Rhodes, Greece.
Naomi caught Bubba’s whimper and rushed into the room. Her grandmother cowered against the pillow, her eyes wide, glazed, afraid.
‘They’re going to hang me! Help me, please. I have to escape,’ she slurred. ‘Papa! I can’t see him. Where is he? Don’t let them kill my Papa, I’m begging you!’
Naomi held her grandmother. ‘Come on, Bubba. It’s just a bad dream. You’re safe with me.’ She found it heartbreaking to see the old lady like this. Whatever was going on in her mind was very real to her grandmother.
Bubba thumped herself in the chest. ‘I loved her, and because of me she’s dead too. Please, bring her back!’
‘Who, Bubba? Who did you love?’ Naomi asked, cooling her grandmother’s forehead with a damp facecloth, but Bubba had purged herself of the memory. Exhausted, she returned to sleep. Naomi watched her eyes flutter behind thin lids, and the occasional twitch of her body with a half-started word on her lips.
Despite these anxiety attacks, the last thing Naomi expected was Bubba’s strange request: to post a gun to Rebecca.
Dragged away from her thoughts by more movement across the road, Naomi saw Papas Yiannis in his striped pyjamas ambling onto his front porch. He pushed his fingers behind his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Above him, Marina’s bedroom light went out. The priest placed his tiny coffee cup on the tin table and pulled out a rickety chair.
Reluctant to break the peace of the hour, Naomi gave him a wave.
He nodded before sucking the froth off his drink.
Naomi returned indoors and tried to block thoughts of the gun by concentrating on a fresh batch of hand cream. She gathered the ingredients from memory, no longer needing Bubba’s recipe.
2 cups of olive oil.
1 cup of coconut oil.
1 cup of beeswax.
8 drops of lemon essential oil.
She’d forgotten something . . . honey, that was it. She pulled the kitchen cupboard open and reached for the jar. The cruise calendar and a photo of Costa and her boys were taped inside the cream-painted door.
Uplifted by thoughts of her husband, she placed a hand on her cheek the way he did when he said, ‘I love you, Naomi.’
Costa would be prepping breakfast for the rich and lonely, before they disembarked at the port of Kos.
Naomi recalled the time she had sailed to that island on the fast-cat ferry and met Costa at the port. They dashed about the town where he showed her the ancient plane-tree under which Hippocrates had taught his disciples of medicine. Like tourists, they scrambled through the town’s archaeological site in the blazing sun, and admired antique mosaics underfoot. Eating cheap ice cream from McDonald’s, they wandered about in Freedom Square, taking in the mosque, the museum, the spice market, and then the castle.
Naomi kissed her finger and touched Costa’s photo.
She scooped ingredients into a jar that stood in a pan of hot water. The fragrant tang of lemon flooded the room. In a short time, the components would meld together, ready to be whipped, potted, and labelled.
If only life were that simple.
She reached into the kitchen drawer, withdrew the gun barrel, and prepared to wrap it. First, she polished her prints off the metal. You couldn’t be too careful with a lethal weapon. So that Rebecca wouldn’t recognise her handwriting, Papas Yiannis had written a note to go with the parcel. The only words were: INSTRUCTIONS TO FOLLOW.
*
Naomi power-walked through Paradissi Village, striding towards the airport. A favourite exercise route. Perhaps subconsciously, she wished to greet her boys home from university, or her husband at the end of the season, or one day, her sister. In fact, the walk had no other purpose than to burn a few calories and calm her nerves before she faced the post office.
She passed the infamous sex shop, currently the talk of the village, and longed to go in and investigate. Costa would be shocked but thrilled, if she surprised him in something red, and flimsy, and outrageous. Naomi shook her head and walked on. She was saving for a new sofa.
Orange butterflies flitted between roadside blooms of tansy and yellow tobacco blossoms, stealing their nectar. The dawn air, getting warmer by the second, was laden with fragrances: jasmine, honeysuckle, and night-flowering cactus. She sniffed, and analysed, and considered how to reproduce the perfumes using essential oils.
Somewhere, a caged canary trilled. Naomi wondered if birds enjoyed the wonderful scent of flora at daybreak. Few people realise the power of scent, how it prompts our hunger or satisfaction, and can make us hot with desire, or recoil in revulsion.
