2019
We didn’t need to lead Sofia into the house. She knew exactly where she was going. With her long white dress, golden sandals and flowing blonde hair, she looked like a Greek goddess, and we followed like dazed worshippers as she stepped through the front door and into the hallway.
She stood still for a moment, taking it all in. She said everything was just as she remembered. When she turned and headed for the wooden staircase, we followed her up it.
In the corridor outside the rooms she once shared with Eva, she hesitated. Quinn opened the door and ushered her into the living room we’d created for her. It was once her bedroom and, as we followed her inside, her gaze roamed hungrily around the small space, as if she expected to find her mother there.
The bodyguards appeared, red-faced and sweating and dragging hefty luggage behind them. Sofia ordered them around in Russian. She was clearly used to being in charge.
None of that fazed us. Despite her entourage and her expensive clothes and jewellery, we could still see the girl she once was. Although, I must admit her resemblance to her mother was unsettling.
After the bodyguards left us alone again, Sofia explored the adjoining room. It was once Eva’s bedroom but now she would sleep there. What she found on the bedside table made her gasp. The Encyclopaedia of Greek Myths.
‘I meant to take this with me when I left,’ she said, ‘but it all happened in such a rush.’
After checking out the bedroom, she returned to the living room and rushed over to the small oak desk by the window where she used to sit and do her homework. I remembered sitting with her there, reading to her from a dated textbook about World War One.
‘Why does history matter?’ she’d asked me.
I’d stroked her thick dark hair. ‘It helps us understand who we are.’
Now her body tensed as she looked out of the window, and I wondered if she could see the monastery through the trees. Was she picturing her mother hanging from one of the wooden rafters inside it? The lifeless body swinging back and forth?
We told her she could move rooms if she wanted to. Away from that view. She shook her head. She told us it was good to remember.
At that moment the room appeared to go dark, despite the sunlight outside. I thought it was the memory of Eva’s death casting shadows. I didn’t know the darkness was an omen of what was to come.