‘Yes, why not? You’ll be perfectly safe,’ he replied. Her hint had clearly been too subtle. But then he took her completely by surprise. ‘I’d have offered to come with,’ he said, ‘but we’re going home tonight. Eleven p.m. flight. Squeezing this trip in, to be honest.’
‘Oh!’ She couldn’t help showing her disappointment. And thought she detected his, too.
Before she could find out, their conversation was brought to an abrupt end by Angelina announcing their arrival at the entrance of the National Park. Lana and Judith stretched and stirred. ‘Aw, I was having an amazing dream,’ Lana mumbled sleepily. ‘There was this dog and it was wearing my shoes!’
Solomon stood up and pulled down his rucksack from the overhead rack. Catrin sensed he wanted to carry on talking, or maybe even ask if he could join them on the hike, but the people behind him were impatient for him to move on, eager to get off the bus.
So they had a jagged and awkward farewell. ‘Nice talking to you!’ he said cheerily as he set off down the aisle.
‘Yeah, you too. Enjoy the hike!’ Catrin knew she sounded hysterically enthusiastic.
‘Who was he?’ asked Judith after Solomon had disappeared from earshot.
‘Oh, no one,’ she replied. ‘Just some guy.’
Lana complained for almost the entirety of the initial two and a half miles. She was cold. She was hot. She was tired. Her feet hurt. Her head hurt. She was thirsty. She was hungry. When they arrived at Neroutsiko, the first natural spring en route, a long queue of thirsty travellers had formed, desperate to refill their water bottles. ‘I wanna sit down,’ Lana declared.
‘Oh Larn, you’ve got to change the record, mun!’ said Judith. ‘You’re worse than a three-year-old.’
Sensing a potential row, Catrin stepped in. ‘Tell you what, if you can bear to walk a few more minutes we’ll reach the little chapel of Agios Nikolaos, which is a kind of resting place. And there’s more water there.’
‘As long as we can have a snack,’ Lana mumbled petulantly.
‘Of course.’
‘Are we nearly there yet, Mum?’ said Jude mockingly. Lana flicked her on the arm and they carried on walking.
Fifteen minutes later they reached the little chapel and quenched their thirst at the spring.
‘Come on, let’s find somewhere to sit,’ Catrin said, in an attempt to jolly them along.
Behind the chapel they found a little patch of dusty grass next to a cluster of magnificent cypress trees. Catrin took some Greek bread and tzatziki from her rucksack and cut an apple into six pieces. She shared it all out like a patient parent and felt the tension instantly dissolve.
‘Amazing what a bit of food and drink can do,’ she said, and lay back with her eyes closed for a couple of minutes’ rest. Gently dozing in the sun, she felt soothed by the sounds of nearby traveller chat and singing wood larks.
‘Tallest cypress trees in Crete, y’know!’
Catrin opened her eyes and squinted upwards. Solomon was standing there, admiring the view.
‘Oh hello,’ she said, caught unawares by how pleased she was to see him again and worried that she might be looking a bit sweaty.
‘Alrigh’ mate?’ said Lana. ‘You were on the bus, weren’ you?’
‘Yes, I’m Solomon,’ he said. ‘Call me Sol though if you like.’
‘You been inside yet?’ asked Judith, pointing to the ancient building.
Entering the cool stillness of the Agios Nikolaos chapel, the four of them marvelled at the delicate beauty of the icons on the wall. Catrin read aloud from her guidebook, adopting a slightly posh and eager-to-impress voice. She informed them that ‘this tiny chapel is built on very sacred ground, where Apollo once was worshipped.’ They all stood in respectful silence, the air heavy and pensive.
‘Hey Sol, we got a nightclub in Coed Celyn called the Apollo,’ said Lana, unintentionally ruining the moment. ‘Bloke got stabbed there last year. Danny Rhys. Borrowed a strimmer from Eryl the Smack and never gave it back.’
Catrin glared at her.
‘Oh yeah!’ said Judith, oblivious to Catrin’s awkwardness. ‘And it’s weird, ’cos you wouldn’t think Eryl the Smack would own a strimmer, y’know.’
Catrin was mortified by the impression her friends were creating. She looked at Sol. What must he be thinking?
‘I dunno, Jude,’ he said, straight-faced. ‘Just ’cos someone’s a heroin addict doesn’t mean they’re a bad gardener.’ There was a pause, then he smiled. Lana and Judith burst out laughing, unexpectedly warming to him. And Catrin felt her skin tingle.
As they set off on the rest of the hike, Sol and Catrin naturally put distance between themselves and Lana and Judith, who were not the fastest of movers. But Catrin was glad. Because all she wanted to do was walk with Sol along the gorge, talk to him, stumble on another rock so she had an excuse to lean on him, and talk to him some more.
When they reached the abandoned village of Samaria, they walked around its ruins and stroked the curious Kri-kri goats who’d made the place their home. There were benches and shade there, so Catrin chose a seat and took out her packed lunch. ‘You not hungry?’ she said to Sol, who sat, hands in his empty lap.
‘Absolutely starving,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t have time to buy anything.’
She smiled, and placed her share of the picnic feast between them. ‘Dive in,’ she said, and he began devouring the Greek bread before she had time to say ‘taramosalata’.
An hour later, they passed a place where people were building little pyramids out of small stones, as they whispered their secret wishes and prayers. Not wanting to miss out, Catrin and Sol built their own, though neither of them shared with the other what they were wishing for, both confessing that their Catholic guilt still made them feel weird about doing anything vaguely pagan like that. They were seven hours into the hike and Catrin knew this would soon all be coming to an end.
Walking through the narrow cutting known as the Gates, they stretched out their arms laughingly to prove how little space there was between the two megaliths. ‘They’re like two giant security guards,’ Catrin said, ‘escorting us off the premises.’
‘That’s so true!’ Sol laughed. ‘Hey, pass us your camera.’ And he took several shots of her posing – the filling in the mountain sandwich. But before he handed it back, he stopped a fellow hiker and said, ‘Excuse me, mate, will you take one of the two of us?’ Just hearing him say the two of us made her melt and she never wanted that photographically snatched moment to end, as the joyous image was captured on film, their arms thrown around each other’s shoulders in a display of newly discovered friendship.
When they untangled themselves from the pose and Catrin took back her camera, there was a tiny and silent exchange between them. It was only a look. But in that look pulsed a million heartbeats. And they both knew this was so much more than just friendship.
They’d reached the other end of the gorge, walking in silence towards the once-flooded village of Agia Roumeli and the lazy, turquoise sea. Catrin had arranged to meet up with Lana and Judith at a café called Irene’s when they’d all finally finished the hike. Sol said he could wait with her for half an hour, but then he’d need to get the ferry to Sfakia. ‘I wish I could stay,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see your friends again. They seem like a good laugh.’