The edge of a distant cloud sizzled gold like a firework fuse, warning Naomi she hadn’t long to reach her turning point before sunrise. The small knapsack tapped a steady rhythm on her back, spurring her onward.
She wondered why Rebecca couldn’t respond to Bubba’s correspondence and save Naomi from all this melodrama. Naomi understood her sister not answering the first letters, when tempers were still frayed, but years passed before Bubba wrote again. The outcome remained the same. No reply. She found it difficult to believe Rebecca would hold a grudge for so long.
Naomi doubted the conspirators would get the reaction they hoped for. Yet, she hadn’t the heart to go against them. Since the night of the hurricane, Bubba had dedicated her life to Rebecca and herself, and Papas Yiannis had always been ready to offer support.
She recalled the day they delivered the bad news, two days after the storm.
‘Take your sister for some fresh air,’ Bubba said, placing baby Rebecca in the pram. ‘Don’t forget to use the brake when you stop.’
Naomi, proud of her baby sister, didn’t need telling twice.
When she returned, the priest was in the house. He and Bubba were red-eyed and oddly breathless.
When Papas Yiannis told her the news, he held Bubba’s hand, squeezing it until his knuckles turned white.
Odd the things that stay in a child’s mind.
‘Naomi, I’m sorry, but we think your father had a problem with Elevtheria,’ he said, gulping between words. ‘Your parents are lost at sea, koritsie.’ Even now, he still called her koritsie, my girl, occasionally and it always reminded her of that day.
She accepted the information as she accepted everything adults told her.
That Mama and Papa never said goodbye made her unreasonably angry. Furious with the world, she had punched a girl in class who called her a liar and said her parents were dead. Naomi found it impossible to say why she’d behaved so badly, and it got her into awful trouble.
She couldn’t grasp the situation, and didn’t know how to deal with the information she’d been given. As the days passed, Naomi came to realise Mama and Papa really weren’t coming home any time soon. Splinter by crack, her heart slowly shattered. She wouldn’t talk to anybody about it because, secretly, she expected her parents to walk through the door at any moment. She truly believed Papa had found that safe haven he talked about. How could anyone be sure he hadn’t?
A globe the size of a football stood in the corner of Naomi’s classroom. At the end of the lessons, she would look at it and study how much sea there was to get lost in. Her father had to be out there, she convinced herself, lost because of the storm. After all, there were no road signs in the ocean. He’d be desperate to bring Mama back to his girls and Bubba. Papa was certain to find the way home eventually. He was very special, amazingly strong, and always right.
One windless day, when the sea was flat as glass and sound carried for many kilometres over the water, she heard the motor of an old fishing boat that was too far away to be seen.
It must be them!
She rushed into the shallows, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted as hard as she could, ‘Papa, Mama! This way! I am Naomi! I’m here!’ Over and over she repeated herself, jumping up and waving her arms above her head because grown-ups probably saw further than children. They’d realise the island they were sailing past was Rhodes, and they would recognise her and be filled with joy at seeing her. She imagined them so full of laughter they’d rock the boat, glad they weren’t lost at sea any more.
Her father would push the long, wooden tiller and turn Elevtheria towards land, happy to return from their safe haven after such a lengthy journey.
A neighbour must have caught her racket and told Bubba. The old lady scurried down the shore, straight into the water. ‘It’s not them, Naomi. It’s not your Mama and Papa.’
‘Listen, Bubba! It’s Papa’s boat. The priest said Mama and Papa were lost at sea. They’re trying to come back from their safe haven, but they don’t know the way. If they don’t hear us, they’ll sail right past. Shout, Bubba. Please! Shout!’
Slowly, Bubba shook her head.
‘Please, Bubba! Please! They’re going past. They’ll be gone soon. They might end up on the other side of the world. Shout as loud as you can! They have to hear us, I want them to come back . . . to return home! I’ve been waiting so long, Bubba . . . I miss them so much.’
‘Oh, you poor child,’ Bubba said gently. ‘Your parents are in Heaven, Naomi.’
‘No, Bubba, no! They’re lost at sea. Papas Yiannis said so. Please don’t say those things. I’ve been looking out for them, listening, every single day after school. No, no, you’re wrong!’
