Dragging a comb through my wet hair, I catch Tasha up on the weirdo outside the house last night and the latest developments in my search for Mum’s painting.
‘You didn’t see their face at all? So horrible that someone would be lurking outside.’
‘It could just be some random and I’m reading too much into it. It was dark and I’d had a couple of drinks …’
‘Maybe you are overthinking it. Don’t give it energy, Soph. Just think about today and meeting the guy about Mumma Lyns’ painting.’
Theo dropped me off this morning so I could get ready for our excursion. He will be back soon with Christoph and Zino to collect me. Although Tasha tells me not to worry about the stranger on the beach, I’m unable to dispel my fears entirely. Especially since I can’t seem to get myself together this morning, still shaky, feeling violated by whomever was lurking outside last night. The threat of someone following me or us, watching from the shadows, has displaced the safety I’d found in Theo’s arms just hours earlier.
I’m also nervous about my meeting with Tony Giovinazzi in Kalamáta, but at least I can play at being tourist with the boys afterwards. I then tell Tasha about Theo’s tattoo. Her jaw drops and she shrieks.
‘What?! Let me get this clear … he has on his skin, written in permanent ink, a barely known poem that was the last thing your mum ever wrote to you?’
I nod, remembering my reaction.
‘Soph, that’s the freakiest thing I’ve ever heard. How can it not mean something? Sorry, I’m not being helpful, but that’s blown my mind!’
‘Well, whatever it means, I’m trying not to take it too seriously.’ I shiver as I think about the poem written in Mum’s hand. ‘Don’t! It still gives me chills. But from now on, I promise to be rational and let my head, not my heart, rule, as you always tell me. At least I’ve learned something on my daft quest out here.’
Although after last night, I can’t deny the strong feelings lurking, though I am trying to prevent them from attaching to Theo. But I know they are and I daren’t say it out loud to Tasha. Her injection buzzer sounds.
‘Saved by the bell! Stay there, I’m not finished with you yet. You can watch me do this while we chat.’
She takes her iPad into the bathroom with her, propping it against the taps so I can see. Unwrapping a sterile syringe, she fills it from a vial of liquid.
‘Right, you choose – thigh or tummy?’
‘Jesus, you’re giving me this to decide?’
‘We’re doing this together and you’re going to live through this with us! So, which is it?’
She waggles the needle at me. I don’t know how she does this twice a day.
‘In my completely uninformed opinion, I’d say tummy.’
She lifts up her top and pinching a small bit of skin, injects herself without a flinch. I’m cringing with squeamishness.
‘There, done! Didn’t even sting. Don’t forget, I’ve got my follicle scan coming up and you’re coming, so you can virtually count my eggs with me!’ She re-adjusts her clothes in triumph. ‘Now, I need all the details about Theo. You haven’t said as much, but given you were clearly in his bed looking at his chest before you were accosted by a shadow on the sand, I can only assume the deed is done.’
I smile back at her, unable to conceal the confirmation of her suggestion.
‘I knew it! Tell me everything, immediately.’
The relentless tooting of the car horn outside my villa interrupts our chat.
‘Saved by the horn!’ I say, both of us laughing at my choice of words. ‘That’s Christoph. I have to go, but I promise I’ll call you later and tell you all you wish to know.’
‘Fine, but I insist on all the details. Good luck and let me know how the meeting goes. Crossing everything that he knows where to find Mumma Lyns’ picture.’
Outside, I find the boys leaning against Christoph’s car smoking and chatting. They don’t appear to be making haste, despite harassing me with their beeping. Christoph steps towards me and hugs me tightly.
‘Sophie! Kaliméra. This is my Zino.’
He presents his boyfriend, who immediately greets me with a kiss on each cheek. He’s clearly a gym bunny, heavily tattooed forearms and an oiled dandy moustache that flicks up at the ends. His goatee frames his chiselled cheekbones and seeing them stood together, they make a beautiful match.
‘Sorry to keep you all waiting.’
‘Darling,’ Zino says with a flourish, ‘these boys are the impatient ones. All so keen to show off their Greece. Me? I want to sit on the beach with coffee and relax. But no, off we all go to the greatest place in the world.’
Rolling his eyes, Zino puts a friendly arm around me, lowering his voice so only I can hear.
‘I think our Theo was impatient being without you! We talk later, I need to know all!’
