She was in Perithia. The very village Meg had told her she stayed at when she had visited Corfu all those years ago. Lucie sipped at the sweet white wine Michalis had ordered for them and took a moment to gaze through the tumbling flowers that decorated the outside of this traditional taverna. Across the road was a cafeneon-cum-post office, its paved outside area full of wooden tables and chairs occupied mainly by men enjoying a chat or playing some sort of game involving a board and counters. A curly-haired white dog meandered between the cafeneon and the taverna, and cats sought scraps or stray crumbs being brushed from laps. A little further along the road was a glass-fronted restaurant called Jelatis and a mini-market they had passed on the way. Lucie tried to imagine a much younger Meg, long hair blowing in the breeze, tanned skin, holding hands with someone called Petros. It was difficult to envisage that version of the woman who had basically raised her. Meg was, and had always been, this organised and measured adult with the strongest sense of what was right and wrong. Delivering advice and cautionary tales along with money for college and home-cooked meals…
‘What are you thinking about?’ Michalis asked her.
Lucie smiled, turning back to face him. ‘Sorry, it’s just, my aunt has talked about this village. She stayed here once and she said it was one of the best times of her life.’
‘It is the place I like best apart from Sortilas,’ Michalis admitted. ‘I feel at home here.’ He smiled. ‘That sounds so stupid, does it not? Corfu is my home. Perithia is only ten minutes to drive from my village but—’
‘But there’s a difference between familiarity and feeling at home,’ Lucie interrupted. She gave a nod. ‘I understand completely.’
‘You do?’
She nodded again. ‘I haven’t had the most traditional upbringing. That’s why I’m so close to my aunt. She brought me up, her and my grandparents, after…’ The sentiment caught in her throat and she forced a swallow. ‘After my mother passed away.’
‘Oh, Lucie,’ Michalis said, reaching for her hands and holding them tight.
She swallowed again as she felt her eyes begin to well with tears. A first date was not the moment to go blubbing about things she should have grieved for long ago. But when had she really let it come out? Could it be that it was always simmering away, locked in a pressure cooker inside her, ready and waiting for someone to knock off the lid?
‘It was a long time ago now,’ she replied, feeling a little more steady in the potential weeping department. ‘But, I do get the sentiment about feeling at home.’ She smiled. ‘Sometimes, even though I had the best, most wonderful loving family, it felt like I was… I don’t know… a bit of a jigsaw puzzle whose edges had been shaped wrong. A piece that didn’t quite fit.’
‘How so?’
‘I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. Just like, I wasn’t exactly the same as my nan or my grandad or my aunt I suppose.’
‘I do not think we are always replicas of our family members. Look at my sister,’ Michalis said, smiling.
‘I know, but although our feelings for each other were always strong… I wonder if it was more by design than it was by real connection.’ She bit her lip, feeling that this admission was something akin to a betrayal of everything her aunt and grandparents had tried to do for her. It can’t have been easy, especially for her grandparents. Having a toddler suddenly your full responsibility when you saw retirement on your horizon. Losing your daughter so suddenly…
‘You are talking about the spirit now,’ Michalis said, letting go of her hands to pick up the wine carafe and add a little to her glass.
‘Too deep for an evening of olives, breads and feta cheese dip?’ Lucie asked. And the swordfish was to come…
‘No,’ Michalis said, shaking his head and leaning back in his chair a touch. ‘Greece is all about the spirit. Most of our heritage relates to mythology and gods.’ He seemed to pause before his fingers found the rim of his glass. ‘And my mother believed she could tell a great deal about someone by simply laying her hand on theirs and tuning in to their energy.’
Michalis had used the word ‘believed’. Like his mother wasn’t here anymore either. Should she ask? Or was he going to tell her? She watched him inhale.
‘My mother has passed away too,’ he admitted.
‘She has? Oh, Michalis, I am so sorry.’ His hands were now out of reach to her so there was no opportunity to comfort him other than with her condolences.
‘In Sortilas,’ he said, sighing. ‘Where people live for almost forever.’
Michalis shook his head as the anger he still felt about his mother’s passing threatened to be exposed. He took a breath and looked back to Lucie. ‘I am sorry. I should not have said that. I love that everyone lives for a long time.’
‘No, I get it,’ Lucie said, nodding. ‘My mum died when she was eighteen. I was really young, so I didn’t know exactly what was going on at the time, but now I’m older I think “how can that be allowed to happen”.’
He blew out a breath, the wind taken out of his sails by this revelation, his own feelings dropping into an immediate back seat. ‘Eighteen,’ he said. ‘She was so young.’ And how had that happened? Had she been sick? An accident? He wanted to know, to understand a little of Lucie’s history. But perhaps the way to get her to open up was to open up himself…
‘Yes,’ Lucie answered, nodding. ‘She was.’
‘My mother,’ Michalis began. ‘She had a rare condition. A form of vasculitis that she was not aware of.’ He sighed. ‘She would often have a cough and a bad chest that, sometimes, would develop into a pneumonia. But being Greek and being equally as stubborn as everyone else in my family, she would never rest and she would wave away the idea that she was sick.’
‘That’s why you work with the lungs,’ Lucie said in understanding, leaning a little closer into the table.
Michalis nodded. ‘That is why I work with lungs.’ He took a breath. ‘The last time she had pneumonia she refused to go to the hospital. She was too weak to even make the journey. And that was… the end. Nyx was one year old. I was just ten.’
‘You must miss her very much.’
‘I miss her for Nyx more,’ Michalis admitted. ‘Like you with your mother, Nyx, she was so very young. She will only know who our mother was from the stories we tell her.’
‘But I bet you have some wonderful stories,’ Lucie said.
‘We do but, you know how it is, there can never be too many memories made. You always long for another. More time, one more day, another week… another always.’
‘Xiphias.’ A voice speaking Greek interrupted their conversation.
Two large platters containing large steaming swordfish steaks, complete with thick homemade chips and a fresh-looking salad of bright red tomatoes, oblongs of cucumber and red onion rings were delivered to the table.
Lucie gasped. ‘Gosh, this looks incredible!’
‘It really is incredible,’ Michalis said, smiling at her enthusiastic reception to the food.
‘I’m so hungry after riding a giant fruit around Sidari.’
‘And I want to hear about it,’ Michalis told her.