Bubba wrapped Naomi in a tight hug and they both cried hard, their bodies shaking against each other. Then, when their tears were spent. Bubba took Naomi’s hand and said, ‘Let’s shout one last time, on three.’
They stood in the water, holding hands, their faces turned to the sky. Together they shouted with every bit of strength. ‘MAMA! PAPA!’
‘I think they heard us in Heaven,’ Bubba said. ‘Come on, give them a smile and a wave, and then we’ll go on home.’
They waved, smiled through their tears, then returned to the cottage in silence.
And all through that time, Naomi now presumed, Bubba had this pistol hidden in the house.
According to Bubba and Papas Yiannis, taking the gun apart and posting the parts separately would not only instigate Rebecca’s curiosity, but also avoid flouting the laws about shipping a firearm. Not that either of them understood exactly what those regulations were.
She wondered how long it had taken them to hatch this crazy plan, and what the hell was Bubba doing with a pistol hidden away. What if her own boys had found it when they were young? She shuddered.
A coach of tourists turned into the airport. The soft light strengthened around her, pale shafts fanning across the sky. Feeling the burn of lactic acid in her thighs, she pushed on.
A Tui plane, wheels down, headlights blazing, seemed to skim the distant treetops on its runway approach. The noise filled the air. Naomi reached the traffic lights, turned, and headed back to Paradissi. At this rate, she’d get to the post office before it opened.
The sun rose above the horizon and glittered off cars and windows. Naomi’s shoulders warmed and her elongated shadow undulated over the tarmac before her. At least her silhouette appeared tall and slim with long, long legs. She watched her shadow, swinging her hips a little and rejoicing in the illusion of a model-like figure, until she almost bumped into a lamppost.
‘Look out!’ Manno shouted, raising his fat arms. He shook his head and turned to unlock his kafenion door.
‘Morning, Manno!’ Naomi replied, laughing at her own stupidity. ‘Nice shirt!’ she said, nodding at the garish parakeets and palm trees that covered his mammoth belly.
She took a turn around the village square while Manno gathered scattered chairs and tucked them neatly under his pavement tables. ‘Come for coffee,’ he called.
‘Later!’ She grinned and waved.
‘I’ve another bag of ouzo bottles for you.’
‘Bravo, thanks again!’ The small, retro carafes were perfect for her witch-hazel toner, and they were free.
Opposite the kafenion, the grocer’s door opened. Stick-thin Savvas stretched his neck and peered around the square. Gangling and mantis-like in his leaf-green overalls and thick round glasses, he threw a wink at Naomi before pulling hessian sacks off crates of fruit and veg.
Both men stopped to watch Katarina come out of the hair salon and clean her window. They exchanged a glance before continuing to study the shimmy of her buttocks as she buffed.
‘You’re being admired,’ Naomi said, marching past.
‘Same every morning,’ the hairstylist replied. ‘I polish my glass; they ogle my ass.’
‘Pure poetry!’ Naomi called over her shoulder. They both laughed. Ahead, a taxi pulled up beneath a peeling blue and yellow sign: RENT ROOMS IN PARADISE. A couple in party gear tumbled out of the car, paid their fare, and wilted into the apartment. Naomi remembered Marina’s tryst and tried to recall if she had ever stayed out until sunrise with Costa.
Passing Naomi, the taxi driver beeped his horn. She lifted her chin, turned her head away, and flat-lined a smile. Cheeky devil.
She marched down the shopping street and headed for the post office, hoping for a letter from England. Then, she wouldn’t have to post the bloody gun.
A queue of elderly people reminded her it was pension day. Two yellow sacks stood on the kerb, confirming the mail van hadn’t arrived yet.
She slumped at a café table under a frangipani tree, pulled a magazine from her rucksack, and stared at the page, but her mind was lost in questions about the blasted gun.
‘Naomi!’ The urgent voice made her jump.
Her neighbour, Heleny, a large Greek woman with Italian roots, dropped into a white plastic chair that appeared alarmingly inadequate for her hips. She glanced about and whispered, ‘You remember that perfume you gave me?’ Naomi nodded. ‘You won’t believe the weird effect it’s having!’
