Thursday 21st September 1
S tanding at Karmela’s window, Zina watched as Lambros and Yiannis stopped to chat next to Yiannis’s car. She’d heard their voices as they rounded the building from the drying yard and now they were directly in her line of vision. Lambros was laughing. Laughing! He clearly wasn’t unhappy at all.
Unable to stop her tears, Zina sank onto the sofa. If Mama was wrong and he didn’t even care about their estrangement, what could she do? Pack up and go back to Athens and try to find another job? But what about The Retreat House? And what about Lambros? He could only farm here because he was married to her, so should he be the one to leave? But what would happen to him then? This whole thing was such a frigging mess. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed.
“Zina?” She hadn’t heard Karmela come in. “Whatever is going on?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I just need to make the bed. Everything else is done.”
“Do not worry about that. What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It does not look like nothing to me. And has not for a few days, if I am honest. I have been worried about you, Zina.”
Had it really been so obvious? Skatá! But as ever, Karmela’s eyes were full of kindness and concern. “I’ve tried so hard to hide it,” Zina said, sniffing. “I’m so sorry.”
“Stop saying that. You have been faultlessly professional.”
“Thank you, but I don’t just want to be professional. I want everything to be exceptional, to be the best, and that includes me.”
“You are the best, Zina. I cannot imagine anyone better at running a retreat, but clearly you are unhappy and I would love to be able to help if I can.”
Karmela sat on the sofa next to her, and Zina looked into her dark eyes, the fine lines around them the only feature that gave away her age. She was older than her and had seen so much more of life. Zina was desperate to talk to someone detached from her situation. She needed a friend, and in Karmela she knew she had found one. She should have known before, should have trusted… There could be no holding back, not anymore.
“It’s Lambros. We had a row and he doesn’t want to make up.” That was putting it at its most basic, but it was hard to find the words to explain what she was feeling inside, how lost and confused she was. How stumped for any answer at all. “It’s not like him. Normally when we argue it’s over and done with quickly, but not this time.”
“So when you try to talk to him, what does he say?”
Zina bit her lip. “I’ve only tried once but he was pretty nasty, and that’s not like him either. I’ve tried to screw up the courage to have another go, but…” It sounded so pathetic to say she’d walked away because Iain was there.
Karmela nodded. “I get it. Nobody likes rejection.”
“And he’s avoiding me. Deliberately. He’s not even sleeping in our bedroom anymore.” God, that was a totally humiliating thing to have to admit, but she needed Karmela to know the whole truth so she would understand how desperate the situation was. “I just don’t know what to do. Except… except…” She sniffed. “This is not a battle I can afford to lose.”
“ Battle is an interesting choice of word, especially if you want the disagreement to end.” Karmela frowned. “Shall we instead call it a negotiation?”
“I can’t negotiate if he won’t talk.”
“At some point he will have to, and you need to be ready.”
Zina nodded. It did make sense.
“As a first step, shall we try to see things from his point of view? Have you given any thought to how your behaviour might appear to him?” Zina’s puzzlement must have shown in her face, because Karmela carried on. “To negotiate successfully you will need to understand at least a little of what he is thinking and of what his position might be.” She smiled. “If nothing else, try to second guess it. Put yourself in his shoes. Work out what he might want, then you should be able to identify any common ground as a place to start.”
This sounded all very well in theory, but… “Common ground?”
“Outcomes that will work for you both. I have undertaken some dispute resolution at the university, and once people are talking I find it is helpful to make a list of phrases starting with we not me , as the jargon goes, although obviously, grammatically speaking a phrase should start with I . That way the process feels much more collaborative, but of course you also need to know where your own bottom line is. The things that are non-negotiable for you.”
“Yes… I do get that.” She didn’t entirely; she’d need to think about it some more later. The we-not-me bit especially. It sort of chimed with what Mama had been saying yesterday. In a most uncomfortable manner.
“So do you think Lambros sees a busy wife, or one who is avoiding him?”
“I suppose, at first, I was very angry and he knew it, but instead of making up like he always does, he began to avoid me. I’m not sure if I’ve exactly been avoiding him because I haven’t needed to. It’s not like we see much of each other anyway, not now the retreat’s open. And what with the nut harvest… Oh, Karmela, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat a pistachio again.” Her voice rose almost to a wail. She needed to get a grip. She apologised.
“There is no need to say sorry. I can see how much you are hurting. Shall we look at this another way? Obviously you want to sort this out, so what steps do you need to take to make that happen?”
