Chapter Five
Nina’s usual evening scrolling had been curtailed; they must get a router as soon as they could.
She didn’t want to use all her data. Without the usual distractions provided by Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest, not to mention shopping sites, she thought she wouldn’t sleep, her mind obsessing over Sam and Mags or bubbling with worries over jobs and the state of the house in Kefalonia.
She went out like a switched-off Vitra lamp, sprawled under Maria’s crisp cotton sheets, the bed surprisingly comfy.
Perhaps it was the sea air creeping in through the holes in the roof, or simply exhaustion from travelling, but her mind felt as clean and clear as the Kefalonia sky.
She woke refreshed and calm, luxuriating in the feeling of being recharged as she stretched and listened to the lapping of waves and the call of seagulls, and very deliberately not thinking about her cheating ex-boyfriend and lying ex-friend.
Splinters of butter-yellow sunlight slipped between the cracks in the shutters, ribboning the floorboards she and Theo had brushed and mopped the day before.
This was the first real day of her holiday, and she was going to make the most of it. Theo was still in bed, but she was ready to start her day. Quietly she crept through the creaky house, washing and dressing, fixing her hair and makeup.
Maria hadn’t suggested a time for their coffee, but she nodded when she found Nina on her doorstep just before nine, stepping aside to let her in.
‘There’s a goat in your garden,’ Nina said, pointing to the little creature that stood happily munching on one of Maria’s potted plants. It looked suspiciously similar to the one that had been in the village square the day before.
‘Yes, this is Milo,’ Maria said, shrugging and giving her a hard stare, as though she was having to explain something very obvious to someone very stupid. ‘You chose a good time for coffee. Suppose you want breakfast, too. Yes?’
‘Oh – I wouldn’t want to put you out.’ At home she barely ate breakfast, just a quick bite of fruit before dashing to work, taking her cup of coffee with her and drinking it on the way. But now, her stomach rumbled, and Maria sniffed.
‘In you come,’ she said. ‘I’m making bougatsa.’
A Greek food Nina wasn’t familiar with, unusually.
It wasn’t one of Theo’s regular recipes.
But the kitchen smelled of butter and milk and sugar, and she found her mouth watering as she followed Maria in.
The room was immaculate, a scrubbed wooden table at the centre with a vase of poppies on it and a large oven with gas rings at the side.
‘Do you need any help?’ she asked, eyeing Maria’s injured foot.
‘Oh this thing?’ Maria asked, glancing down, staring for a moment as though she was surprised to find the boot still there.
‘No, all fine. My grandson helped me, they’re just ready to come out of the oven now.
’ She gave Nina a shrewd look as she glanced over her shoulder, balancing carefully with her injured leg sticking out as she opened the oven and used a tea towel to pull a tray from it. ‘Your timing is good, yes?’
‘Very good.’ Nina hovered, afraid that the fragile old lady would overbalance and fall, breaking another bone.
‘How did you do it?’ she asked, cocking her head to one side in sympathy as she imagined Maria tripping in the street and doing herself harm, or falling in her kitchen and waiting for hours, bruised and scared, until someone came to help her.
Maria placed the tray on top of the oven. It contained a sweet-smelling, golden pastry. ‘Paddleboarding,’ she said.
Nina laughed. ‘Okay. Or skydiving, right?’
‘Oh.’ Maria turned to face her, frowning and folding her arms, tea towel dangling from her fist. She jerked her chin up. ‘You don’t believe?’
Nina hesitated. Was this some strange Kefalonian sense of humour she didn’t understand? Or was it the monster Theo had warned her not to wake?
Beast, she thought, giving her head a little shake.
Maria’s face broke into a grin and she hooted a deep, throaty laugh. One that spoke of nights of ouzo and cigars. A misspent youth, perhaps.
‘Don’t look so worried, I don’t bite you,’ she said, wiping her eyes and chuckling as she began to slice the pastry and put it onto plates. ‘Funny girl.’
For a moment Nina thought she might say, just like your mother. She didn’t.
She pointed to her foot with the knife. ‘True, though. Paddleboarding. Pour the coffee, eh?’