‘In what way? Perhaps you’re allergic to something.’
‘No, nothing like that. It’s . . . well . . .’ She gulped and widened her eyes. ‘It’s men. They keep looking at me and, you know, paying attention.’
‘I see. Best not wear it then.’
Heleny shook her head. ‘No, you don’t understand. I want more. That perfume is amazing, makes me feel . . . hot! I was just—’
Georgia rushed up to the table and interrupted. ‘Girls, I’ve brought the latest gossip. A sex shop has opened in the village!’
Naomi needed a lift and couldn’t resist a little fun. ‘That’s interesting. Do they need any staff, Georgia? I’m looking for a part-time job.’
Heleny tried to hide a chuckle but her chest bounced and quivered.
Georgia stared at Naomi, her mouth hanging open for a moment. ‘You wouldn’t! It’s disgusting. Children might go in. They’re selling all sorts of erotica.’
‘What, the children?’ Heleny said, losing the struggle to keep a straight face.
Georgia huffed. ‘You can laugh, but never mind that. What about the secret door, the documents, the historian investigating? I’ve just come from the church. They’re saying it’s a real genuine miracle.’
‘What’s a miracle?’ Naomi asked sitting up, snapping her mind away from the parcel in her bag.
‘They say God was searching for someone pure, a man that wasn’t corrupt, to get the door in the police station opened. And it took Our Lord Himself seventy years to find an honest man in Greece.’
Naomi hooted with laughter, and then saw her friend was deadly serious and slightly offended.
‘Georgia, get your facts straight,’ Heleny said. ‘Firstly, the historian isn’t Greek; he’s Italian. Secondly, the Italians are even more corrupt than the Greeks. Who do you think invented the mafia?’
‘They can’t all be corrupted. Isn’t the Pope Italian?’ Georgia said flatly.
‘No, he just lives there,’ Heleny retorted. ‘Free accommodation, a perk of the Pope job. The Vatican’s probably a registered charity, tax deductible too. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with God. He’s too busy causing wars, and cancer, and starving children.’
Georgia’s pinched face blanched. With her slender, long-fingered hand, she crossed herself three times before sitting at their table. She turned to Naomi.
‘It’ll bring trouble, you’ll see. No good ever came from poking around in the past.’ The words rushed out. ‘My man says it was all the Italians’ fault.’
Heleny glared. ‘Don’t blame the Italians! They’re the ones who brought tourism to Rhodes. If it wasn’t for the Italians, you’d be in the fields picking olives right now.’
‘No, it’s far too early; they’re not ready.’
‘You know exactly what I mean, Georgia.’
Naomi supressed another giggle. She loved her friends.
‘The point is,’ Georgia continued, scratching her nose and talking from behind her hand, ‘someone didn’t want the contents of that room discovered, but they hadn’t the guts to burn the lot. Isn’t that right? My husband says it’s dangerous, we shouldn’t talk about it. He says there’ll be important people who don’t want questions asked.’
Heleny shook her head. ‘You always do what your man says?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Am I actually talking about it or what?’
Naomi stared into her magazine. ‘Cut the dramatics, you two. What door? What trouble?’
‘The mysterious door in the police station. Seventy years locked and the key tossed aside. Secret information concerning the dead . . . Ouch!’ She reached down and rubbed her shin while glaring at Heleny.
Heleny turned to Naomi. ‘Those poor people. Obviously the malákas were hoping the room full of war-time statistics would rot to nothing. Nobody wants to remember those times, do they?’
Georgia narrowed her eyes. ‘I wish you wouldn’t swear.’
Naomi turned a magazine page with no awareness of the article she’d stared at. ‘I still don’t understand what you’re talking about. Anyway, I’d rather not talk about the war thank you very much. I’m not in the mood.’
A frangipani flower floated down and landed on the table. Naomi picked up the waxy blossom, sniffed it, and tucked it behind her ear.
Heleny turned her head dismissively. ‘Will you stop blaming the Italians, just because Rhodes was under Italian rule? The Italian army were all murdered by the Nazis, or sunk by the British, in forty-three. It was the Greeks that hated the Jews as much as the Germans. They wanted rid so they could steal everything the poor Jews owned. Hypocrites!’
