Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-two
Three weeks after arriving on Folegandros, Skye experienced her first Greek storm.
The morning had begun in stillness, the mountains standing sharp against a backdrop of clear blue.
By the time she had scraped the last of her breakfast from the bowl—yogurt, fruit, and honey, eaten while standing at the open back door, having become a quiet ritual—the light had shifted.
A wind rose out of nowhere, wild and impatient, rattling what remained of her shutters and sweeping grit across the kitchen floor.
Andreas appeared not long after she had finished washing up, pausing in the front yard with his arms folded and chin tipped to the sky. His hair was damp, the dark curls brushed back but already at the mercy of the wind.
“Are you attempting to have a staring match with those gray clouds?” Skye asked.
Something close to a grin tugged at his mouth.
“Rain in June is not impossible,” he said, “but it is unusual. Most of the time, we have a lot more at the end of August and also in the winter.”
“You’re forgetting I grew up in England,” she reminded him. “Rain is part of my DNA.”
Andreas’s smile grew.
“If that is true,” he said, “it means the sun is part of mine.”
The two of them shared many of these playful exchanges, and this moment itself did not demand attention. Yet there was something in the way they looked at each other now, soft and unhurried, that made it feel like one worth remembering.
“I didn’t think I’d see you today,” she said. “I thought everything was on hold until Pantelis had time to do the plastering?”
A violent gust of wind tore through the house, and Andreas flinched as the back door slammed shut with a crash that echoed through the walls.
“That is true,” he allowed. “It is, perhaps, unfortunate that the best plasterer on the island decided to also open a taverna. But it is OK because, today, I have brought my potty.”
“Your…potty?” Skye spluttered out a laugh. “I know this place is a work in progress, but there is a functioning toilet.”
He stared at her, incomprehension writ large.
“Why would I use a toilet to fill holes in the walls?”
“Oh,” she said, “you mean putty.”
“Nai, potty.”
“What do you call it in Greek?”
“Stokáki,” he said.
Skye let her own smile come, small and irrepressible.
“Maybe stick to that in the future,” she suggested. “Less risk of misinterpretation.”
Andreas gave a faint shake of his head as if amused but slightly resigned.
“Do you want to help me?” he asked. “It is a messy job but quite satisfying.”
“I can’t,” Skye said. “It’s Monday, and Mondays and Wednesdays are my teaching days, remember?”
“Nai, of course,” he said. “And how is the boy getting along?”
“George? Very well. Now that the initial adjustment has eased, I think he’s starting to really enjoy living here.
I’ve discovered that he finds it easier to concentrate when we’re outside, walking and talking rather than sitting together at a desk.
I was actually planning to head down to the beach today, but perhaps that’s unwise? ”
She glanced up toward the sky, the clouds congregating in bruised layers, their dark underbellies threatening to spill.
“I think it is better to stay indoors today,” Andreas agreed, briefly touching her arm. “Teach him some Greek history.”
Skye lingered inside the door, watching as he pulled a tub of “potty” from the back of the truck.
Andreas was right, history made sense. Teaching it wouldn’t just provide George with some background about his new home, it might deepen her own understanding, too.
The thought sparked something, and she dashed up the stairs, returning moments later to find Andreas unfolding a dust sheet.
Like her, he was protective of the terra-cotta floor tiles they had laid together—a task that had offered a welcome distraction from all the things she was trying not to think about.
Martyn’s emails had stopped, though the silence was, in its own way, more unsettling.
Her insomnia had worsened since leaving London, and even when sleep came, it was fragile.
The slightest noise would jolt her awake, adrenaline surging and nerves shredded, leaving her twitchy and irritable.
“Sorry I can’t stay and help,” she said, grabbing her bag and making for the door.
“éla, it is OK. This is my happy place, and now you must go and be in yours.”
It was uncanny the way his words always found their mark. Language, to Andreas, was a tool, too, wielded with the same gentle precision as a hammer or drill.
There was a spring in Skye’s step as she crossed to Theo and George’s house. She raised her hand to knock, but just then, the door swung open.
