Chapter 20
Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.
EURIPIDES
It’s an interesting subject, strength. Human beings possess it in immeasurable quantities. But as we all discover at some point, life is also fragile and finely balanced; can be cut off in its prime by something as everyday as a few rogue cancer cells or a wrong step on a flooded Cretan street.
Michail’s house comes into my head, the chickens in his garden and the cats that were the only reason I’d gone there, as I realise that was most probably the biggest sign of them all.
It hadn’t been my responsibility, but Tilly the hub had taken it on – another responsibility that wasn’t hers.
And, quite literally, bringing me down was the only way the Universe could stop me.
And this is the thing. What happens if I’m not this hub? This person who comes to the rescue of others, who is always there in a crisis, who am I? But in the midst of this place I find myself, the answers floating around me are elusive; I can’t reach them.
Sometime later, the scent of lemons reaches me. Fresh, sun drenched; evocative of a hundred summers. Alex’s voice is like a dream.
She’s always loved the smell of lemons. One time, we were in Italy… She made Dad stop just so that she could photograph the trees.
The memory flashes into my mind, vivid as if it happened yesterday; my heart twisting.
It’s of the four of us in a hire car, of Gareth’s impatience to reach the hotel where we were staying, but stopping anyway so that I could stand in the shade of the lemon trees, inhaling the sweet scent of their tiny white flowers.
Ten years old, the boys had been filled with excitement, joyful.
What happened to that woman? The thought dimly occurs to me. But all I want to do is take away the worry in Alex’s voice. I concentrate all my effort into trying to move my hand. A hand that remains leaden.
Another thought suddenly occurs to me. I hope Gareth isn’t with them. Or Rick. Even my dad. You see, in their eyes, I’m still the hub. They don’t know how to see me as anyone else, least of all unresponsive in a hospital bed.
‘She fell in the street.’
But it isn’t any of them. It’s a stranger’s voice. Obviously, the stranger who saw me fall. I listen as he goes on.
‘There was a freak downpour. The road was like a river…’
The voice is warm, concerned, the words connecting with something in my head, triggering the whisper of a memory as my heart misses a beat. You see, somewhere from my past, I know this voice.
‘I’m sure you’d like some time alone with your mum. If there’s anything I can do, you know where to find me.’
Two voices, in unison this time. My boys’ voices. ‘Thanks.’
Suddenly I recognise the voice; my mind is in overdrive.
Is it Adam? Could he really be here? It’s too much to take in.
After the chain of events that unfolded to bring me to Greece in the first place, how I ended up in Chania, how I came to be out in the torrential rain when I fell; out of all the people who could have been there when it happened, how come it was Adam who came to rescue me?