Exploiting her daughter’s absence, Daphne joined the boys’ mother out on the balcony where she was smoking. Evgenia had become a middle-aged matron with thickened midriff and hair stiff with spray. We’re getting old now, Daphne thought, remembering the glamorously sexy teenager she’d admired as a girl. Evgenia gave her a Marlboro Light from a packet with a health-warning picture of a corpse lying on a morgue table.
‘We would all leave if we could,’ she said, putting an arm round Daphne’s waist. ‘There’s nothing for Pavlos and Alexis here. We can’t even afford to send them to university abroad. I always believed that we would keep getting better, richer, more European. And now it’s all turned upside down. We’re in our fifties and moving back into our parents’ homes.’
‘Yes, but look at this.’ Daphne gestured at the city’s expanse of sparkling lights spilling all the way down to the sea, and the surrounding mountains making dark shadows against a sky still tinged with stripes of the long-departed sunset. ‘You don’t get this in London.’
‘Yes, well that’s not going to pay the bills. You’re lucky to be here on holidays – that’s all Greece is good for.’
They spent two days in Athens so Libby could see Sam and, on the third morning, Daphne woke early in anticipation of the trip to Aegina. The aunts had agreed that, with her knowledge of tourism and mother-tongue English, Daphne was the ideal person to organise holiday lets at the old island house. It was either that or sell it. And nobody was buying property these days – you could hardly give it away.
‘People are refusing their inheritances,’ said Aunt Athena. ‘They reject their parents’ homes because they can’t pay the taxes and there’s no way to sell them.’ All three aunts were adamant that it would be terrible to lose their beloved patriko, their father’s home.
Aunt Athena plied them with a resplendent breakfast, including boiled eggs, cheese, soft tzoureki bread and an orange cake. Dainty, cut-glass dishes contained samples of her preserves.
‘This feast reminds me of when Ellie made me name-day breakfasts,’ said Daphne, remembering the infinite bounty of her mother’s feverish nurturing sessions that were simultaneously opportunities for expressing love and female domination. It was like getting an extra birthday each year on April 9th – a bonus of having a Greek parent. Athena looked tearful, then wiped the slate of her face clear again and smiled.
‘I still miss her so much,’ said Daphne, shocked by the knife of grief that stabbed, as though her mother’s death had been quite recent.
Daphne and Libby wheeled their cases back down the bumpy streets to Maroussi’s station and took the electric train down to Piraeus. The carriage was packed with people heading in to work and it wasn’t until Omonia, where crowds got out, that they found seats. An unshaven old man swayed about playing ‘Cloudy Sunday’ on his accordion. Most of the travellers paid little attention and very few gave him small change when he proffered his hat. The journey only took half an hour, though it cut through an entire cross-section of Athenian neighbourhoods, starting in the privileged, northern high ground, traversing the anguished plain of an overcrowded inner city and terminating down in the anarchic bustle of the port.
They had just left the train terminus at Piraeus when Daphne stopped to answer her phone. It was Ralph.
‘I can’t hear you very well,’ she shouted, holding one hand to her ear against the rumbling cacophony of passing lorries and a café blaring dance music. ‘What did you say?’ She heard the word ‘hospital’ and her chest felt heavy in anticipation. ‘I’m in Greece,’ she yelled. ‘I can’t really talk.’ She didn’t want Libby to think she was chummy and chatting with her old abuser.
‘I know,’ came the reply, much clearer now. ‘I am too. At the Metropolitan Hospital, in Neo Faliro. I almost died yesterday. It seems heart failure is another charming side effect of my disease. I don’t think I have much longer. Nina’s gone. Will you come to say… so that I can say goodbye?’
‘I’m in Piraeus with Libby,’ said Daphne. ‘We’re catching a ferry.’ She didn’t want to be pulled into Ralph’s drama, but she could not help feeling sorry for him. ‘I suppose… well maybe we could get a later one.’ He didn’t reply. ‘OK, I’ll come,’ she continued, noting Libby’s concerned air and holding up a hand in a pacifying motion. ‘We’ll take a taxi and be there in ten minutes. I’ll see you soon.’
‘I can’t say no,’ Daphne said, hoping to get in her point before Libby began complaining.
‘He doesn’t deserve it.’
‘No, you’re right. But when someone’s about to die you can’t refuse to see them.’
‘You can. He should be in prison. Just let him die.’
‘You’re right, my Libs. But I’d prefer to say goodbye in peace. It’ll make it easier for me. And actually, the hospital is very close to here.’
Libby made a grumbling sound indicating her realisation that she had no chance of success, but that she hadn’t forgotten the accusations against Ralph or her revulsion about them. ‘But no way am I going to see him, OK? I hate hospitals.’
‘Thanks, my gorgeous girl. It won’t take long, I promise.’ She held her daughter’s head and kissed it.
The hospital was a modern block, opposite a tangle of bridges and underpasses. Libby managed – bewilderingly – to look both forlorn and angry when Daphne left her in a café on the ground floor, though she agreed to call Sam to make birthday plans and arrangements for staying with him on their return from the island. Daphne took the lift to the fourth floor as instructed and asked for kyrios Boyd at the nurses’ reception desk.
‘Kyrios Boont,’ replied the nurse, correcting Daphne with the Greek interpretation of the spelling, ‘is in room 11.’ She pointed casually along the corridor.
Daphne opened the door gently and saw him before he noticed her. He was facing away and appeared shrunken, hair lying flattened against his skull. Tubes and wires connected him to winking machines. Here was the man who had loomed so large in her life. Here was the person who had introduced her to love. And, of course, he had been meaningful enough to make her hate him and want revenge, even as a grown woman with a child of her own. Yet before her was a frail body on the verge of leaving the world, drained of strength and power.
‘Hello?’ She couldn’t see if he was asleep, but he turned quickly to face her.
‘Christ! You came.’ He sat up, his face feverish or mad, his skin tinged a dispiriting yellow. ‘I didn’t know if you would. Jeb said you were in Greece.’
‘Yes, I’m with Libby. We’re taking the boat to Aegina.’ How strange that Libby was about to have her thirteenth birthday, she thought. She’ll be the same age I was when Ralph and I took the Magic Bus.
‘Ah.’ It was more of an outbreath than a word. ‘Aegina.’ He continued in a more practical manner. ‘You know, I thought I’d died. I was sitting on this rock in the middle of nowhere… The pain was astonishing. It’s peculiar, but I was fine with the idea of leaving.’
‘What happened? How did you get here?’
‘Someone must have spotted me keeling over. They got an ambulance and by that time Nina found me. I was taken to the nearest town, which was Thebes.’ He made a noise that was meant to be a chuckle but sounded like a dog coughing. ‘That would have been rather a good place to have died. Oedipus and all that jazz. You know, King of Thebes…’ His voice trailed off.
‘Anyway, Nina sorted out everything. I was brought here. Doing rather well in the circumstances. Quite perky, really.’ He coughed and winced in pain. ‘I’m a bit bruised from the fall, that’s all.’