Maria can’t sleep. She doesn’t cry, either. It’s not her loss to bear. But the girls … As her mind moves to Rose and Stella there is a wrenching in her chest, like the cracking open of bone.
Anna is dead. David’s words move on repeat in her mind between cold sheets, her gaze fixed to the ceiling of the bedroom as she lies awake, following the circling of the blades of the fan above her head.
It is too late. The only thought she can cling onto now is the girls who have lost both the man they believed was their father, and now, just months later, their mother, too.
David doesn’t come to bed, and she is glad not to have to pretend to comfort him right now, scared of what her touch will say.
Anna is dead.
At some point Maria finally falls asleep and when she wakes up the space beside her is still empty. Pulling on a cardigan, she moves through the empty kitchen, outside where a light wind blows through the palms.
Following the deck towards the grass which rolls down to the shore, she spots David, barefoot in the sand, looking out to sea. She says nothing, moving beside him and looking out at the water. His eyes are red from crying and she slips her hand in his, reminded of the night some fifteen years earlier when they walked together along the path beside her house, back in Greece, before David had given her their first kiss.
When she turns to face David now, she seems someone else entirely.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks finally, still not knowing the right thing to say to him, when it counts.
‘Yes,’ he says simply, turning back to the house. ‘I’ll have them make breakfast.’
‘Do you want me to call the girls, see how they are?’ Maria asks a couple of days later as they sit opposite one another at the kitchen table, both glassy-eyed from continued lack of sleep.
The words feel brittle on her lips. She has to be careful of what she says next, every word a potential fracture line – and yet, she would ask that, wouldn’t she? The Maria David knows has spent the whole of the children’s lives devoted to them, looking after Stella and Rose with a singular dedication. How could she possibly hear what has happened to their mother and not automatically turn her thoughts to them?
David’s jaw tightens at the mention of Stella and Rose, the children who think he is dead, the man they still believe to be their father.
He turns away from her. ‘Why would I want that?’ Maria flinches, and after a moment his expression softens slightly. ‘They’ll be fine. They’re with their grandmother.’
He places the emphasis on their, reminding himself as well as her that the children are no longer his concern – as if he could so easily spirit away his love for the twin girls he had raised for three years as his own.
For the first time, Maria wonders whether Harry knows the girls are his. Had Anna told him? There are so many things Maria can’t be sure of; so much is staked on instinct, feeling about for who to trust. And yet where had instinct got Anna?
Later that week, she spends the morning walking the modest length of beach alone, while David and Jorgos sit hunched opposite one another at a table and chairs under the portico that runs between the two main villas. She can see from here that they are deep in conversation. She watches them, oblivious, wishing there was a way of listening in on what they are saying, but every time she has gone near them since her arrival, the men have fallen into silence. It is a moment before she sees the third figure, Hans, seated a few metres from the other men, looking back at her.
Turning away from his intense gaze, Maria moves back to the house.
There is something unsettling about the presence of the staff who suddenly appear, making up the beds unasked, swilling dishes, silently laying out food at the kitchen table three times a day, and then retreating again.
‘Lunch is ready,’ one of the maids says as Maria enters the villa, still picturing Hans’ inscrutable expression.
‘Thank you, I’ll fetch David,’ Maria replies and the maid indicates for her to sit.
‘He has asked not to be disturbed. He will join you in five minutes.’
Maria wonders what this woman must think of her, unaware as she is that until recently she, too, was the hired help.
‘This looks delicious,’ David announces, sauntering into the room with an unconvincing show of ease as the maid sets to work at the lobster at the centre of the table, with a cracker and picker. The crunch of the shell is like breaking bone, and Maria winces as David fills their glasses from the bottle of Chablis.
‘What have you been working on?’ Maria asks, once the woman has excused herself.
David has already finished his wine, and she watches him pour himself another glass.
She is about to suggest he slows down, but she thinks better of it. In the week or so since Anna’s death, David has grown increasingly tetchy. There is something performative about this newly cavalier persona – something unpredictable, and untrusting – and she has felt the soothing effect she has always had on him slipping from her grasp. Perhaps a few glasses of wine to loosen him up is exactly what he needs.