‘Poor Jews?’ Georgia retorted. ‘I’ve never seen a poor Jew in my life!’
Naomi’s anger rose. ‘Well, look this way, why don’t you?’
Georgia blinked. ‘But you’re not Jewish.’
‘Well, my mother was Jewish, and my grandmother is Jewish. My father was Greek Orthodox, like his father before him. So I’m half Jewish . . . but I’m not half rich.
‘And as for the Italians,’ Heleny continued, ‘they were pawns in a game between the British and the Germans. Cast aside by one lot, and gathered up and murdered by the others.’
‘You’re talking rubbish, Heleny. The Italians had changed sides, again! Like in the other big war,’ Georgia retorted.
‘Girls, stop it!’ Naomi said. ‘It was a long time ago, and I doubt anyone here will have their facts straight. Why are we bickering about it now?’
‘Because’ – Georgia drew the word out for effect – ‘behind the door at the police station they found a census the Italians did before . . . you know . . .’ She lowered her voice further. ‘Auschwitz.’
Naomi supressed a shiver. She didn’t want this conversation outside the post office when she had a gun in her bag. ‘Look at that cake,’ she said, focusing on the magazine. ‘We’re getting too Americanised. It’s just a multi-coloured sugar bomb.’
Georgia nodded at her phone. ‘I’m addicted to Candy Crush. That’s got multi-coloured sugar bombs.’
Naomi blinked at her. ‘You’ve completely lost me.’
Heleny leaned in and poked the glossy magazine picture. ‘It’s for Mother’s Day. Why don’t we all make a cake, and have one of those “bake-off” things? Let our mothers judge them.’ She stopped and her eyes turned to the floor. ‘Sorry, Naomi, tactless of me. I always think of Bubba as your mother.’
‘Bubba is an old Jewish term for grandmother,’ Naomi said pointedly, her eyes fixed on the page as she scored a point.
Georgia broke an awkward silence. ‘That cake recipe’s a bit out of date, isn’t it?’
‘Costa came home yesterday, brought me a stack of mags off the cruiser. They’re like new. Where’s the post?’ Naomi peered up the street. ‘Bubba’s on her own. I’ve got to get back.’
‘On her own?’ Heleny sounded alarmed.
‘Well, not exactly. Papas Yiannis is there, but if she needs the bathroom . . .’ Naomi shrugged. She had no intention of telling them about the gun, but she couldn’t think of anything else.
‘Go,’ Georgia said. ‘If there’s any mail, I’ll text you.’
‘Is that thing glued to your hand?’ Heleny quipped.
Naomi nodded at her backpack. ‘Thanks, Georgia, but I’ve a parcel for London and I want to see it go into the last sack. I’ll wait.’
‘Why the last sack?’ Georgia asked.
‘Stands to reason. If it’s the last sack into the van, it’ll be the first out, won’t it? Sorted and sent off right away,’ Naomi said.
Heleny stretched her neck. ‘A parcel? I thought you and Rebecca weren’t speaking. What’s brought on this sisterly love?’
Naomi blinked and turned away. Heleny hadn’t a sarcastic bone in her body yet the thoughtless words stung her. She ignored the question, peered up the street, and saw Elias step into the bakery. ‘I need to buy bread before old dirty-fingers squeezes every loaf in the shop. I haven’t time to bake today. I’ll catch you later.’ She stood and slung her backpack over her shoulder.
‘Wait! I nearly forgot,’ Georgia said. ‘I’ve three orders for the lemon and honey hand cream.’
Naomi grinned. ‘Great, thanks. I’m just making a fresh batch. Text me.’
‘Just bring it to poker night, okay? It’s brilliant for age spots. Mine have almost gone.’ She turned the back of her hand for Naomi to inspect. ‘Better bring a few extra jars. Word gets around.’
‘I hope to . . . but I’m not sure I’ll make cards night,’ Naomi said.
‘ ’Course you can,’ Heleny replied. ‘I’ll sit with Bubba for a couple of hours. You need a break. What’s in the parcel?’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ Naomi lied. ‘Got to run!’
Halfway to the bakery, she spotted the mail van coming towards her, turned, and marched back to the post office.