I’m put at ease. This is going to be a fun group. Theo’s eyes lock with mine and once again, that electric force we share reasserts itself. He strides over to kiss me, oblivious to the knowing looks exchanged between his friends, as we step into our bubble of two, forgetting everything else.
Christoph cuts impatiently through our reunion.
‘This is the endless day already, let’s go!’
I hand him the address for my meeting with Tony and we set off in the sunshine, my legs draped over Theo’s lap on the back seat, my body curled into his. It will feel like an endless day, unable to be as close as we’d like, but the consolation is, I hope, nearing a conclusion to Mum’s Methoni painting mystery.
Theo and I doze, not breaking our physical connection, exhausted from a very late night and a frightening start to the morning. We are regularly remonstrated by Christoph for being too distracting in his rear-view mirror.
‘I think this is it,’ says Christoph as we crawl along a tree-lined street fifteen minutes outside the main city. Imposing gates and high walls loom over the car as we stop.
‘Do you want me with you?’ asks Theo as he takes my hand.
‘No,’ I lean in to kiss him, ‘I need to do this on my own. Thank you.’
‘No rush, Sophie mou,’ says Theo. ‘Just find what you came here for.’
Turning to the gates, I press the intercom. A security camera winks its red light and turns its head to zoom in on me. An electronic buzzing clicks open a door concealed within one of the gates.
It’s like stepping into the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakesh. I went to Morocco with Mum on a cooking retreat and we visited Yves Saint Laurent’s famed estate, and this is a stunning homage. Fleshy succulents emerge from ochre gravel, cacti stand ten feet tall and thick bamboos border the driveway up to the magnificent house.
The black front door swings open and a small woman in uniform greets me wordlessly, sweeping her arm to welcome me into the house. The entrance hall is wall-to-ceiling white marble, almost like a mausoleum, my footsteps echoing around the vault-like space. Monochrome décor punctuated with stunning modern art lines the long corridor ahead. Striding towards me is an elegant figure dressed in linen and my eyes clock his expensive designer loafers.
‘Tony Giovinazzi. Wonderful to have you here and such a pleasure to meet you, Sophie,’ he says in an educated American accent, shaking my hand enthusiastically. ‘I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to welcome you to my home.’
‘Thank you so much for meeting me at such short notice, Mr Giovinazzi.’
He guides me towards the rear of the house, insisting I call him Tony. As we walk towards the patio doors, we pass a Miro, two Kandinskys and several other pieces of renowned modern art.
‘Can I get you a tea, water, coffee?’
‘Tea would be great, thank you,’ I say, sitting on one of the oversized rattan armchairs arranged around a dormant glass firepit on the patio.
The rear garden’s planting replicates the front, lush and green with bursts of creeping magenta bougainvillea. The silent woman scurries away to make my drink.
‘So, tell me how your search is going.’
He rests his leg on his knee, revealing a deeply tanned ankle, made even more so against his white linen trousers.
‘Not too well so far. I knew it was a long shot, but perhaps I was naive. It feels like I’m nowhere closer to finding it than when I first got here. Sorry, that sounds terribly pessimistic.’
‘Not at all. It is an important piece not just to the art world but, of course, to you. Do you mind me asking how you discovered it? For years it’s been just a rumour and then there were so many fakes, claiming to be the “lost Lyndsey Kinlock”. They were quickly shut down by your mother. But still she wouldn’t give anyone a clue about the fifth in the series. Real smart or elusive, I don’t know which it was, but it got everyone talking.’
I reach into my handbag and retrieve the photocopy, passing it to him.
‘This was in a box of photographs of Methoni that I found in my mother’s wardrobe. I asked her agent about it, I’ve spoken to your art dealer, Nikos, and I’m still waiting to hear from this guy, Dimitri. He owns a large gallery in Pylos. They’re my only leads so far.’
He scrutinises the piece of paper, holding it close then further away, his eyes flicking over the lines of the shore and beach and landing on the man in the foreground. He laughs excitedly.
‘It sure would be something to see in real life. Incredible. I can’t believe I’m actually looking at it. I know of Dimitri, I can reach out to hurry him along. You know, when I first saw your mother’s art in the States, I couldn’t contain this wave of feeling. It was the She’s Leaving Home piece and my daughter had just gone to college. I was already emotional about that, but the painting brought it all out, uncontrollable sobbing in public at an opening. I was mortified.’
I smile fondly, recognising how so many people react to Mum’s work in a similar fashion.
‘She painted that when I left for university. Arabelle, Mum’s agent, has the original in her office. It always stops me in my tracks when I see it, too.’