And so Nina found herself sipping strong coffee and eating delicious pastry filled with sweet, creamy custard with an elderly woman who may or may not have injured herself paddleboarding.
‘So,’ she said, holding her hand in front of her mouth to disguise the chewing. It was so delicious, she couldn’t quite get herself to stop eating. ‘Is your grandson here?’
‘Yiorgos?’ She shook her head. ‘Out early, every day. He’s busy-busy.’ She waved her hand. ‘But good boy, looking after his yia-yia.’
Nina smiled as Maria plonked another slice of the delicious bougatsa onto her plate.
She sliced into it without hesitation, the pastry melting in her mouth and the sweet custard filling bursting out.
On some level, Nina registered the heavenly flavour, and on an even more minor level, the calories that she was pouring into her body.
Oh well. Holiday rules. And this was delicious, homemade food, not some chemical-filled processed nonsense.
She gazed at Maria as she ate, wondering again if this woman had known her mum, and if she had, how well she’d known her.
Were they friends? Nina couldn’t imagine her glamourous, ladylike mum clicking with this slightly cantankerous strange old woman.
Fiddling with her bracelet, she tried to think of a way to ask Maria if she’d known Clare, or even what she knew of a young Theo, but couldn’t decide how to ask in a way that felt natural.
‘So, you and your baba staying for good?’ Maria asked, and Nina had lost her chance.
She swallowed down the last mouthful of pie, which had somehow rapidly disappeared, almost choking on it as she snorted. ‘Oh, no. No, definitely not, it’s just a break really.’
Maria brushed crumbs from her lips and raised her eyebrows. ‘You don’t like the house? It’s beautiful, yes? But you too much of a city girl.’ She pulled a face, as though she’d stepped in something unpleasant.
Nina called to mind the holes in the roof and the half-fallen shutters.
‘Beautiful,’ she said. She had a feeling Maria would take any insult to the house as an insult to Kefalonia itself.
‘But we have lives to go back to, you know, I –’ She faltered.
She’d been about to say that she had a career, a boyfriend.
But all that was gone. What life did she have, really?
Tears stung her eyes and she licked her finger, absent-mindedly dabbing at pastry crumbs and eating them.
Maria watched her shrewdly, though not unsympathetically. ‘Things go bad for you at home?’
‘Oh, I –’ She shrugged, shook her head. ‘No, it was just a small . . .’
She sighed. Just a catastrophic collapse of her whole life. That was all.
Maria patted her hand. ‘New start is good. Beautiful place, yes? Good food, good people to make you good food.’ She grinned, and Nina couldn’t help smiling back. ‘So what’s Theo’s plan with the house?’
Nina shrugged. Theo had been a little vague about it, or perhaps she just hadn’t been that interested. ‘I don’t know. I think he needs to do some work on it for a hotel to buy or something.’
Maria drew her hand away from Nina’s, and began to clear up the plates and cups. It seemed that breakfast was over. Nina helped gather the things.
‘I can wash up,’ she said.
Maria shook her head. ‘Not this time. Next one perhaps.’
Nina nodded. ‘Thank you for the –’
‘Yes, and next time we have a good talk.’ There was something in Maria’s expression that Nina couldn’t read. She didn’t seem angry, exactly. But not happy, either.
‘Did you know my dad when he lived here?’ Nina asked. Apparently just blurting out what the questions she wanted to ask was the way to go.
Maria’s face relaxed immediately as she put the plates and cups into the sink. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, chuckling. ‘Naughty boy, he was, always up to no good.’ Nina laughed. That she could believe. ‘Him and my Sofia, oh dear, naughty pair. Always off and up to trouble.’
There was a warmth in Maria’s eyes that suggested the trouble caused by a young Theo was nothing too major.
‘And did you know my –’
But Nina didn’t get to finish the question. She found herself ushered out of the house by a surprisingly speedy Maria. ‘Yes, goodbye then,’ she said, flapping the tea towel at Nina as though she was an annoying fly. ‘See you next time. You can cook for me, eh?’
She turned and disappeared back into the house, leaving Nina full of delicious breakfast and unasked questions, contemplating a day at the beach, wondering when that next time might be. Once again, nothing had been arranged.