‘Mama does. She makes me.’
He needed time to take that one in.
They walked along. Kicking stones. Nikos suddenly realised…He was kicking stones in front of him. So was Nicky. With his left foot.
‘You’re left-handed?’
‘Mmm,’ Nicky said.
‘Your mama’s right-handed.’
‘Mmm.’
Riveting stuff. Both being left-handed. It meant nothing.
It meant everything.
‘Has your mother told you about Argyros?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Are you a fisherman?’
‘Yes.’
‘I like boats.’
‘Have you been on boats?’
‘Twice. I don’t get seasick. Mama does. This is the place where a Beatle was shot.’
‘Right,’ Nikos said. He gave up. There were too many questions for one small boy to handle.
There were too many questions for him to handle.
They were sitting right where he’d left them, only Christa had replaced her ice cream with a hand puppet. A squirrel.
She wiggled it as they approached, her face lighting up as she saw him.
‘Thena bought…me…squirrel.’ He grinned and swung her up into his arms. No matter what else was happening here, this mustn’t touch her. That had been his mantra for almost ten years and he wasn’t budging now.
‘Thank you,’ he said gravely to Athena.
‘We didn’t get all the way round,’ Nicky said. ‘We caught another buggy. Nikos says John was his favourite Beatle. He was yours too, wasn’t he, Mama?’
‘Yes,’ she said, sounding repressive.
‘Imagine,’ he said softly and watched her wince.
It had been the last night they’d been together. ‘I have to go away,’ she’d said, but she’d sobbed and clung.
He hadn’t understood why she had to leave. She’d completed her university degree by correspondence, far younger than most. Her writing was brilliant. Everyone said so. She could take a job with the local paper and write the novel to end all novels. They’d agreed. She could stand by him in his battle with Giorgos.
That was what they’d planned, but suddenly she was crumpled, broken, sobbing about having to leave.
‘I need to go. I just need to go. Please, Nikos, don’t make it any harder.’
He’d thought it was her writing that was driving her. ‘You’ll come back?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t. Nikos…’
She’d run out of words. He’d been angry, shocked, bewildered.
That night in his family’s boatshed…Their last night. He’d played music by John Lennon on his tinny little sound system.
Imagine…
He thought now: Nicky must have been conceived that night.
No matter. He had to get rid of the white noise. There was only one absolute. ‘You need to come home,’ he told her.
‘No.’
‘Then Demos wins.’ He made an almost superhuman effort to rid himself of his emotional tangle and concentrate on what was important. ‘I need to go home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I thought I had a week to persuade you, but Demos has already contacted mining companies. He’s acting as if he owns the place. I daren’t stay longer. But it’s your birthright, Athena. And,’ he added, ‘it’s your son’s.’
‘And your…’
‘And my daughter’s,’ he finished for her, harshly. For maybe she was going places he wasn’t ready to go just yet. ‘Our children’s. You must come home.’
‘No.’
‘Think about it,’ he said briefly, harshly. ‘There’s so much happening here I can’t take it in. Whatever’s gone on in the past…’ He glanced at Nicky and felt as if he was on a shifting deck, unsure of his footing, unsure of anything. ‘For now we need to put that aside. If you don’t come home, then some time soon I’ll be back here to…sort what’s mine. But my priority right now has to be the islanders. Thousands of livelihoods, Thena. Princess Athena. They’re your people. You answer to them and not to me. Except…’
He hesitated and then said the words that had to be said. The words that had been in his head for the entire tour of the park.
‘Except on the question of my son,’ he said.
She gasped. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Life’s not fair. Get over it, Athena, and come home. Princess.’
Nicky had been listening on the sidelines, troubled, not understanding but trying. ‘You said my son,’ he pointed out, trying to be helpful. ‘Did you mean your daughter?’
Nikos nodded. Grave as Nicky. ‘I must have,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m a bit upset right now. I need your mama to come back to the island where she was born.’
‘You called her a princess.’
‘She is a princess.’
‘She’s my Mama.’
‘She can be both. I bet your mama says you can be anything you want if you try hard enough.’ He turned and faced Athena straight on. She was lovely, he thought. In her casual sweatshirt, her jeans, her tumbled curls tied back with a piece of red ribbon…She was a mature version of the girl he’d fallen for ten years ago. Longer. The girl he’d loved for ever.
He couldn’t think that.
‘Your mama can do anything she wants,’ he said to Nicky, but he kept right on looking at Athena. ‘I think it’s time for your mama to do just that. Because I think she wants the island of Argyros to be safe just as much as I do.’
CHAPTER THREE
SO TWO weeks later…Maybe she was out of her mind, but she was going back to a place she’d thought she’d never set foot on again. Argyros. The Silver Island of the Diamond Isles.
If Giorgos had had a son this never would have happened.
Generations of islanders had ached for the islands to revert to the three principalities they had once been. Now with Giorgos’s death, they had.
‘But why did it have to happen on my watch?’ Athena muttered as she stood on the deck of the Athens-Argyros ferry and watched her island home grow bigger.
Beside her was Nicky. He was practically bursting with excitement. He should be in school, she thought. How could he get into the college of his choice if she kept interrupting his education?
That was only one of the arguments she’d thrown at Nikos during the tense phone calls that followed his visit. But always it had returned to the bottom line.
If she backed away from her role as Crown Princess then Demos would open all six diamond mines.
Whereas Nikos had a very different proposal-to open one mine, avoiding mess and with minimal effect on the island’s environment. Profits to go into the island’s infrastructure and the island could prosper.
Nikos had told her all of this by phone, talking of nothing but the island, making no mention of how these children had happened, how Nicky and Christa affected their future-nothing, nothing, nothing.
Apart from that one outburst in the park, he’d contained his rage.
As she’d contained hers. We’ve been civilised, she thought, and tried to feel proud of herself.
Instead she felt small. Belittled by the latent anger she heard behind Nikos’s civility. Frightened of what lay ahead.
‘How long will we stay?’ By her side at the rails, Nicky suddenly sounded as scared as she was. ‘For ever?’
‘I’ve taken a month’s leave. I’m hoping by the end of the month Nikos should be able to take over the running of the place.’
‘Running?’
‘Like…the government. If I can organise things then Nikos will be the government when I leave.’
‘Are you the government now?’
‘Technically, yes. Though my cousin has been filling in.’
‘We don’t like your cousin Demos?’
‘I’m not sure we do,’ she said. ‘Nikos says he’s greedy. But let’s just see for ourselves, shall we?’
‘Okay,’ he said and tucked his hand into hers, with the infinite trust of childhood.
She needed someone to trust too, she thought. What was she letting herself in for?
‘We’ll just slip in quietly, do what we have to do and leave,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping we’ll hardly be noticed. I’ll show you the places where I swam and played when I was a little girl. I’ll figure how to stop Demos digging his great big diamond mines. Then we can go home, with as little contact with the locals as possible.’