Emma: I didn’t tell him about prison, or the car crash. I thought about it but didn’t want to spoil the moment. I thought there was a chance he’d know, anyway. If you search for me on the internet, it’s impossible to escape stories of my sentencing.
…
I probably should have told him – but…
…
I think I probably liked him.
Paul: We left the bar and walked back through the village. It was late by then and the sun was all the way down. The market stalls had been packed away and the only sound was the vague noise of music coming from the hotel bars. I saw the village in a different way that night. It wasn’t only the front that everyone gets to see, with the all-inclusive buffets and the sun-burned tourists. It felt like a real place, with real people.
We stopped outside my hotel, tucked into the shadows underneath the palm trees where nobody could see us. It was a few degrees cooler. I held her hand.
Emma: He asked if I’d give an interview for the documentary. Ever the romantic.
Paul: It wasn’t like that was the only thing we talked about in those shadows. It was a private moment.
Emma: I don’t think I want to say any more.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Day Five
THE DAYS OF PIRATES
Emma: I got up early the next morning. I’d probably only had four or five hours’ sleep – but I’d had such a good time with Paul that I was feeling fine anyway.
I walked down to the village while people were still setting up. Café owners were trying to wave me inside, hoping I’d have breakfast, but I waved them away and kept walking.
It probably took around twenty minutes or so until I spotted Lander. He was carrying trays of soft drink cans from the back of a truck into a restaurant. I waited until he’d finished and then asked if I could have a word.
He hesitated and, if I’m honest, I know I probably shouldn’t have put him in that position. It was clear that his wife knew who I was and that she didn’t want him talking to me. He ummed and erred for a moment and said he’d be about fifteen minutes. When I said I didn’t mind waiting, he didn’t have much option, unless he outright told me to go away.
Lander: I don’t have to do what I’m told. I’m my own man.
Emma: I went to a café over the street, ordered a mountain tea and then waited. Lander came across after about half an hour. He might have been waiting for me to give up and go away – but I needed to talk to him.
Lander: I cannot remember what she wanted that day. Something to do with a bank, I think. We talked, that’s all.
Emma: Inside the envelope that I’d got from the PO box was a letter addressed to Alan Lee, with the name ‘Bank of Galanikos’ across the top. It was dated from more than a decade before, with a series of account numbers listed and linked to him.
I’d been wondering why Dad had an ID with his photo but Alan’s details. I couldn’t come up with any reason other than that he wanted to move money from those accounts.
It felt as if this was the reason we’d returned to Galanikos, as opposed to anything else. It was all being done under the guise of a family holiday – but then Dad went off that cliff on the first night and everything changed.
That left all sorts of unanswered questions about what might have happened to Alan nine years before – but I had no way of answering those at that time.
I’d also never heard of any sort of local bank, which was where Lander came in. I asked him about the Bank of Galanikos, which, it’s fair to say, confused him. He asked what I wanted to know and I said I’d never heard of it.
Lander: I really can’t remember what she wanted.
Emma: He asked if I was thinking of opening an account. When I said I wasn’t, he went quiet. He said: ‘What do you know?’ and there was this impasse where it felt like we were speaking a different language.
I’d been visiting the island since I was a girl. My impression of a bank is something like a HSBC, or a Barclays. I thought that I’d have noticed a branch in all that time. Lander went quiet for a moment and I thought it might be something to do with Rhea and the fact that his wife didn’t want us talking. Then, suddenly, things started to make sense.
He said that the Bank of Galanikos isn’t something used by locals. There are no high street branches, or special interest-rate deals for new mortgages. They don’t advertise on the TV or radio.
He made the bank sound like a myth… something that may or may not exist. He said he didn’t know of any branches but that he’d heard it operated out of a fishing village to the north, close to the volcano. It was a word-of-mouth thing that wasn’t on any maps. There was no website, no logo or advertising.
Rumours were that people who lived offshore would open accounts to hide money from their local governments. He said it went back to the days of pirates. Boats would turn up with gold and treasure that they wanted stored.
It sounded… far-fetched – especially the pirate bit. But then I thought about stories like the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, with rich people doing everything they can to hide their money. And I thought about Dad and the way we had visited this island religiously year after year for such a long time. I’d often wondered why, with all Dad’s resources, we kept coming back here of all places.
Then, in that café with Lander, it felt as if I knew.
It felt as if Lander was worried for me after the talk. He reached across and took my hand. His skin always used to be so smooth, but it was rough in that moment. The hands of a man who’d spent nine years doing manual labour.
Maybe I shouldn’t have let him touch me – but it didn’t mean anything, other than two people who used to know each other sharing a moment. It was comforting.
He asked if I was OK – but it meant more than that. He was asking if I was safe. I wanted to ask what he meant – but didn’t get a chance because he suddenly pulled his hand away. His whole body went rigid – and I knew Rhea was behind me a moment before she said his name. She was like a ninja. That’s all it took, not even a proper sentence, and then he said that he had to go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE SOGGY BAGEL
Emma: The crew were setting things up so that the ‘Welcome to Galanikos’ sign was directly behind where I was standing. It’s not a traditional black-on-white sign like the ones from the UK. Someone had painted this beautiful sunshine and beach scene, with the words blended across the top. I had my photo taken in front of it when I would have been eleven or twelve. It was starting to fade, but it was still glorious. I remember I once asked Mum why places in the UK didn’t have these types of colourful ‘welcome to’ signs. I don’t think she ever answered.
Paul: I told the crew that Emma and I had run into one another on the street and that I’d asked her if she’d do the interview. That’s all they knew about us at that time.