‘Hush, Lana,’ said Catrin.
‘They had an ice sculpture an’ everything.’
‘I mean surely,’ said Judith, ignoring Lana, ‘you’d have understood? You’d have forgiven him?’
When Maria translated this, Sofia began to cry.
‘She says of course! There would have been anger maybe at first, but eventually there would have been forgiveness. All this time, Sofia believed and so did her mother that Georgios had done something bad. That he was maybe in prison. Or worst of all, that he had ended his life. They had no idea what could be so terrible to make him cut off from his family like that, and his country. He loved Cyprus.’
‘Ítan gálos anthrópos,’ Sofia wept. ‘Gálos anthrópos!’
‘She says he was a good man,’ whispered Maria.
Judith took Sofia’s hand and sighed. ‘He still is,’ she said.
The shame had obviously been too great for George. To have come to Britain to better his prospects and save money for his family in Cyprus, fully intending to go back and marry Cleoniki. But instead he had met Patricia, fallen in love with her and started a brand-new life in Wales, becoming father to little Judith. Sofia simply wished he had told them. Just to know that he was still alive all these years would have spared them from so much heartache. But the saddest thing was that their mother, Alathea, had died in 1984, believing her son was no longer alive. It was all too too sad.
Looking directly at Judith, Sofia said, ‘Thélo na ton do! Thélo na tou milíso! Aderfós mou.’
‘Sofia wants to know when she can see her brother – when can she talk to him?’ Maria said.
Judith panicked at the thought of orchestrating such a reunion. It was too much for her. Feeling like she was six again, she just wanted her dad to make it all all right. ‘I don’t … I don’t know …’ she stuttered. ‘Tell Sofia please to be patient. I need to go home, and I need to think and work out what to do, but it will happen.’
Maria nodded, understanding.
‘I promise she will see her brother again.’
As she lay on the small camp bed that night, Catrin and Lana out for the count on the sofa, Judith stared up at the ceiling. So many thoughts raced around her head. How much life she’d wasted ignorant of the existence of her Cypriot family; how she wished she could stay here longer and not leave tomorrow – and how on earth could she hop, skip and jump her way through the rest of the trip, all jolly hockey sticks, knowing what she now undeniably knew?
How could her life ever be the same again?
Worse than that, how could she break it to her father that she knew who he really was? And what else could he be hiding?
9
Catrin
‘If they could see me now, that little gang of mine …’ she sang quietly to herself as she rinsed out the last of the shampoo. This had to be the most bizarre experience of the holiday so far and yet she was loving it: washing her hair, leant over an old tin bath in the middle of a barn in the Troodos Mountains, using two buckets of warm water, an empty tin can for pouring, and a bottle of Vosene. And all of it observed by a curious nanny goat and her kid, who stood watching in the corner.
Doing the ‘squeak’ test with her fingers to check her hair was clean, she squeezed out the excess water and reached over for the faded towel. She wrapped it tightly round her head and tucked it in at the back. Catching sight of herself in an old cracked mirror, she smiled. Her smile was different now. Had been ever since Sol. Though only she realized that.
It had been a whole week. A whole seven days living with the painful and ecstatic knowledge that he existed in the world; that he was somewhere right now – probably in his bed in Bayfield, sleeping, breathing, this human being of whom she’d been blissfully unaware until that fateful day in Crete and who had now taken up permanent residence inside her head. She still hadn’t told Judith or Lana about Sol. Keeping him a secret somehow kept it magical.
When she’d made her weekly phone call home a couple of days earlier, she’d felt the most peculiar sensation – like she was somehow defrauding her parents. Keeping from them her big beautiful secret, knowing that the daughter they’d left at Bristol airport a month ago was not the same daughter who’d be coming home.
‘Now tell me, are you getting enough roughage?’ Her mother’s voice on the crackly line had crashed into her thoughts. ‘Because it seems to me – and your nana agrees – that over there it’s all meat this and meat that, with your souvlakis and moussakas and kebabs and what have you—’
‘A souvlaki is a kebab, Mum,’ Catrin had said, only to be ignored.
‘I mean I’m sure they’re all very nice people, the Greeks, but I do worry about their diet. And the last thing you want is to be getting constipated!’
‘Mum!’ Catrin had felt herself redden.
Suddenly her brother’s voice had come hurtling down the line as he shouted into the receiver, ‘Nana wants to know if you’ve opened your bowels yet!’ And she heard him scurry off laughing – he knew how to make her smile. This frequently used expression of their nan’s had always entertained them: the idea of ‘opening a bowel’ sounded like something a local celebrity would do by cutting a ribbon with a pair of golden scissors and getting their photo on the front page of the Gazette. Bodily functions were readily discussed in the Kelly household, which her father said was healthy. Catrin just found it mortifying.
‘We eat a lot of salads,’ she’d mumbled, noticing that the coins she’d fed into the phone were almost used up.
‘Oh, well that’s something, I suppose. But do make sure you wash the lettuce—’
‘Mum, I’ve not got much left on the phone – let me talk to Dad.’
‘Hold on, I’ll get him for you now.’
They always went through this rigmarole where her mother pretended to fetch her father, but Catrin knew he always listened in on the extension in the bedroom.
‘Hiya Dad!’ she said.
‘How’s my little pumpkin?’ he asked brightly, and instantly hearing her daddy’s voice made her want to cry.
She wanted to tell him all about Sol – ‘I’ve met him, Dad!’ she wanted to say. ‘I’ve met the man I know I should have babies with. He’s perfect. You’d love him. And he reads the National Geographic!’ But instead she cleared her throat and asked him about his tomato plants.
‘Ah Cat, I’ve got a bumper crop this year. And there’ll be plenty here for you when you get home, although your mother’s threatening to make a chutney!’
Catrin smiled, the digital display on the telephone unit warning her the call was about to end. ‘I love you, Dad,’ she said. ‘We’re gonna get cut off in a sec!’
BEEEEEEEEEEEP. And the line had gone dead.
Speaking to them had made her homesick for the first time during the holiday. Only two more nights and they’d be flying back. Apart from the obvious, all-consuming joy she felt at the prospect of speaking to Sol again, there were other more domestic reasons for wanting to go home. Firstly she’d get to sleep in her own bed. Secondly she wouldn’t have to live out of a rucksack any more – no matter how many times she shook it out, she always found sand in her clothes, especially her pants. Thirdly she’d get to eat her mum’s shepherd’s pie again. And finally she’d be able to have her films developed so she could see that long-awaited photo of herself and Sol taken at the Samaria Gorge. She hoped beyond hope that her eyes wouldn’t be closed in the shot – she never looked good in photos. ‘Well, I can always cut myself out,’ she thought. After all, it was Sol she wanted to look at.