2018
Gratitude and Prayers Journal: Wednesday 1st August, 9 a.m.
Zoe sits at the table in the orchard, flanked by apricot trees. On the table lies her open notebook and a cheap black biro. She closes the notebook. Since Andreas died just over two weeks ago, she tries and fails every morning to write. She doesn’t want to commit her darkest thoughts and feelings to paper.
Carl was furiously scribbling away at his desk when she left their room. When his biro ran out a few days ago, she lent him her Mont Blanc fountain pen. He claims his thoughts flow much better when he writes with it. She doubts he’ll give it back.
The straps of her black cotton sundress have fallen onto her tanned upper arms. She slips them back into place and picks up her mug of flat white. How nice it is not to have to drive miles for a decent coffee.
The warm air around her is laced with the scent of overripe fruit. The temperatures have been steadily rising since Andreas left them. Often, when August is as hot as this one promises to be, dramatic thunderstorms visit the mountains.
A purring sound fills the air. Soft fur brushes against her bare calves. ‘Hello, you,’ she says, when Aphrodite leaps onto her lap. A rare visit. The loyal black cat rarely leaves Quinn’s side these days.
Zoe strokes the underside of Aphrodite’s chin. More to soothe herself than to pleasure the cat.
The day of Andreas’ death left her with a strange fizzing in her blood, her pulse thundering in her ears. These sensations haven’t left her. She’s finding it hard to get to sleep and, when she does drop off, she wakes startled in the early morning hours. Carl is the same and his recent feverish writing sprees aren’t helping. He hasn’t told her what he’s working on yet, but she can sense it growing inside him, as if he’s a pregnant woman.
Sometimes at night she thinks of Andreas in the sweat lodge, the skin of his weathered face sticking to the hot stones. Lying in bed, she wonders if he fell onto the hot rocks after he lost consciousness or did he have to endure fiery, searing pain before he died? She even lets herself imagine, just for a moment, how easy it would have been to suffocate him in his drunken state and place his dead body over the smouldering stones.
Not that she would have. Not that any of them would have.
She also, when sleep eludes her, thinks about him in the restaurant, waving the broken bottle in the air, ranting at them all. No one at Pure Heart has done anything wrong. It hurt to hear Andreas accuse them of future crimes they wouldn’t dream of committing. Like Quinn said, he was projecting his own soiled conscience onto everyone else.
Aphrodite’s rough, warm tongue licks the skin of her forearm. After a while, the cat peers up at her, eyes narrowed. Zoe wonders if she can taste the Coco de Mer body lotion she put on after her shower this morning. A gift from Sofia.
‘She’s got loads of free toiletry samples from hotels and spas,’ Zoe tells the cat. ‘If they don’t get used, they’ll go to waste.’
When she put the body lotion on, it sank into her skin like liquid silk. Rich and decadent. Aphrodite resumes licking it from Zoe’s arm. Her seal of approval?
As Zoe finishes her coffee, she marvels at how quickly human beings can adapt to loss. It’s still strange not to see Andreas around the place, but life does move on. Yesterday Mel fixed an issue with the swimming pool filter and Joe and Carl built a new wooden container for the compost. Jobs Andreas would have dealt with.
The past does not exist. Zoe can’t say that’s true in the case of Andreas, but even Quinn has slowly returned to form over the past few days. Her foot appears to have healed and she is now feeding her hens every morning. Mel goes with her, of course. Mel goes everywhere with her. A sullen, burgundy shadow.
Zoe is still surprised Mel didn’t tell Detective Louca about Sofia’s offer when he questioned them. Why? In the police Mel had to take orders from higher-ranked officers, but Zoe doesn’t think blind obedience is the reason. She saw how ashamed Mel looked when Quinn reprimanded her for her cynicism. Mel wants Quinn’s approval, possibly even her love. Either that or she’s trying to gather evidence to back up her suspicions.
Last night at dinner, Mel nodded along when Quinn told them all to take a wider spiritual perspective on recent events. Only in the fullness of time would Spirit reveal to them the reason for their sad loss. The universe was working to deliver all they’d asked for and now, more than ever, they had to believe in miracles.
Part of Zoe can’t help believing whatever Quinn believes, but another part of her keeps asking the same question over and over. What if she’s wrong?
Aphrodite’s warm body grows tense in Zoe’s arms. She follows the cat’s gaze and glimpses Dmitri stealthily covering the ground between the olive grove and the polytunnel.
He vanishes from view. Will he go straight back to the house or walk through the orchard? When the dry grass crackles behind her, she opens her notebook, picks up her pen and pretends to be lost in thought.
‘Good morning,’ he says.
‘Oh.’ She feigns surprise. A stagey jolt in her chair, one hand across her chest. ‘I was miles away.’
A smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. Aphrodite jumps from Zoe’s lap and darts away into the orchard. One of the straps of Zoe’s dress falls off her shoulder and she’s pleased to see Dmitri glance at her exposed collarbone. His eyes flick down to her lotus flower tattoo and linger on it just long enough to make the skin beneath the black petals quiver. She remembers the thrill of sitting beside him in the Land Rover on the way to the restaurant. The anticipation of some accidental touch. Not that he touched her, not once, but the thought of it kept her aroused for the whole journey.
‘Keeping an eye on everything?’ she says.
‘I make sure everything is safe.’
‘Are we in danger?’
He shrugs. ‘People, they seem to die here.’
