Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Skye did not join the others at the taverna.
She stayed where she was—in the dirt, staring but not seeing, listening but not hearing, thinking while trying her hardest not to remember.
There was a distance between her and Martyn now, but she couldn’t rid her mind of him, couldn’t silence the sense that he was coming for her.
His message—three words that would seem innocuous to most people—represented the firing of a starting pistol.
Martyn Lockhart was on the hunt, and he wouldn’t stop until he found her.
Aware of movement on the slope below, Skye looked down and saw the ginger cat Tigri making his way toward her, delicate paws sidestepping stones and tufts of grass.
“Geiá sou,” she said. The Greek language sounded strange in her voice, though she supposed it would become less so with more effort. Tigri responded by nuzzling his soft head against her ankle. He wore no collar yet appeared well fed and healthy, his eyes bright and fur clean.
“Hungry?” she asked, scratching under his chin. “Me, too. Come on, then.”
When she stood and headed back the way she’d come, the cat followed, lagging at first, then bounding ahead as they neared the houses.
There was another pickup truck parked at an angle outside the cottage next door to Joy’s.
It had a UK license plate and a sticker on the bumper that read: “Sorry for Driving so Close in Front of You.” As Skye approached, a crash rang out from inside the house, followed by a shout of frustration.
The door flew open, and a petite young woman burst into the yard, chased by another—a head taller though seemingly younger. Both had the same fiery red hair.
“How can someone so small be so bloody clumsy?” the taller woman raged in a strong Bristolian accent. Then, noticing Skye: “Oh, hello there.”
“Hi.” Skye said. The shorter women smiled with faint embarrassment.
“Sorry about all the yelling,” she said. “I dropped a vase—but it wasn’t my fault,” she added, turning to her pursuer. “I tripped over Bruno.”
“I told you to leave him in the truck.” The other woman sighed and wiped her hands on the front of her jeans. “Bruno is our almost-blind basset hound,” she told Skye. “No one knows how old he is in human years, but I reckon he must be at least a hundred by dog standards.”
“Rude,” the other woman intoned. “Bruno isn’t a day over ninety.”
Right on cue, a large droopy-eared dog lolloped out of the house and walked straight into a stack of clay pots. Tigri, who had sprung up onto the mottled stone wall that surrounded the property, hissed in disgust.
“Oh, how gorgeous.” The first woman shot forward, bending so she could peer at the cat’s face. “Nice moggy,” she said. “Is he yours?”
“Not mine, no.” Skye matched her smile. “I think he might belong to the village collectively—he certainly seems to behave as if he does.”
“That’s cats for you,” the woman said. “I’m Mia, by the way. And that crosspatch over there is my younger sister, Dusty.”
“Younger but wiser,” Dusty called across, and Mia rolled her eyes theatrically.
“Is it just the two of you?” Skye asked once she’d introduced herself. Dusty glanced up from where she’d bent to tie her shoelaces. She wore the same thick-soled boots as Andreas.
“There’s a third sister,” she said. “Louisa, she’s the eldest. I think she went off in search of a shop, though I have to admit, I wasn’t really paying much attention to what she said.”
Bruno gave up trying to find his way back indoors and lay down across the front step, stubby tail flicking away flies.
“Of all the places…” Dusty sighed, readjusting her baseball cap over an untidy bun.
“Do you want to see our house?” Mia offered. “It’s a bit of a shell, but there’s running water and electricity, which, apparently, we should feel thankful for.”
“The listing said ‘derelict,’ ” Dusty reminded her. “I’m thankful we have a roof.”
They took turns stepping over Bruno—who’d rolled onto his back and was snoring loudly, all four paws dangling in midair—and went through into an open-plan room cluttered with half-open boxes, suitcases, and three tightly knotted trash bags.
“Duvets,” Mia said, prodding one with her foot. “Not that we’ll need them if it stays this hot.”
“I’ve been sleeping under a pashmina,” Skye said, deciding not to mention the hated air bed.
Dusty had marched over to the far wall, to where a livid crack ran across the plaster.
“What in the crumble-stiltskin?” she said with a groan.
Mia pulled a face and ushered Skye through into the kitchen, which was even more compact than her own. The sisters had only a small fridge and microwave and, aside from a single rickety chair, no furniture to speak of.
“I’d offer you something to drink,” Mia said, “but we have no tea bags, coffee, milk, or sugar, and I’ve no idea which box the mugs are in.”
Skye’s stomach growled, the sound embarrassingly loud.
“I can stretch to a chocolate digestive, though?” Mia went on. “I’m sure there was a half-finished packet somewhere around here, unless Dusty ate them. She eats like most people breathe,” she added, and Skye laughed as an indignant “Oi!” filtered through from the other room.
“The bathroom is in there”—Mia indicated a second door—“but that’s it.
The only other space we have is at the far end of the garden, and that’s just a hut full of broken pots and a few old tools.
Dusty has grand plans for the place, of course, but for a while, it looks like we’ll be bunking down on the floor, all three of us sharing one room again, like we did as kids. ”
“You don’t sound too thrilled by the prospect,” Skye observed, and Mia shrugged.
“Needs must. At least I can use Bruno as a pillow.”
“Is he your dog, then?”
Mia ran a finger along the wall, watching as a shoal of plaster cascaded to the floor. She wrinkled her nose, then turned to Skye.
