With the perspective of time and distance, Jane also appeared less deserving of blame. She, too, had suffered abuse. In fact, she had been so traumatised by her experiences that she could not even confide in her old friend. From the safety of Athens, Daphne wondered whether she might write to Jane – not to reopen their friendship, but to close it on a gentler note.
The early-morning sun warmed her face as she sat on the balcony sipping a ‘first coffee’, as Ellie always called it. She could smell the sweet tang of the small-leafed basil and spearmint plants she’d placed in a row beside a small, round café table and two folding chairs. Noises echoed from the nearby Saturday market where one man’s fervent call made selling sweet oranges sound like a war cry: ‘Portokalia, glyka portokalia.’ She lit a cigarette, enjoying every illicit breath.
She was still on the balcony, typing emails on her laptop, when Libby appeared.
‘Hello, early bird. Did you sleep OK?’ She had a lurking fear of passing on her insomnia, not to mention any number of other undesirable traits.
‘Yeah, all good. Caught you smoking, though.’ She looked pointedly at the cigarettes Daphne had forgotten to hide. ‘Bad example, Mum. “Smoking causes fatal lung cancer,”’ she read slowly in Greek from the packet. Even with a tangle of unbrushed hair and bobbly, mismatched pyjamas, Libby gave the impression of streamlined efficiency. She had grown so much in the last year that now, at almost fourteen, she was taller than her mother and had bouts of womanly maturity that Daphne felt she herself would never achieve.
‘So you’ll spend the whole day at The House? Will Sam be there?’
‘Yes, the usual deal. I need to be there by ten thirty.’
Daphne saw that Libby was flourishing with not only a father and a wider family of cousins, aunts and uncles, but also the young refugees she volunteered with every weekend. It made her realise what a tiny, tight nucleus they had been in London. She had always seen the positive aspects of their exclusive bond, but now it was clear that Libby was happier to have all these other people around her. Daphne’s old fears of losing control were gradually evaporating, as if from exposure to sunshine.
‘But I’m a bit worried about today,’ Libby said. ‘I’m meant to be starting a project with these three sisters who arrived a few weeks ago. They’re from Iraq. And they don’t talk. Or hardly. The oldest one’s sixteen. They’re still really upset from what they’ve been through. Their parents died – drowned when they were crossing from Turkey. And now they’re completely alone.’
‘God, how awful.’ The stories that Libby brought home were often upsetting, but she appeared to take them on with a practical attitude.
‘I know. And Dad and Xenia had this idea of some sort of art project or something, to get them to express themselves another way. But it’s not really my thing. We’ve got paints and paper there, but I don’t know. How do you inspire them after something like that? They look so sad. And when I talk they just look at me and I feel stupid.’
Daphne paused before speaking, weighing up the potential pitfalls of getting involved. The House was Sam’s thing, after all. She was busy enough with a bit of private English tuition and some part-time work for Jelly – it turned out that much of what she’d done in Shepherd’s Bush could be achieved just as well if not better in Ano Petralona. She even had the offer of exhibiting some work in a small gallery in Psyrri, with new subjects based on the city life she saw around her. (In the end, Putney had gone into the Shoreditch exhibition and sold on the opening night; she assumed nobody would ever guess the real story behind the images.) In Athens, however, it was impossible to ignore the wave of pain that was flooding across Greece with the constant arrival of refugees. Each time she accompanied Libby to The House for her weekend volunteering, they passed through Victoria Square – an ad hoc camp for people who had lost everything. There was something absurdly cheerful about the garden square in the warm, October weather, with its air of former gentility and rows of pollarded mulberry trees. Colourful clothes were hung out to dry, young children played clapping games in the sunshine and men stood around the sculpture of Theseus rescuing Hippodamia from a drunken centaur, discussing the next, northerly leg of their journey. Daphne knew there was also a terrible darker side to life on the square. Some unaccompanied children and teenagers survived by selling themselves, often for a few euros or just a cheese pie. Athenian men arrived in the evening, strolling around until they located a boy they could take along the road to the Field of Mars park.
‘Have you thought of doing a sewing project or a collage with fabrics? You know, something like the pieces I do. Figures in a landscape telling a story?’
‘I don’t know if I could.’ Libby’s face spread into a pleading smile. ‘But maybe you could help?’
‘Well I don’t want to step on Sam’s toes.’ Daphne was already envisaging the three wordless girls as figurines in a tableau – a long strip with a narrative, like the Bayeux Tapestry. They could create the sisters’ home in Iraq, the fearful sea journey, Athens as a chaotic sanctuary, and maybe even the future. They wouldn’t need speech in order to tell their story. ‘Why don’t you call Sam and talk to him about it? I’m going to nip out to the market now anyway, so let’s discuss it again when I’m back.’
She took their landlady’s abandoned shopping trolley and returned home with a harvest festival of autumnal produce. On the top was a Dionysian wealth of grapes and thin-skinned, purple figs, some of which they ate for breakfast with yogurt.
‘Dad’s really keen. He said, “Go for it!” So please do come with me today.’
Daphne gathered up some sewing gear. ‘Here we are! A roll of canvas for the backing. And two big bags stuffed with beautiful rags!’
The next day was Sunday and she and Libby had planned to go swimming before another sewing session at The House in the afternoon. They caught the tram down to Kalamaki.
‘Maybe we could take the sisters to the beach one weekend?’ said Daphne. The three silent, solemn girls had immediately pulled her into their orbit and she couldn’t stop thinking about them. They turned out to be accomplished at sewing and, with Daphne’s help, had soon created a rough cut of the collage’s first scene. It depicted their old home – a two-storey, stone house in Nineveh, with cherry trees, several striped cats and their parents standing by the front door. When Daphne produced three identifiable figurines of the sisters, all with dark, almond eyes and prettily wrapped head-scarves, they smiled – for the first time since their arrival, according to Libby. At the end of the afternoon, they said goodbye and still did not speak, but they held Daphne’s arm with such tenderness, it was all she could do not to cry. She promised to return with Libby the next day and to help them until they finished the project. It was clearly the beginning of something significant – the wind had changed direction for them as well as for her.