Chapter 20
IOANNIS KAPODISTRIAS AIRPORT, CORFU
Kostas sat on his motorbike outside the airport doors, an ice-cold freddo cappuccino in his hand.
When he’d woken up this morning to a text from Stathis telling him his flight arrival time he’d been all set to order a taxi, but then he’d thought about his journey on the motorbike when he’d arrived.
He’d liked it. Relished it even. Zipping around those tight bends, breeze in his hair, the engine vibrating through his body.
It brought back memories of riding alongside his father.
Good memories outweighing the bad for a change.
He sipped through the straw in his drink then checked his watch.
Stathis had texted when he had landed; he just needed to make it through the terminal to the exit.
And then suddenly his motorbike bumped forward, shunting him in the seat.
He whipped his head around. It was a car. ‘éla maláka!’
Next, the driver got out of the car. He couldn’t believe it. Faye. He got off the motorbike but he knew, from her stance, from the look on her face, something was more wrong than the shunt to his bike.
‘Faye, what’s happened?’
She looked at him, tears in her eyes. ‘Kosta.’ She was panic-breathing. ‘What are you doing here? Oh God, was it your bike I hit? I didn’t see it and—’
The tears were falling, involuntarily. She was functioning but not really. ‘Hey,’ he said, taking her arms. ‘Fuck the bike. Tell me. What’s going on?’
He watched her swallow, trying to regroup, arrange thoughts before words. It was something he recognised from personal experience. Being brave. Keeping those feelings locked in. ‘Tell me,’ he repeated.
‘My daughter… she’s supposed to be here.
But I was late and she texted me that someone was giving her a ride to Avlaki…
but she doesn’t know anyone here that I don’t know and she didn’t tell me who it was…
and she has anxiety and that makes her vulnerable…
and now she won’t answer her phone and I’m trying to get her location but it’s not working and—’
He was already grabbing the helmet as she continued to speak and then he put it over her head then took her phone from her.
‘Get on the bike,’ he ordered. ‘I will get the location when we have better internet. We will track where she is. We will find who she is with and I will beat the shit out of anyone I think needs it.’
Faye was looking stunned, eyes still leaking tears, unmoving. He got on the bike, put her phone in the slot on the dash then turned back to her. ‘Faye, come on. Get on. Hold on to me.’
She didn’t seem to need to be told twice. He started the engine and she put her arms around him and held tight. Stathis would have to wait.
* * *
Faye felt like her brain was made of cotton wool that had been deep-fried.
It felt hot but it was also soft mush and not retaining the simplest of things.
She couldn’t think or react normally; rationality wasn’t coming, and all she could do was cry.
She needed to get herself together. Although Saffron had anxiety, she was much older now, more clued up than the time she went missing at the music festival and was brought back to the house by a policewoman.
But Faye was still experiencing all those same sickly feelings, that foreboding, that dread…
‘OK, she’s in something that’s moving so hopefully a car!’ Kostas called back to her. ‘We are going to catch it up.’
‘Can we? How far is it?’ Faye yelled through her helmet.
‘Let me worry about the how far. You just hold on to me.’
She tightened her grip on Kostas’s body and he swerved out around a car and took off at an even faster pace.
They thundered along the dual carriageway, passing the sea on the right and the fur coat shops on the left until Kostas pulled alongside a dark blue car with blacked-out windows.
He started beeping the horn and shouting in Greek while Faye tried desperately to see inside the vehicle.
Was Saffron in there? She didn’t know this car. Now her heart was pounding even more…
‘Stási! Tora!’
Stop. Now.
Finally, the car indicated to pull off the main road and onto one of the service roads.
Kostas stopped the bike, dropped the kickstand and leapt off before the male driver had even made it out of the vehicle.
Faye scrambled off the bike, wobbling as her feet met the tarmac and then, as yelling in Greek ensued, she watched Saffron emerge from the passenger side of the car looking slightly bewildered.
Faye’s heart swelled first with love then quickly flooded with relief.
‘Saffron!’ Faye exclaimed.
‘Mum! What’s going on?’ Saffron asked. ‘Why are you wearing a motorbike helmet?’
‘Tha fas xylo!’
That had come from Kostas and Faye knew it meant he was ready to make things physical with whoever was driving Saffron to wherever they were heading. Right now, Kostas was squaring up to the man who was a lot shorter than him and quite a bit rounder, but equally furious it seemed.
‘Saffron, who is that man? Do you know him?’ Faye asked her.
‘Not really,’ Saffron said.
Faye’s heart thumped until…
‘But Dad does. He’s called Giorgos. He does taxi runs for friends, you know, cheap. I told Dad you were coming to get me but he’d already phoned him and I didn’t have any phone signal or 4G to call you so—’
‘Kosta!’ Faye called. ‘It’s OK. He’s not, you know, a kidnapper.’
‘What?’ Saffron said. ‘You thought I was being kidnapped! Mum! I’m not even a kid any more.’
Faye was now torn between listening to Saffron’s annoyance at being labelled a minor and the two men who were still arguing. ‘Kosta! Please! It’s OK.’
‘It is not OK, Faye,’ Kostas replied, his hands now full of the man’s polo shirt. ‘I do not like his attitude.’
The man gasped for air and Faye wondered if he was about to have some sort of asthma attack. Until he spoke…
‘I know you! My God, you are Kostas Petsas!’
‘And I still do not know who you are,’ Kostas barked.
‘I am Giorgos. I have been watching the mighty team of ours since I was three years old. It is an honour to have you touch my shirt.’
Faye watched Kostas drop his hands from the man’s top and take a step back. Then he looked to her, body still bristling with adrenaline. ‘Faye, are we good here?’
She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, yes, I think so. Saffron?’
‘I literally have no idea what’s going on,’ Saffron answered.
‘Would you sign something for me?’ Giorgos asked, going back towards his car.
Faye headed towards Kostas, who was already getting back on the motorbike. ‘Thank you, Kosta, for—’
‘Do you need a ride back to the airport? For your car.’
Now she didn’t know what to do. Yes, she needed to get her car but she didn’t want to leave Saffron now and she was feeling a bit like all of this was a massive overreaction on her part.
‘Listen, I am collecting a friend. That is why I was there. If you like I can get him to drive your car back to the hotel. If you are OK with travelling with this guy.’
That would work. But Kostas was a guest. An important guest. She couldn’t have him running errands for her and he had already put himself out chasing down this car and being prepared to virtually slay a potential felon.
‘Don’t think about it,’ Kostas said. ‘I will take care of it. I will see you back at the hotel.’ He put the helmet over his head and started the engine of the bike.
‘Kosta,’ Faye said, digging her hands in the pocket of her skirt.
‘Yeah?’
She passed the keys to him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Tipota,’ he answered, taking them.
But it wasn’t nothing. It was kind of heroic how he had jumped to her rescue with no questions asked.
No one had ever done anything like that for her before.
She was a firm believer in being able to protect others and save herself, but it was like he had sensed how desperately vulnerable she had been in that moment.
‘Kosta mou!’ Giorgos appeared from his car, an empty cardboard coffee cup in his hands, and a pen. But it seemed the only thing Kostas was going to do next was leave.
And, as the motorbike roared away, it was Saffron who had a question.
‘So, Mum, who exactly was that?’