‘Petra, there was a mosquito in there. I was going to fish it out.’
Petra wasn’t listening. Petra looked to be in shock. ‘Can you believe it. Elias and that woman? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense, does it? A guy like that and… her.’ Petra chewed on the end of one of her plaits. ‘But, then again, you know, maybe it does make sense. Maybe that’s exactly why he wasn’t into our kiss.’
Elias hadn’t been into the kiss with Petra? Becky couldn’t help but sit further forward, bumping her small chair in slightly. ‘Elias wasn’t into your kiss?’ Repeating that sentence seemed to set off a chain reaction of events inside her. She was feeling Elias’s fingers on her skin, the warmth of his hand in hers, the movement of their dancing… This wine was definitely potent and she needed to remember that the more she found out about him the less she seemed to know.
‘No,’ Petra admitted with a sigh. ‘It was alright, you know, obviously because he’s hot, but I could just tell he wasn’t really in the moment with me.’
‘Oh,’ Becky said. Would she know if Elias hadn’t been in the moment with her? She didn’t have a great track record on that score. She hadn’t known that Mr Eighteen Months hadn’t been in many moments with her. ‘That’s… upsetting.’
‘Not really,’ Petra said with a sniff. ‘You win some, you lose some. And I said before, he’s way too old for me. Practically Dick Van Dyke.’
Becky shook her head. Petra seemed to think that anyone over twenty was halfway to the grave. And how old could Elias be? Thirty, perhaps?
‘Now, those guys over there, they’re much more my thing,’ Petra announced. ‘Definitely under thirty and hot with it. And here! In the Village of Retired People! I’d better go and introduce myself before they get snapped up by someone else who’s bored of looking at grey matter.’ And just like that, Petra was up off her seat and rushing from the terrace of the cafeneon and across the road to the restaurant named ‘Panos’s Taverna’. Becky could see there were a group of three men in their twenties, arriving at the entrance. They very much looked like they wanted a meal and not to be jumped on by a very full-on Brit under the influence of local wine.
‘Dark Dating!’
Becky jumped in her seat as Eleni banged down a day-glow orange flyer on the table, the salt and pepper pots rattling against each other. There were letters and words she could not comprehend. Greek words in the Greek alphabet. There was a number seven and that was about all Becky could get from it.
‘What is this?’ she asked, picking the paper up and pretending to look interested. What she really wanted to do was pay for the meal and get back to the house for a late-night swim to cool off from the humidity. Another jug of wine came crashing down. No swimming if she had to drink the wine she shouldn’t really have ordered more of.
‘This is something you will come to on Saturday.’
‘Oh, well… I don’t know what Petra’s plans are and…’
‘You tell me she only stay at the villa for a couple of nights.’
Bugger. Eleni remembered everything. ‘I…’
‘Dark Dating,’ Eleni said, snatching the paper out of Becky’s hands and translating it for her. ‘I see this on TV. I make this in Corfu. But with the twist.’
‘The twist?’ Becky queried.
‘You cannot see and you do not speak.’
‘I don’t understand.’ How could you date in the dark and not speak to your date either? How could you get to know anything about anyone? By touch alone? Becky shuddered. She really didn’t want to think about the connotations of that!
‘You will come,’ Eleni ordered. ‘You and the rude girl. I find you nice Greek men who are not Elias.’
‘Oh… well, I’m not looking for any men,’ Becky said, a blush covering her entire face and rapidly spreading to her neck. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the cover of How to Find the Love of Your Life or Die Trying.
‘You look for women?’ Eleni asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘No, but—’
‘Good. You come. It is ten euros. There is food. I add to your bill.’
‘Well, I need to—’
‘Drink the wine,’ Eleni ordered, pointing at the new carafe. ‘No one leaves my cafeneon until they have finished.’
‘Efharisto,’ Becky said, reaching for the jug. ‘Yammas.’ Resistance was apparently futile.
Thirty-Eight
Villa Selino, Kerasia
Elias sat in his hire car outside the property watching the light of the moon reflecting off the roof tiles. He had the window of the car down, the temperature cooling only slightly, the burr of the bugs from the trees and the occasional hooting of an owl were the only sounds.
Earlier, he had spoken to Chad on FaceTime and told him that Kristina was currently not in Corfu as first thought. Elias had been honest and said that although his initial plan had been to speak with her personally, to put the offer they had devised to her rather than through her own solicitor, that perhaps her absence was fortuitous. He had asked Chad to provide him with an inventory of what should be in the villa and Chad was going to put this together overnight. What Elias hadn’t told Chad was that when he had looked through the window of the property that morning, there was an obvious absence of artwork on the walls. Bare space and tell-tale fading of the paintwork told a story. Perhaps Kristina had simply got bored of what was there. But, equally, perhaps they had been expensive pieces she had sold already, or was planning to sell without Chad’s knowledge. And that was the dilemma. Elias had Chad’s authority to go into the house and assess the situation and now he had his mother’s set of keys to give him access to the villa. But all he could think of was the underhandedness of it all. He shouldn’t be acting like some sort of private investigator. If he needed to creep around in the dark to get results then there was something very wrong with his life. And then there was Becky. Becky who he should stay away from, thrown back into his orbit by complete coincidence. Or perhaps, fate. What was he going to do about it all?
The one thing he was certain of was that drinking ouzo in the middle of the day with his father was not going to help either of them solve anything. But the male-bonding had helped him discover that whatever was wrong with his parents’ relationship it hopefully wasn’t terminal. Spiros had talked of Eleni’s boredom and dreams and his father had said it all in such a way that Elias could understand completely why his mother might have got frustrated with him. Spiros was a simple man at heart. He thought that dreams were for other people. His mother however had always been far more ready to experiment with life. Yes, she was big on certain traditions, but she also broke boundaries, albeit in a small way. She was never afraid to be vocal to the mayor about refuse collection or broken streetlights. She organised events to bring the community together. She encouraged the widows of the village to wear colour again and reembrace life. Yes, it was true she might be a little – or a lot – bullish about things, but deep in her heart it was because she cared about everyone.
‘I am walking in a straight line! It’s you who isn’t!’