*
Elias put two fingers to the bridge of his nose and pressed hard. He was getting a headache and he knew it was over the email Chad had sent through last night that he had ignored in favour of another beer and writing his own strategy. Chad was concerned Kristina was still buying things with joint funds, frittering away money that should be his. If they couldn’t be sensible about things it was going to make this case even harder. Elias sighed. This was what his life was – dealing with rich people who argued more over who kept the money than they did about who kept the children. He could of course bow out. Right now. Or at least tell Chad he was going to. Scare him a little. Except, he needed this case. Not for the money. But because it gave him an excuse to go back to Corfu.
Clicking on his laptop, he brought up the document he had prepared last night when he should have been emailing Chad back. It was a pro/con list in two sections. One section was headed ‘Mitera ke Pateras’ (Mother and Father) and the other was headed ‘Hestia’. Elias picked up his water bottle and took a swig as his eyes roved over the page. He sucked warm air from the bottle. Empty! He checked his watch. Were they going to come round with another drink before landing? They were still running behind schedule. If this kept up there was a chance he would miss his connecting flight. And now he had made the decision to return he just wanted to get there. Was that why he had suggested the option with the Corfu property to Chad? Because it fitted with his own agenda? Elias shook his head and focused on the screen. He couldn’t let his home island and everything connected to it take over. Business first. Of course this was about Chad’s divorce. The fact that it allowed him to check in was fortunate coincidence, nothing more.
Mother and Father
Pros
You can check on their health
You can check on their wealth
The next time you call they cannot say it is almost two years since you have seen them
Cons
They will expect you to be re-married
If you stay too long they will find you someone to marry
They are still embarrassed by you despite what they say
They will talk about Hestia
Even writing his ex-wife’s name had been painful. He’d almost turned the ‘H’ into a random animal like his row companion just so he could stab hard dots to make snout holes. Why was he still so angry about their ending? It had been two years. Recovery should have happened by now. Except what actually still happened was every time Elias thought about his ex-wife, he was faced with two images. The one with Hestia standing facing him surrounded by golden effigies of Christ in the Greek Orthodox church, her smile so perfectly beautiful he had struggled to draw breath. She had held his hands in hers and she had cried as they had exchanged vows. The second image was Hestia crying again, but this time she was throwing her belongings into suitcases and telling him it was all a mistake. She had told him that their whole relationship had been a mistake. Hestia was in love with someone else. She had always been in love with someone else. And that someone else was a woman. Thalia.
Elias did stab at her name then. In a pathetic attempt to make himself feel better, or maybe to remind himself that almost twenty-four months down the line he really ought to be moving on. Except being left like that, only six months after being married in front of everyone they knew, still kicked at him. And being left for a member of the opposite sex was the ultimate savaging of his Greek masculinity. He could imagine the raised eyes in the village, the whispers among the patrons of his mother and father’s cafeneon, the not-so-whispered gossip of the village’s president like a rally bullhorn. Greek men didn’t get left like that. Greek men absolutely never got left for a woman… if it didn’t happen in mythology it didn’t exist. Elias was hoping that Chad’s case – his honest reason for being back on the island – was going to finally give him the strength to show his face in the village of Liakada again. Hestia was long gone. She and her new partner had left the island the second Hestia’s suitcases were full and fastened. The divorce had been fought out by email. She had wanted an annulment. Elias had insisted on adultery. He got his way, but it hadn’t made him feel any better. What was going to make him feel better? The short-term answer to that was simply ‘winning’. The more men he could help settle complicated separations the better. With every small win – or rather multi-million-pound victory – he grew a little more in confidence. He just needed to find a way to work that confidence back into his personal life.
Hestia
Pros
She will not be there
Cons
She will not be there
Elias closed his laptop as his companion plumped back down into her seat, looking a little flustered. Immediately she picked up her notepad and pen and began writing… He strained his eyes to see. Egg? Watercress? Then her hand moved from forming letters to a shape. Another pig perhaps? What had any of that got to do with her job for the army?
‘Is everything OK?’ Elias asked her.
‘Me?’ Becky asked him. ‘Am I OK? Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Perfectly fine.’ She looked at her watch, a bead of perspiration above her top lip. ‘Absolutely fine.’
‘The plane is still late,’ Elias said. ‘It is lucky you do not have a connecting flight.’
For some reason, his comment prompted a laugh from the woman and more stabbing at the paper. The drawing seemed to be half-pig, half-chicken, with inky spots being bludgeoned into place.
‘I do,’ Elias continued.
‘You do what?’ Becky asked, her eyes flicking away from the paper and to him.
‘I have a connecting flight.’ He looked at his watch now. It was still an hour late. At this rate he really wasn’t going to make his connection. ‘I’m heading to Corfu.’
‘Are you?’ Becky asked, turning her body to him a little. ‘With Olympic Air?’
‘Ne,’ he answered. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh, oh thank God,’ Becky announced, relieved air rushing from her mouth. ‘Because you said you travel all the time and I don’t think you do the kind of travelling Petra does… with drinks served out of coconuts…’
‘You have a connecting flight?’ Elias asked her. ‘I thought you were staying in Athens.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Exactly which part of Greece has a political problem the British army needs to assist with?
‘I… well…’
She seemed even more flustered now, her right hand still stabbing at the animal drawing. At any moment the nib of the pen might puncture the paper.
‘Will they give us more than a bowl of beansprouts if we miss that plane?’ Becky said, suddenly appearing half-terrified.
‘You are heading to Corfu?’ Elias asked her.
She nodded then inhaled rapidly before breathing out again, quick and hard.
‘Do not worry,’ Elias told her. ‘I am sure they will hold the plane.’ He wasn’t sure. Usually they would delay it a little in these circumstances but an hour…?
‘They will?’ There was definite relief now and Becky finally stopped manically moving the pen like she was the crazy with murderous intentions in a horror movie. Perhaps she really did work for the military…
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ He smiled at her, watching her calm and settle back a little in her seat. She flipped down her tray table and began to write legibly again. Elias’s attention went back to his laptop and he reopened the lid. There might be nothing to worry about here suspended peacefully in the skies, but he knew when he arrived back in the hamlet of Liakada nothing was likely to stay quiet for long.