Wasn’t that obvious? Even to her. She sighed. “We need to talk.”
“Then what is stopping you from making the first move? Apart from the possibility that he might rebuff you again. But you are a determined young woman; you built this marvellous place from scratch and that took some doing.”
“Lambros…”
Karmela held up her finger. “No. What is stopping you ?”
“I want to save my marriage; that’s the bottom line. But if I’m honest, this has been rumbling on for a while, even before the row, and?—”
She couldn’t tell a guest she was less than happy running the retreat, could she? How would that come across? But she’d promised herself, no holds barred, and she trusted Karmela implicitly.
“You won’t tell anyone what I’m going to tell you?”
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t want to come back to Santorini; I did it for Lambros. And for Mama when she was widowed. I loved my job in Athens so much I could hardly bear to leave. The challenge of getting my clients’ stories across to a wider audience, making contacts with all the right social media influencers, creating eye-grabbing posts. It was the best thing ever. There was something new every day, and I miss it like hell. But Lambros can’t go back to the corporate world. That’s something that really isn’t negotiable. It’s… a health thing.”
“So you feel as though you have to make an impossible choice?”
“I love him. Simple as that. But I feel so frustrated here, like I’m wasting my brain. The lack of mental stimulation is driving me nuts.” Zina bit her lip. “And, I guess, making me not the easiest of people to live with.”
“That I do understand. I would feel the same if I was spending a good part of my life cleaning and waiting tables. But have you told Lambros any of this?”
Zina shook her head. “Not in so many words. I didn’t want him to think I regret coming here.”
“You need to be completely honest with him about how you feel, and hope he will be honest with you. Once you know each other’s baselines then you can negotiate effectively.”
Karmela made it sound so simple, but even before they could get that far a major issue needed resolving.
“What if he won’t talk to me?”
“You will have to keep trying until he does. Be so reasonable that he will feel bad if he is not. Starting right now.”
Zina nibbled the skin next to her thumbnail. “I suppose I was waiting for the harvest to be over. So he couldn’t use it as an excuse.”
“It is almost finished though, is it not? Iain said at breakfast he was not needed any longer.”
So Lambros would be alone in the orchard. But she wasn’t ready?—
Karmela interrupted her thoughts. “Clearly you both need to set time aside to have a proper conversation so you can give it the importance it deserves. Do not wait to arrange when that will happen.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” Much as she knew Karmela was right, Zina felt rather sick.
“Now,” said Karmela briskly, “I will make my own bed and you go and find Lambros.”
“If he doesn’t agree?”
“If that is the case then come straight back here and we can talk about this some more. I really want to help you sort this out, Zina.”
So there’d be no wriggling out of this, nor prevaricating either. Karmela was the sort of person who would care enough to make sure she found an opportunity to ask how the conversation had gone. On one level it was entirely wonderful to have a friend like that, but on another…
She thanked Karmela with a heartfelt hug, then made her way along the side of The Retreat House towards the pistachio orchard. Small birds flitted between the trees and cicadas hummed in the tufts of long, dry grass around her. Ahead was Lambros’s truck, and she walked slowly towards it, framing and reframing the words she needed to say. Words that needed to focus on we , not me .
She spotted Lambros working fifty or so metres from the track. Alone, as Karmela had said he would be, his gloved hands grasping a bunch of pistachios, the back of his T-shirt soaking with sweat. Her gut instinct was to return the way she’d come, find an important job in the kitchen and hide. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t only Karmela, she owed this to herself, and sick as she still felt, she had to do this. Fixing her marriage may be the biggest challenge she’d ever face, but she loved a challenge, didn’t she? And Karmela’s wise words about negotiation had given her a place to start.
Her husband turned when he saw her, his face expressionless as she approached.
“Lambros, please can we talk? After the harvest, I mean. When we have more time.”
He wiped his brow with his forearm, looking only at the dry earth beneath his feet. “I should finish by the end of the day.”
“Then tomorrow. Will you have time tomorrow?”
“Will you?” A muscle twitched in his cheek.
“I will make time. For us.”
He nodded. “Fine. We’ll do it at three o’clock once I’ve checked the goats.” With that he jammed his sun hat further onto his head and went back to his work.
Lambros had, at least, agreed to talk. Provided he didn’t back out. A chill ran through her. What if…? But no, in this thing above all others, failure was not an option. The ultimate challenge. But she could only win if Lambros wanted to as well. Skatá! Karmela had been more right than she knew with this we-not-me stuff. It wasn’t about winning against her husband. It was about winning with him.
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