was tall and on the skinny side of slender. Her eyes were grey to Millie’s blue, and her skin much paler than her sister’s peaches and cream complexion.
But the big difference was her hair, almost at the silver end of the spectrum, and totally straight, spilling halfway down her back, even when confined to the thick braid insisted upon by Aunt Nora.
Hair like moonlight...
Oh, God, she thought, as memory stabbed at her suddenly, viciously. Not dead as she’d believed and hoped, but brutally alive.
She sat rigidly, her nails digging into the palms of her hands as she tried to force that particular memory back into the oblivion it deserved.
No one would ever say it to her again. She’d made sure of that long ago, leaving the long silky strands on the floor at the hairdressing salon in Haylesford in exchange for a gamine crop with feathery tendrils framing her face and giving emphasis to her high cheekbones.
Yet another difference between us, she thought, as she made herself think about Millie again.
She looks like Mum, and I take after Dad’s side of the family, she reflected, swallowing past the lump in her throat. He always claimed he had Viking ancestry and that’s where our colouring came from. On the other hand, he tended to wing his way through life like Millie, while my mother was the steady, sober member of the partnership. As I believed I was.
But whatever the reason for Aunt Nora’s reluctance to take them on, it couldn’t be a dislike of children because she ran a private junior school for girls and a very successful one, catering for those needing extra help to pass the examinations for their very expensive senior schools, or, as it was known, a crammer.
Not that she and Millie were ever enrolled at Meade House School, even though they were both under thirteen. Instead, they were both placed very firmly in the state system.
Her long-term plans for them, however, she’d kept to herself, Selena thought drily.
She drank some more coffee, wondering why she was re-treading these well-worn paths all over again. Especially when she’d told herself the best way to survive was to shut the door on the past. Think only of the future.
Or was this simply deliberate prevarication? Delaying the moment when she’d have to deal with Millie’s letter, still in the kitchen, silently demanding her unwilling attention.
Time to get it over with, she decided as she finished her coffee and went indoors.
The single piece of paper inside the envelope looked as if it had been ripped from a small notebook.
‘Lena’ Millie had written. ‘We have to talk. It’s an emergency, so please, please call me.’ She’d added the telephone number, including the code, and signed off ‘M’.
Short, but not too sweet, thought Selena. And it’s almost certainly about money because Rhymnos is bound to be having its share of economic problems.
Or has her life on a small Greek island already palled and could this cry for help involve a one-way ticket back to Britain?
But to do what—and to live where? Well, hardly here, that was for sure, sharing a cramped bedroom with a three-quarter-sized bed, not to mention a shower room not much bigger than a cupboard.
And apart from some undistinguished GCSEs, Millie had no qualifications for any career except bar work or waitressing. And she’d probably had her fill of both by now.
Surely she can’t imagine there’s a remote possibility that Aunt Nora’s been in touch and all is forgiven?
If so, dream on, Millie, she thought. She’s out of our lives for good and all.
And why didn’t you ring me if it’s all so urgent? Especially as I sent you my number along with the address.
She realised she’d crumpled the letter in her hand, and smoothed it out again on the work surface.
The phone number Millie had given clearly demonstrated that she was still living with Kostas at his taverna, named Amelia in her honour. But maybe that was only temporary.
And although it was tempting to take the coward’s way out and pretend the letter had never come, Millie was, in spite of everything, her sister and wanted her help.
She said aloud, ‘I can’t let her down.’
Steeling herself, she picked up the phone. It was answered on the second ring. A man’s voice.
She kept her voice cool and steady. ‘Kostas? It’s Selena.’
‘Ah, sister, you have called.’ Across the miles, she could hear the relief in his tone. ‘How good to hear you. But I knew it would be so. I told my Amelia that she must not disturb herself with worry.’
‘Things have obviously been—difficult for you all,’ she said. And that’s putting it mildly.
‘Po, po, po. Now we look for better times.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘Is Millie around? Can I speak to her?’
‘At this moment, no, sister. The doctor has ordered she must rest, and she is sleeping.’
‘The doctor,’ Selena repeated, frowning. ‘You mean she’s ill? What’s wrong with her? Is it serious?’
‘I cannot say. It is a woman’s thing, and she feels scared and very much alone.’ He hesitated. ‘My mother is here, of course, but—it is not easy, you understand.’
I bet, thought Selena, remembering Anna Papoulis in her unrelieved widow’s mourning, her headscarf framing her sharp face with its narrow-lipped, bitter mouth set in resentment of her son’s foreign bride.
However, it seemed as if the marriage was surviving, which was some relief.
‘It is you that she wants. Again and again she says it, and she weeps.’ His tone became eager. ‘If you would come here—be with her for a while—she would soon be better. I know it. And there is a room for you here with us. I prepared it in hope.’
She was shocked into silence. And disbelief.
Rhymnos, she thought. He actually thinks I can go back to Rhymnos? After everything that happened? He must be crazy.
‘No,’ she said at last, her voice harsh. ‘That’s impossible. You know it is. I—I’m needed here.’
‘But things are different now,’ he persisted. ‘You have nothing to fear, sister. People have gone,’ he added, his voice heavy with meaning. ‘The island has changed. You will be safe here. Safe with us.’
I thought I was safe before. Believed Millie was the one in danger. Yet I was the one to be betrayed and I still have the scars.
He went on quickly, ‘And my Amelia wants so badly to see you—to be with you. I cannot bear for her to be disappointed.’
No, she thought. That’s how it all began. Because Millie mustn’t be disappointed. Because two of her classmates were having a holiday in Greece, for the first time without their parents, and asked her to go with them. And she cried when Aunt Nora said, ‘At seventeen? Absolutely not.’
Tears on their own probably wouldn’t have worked, but reinforcements arrived in the shape of Mrs Raymond, mother of Daisy, whose idea the trip had been, and, in her way, as formidable as Aunt Nora.
‘I think one has to allow them some independence at their age,’ she’d pronounced majestically. ‘Demonstrate that we trust them. After all, they’ll all be off to university next year.’
Daisy and Fiona, perhaps, Selena had thought drily. Millie—only if she started doing some work.
‘And Rhymnos is only small and quiet, not crowded with nightclubs, which means fewer opportunities for mischief,’ Mrs Raymond had added. ‘The hotel, too, is family run and has a good reputation. The girls are so keen for Millie to go with them,