“Hi,” George said in a sullen sort of voice. “Dad’s on the phone, like always.”
“Ah,” she said. There had been much celebration the previous Wednesday when their hillside homes were finally connected to the internet.
Theo and Adam no longer had to trek down to the taverna to work, and Victoria was already planning online yoga sessions just as soon as their garden had been suitably landscaped.
For Skye, it made little difference, though she had bought a new SIM card for her phone and was using it to check in regularly with Sal.
Her friend repeatedly urged her to find someone on the island she could open up to, but she wasn’t ready. Not yet.
“I thought we’d stay here today,” she told George. “Andreas says it’s going to rain soon.”
The boy fiddled with his headphones, his “All right” in reply coursing out on a sigh.
Skye followed him inside. The layout mirrored Joy’s next door, though with an extra bedroom for George and a tiny office Theo had created in an alcove behind the old fireplace.
The walls and ceilings still needed plaster and paint, and aside from several overstuffed bookcases, the furnishings were minimal.
One low table displayed George’s creations—air-dry clay animals, mosaic tiles, and painted shells he and Skye had collected from Livadaki Beach.
The boy was like many nine-year-olds—rambunctious, physical, easily distracted—but also capable of sitting quietly with a task.
She had learned that if she hit upon a subject that interested him, he would respond with studied enthusiasm.
“I brought something exciting to show you today,” she said, mouthing a silent greeting to Theo as he leaned out from his alcove. George slumped down on the shabby sofa and began to pick at a scab on his knee.
Drawing a sheaf of papers from her bag, Skye spread them across the seat. It was the first letter from the bundle, not Andreas’s translated version but the original, age-stained and blotted with ink. George leaned over, scanning the words through his thick, smeared glasses.
“It’s in Greek,” he said, looking up. “Who wrote it?”
“I don’t know for sure,” she admitted. “Though it was probably a man, and his name began with an S.”
George thought for a moment.
“Stamatis’s name starts with an S,” he said. “Maybe it was him.”
“He might well have been called Stamatis,” she said, “but whoever wrote this did so in 1940.”
George tilted his head, curiosity catching hold.
“Where did you get it?” he asked.
“Well, now,” Skye began, “that’s where the story gets really interesting because—”
“Sorry, sorry.” Theo’s chair had fallen to the floor, and he was hurrying toward them. “I heard what you said, and— Is this the letter Joy told me about? Can I see?”
Skye passed him the pages, which he read silently.
“This is quite a find,” he said. “I like the way he writes, this man.”
George began to tap the arm of the sofa.
“Will you read it out loud, Dad?”
Theo drew in a short breath.
“Please!”
“OK,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the threadbare rug. He read almost all of it, leaving out the parts that Skye agreed might be a little hot for younger ears to handle.
“There are lots more,” she told him. “I found a whole bundle hidden inside my chimney.”
“Whoa!” George exclaimed. “Like that sword thing Dusty showed me?”
“That was in her garden, but both are buried treasure if you ask me.”
Theo reached across and stilled his son’s still-tapping fingers.
“If you bring the other letters here, I can translate them for you,” he offered.
“That’s kind of you, but I think Andreas wants to do it.”
“Isn’t he very busy?”
George swung a leg, narrowly missing his dad’s kneecap.
“You’re always busy, too,” he said mutinously. “I heard you on your laptop last night, crashing on the keyboard. It was going on for ages, I couldn’t even sleep.”
Theo blinked as if something had dimmed inside him.
“It’s tricky edit,” he said, glancing at Skye. “You change one thing, and it’s like a domino’s been knocked over in the novel. I’m so close to the end now, and then”—he turned to his son—“I promise I’ll have more free time.”
George resumed his slump, bottom lip protruding.
“When’s Mum coming?” he asked.
Skye began to fold away the letter. She could almost feel the heat of Theo’s discomfort.
“I’ve told her where we are,” he said. “Whether she comes or not is up to her.”
George tore off what was left of the scab, blood blooming.
“Maybe she can’t afford the plane ticket,” he said hotly. “Or she might be scared of flying—you don’t know.”