“Officially, he belongs to all of us, but I’ve looked after him the most since my mum passed away. Bruno and me, we have a bond.”
Touched by Mia’s obvious sorrow, Skye searched for something to say. The silence that stretched was broken by another loud groan from Dusty.
“I could park a four-wheeler in this crevasse,” she muttered before calling through, “This whole interior will need to be replastered.”
“Don’t pretend you’re not glad about it,” Mia called back. Then to Skye she added, “Dusty works in construction, hence all the tools and the grand plans.”
“And you?”
“I’m a vet,” she said with a certain amount of pride. “Newly qualified. I don’t suppose you know if there’s a clinic on the island?”
“Sorry, no.” Skye thought for a moment. “Though if there is one, it’ll most likely be in Chora.”
Mia nodded, looking thoughtful.
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “Moving here wasn’t even my idea. It wasn’t— Never mind.”
“It wasn’t what?” Skye said, but Mia had stepped away and was peering into the other room.
“Did you hear that?” she said. “I think there’s someone outside.”
It was Andreas, accompanied by the eldest sister, Louisa, who was tall and willowy with a Rapunzel sweep of red curls. Both were holding bulging shopping bags.
“I might have overdone it,” Louisa said, lowering her cargo of groceries to the floor. “There were so many delicious-looking things, all so fresh, and the nice man at the shop insisted I take a bottle of ouzo on the house.”
“I’m starved,” Dusty said, bending to root through the nearest bag.
Having extracted a packet of Lay’s oregano chips, she tore them open and began to crunch noisily.
Bruno the basset hound, having been roused from his doorstep slumber by the whiff of food, heaved himself onto all four paws and shambled toward them.
“Not a chance,” Dusty scolded when he pressed his snout against her leg. Mia threw her sister a scathing look before digging in the pocket of her shorts.
“Here,” she said, tossing the dog a treat. “Good boy.”
“This is Andreas,” Louisa said, turning pink as the man in question smiled around at them. “He saw me struggling up the hill and offered to help.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said. “I am always at the service of a lady in need.”
Dusty choked on a mouthful of chips, and Mia shot back with a yelp as crumbs sprayed out in all directions. It was clear that nobody was going to introduce Skye to Louisa, so this she did herself, pointing across the hillside to indicate which house was hers.
“You are the final arrivals,” Andreas told them. “The last lottery winners on Folegandros.”
“That can’t be right,” Skye said. “What about the sixth person? There’s still one property yet to be claimed.”
Andreas rubbed a hand across his jaw.
“Nai,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “There is another empty house here, but I do not think it belongs to the municipality. There must be some other situation.”
“Another owner?”
He shrugged.
“Perhaps so.”
The five of them stared across at the abandoned property, with its crumbling outer walls and collapsed roof. There were only two windows at the front, and each had been boarded with thick planks of wood, hammered in place from the inside.
“Whoever’s it is, they’re going to have a hell of a job on their hands,” Dusty mused. She had finished the first bag of chips and was now polishing an apple on the leg of her jeans. “Roofs don’t come cheap.”
“Your own foundations are some of the best,” Andreas informed her. “I did not have to do much to make the house secure.”
“The new supporting structure is your handiwork?” Dusty asked, and he nodded. “Oh. Well, I’m not sure I would’ve done it like that, but I guess it’ll do the job until I get around to replacing it.”
The genial smile fell from Andreas’s face.
“You do not think it is good enough?”
Dusty bit into her apple and chewed for a few seconds before replying.
“I’m sure it’s sturdy. It’s just a bit…unsightly.”
“It is traditional,” he said firmly as a still-blushing Louisa took the shopping bags from his hands. Andreas folded his arms across his chest. He looked seriously unimpressed. Skye met Mia’s eye, both women suppressing the urge to grin.
“Greeks have been constructing their houses this way for hundreds of years, and here on Folegandros, we build strong homes, those that can withstand the wind, the rain, and the earthquakes.”
Dusty began to twist the stalk off her apple, reciting the alphabet as she went. “…G, H, I, J—oh, J. Who do I know whose name begins with J?”
“You’ll know your new neighbor Joy soon,” Skye said.
Dusty screwed up her features.
“Wrong sex but never mind,” she said, and having thrown the apple core as far as she could into the surrounding undergrowth, she headed back into the house.
“Sorry about that,” Mia said to Andreas. “She doesn’t mean to be rude, she just likes to do everything her own way. Having the job she does can be tough—there’s still a lot of sexism in the construction industry, at least in the UK,” she hastened.
“Entáxei,” he muttered. “It is OK.”
Bruno sniffed at Mia’s pocket in search of more treats, and Andreas crouched briefly to pat him. Tigri, meanwhile, remained on the wall, washing his bottom and feigning indifference.
“I should let you get on,” Skye said. “Unpack and settle in. You know where I am if you need anything.”
Mia smiled gratefully, but Andreas continued to frown.
“I am not sexist,” he told her, “but I am right to be worried. Things here, they must be done a special way, to a standard that is very particular for this island. I’m not saying that it must be me who does the work, but it is important that you use the right materials and processes.”
“Dusty knows her stuff,” Mia assured him. “I’m sure she’ll do everything by the book.”
“She must.” Andreas’s expression was stern, his tone no-nonsense. “To do it any other way would place all of you in a lot of danger.”