
His forearms were burning and he tried to find some kind of foothold on the house to aid his rise up the rope, but nothing was working.
‘What are you doing? Why are you on this rope?’
His grandmother’s head had appeared out of the window, grey headscarf wrapped tight, and he had never been so pleased to see someone.
‘The steps are all tied off,’ he answered, breath catching in his chest. ‘Then I remembered the emergency rope ladder but… half of it is gone.’
‘Because I do not want visitors. Is that not obvious? From everything you have just said.’
‘If you could—’
‘Stay still,’ she ordered. ‘I will bring you up.’
‘What?’
His grandmother disappeared but, shortly after that, he heard a whirring sound and, from below him, a small wooden crate-like object was rising from the ground. A lift? He shook his head in surprise, but his body was grateful that assistance was coming, whatever form that took.
Within a few minutes he was climbing through the window like he had done so many times – sometimes undetected in the middle of the night if needed.
‘You have electricity!’ Kostas declared like it was a sin his grandmother had committed.
‘Not in the way you think before you ride a high horse,’ Kyriaki said, setting the briki to warm. ‘I have some things working with solar energy. We are in the twenty-first century now, do you not know?’
He smiled. ‘I know. I am still deciding if it is a good or a bad thing.’
‘Pa!’ Kyriaki exclaimed. ‘It does not matter what you think it is, the world will turn just the same. Sit down. You are too big now to be standing in this space. You make it look small with your long arms and everything wide.’
Kostas did as she asked, dropping down onto one of the wooden chairs covered by a crochet-cushioned seat pad. Everything here was so characterful, so homely, so full of old-fashioned hope. All the things he shied away from.
‘So, you have come to me because of the photographs?’ Kyriaki asked, sitting on her favourite tall stool that now made her higher than him.
‘What?’
‘I have a mobile phone, Konstantino. Not the latest model. But when I lay a certain way in my bed and point it to the east I can pick up the unsecured Wi-Fi from one of the villas. So, the press again want to pick apart your private life and try to ruin beautiful things. It is no surprise.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Because they have been doing that most of my life.’
‘And you knew that would happen when you signed for the big team and you played for your country and you advertised milk for vegans.’
‘I didn’t come here for an analysis of everything I have done wrong so far.’
‘Then why did you come?’
There were so many reasons. So many. But before he could get to dealing with any of them, he knew there was something he had to do first.
‘Na se akoúso. To listen to you.’
He looked up at his grandmother, waiting for a tight retort or reprimand, but nothing was forthcoming. He wrapped his hands together and toyed with his thumbs.
‘Then let me finish making the coffee,’ Kyriaki said, slipping down off the stool.