Chapter Five
Five
It was late morning by the time Skye and her new neighbor made their way back up the hill from the village.
Once it had been established that Joy was also taking ownership of a lottery house, Klodi and Cora had been effusive in their welcome, insisting the two women join them for iced coffee in the garden before pressing gifts of fresh herbs, ripe limes, and a jar each of Cora’s homemade pasteli into their hands.
“I can’t get over the view,” Joy exclaimed.
At numerous points along the pathway, she had stopped to take it in, a hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun.
The sea, which had been quiet that morning, was now agitated into a blur of movement, its surface a treasure chest of sparkles in the light.
“As soon as the rest of my stuff arrives, I’ll have a go at painting it. ”
“You’re an artist?” Skye said, and Joy pulled a face.
“So it says on my tax return, but it’s been a while since I produced anything worth a bloody second look. What do you do?”
“Teach,” Skye said, “or did, until this whole moving-to-a-tiny-Greek-island thing happened.”
“When I told my folks I was moving here, my dad told me I must be ambo.”
“ ‘Ambo’?”
“As in ambulance. He reckons I need one to cart me off to wherever it is they take the crazies. But I don’t know, my friends were all for it. I have quite a few Greek pals back in Sydney, and they told me I’d love it over here. Bit of P and Q, find my mojo again, you know.”
Skye nodded.
“I think I do know,” she said.
Joy’s house was one of the smaller single-story dwellings, though she had the benefit of a long rear garden, complete with a stone-walled hut, which she immediately earmarked as a studio.
The interior was structurally sound, though the walls were in dire need of repainting, a task that did not daunt Joy in the slightest. She was also delighted to discover that the crate of furniture she’d shipped across had arrived before she had.
Skye helped her unload a decorative patio table and two foldout chairs, a tightly strapped mattress, and a stack of wooden planks that Joy would reassemble into a futon.
“I really must order a few bits,” Skye said, thinking forlornly of her deflated air bed.
“Share with me if you like,” Joy offered. “Though if you do, bring your earplugs. I snore louder than those drills they use to break up the highway, or so my husband used to tell me.”
Skye paused in the process of unboxing cushions.
“You’re married?”
Joy looked away.
“Was,” she said, “until the old bastard went and died on me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Skye began, but Joy waved her away.
“It’s stupid,” she said. “Every day that I knew him, I’d be like, ‘Bobby Monroe, if you don’t put your dishes in the sink or your towels on the hook or your dirty kecks in the hamper, I’ll bloody kill you.
’ I couldn’t believe it when he went and called my bluff.
I still don’t believe it a lot of the time. ”
She fell abruptly silent, and Skye waited, paralyzed by indecision, torn between wanting to offer her neighbor a hug and wanting to run away.
In the end, Joy got up and left the room, and a moment later, Skye followed her, out through the back bedroom onto the sunlit patio beyond.
Joy’s head was down, but her eyes were dry.
“I told him,” she said, “ ‘We’re in our midforties, Bobs, it’s time to stop pretending you can surf.’ He wasn’t very good even in his twenties, and it only takes one slipup, one bang on the bonce. He was there, and then he wasn’t, and I was supposed to just carry on.”
“You have,” Skye said, gentle but firm. “You are.”
Joy nodded slowly, then turned to face her.
“Have you ever been married?”
Skye hesitated, then shook her head.
“Smart cookie,” Joy drawled, and then, with more humor: “Hey, do you think they gave all these houses away to single women? Maybe there’s an excess of unmarried Greek men on Folegandros and the locals have had enough of them jackbooting around, going after other fellas’ wives?”
“I’d much rather live surrounded by women than men,” Skye said, and Joy laughed.
“I’ll raise a beer to that—speaking of which, do you fancy one?”
It was too early and too hot, and she had too much to do, but Skye was in a what the hell?
mood. Joy had gotten as far as unearthing a bottle opener from one of her many boxes when they heard the roar of an approaching engine and went out through the front door to investigate.
A pickup truck was lumbering into view, its bed piled high with an assortment of items, including, Skye saw with a rush of pleasure, a fridge and a small oven.
Andreas had known they were due to arrive that morning.
