to stay that way.
But some kind of show of togetherness would be expected of a husband and wife having a civilised meeting and she didn’t want to draw unwanted whispers from the people she knew were observing them. So she let her hand stay in his and made appropriate small talk about the resort as she walked by his side. It was just an act, she told herself, on his part as well as hers. He’d made steps towards divorce too. She could endure it for a few hours.
‘You’re not seeing the island at its best,’ he said in a casual, conversational tone that anyone could overhear and think nothing of. She was grateful to him for that; she was aware that many ears in the room were tuned into their conversation hoping for a hint of what was going on between Cristos and the wife who had left him. Even if they could lip-read they wouldn’t catch anything titillating. ‘We’re having an unusually cold winter,’ he added.
The weather was always a useful standby but in this case it was a topic of genuine interest. The breeze that had outside played havoc with her hair had turned into something much stronger, buffeting the windows that looked out to the sea. The view was magnificent, the deep turquoise sea whipped up to whitecaps, grey clouds scudding across the sky.
‘It must be breathtaking here in summer,’ she said. ‘But I can see the place has its own wild winter beauty too.’
‘Kosmimo is special at any time of the year,’ he said with an air of possession that surprised her. As far as she knew, his cousin Alex owned the island. But then his family were very close—perhaps what belonged to one belonged to the others. Who knew? She had an older sister but they weren’t particularly close.
Hayley didn’t have to fake how impressed she was by her surroundings. The resort building was white and elegant in its simplicity as it stepped down the side of the slope to the sea and the single jetty that served the private island. As she had approached it by boat earlier in the day she had admired the way the structure sat so perfectly in the landscape.
The interiors exceeded all expectations—strikingly stylish with pale marble floors, whitewashed woodwork, large shuttered windows and wide balconies facing the incredible view of the sea to the front and the forested hills to the back. It seemed serene, she thought, but with a subtle air of energy as well, fitting for a holistic resort where the guests came to rest and recharge. She was not surprised when Cristos told her the fit out had won design awards.
‘Why is the resort called Pevezzo Athina?’ she asked Cristos as he led her to their table.
‘Pevezzo in the local dialect means safe haven. Athina is after our family-run taverna on the island of Prasinos not far from here. It’s also the name of the restaurant my great-uncle, Alex’s grandfather, started in Sydney.’
‘So the name is a tradition,’ she said. Once she had realised the connection to his family, she had not gone anywhere near that Sydney restaurant.
He nodded. ‘Tradition is important to my family.’
When she had met him in Durham they had both been strangers away from home. His English had been near perfect, just slight differences in inflexion giving away that he was not a native speaker. They had been lovers and partners and husband and wife. The fact he was Greek and she was English hadn’t mattered. It wasn’t until they had visited Greece on their honeymoon that she had appreciated how Greek he was and how important his culture and traditions were to him.
‘A safe haven.’ She nodded slowly as she looked around her. ‘I can see that. And the way the wind is starting to lash around the windows I want to feel safe.’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘Do you think it will be okay for you to take me back to Nidri in your boat after lunch?’
Cristos had suggested she cancel the return trip she had booked with the boatman and let him take her back along with other guests in his bigger boat. Looking through the windows at how angry the sea had turned, she thought it had been a wise decision for her to agree.
He followed her gaze and frowned. ‘We checked all the weather forecasts for this day when we were planning the celebration, but they didn’t predict this. Hopefully it will blow over. Most of the guests need to leave after lunch. I’ll check the reports again.’
From the time she had met him until the time she had left him, Hayley had leaned on Cristos. It was something she was determined never to do again. But checking weather forecasts in Greek was something she was happy to leave to him.
She knew she was gawking as she looked around her. The place really was extraordinary and she wasn’t used to such high-end luxury. She earned a reasonable salary as a mechanical engineer, but a resort like this would be way out of her reach, the stuff of dream vacations. Cristos had coerced her into staying for lunch—she was determined to lap up the luxury and enjoy it.
True to her word, Dell had seated her at the round table where she was already waiting with Alex. Hayley returned Dell’s big smile. Dell was one of those people she had liked on sight. Under different circumstances she felt they would be friends.
‘Kalos eerthes,’ Dell said to her and Cristos. ‘Welcome.’ She introduced Hayley to the other guests at the table: cousins from Athens and two sets of parents, Dell’s and Alex’s, who had flown from Australia. The family connections were all too much for Hayley to take in, though she recognised some of the names from long-ago conversations with Cristos.
She was seated next to Cristos as was her due as his legally wed wife. It was surreal to be treated again as a couple, to be swept back into something that was once so everyday. Hayley and Cristos. They’d once been an entity. How much did his cousin and his wife know of their history? Hayley certainly didn’t intend to mention anything of their future. The divorce was hers and Cristos’s business alone.
However, she suspected Dell and Alex might have guessed not all was what it seemed between her and Cristos, the way they steered the conversation strictly to neutral territory. Alex explained the history of the island, how it had long ago been owned by Cristos’s and Alex’s family, more recently by a Greek magnate, then the Russian billionaire who had sold it back to Alex. He and Dell had developed the resort, building around an existing unfinished building.
Then there was chit-chat about the food. The meal was certainly conversation worthy. Mezze platters with a selection of Greek appetisers to start, followed by lamb and chicken cooked with lemon and Greek herbs, accompanied by seasonal vegetable dishes made with artichokes, beets and spinach.
‘Most of what we’re eating is grown on the island,’ Cristos explained. ‘Even the olive oil and the honey. The cheeses come from the milk from their herd of goats, and eggs from the chickens kept here.’
Hayley was surprised at his depth of knowledge about the resort and the island. Perhaps he had been working here for his cousin. As far as she knew he had stopped the lucrative modelling. She wondered what he had been doing since to earn a living. Her lawyer wanted to find out but Hayley had instructed him that there was no need to investigate Cristos’s finances. She didn’t want to make any financial claim on him. A complete severing of ties was all that was required.
‘It’s fantastic to be practically self-sufficient for food,’ she said. ‘I saw water tanks and solar panels too.’
‘The island is self-sufficient for power,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised you noticed. You were always interested in alternative energy sources.’
‘I’m working for a solar-panel development company in Sydney,’ she said, then immediately regretted letting slip the information. Her life in Sydney was hers; her independence had