‘Same old,’ David says, just as she was beginning to wonder if he had actually heard her, leaning forward to refill the small amount of wine she has drunk.
‘Have you spoken to your father again?’ she asks a while later, once David has knocked back more than half the bottle.
‘Why do you ask?’ he snaps, as if she has no business uttering Clive’s name.
‘I just …’ She takes a deep breath. ‘He’s not getting any better, David. The doctors—’
‘The doctors are fucking quacks, the lot of them.’ He cuts her off, taking a long sip of his wine and laughing slightly to himself as he returns it to the table.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘I was just thinking,’ David says.
‘About what?’
‘About Anna.’
‘Thinking what?’
‘I was just thinking how she thought she was so bloody clever, but she got everything wrong. Everything. She didn’t even know where my mum died.’
David looks up at her, holding her eye, and Maria feels the mouthful of lobster catch in her throat.
‘What do you mean?’
David’s expression changes. ‘Nothing.’ He takes a bite and chews thoughtfully. ‘Just that Clarissa told her about my mother dying, about me being the one to find the body, and she assumed it had happened at the house in London …’
He flinches at the memory, and then looks up. ‘Anyway. It’s interesting how you think you know someone but then it turns out you don’t know them at all.’
‘How long are we planning to stay here?’ Maria asks over dinner one evening. David has spent the afternoon once again discussing business at the other house, returning with a look of frustration.
‘Why, are you bored?’ he snaps.
‘No. But, well, it’s not a long-term plan, is it? I’m just wondering what—’
‘Look, I can’t discuss this with you now. I need some peace to think. I have a call with Jeff in a minute.’
There is a note of disdain in his inflection when he mentions his father’s business partner.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Is something wrong, work-wise?’
David pauses, as if he is about to say something, and then Jorgos walks into the room, calling him away.
David is further distracted when he comes back from his meeting, his foot thrumming at the base of his chair as he pours himself another drink.
‘Are you all right, David?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You seem … Are you having second thoughts, about asking me to come with you?’
David leans forward, genuinely engaged with her for the first time in days. ‘Of course not. I’m sorry I’ve been so short with you, it’s just so much stress. You know? Everything, and now Jeff—’
‘David, could I speak to you for a moment?’ Jorgos puts his head round the door.
‘Sure,’ David says, beckoning him into the room. ‘Come in.’
Jorgos pauses. ‘Can we speak in private? It’s about the meeting earlier.’
David stands up, unsteady from the wine, apologising to Maria.
‘You go to bed, I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Maria waits up for him, dressed in a silk nightdress. She pours two glasses of brandy and sets them on the small round copper table in the corner of the room.
She is genuinely intrigued by who would own a villa like this, with its outdated kitchen and ready-made art pulled straight from the pages of a timeshare catalogue. It must cost so much money to own and run, and yet it’s as though no one ever really visits. Except as soon as she thinks it, she knows exactly what an island like this is used for. It isn’t a holiday retreat; this is a meeting place for people who want privacy, a space in the middle of the ocean where they can get away with murder.
By the time David arrives back, Maria is drifting off in one of the chairs, but she pulls herself awake at the sound of the door. Automatically, she feels for the phone by her feet, inside the bag.
Maria smiles up at him, and David’s expression softens, his eyes appraising her outfit approvingly.
‘Come, have a drink with me,’ she says and he joins her, visibly relaxing at her touch as she waits for him to take his glass and then moves behind him and begins to massage his shoulders.
‘Mmmm, that’s good,’ he says, closing his eyes, letting Maria work her hands around his shoulders and down his back. He takes another swig and makes approving noises as she kneads away at areas of tension.
‘Come here,’ he says, pulling her in front of him, pouring himself another drink and sipping at it before pulling her on top of him and lifting up her nightdress.
As he does so, his body visibly relaxes and he calls out, ‘Yes, Anna.’
Maria tenses, waiting for him to flinch at his own mistake, but he just continues to push himself into her, unaware of what he’s said.