He must have brought them up from the port.
“Geiá sou, ladies,” the man himself called through the driver’s-side window.
“Oh wow, he’s brought my luggage with him,” Joy crowed. “You know this guy?”
“Barely,” Skye said as the truck came to a groaning stop outside her house. The passenger door was flung open, and a man hopped out and went straight around to lower the tailgate.
“éla, Stamati,” Andreas said, beckoning urgently to his companion as Skye and Joy walked over to join them. “Come and meet our new friends.”
Stamatis, who Skye guessed to be in his late teens or early twenties, nodded briefly at the two women, grunted out a “hello,” then fished a vape from the pocket of his shorts and began to suck on it. Andreas rolled his eyes theatrically.
“My apprentice,” he explained, “and the younger brother of my best friend.”
He was wearing the same belt and boots as the previous day, though the jeans looked smarter and the shirt ironed. Skye thanked him for the basket of food and wine.
“I was worried that you might starve,” he said. “I must have food every few hours, like a baby.”
“You and me both,” Joy agreed, going on to introduce herself. As Skye had privately predicted, Andreas not only knew what the artist’s name was but had also gone to the trouble of looking her up online.
“I have seen your paintings,” he said. “They are beautiful.”
A bead of color appeared on each of Joy’s cheeks that was every bit as bright pink as her trousers. It was the first time Skye had witnessed her at a loss for something to say, and she felt a smile begin to tug at her lips.
“OK.” Andreas clapped his hands together. “Now, Stamatis and I, we will bring inside the appliances, and then I will come back for the rest.”
“I can manage these.” Joy was already reaching for one of three large suitcases, and Stamatis hurried forward to help. Left alone, Andreas turned to Skye.
“How was your first night on Folegandros?” he asked.
“Fine,” she replied, “although my bed deflated.”
Andreas’s brows shot so far upward that she laughed.
“If you think that’s bad, wait until you see the state of my walls.”
As it soon transpired, there was nothing about the house that Andreas did not already know, having spent weeks inside prior to her arrival, laying cables and digging trenches for pipes.
Once satisfied that Skye’s new fridge and oven were in place and fully functional, he joined her in the back garden, where Skye had escaped to while the two men worked.
“There is a lot of space,” he mused. “Perhaps, you would like to have a plunge pool.”
“A what?”
“Many of the villas and apartments in the main town of Chora have one of these things. A place to cool off at the end of a long day.”
“I think I’m all right for a plunge pool.” She eyed him sideways. “At least for now.”
“Or,” he went on, seemingly unperturbed, “perhaps an extension along the wall there, a place for guests to sleep when they come to visit.”
“I’m not planning on many of those,” Skye told him.
“éla, surely your friends from England will come to see your new home?”
“Nope.”
“Your family?”
Again she shook her head.
“Are you on the run from the law?” he asked, his tone jovial. “A fugitive?”
A rush of heat washed over Skye.
“That’s right,” she said lightly. “I’m one of England’s most-wanted criminals.”
He laughed good-naturedly, and they both turned as Joy came out into the garden.
“There you are,” she said. “Been having a pokey around the place. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You won’t have been the first,” Skye said with a pointed look at Andreas. “We were just discussing the merits—or not—of building a pool out here.”
“A pool?” Joy brushed a sweep of frizzy curls off one shoulder and fanned her face with a hand. “Hadn’t you better see to the bloody floors first?”
“Ah, yes,” Andreas said, reanimated by the mention of potential construction. “I have some things I must do this afternoon, some materials to collect, but perhaps I could come back in the morning and together we can make a plan?”
Skye looked past him, up at the windows with their broken shutters hanging loose, the stained whitewashed walls, and the roof peppered with gaps where tiles had long since been taken by the wind and by the passing of time.
She thought of the money she had, the contract she had signed agreeing to restore the house to traditional standards.
Like her, it needed patching up, rebuilding, a second chance at a better future.
“What do you think?” Andreas asked hesitantly as Joy picked her way over the cascade of stones below the wall.
“I think,” Skye said slowly, her gaze sliding back to meet his, “that tomorrow morning would be perfect.”