“I wish that were the case,” Theo began, but George had gone past the point of calm discussion. He began flicking his thumb and second finger together, his body hunched over. Skye put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you go and get your pens, George, and we’ll do some sketching?”
He shook his head, the flicking becoming more insistent.
“Come on, mate,” Theo began, only to be interrupted by a loud rumble of thunder. Skye jumped, though the noise steadied George. He stopped stimming and crossed to the window.
“I saw lightning,” he said. “Do you think it was like this in the war, when bombs were going off all the time and people were being blown up?”
Skye went to join him.
“I think that would’ve been far scarier,” she said, peering out. The sky had turned eerily dark, the wind whistling as it tore at the earth.
“Dad, what was the biggest explosion ever? Was it from a nuclear bomb?”
“I don’t know,” Theo said tiredly. “Maybe. Why don’t you go and look it up on the iPad?”
“But it’s not my screen time.”
“I’ll make an exception,” Theo said. “Off you go.”
George scampered off as if the disagreement with his dad had never happened. Theo waited until his bedroom door closed, then turned to Skye.
“Sorry you had to hear that,” he said. “The situation with my ex-wife is complicated.”
“Say no more,” she said, but Theo wasn’t finished.
“We broke up a long time ago,” he said, sitting in the space that George had vacated, his elbows on his knees.
“Everyone said we got married too young, but when you’re twenty, you don’t listen to anyone.
George wasn’t planned, and Deirdre, that’s my ex, didn’t enjoy being pregnant.
They say women bloom, but it was the opposite for her, and when George was born, she struggled to bond with him.
I did what I could, took her to the doctor, and then another doctor.
” He sighed. “Somehow, we made it through the first few years as a family, but it was as if a part of her wasn’t there.
The day after George’s fourth birthday, she told me she’d met someone else and wanted to leave.
I thought at first that she’d want to keep George with her, but I was wrong about that. ”
“I’m so sorry,” Skye said.
Theo pulled a what-can-you-do expression.
“Deirdre went from seeing him every weekend to every other weekend, and then slowly, the visits dropped off. There was always an excuse, and suddenly six months had passed with no contact, not even a phone call. My friends told me I should go down the legal route, but I didn’t want that, not for any of us.
The final straw came when she missed his birthday in October.
I was so angry.” He shook his head. “I left George with a friend and went to confront her, but when I knocked on her door, a stranger answered, told me they’d bought the house from her months before.
There was no forwarding address, and she didn’t answer my calls or emails. ”
Skye’s skin turned clammy, her breath catching in her throat. Rain had started to fall, hard and steady.
“What about grandparents?” she asked.
“Deirdre’s parents were in Ireland, and they were never close.
The only time we took George to see them, it ended in disaster, so we never went back.
” He stared glumly at his hands. “They didn’t know where she’d gone—nobody seemed to know anything—until this one day.
I got a message on Facebook, of all places, from a friend of hers.
She said she felt sorry for me and told me where I could find Deirdre. ”
“And did you?”
Theo’s eyes briefly closed.
“Eventually, yes. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. I don’t want George to ever know what she said. I haven’t lied to him, though, except by omission. Deirdre does know where we are.”
“Do you think she’ll ever come here?” Skye asked.
“Honestly?” he said. “No, I don’t think she will.”
His words anchored them for a few moments in silence, the only sound the persistent rain. Theo removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“I really would like to translate the rest of the letters for you,” he said. “My way of saying thank you for helping George, for caring about him.”
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“No, but I want to,” he said. “Maybe we can start a project once this edit is done, do some proper research into the people who lived here before us, build up an archive of letters, photos, artifacts.”
Thunder cracked across the hillside, loud enough to make Skye step back from the window.
“There are bound to be more things out there,” Theo said, his tone thoughtful. “Waiting to be found.”
Skye nodded, a thrill rising in her chest.
“I can’t wait to see what this mysterious little village turns up next.”
Outside, the storm rolled on, and somewhere beneath it, the past stirred, patient yet unresolved, waiting to surface once more.