‘Ahh, yes the infamous Arabelle. I’m glad she connected us. So, let me show you the pieces I have.’
I follow him as we walk back into the house, passing his housekeeper, who carries a tray of drinks to the patio table for when we return.
‘Watch your step,’ he says as the dazzling marble floor stretches out, concealing two hidden steps that lead to a sunken lounge. A modern black fireplace is built into the wall and above it is the vibrant blue seascape of Mum’s, popping brighter against the stark background. It takes my breath away. Colours swim and pulse around the huge rectangle of swirling sea and waves; the magical Greek light captured perfectly as the sun touches the water with white diamond-flecked kisses.
‘Isn’t it something?’ Tony sighs happily. ‘I sometimes find myself just standing here and staring at it. Her work has that way of pulling you in. The other painting is through here.’
We walk into a formal dining room. A black gloss table that could seat thirty takes centre stage, with an oversized arrangement of white orchids sitting in the middle. Again, the monochrome theme makes the art shine brightly.
‘And here is the second,’ he says with pride.
The olive grove scene is elegant and delicate, the trees bent and buckled by the elements, gnarled trunks and branches. Again, it’s breathtaking in its size and scale, and feels so emotional to see Mum’s work in a stranger’s house.
‘Where do you think this lost painting could be?’ I ask, keen to get to the heart of the matter.
‘Well,’ he begins as we walk back out to the garden, ‘I’ve been giving it some thought since your first email. I believe the only explanation for it never surfacing for sale is that your mother gifted it to someone. The other two aside from mine in the Greek series are in private collections and as much as I try to negotiate with those folks, they are unwilling to give them up. Especially now – and I mean that with the greatest of respect – that your mother is no longer with us, they have become extra precious. And I guess that is the case for you with the elusive fifth one in the sequence.’
I can’t suppress a sigh of despair that escapes me. It seems like one setback after another in this foolhardy search. I try not to let my level of despondence show, so I take a sip of tea, sinking into the patio armchair, looking out at the rich vegetation in his garden.
‘I just feel as far along in this as I did when I was in London. If she gave it to someone, then what hope do I have of ever finding it?’
‘I have asked around, of course, used my connections and resources in the past, but it came to nothing. Nobody knew what it looked like, so kinda like trying to find a needle in the you know what. All we can do is stay positive that you track it down. Hey, what do we have if we don’t have hope, right?’ he chuckles.
I manage a small smile, but my trail appears to have run cold again.
‘I’m not sure hope alone is going to get me anywhere. It’ll be luck or fate, or else I go home empty-handed.’
‘Let me show you something,’ he says and jumps up to a side table beside the door. ‘I found this photograph of me with your mother at a summer exhibition in Athens. This was almost twenty years ago, so it’s the only copy I have. Nothing digital in those days. But I can scan and email it if you want it. I was so starstruck meeting her and I made my wife take the picture. Your mother, of course, was charming and indulged me.’
He hands me the photograph. A black-tie occasion, Mum is dressed in a vintage grey silk dress, corseted with an A-line sweeping skirt. It now hangs enclosed in protective cellophane in her wardrobe. It was always one of my favourites. Her wild dark curly hair that we share is tamed into a chignon, and Tony Giovinazzi is next to her, holding a glass of champagne, smiling broadly. He’s hardly aged at all and the same could be said for Mum. She’s in her late thirties here, a similar age to me now.
‘It was a wonderful exhibition and I bought the seascape of your mother’s and several pieces by other artists. My wife was not pleased; it was a very expensive night!’
I laugh and go to hand the photograph back to him, when my eye alights on a figure in the background.
‘Hang on,’ I say, pulling it back to me.
My pulse starts to increase; each of my vertebrae seem to prickle. Although the camera’s focus is on my mother and Tony, I can just make out a familiar face in the background. My eyes hone in on him. I can’t believe it. I blink slowly to make sure I’m not imagining it. It is him, looking straight into the camera.
I squint closer to confirm his identity in my mind. Handsome but still slightly rugged, even when dressed in a tuxedo. Dots of red light replace his pupils where the flash has caught his eyes. But what’s he doing there and how did he come to be at an exhibition in Athens? And did he know my mother?
‘I’ve seen this man before. Last week, here in Greece,’ I say to Tony, my gaze not leaving the photograph. I’m confused, shaking with excitement.
Standing behind my mother is the staring man from Methoni.