Dark Apollo

She’d thought, She’s going to be so hurt.

But, to her surprise, letters with Greek stamps had begun to arrive regularly and frequently.

Perhaps Spiro Xandreou knew Lorna’s rich uncle, and assumed Katie came from the same kind of background.

Little does he know, she’d thought, looking round their small flat. When he realised that Katie’s only relative was an older sister working for a busy secretarial agency to keep a roof over their heads, this so-called engagement would be a thing of the past.

Camilla had never been to Greece, but she had a shrewd idea that marriages there were still very much tied up with property, and the size of a bride’s potential dowry. Katie had no financial qualification to recommend her to the family of a young waiter on the make.

For a time, it had seemed as if Katie was having second thoughts about her romance as well. She had been silent and preoccupied, and spent a lot of time alone in her room. She’d lost weight too, and there were shadows under her eyes.

But then another letter arrived, and Katie, bubbling with renewed happiness, had revealed that Spiro was flying to London at the end of June.

But his flight had landed without him, and Katie had eventually returned to the flat alone, almost distraught with worry.

And now Camilla had to make her see reason.

‘Surely he’d have sent word if he’d been delayed,’ she said. ‘I think,’ she added carefully, ‘we’re going to have to accept, darling, that he’s simply changed his mind…’

‘He can’t have done.’ Bright spots of colour burned in Katie’s cheeks. ‘We’re going to be married. He—he has to come here. Oh, Camilla, he’s simply got to.’

Camilla looked at her in sudden horrified understanding. She didn’t have to ask why, she thought. It was all there in Katie’s tear-bright eyes and trembling mouth, in the curious blend of dignity and shame in her face as she looked back at her sister.

Her voice broke. ‘Oh, no, Katie. For God’s sake—not that.’

‘It’s quite true. I’m going to have Spiro’s baby. But it’s all right, because he loves me, and we’re going to be married as soon as it can be arranged.’

Camilla’s voice was weary. ‘You’ve actually told him you’re pregnant?’ She gave a mirthless smile. ‘And you wonder why he wasn’t on that plane.’

‘You’re not to say that.’ Katie’s voice shook with intensity. ‘You don’t know him. He’s decent and honourable.’

‘So decent, so honourable he couldn’t wait to seduce a girl on her first trip abroad.’ Camilla shook her head, her throat aching with grief and bitterness. ‘Oh, Katie, you fool.’ She sighed. ‘Well, now we have to decide what to do for the best.’

‘I know what you’re going to say.’ Katie’s face was suddenly pale. ‘Don’t even think it, Milla. I’m having this baby.’

‘Darling, you haven’t thought it through. You’ve got your university course—your whole life ahead of you. You can’t imagine what it would be like trying to cope with a baby as well…’

‘But that isn’t what I’ve chosen. I’m going to marry Spiro. It isn’t the life I’d planned, I agree, but it’s the life I want—the only one, now and forever.’

‘Katie—you can’t know that.’

‘Mother knew it, when she met Father. And she was younger than me,’ Katie said unanswerably. ‘And you can’t say they weren’t happy.’

No, Camilla thought. She couldn’t say that. Her parents had loved each other deeply and joyously until a jack-knifing lorry had brought that love to a premature end, leaving her at nineteen with the sole responsibility for a vulnerable adolescent.

And what a hash I’ve made of it, she castigated herself. She needed her mother’s wisdom to tell her how to support Katie through this crisis. I don’t know what to do, she thought, and felt a hundred years old.

She felt even older when she woke the next morning. It had been a terrible evening. Katie had managed to telephone the restaurant in Athens, only to be told with polite but impersonal regret that Spiro no longer worked there. Nor could they say where he’d gone.

I bet they can’t, Camilla had thought, seething. They’re probably inundated with calls like this.

All night long, Camilla had heard the sound of Katie’s desolate sobbing through the thin partition wall. She’d tried to go to her, but Katie’s door was locked. Besides, what could she do, or say—she who had never been even marginally tempted to fall in love herself? She was the last person in the world to know what comfort or advice to offer, she’d told herself unhappily.

To her surprise she found Katie already up, and making breakfast in the tiny kitchenette. Her sister looked wan and red-eyed, but her face was set with determination.

‘I’m going to find him, Milla,’ she said.

‘But you can’t trail round every restaurant and taverna in Athens asking for him. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.’ Dismayed, Camilla took the beaker of coffee Katie handed her.

‘Not Athens.’ Katie shook her head. ‘Spiro comes from an island called Karthos. It’s in the Ionian Sea, south of Corfu. I shall go there. His family must know where he is.’

Camilla took a wary sip of the strong black brew. ‘Katie,’ she said hesitantly, ‘has it occurred to you that Spiro may not—want to be found?’

‘That’s not true,’ Katie said calmly. ‘If it were, I’d know it here.’ She put her hand on her heart.

The simplicity of the gesture and the profound trust it implied made Camilla’s throat ache with unshed tears.

He’s not worth it, she thought savagely.

There were a thousand arguments she ought to be able to use to stop Katie embarking on this crazy and probably fruitless quest, but somehow she couldn’t think of one.

Instead, she said, ‘Then I’m going with you.’

‘Milla, do you mean it?’ Katie’s face was transfigured. ‘But what about the agency? Will Mrs Strathmore give you the time off?’

‘I’ve a whole backlog of leave I haven’t taken.’ Camilla gave her a reassuring smile. ‘And Mrs Strathmore can lump it. She won’t sack me. She relies on me to handle the ghastly clients the others won’t work for. I’ll call in and explain on the way round to the travel agency.’ She tried to sound positive and encouraging, but her heart was in her boots.

What the hell will we do if we don’t find him? she wondered. Or, even worse, supposing we find him and he doesn’t want to know?

She sighed silently. They would cross that bridge when they came to it.

‘We’ll find him.’ Katie seemed to have read her thoughts. Her voice and face were serene. ‘It’s fate. The Greeks have always believed in fate.’

And in the Furies, Camilla thought grimly. The so-called Kindly Ones inexorably pursuing the erring, and wreaking their vengeance on them.

Well, she would be a latter-day Fury, trailing Spiro Xandreou, no matter how well he might have covered his tracks.

She said, ‘There’s no such thing as fate,’ and surreptitiously crossed her fingers under the kitchen table.

* * *

The Hotel Dionysius was small, fiercely clean, and frankly basic. Camilla sat at a plasticcovered table in a corner of the outside restaurant area, a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice in front of her. She was sheltered from the glare of the midday sun by a thatched roof, interwoven with a sprawling and healthy vine. Beyond the hotel’s tiny garden with its hibiscus hedge lay the main square of Karthos town.

The island was only a remote dot in the Ionian Sea, but it was bustling with tourists. So far Camilla had heard French, German and Dutch being spoken, as well as English, and she and Katie had been lucky to get the last two vacancies at the hotel.

She’d left Katie sleeping in their whitewashed shuttered room on the first floor. She was beginning to feel the effects of her pregnancy, and had been miserably sick on the flight to Zakynthos, and the subsequent long ferry trip. The temperature on Karthos was already up in the eighties, and she’d agreed with little fuss to Camilla’s suggestion that she should rest and leave the initial enquiries for Spiro to her sister.

Camilla had been sorely tempted to cancel this whole wild-goose chase after a reluctant telephone call to Lorna Stephens’ Greek uncle. She’d explained, without going into detail, that she was anxious to trace a young waiter from the restaurant Clio, and wondered if he could help.