She looks at his neat, strong hands. Even though she’s sure Andreas died of natural causes, she’s also sure Dmitri could have killed him if he’d wanted to. Fear shivers through her, mixed with a hot, dirty arousal at the thought of those hands holding her throat in a loose grip. ‘Maybe you should all leave if it’s so dangerous?’
‘Maybe you should accept Sofia’s offer so we can go.’
‘I thought it was your job to protect Sofia?’
‘This I do.’
‘She’s a vulnerable young woman,’ Zoe says. ‘You should advise her to give up on such a dangerous scheme.’
‘Vulnerable.’ Dmitri makes a sound that is half-snort, half-laugh. ‘Sofia is the boss. She is always the boss.’
True. Sofia is running her own life and Zoe admires that. She certainly didn’t look vulnerable yesterday, sitting out by the pool reading and sipping on champagne.
‘I think you could be a boss,’ Dmitri says.
Heat floods into Zoe’s cheeks. ‘Me?’
‘If you are strong enough to take your chances.’
‘Hi there.’
Zoe turns to see Carl hurrying towards her.
‘Hey, beautiful,’ he says when he reaches her. He bends down to kiss her upturned lips and at the same time pulls the strap of her dress back onto her shoulder.
Dmitri dips his head in a bow, a gesture Zoe reads as sarcastic. Then he turns and walks away through the orchard.
Carl watches him go. ‘That guy’s really got the hots for you.’
‘The hots? That’s so eighties.’
‘Fuck off.’ Carl sits opposite her. ‘He does though.’
‘Are you jealous?’
A beat of silence. Zoe isn’t sure what she wants him to say.
‘Love isn’t possessive,’ he says, in that calm, measured voice he uses when repeating one of Quinn’s sayings.
She didn’t want to hear him say that. Dmitri, she thinks, looks like a man who knows how to possess a woman.
‘You didn’t say goodbye earlier,’ Carl says. ‘I didn’t know you’d gone out.’
‘I did say goodbye. You just didn’t notice.’
‘Sorry.’ He taps the table with his fingertips. ‘Got a bit caught up.’
The sight of him scribbling away each morning fills her with a complicated blend of emotions. Happiness at seeing him in the flow again, connected to the creative activity that once brought him so much joy. Jealousy, for the very same reasons. She can’t help thinking about the offer she had from Lizzie, her agent, when she was in Ibiza, not long before they came to Cyprus. At that time, reality TV was taking off, and Lizzie, who only the year before had told Zoe her career was over, offered her the chance to take part in a celebrity reality show set in a haunted castle in Scotland.
When she told Carl and Quinn about it, they said it sounded like a soulless freak show and that work like that was beneath her. She knew they were right. Selling her soul to the reality TV circuit would only make her more of a laughing stock. Yet many ‘stars’ of similar shows have rekindled their flagging careers. She could have ended up in musicals again. Or hosted a TV show. She might have been invited to perform at summer festivals for the nostalgic. Fields full of drunk, off-the-leash parents bopping away to the one song they knew her for.
‘You’re working on a novel, aren’t you?’ she says.
Carl nods. ‘I think it might be quite good.’
‘That’s amazing.’ Nerves buzz in Zoe’s fingertips. ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s the Cyprus novel I always wanted to write.’ Carl is animated, his face lit up by his idea. ‘Three different eras of Cypriot history. One story is going to be based on Andreas. The stuff about the Turkish invasion. It will be like a tribute to him.’
‘That’s beautiful.’
‘The main theme is revenge.’ A wasp darts at his ear. He bats it away. ‘Once I realised that, the whole novel opened up to me.’
An Instagram moment. Carl sitting here at the table, working on a vintage typewriter, a cat curled at his feet.
Hubby hard at work on next novel. He runs regular writing workshops here at Pure Heart. #hubbyatwork #writerinthehouse
‘What if I get ill again?’ he says.
‘Ill?’
‘Burnt out. A slave to my ego. Like I was before I stopped writing.’ He looks so vulnerable and childlike. Zoe kneels by his chair and rests her hands on his knees.
‘Connecting to your creativity is a good thing,’ she says.
‘Really?’
Is this how it feels to be Quinn? To have others come to you for advice. Zoe can’t remember a time Carl didn’t need Quinn to guide him through life. Zoe always thought this was normal. After all, she did the same. Now it seems right that she, his wife, should know what’s best for him.
‘It sounds like you’re in touch with an authentic creativity,’ she says. ‘The way you were when you wrote your first novel.’
‘Yes.’ He nods enthusiastically. ‘That’s exactly how it feels.’
‘I don’t see how that can be harmful.’
‘I’m not even thinking about the end result,’ he says. ‘I’m just loving the process.’
‘Ego doesn’t even come into it.’
‘Exactly. Even though it’s pretty good stuff.’
‘You’re reconnecting with your true calling.’
‘You really think so?’
She stares solemnly at him. ‘I do.’
She does, and if he has found his calling, his way to shine, then maybe it’s time she found hers. ‘You’ll need to do a lot of research.’
‘Loads. Maybe this is why I was meant to come to Cyprus all along. To write this book.’ He hesitates. ‘It could take a long time, this kind of project.’
‘Yes, we’d need to be here.’
They sit in silence. Birdsong swells around them. At the base of the nearest apricot tree, wasps crawl over a pile of rotting fruit.
‘Do you think Sofia’s still serious about the money?’ she says.
‘Surely not? Not after everything that’s happened.’
‘It’s hard to tell.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’d never accept it.’
‘God, no.’ Zoe gathers her hair in her hands. Smooths it over one shoulder. ‘But there might be another way.’