Black Butterflies Read Online Free PDF Page A

with blood.
    ‘Oh, you are bleeding! I will get a doctor.’ The girl makes a move to jump up, but Marina puts the bloodied hand on her arm.
    ‘ I don’t need a doctor, but thank you.’ Marina focuses her eyes and looks around her. The cats are still sprawled in the shade. The sun feels hot. She needs a drink and she needs to lie down. She wonders where she will stay.
    ‘ Look, I live just there.’ The girl points to a whitewashed wall with a blue door at the bottom of the steps. A tiled roof can just be seen over the top of the wall. ‘If you think you can make it, you can sit a while and I’ll get you some water.’
    Marina looks about her, judging how best to stand. The girl takes her by the arm but then changes her mind and lets go. She stands in front of Marina, puts her toes on Marina ’s toes and offers both her hands.
    ‘ One, two, three.’ The girl leans back and Marina leans forward, and she rises gracefully.
    ‘ Well, that was easy.’ Marina finds a smile.
    ‘ Practised on my gran.’ The girl crosses herself and picks up Marina’s bag.
    With support, Marina makes it to the house. Through the blue door there is a shady garden full of orange and lemon trees, and a flower border against the walls on all sides. The girl guides Marina to a table and chairs under a pomegranate tree which is growing from the centre of a little paved courtyard.
    ‘Sit here and I’ll get some water.’ She bounces up a couple of steps and into the house. Marina can see her head moving past the windows in succession, each room leading off the next. She stops by the last window and Marina hears glasses clinking.
    ‘ Do you live here with your mother?’ Marina calls through the open window.
    ‘ No.’ The girl crosses herself three times. ‘Mum and Dad are dead.’ Marina can hear in her accent that she is from the north, Thessaloniki perhaps. ‘We’ve got the house and the boat to ourselves for a year, my fiancé and me. His friend has gone to America, and then, well, it depends if there’s work. If there’s not, then God only knows where we will go.’
    ‘ Is he from the island, your fiancé?’
    ‘ Yup, born and bred.’
    The girl returns with a tray. Iced water, cake and a damp cloth.
    ‘Oh, thank you.’ Marina feels quite overcome by the girl’s kindness, and the thought of food and water brings clarity.
    ‘ My name’s Irini.’ She hands Marina the wet cloth for her head.
    ‘ Marina. Pleased to meet you.’ Marina is reviving with the water and the cool, damp cloth.
    Irini is small, a little waif, Marina decides, like her Eleni in many ways, except Eleni ’s hair is long. Both slim, long-limbed and agile, impish, but now Eleni’s impishness has turned into anger. She wishes she knew why. So closed and secretive, it was almost a relief when she took herself, so young, off to Piraeus to join the port police.
    With a drink of water and a piece of cake inside her Marina begins to gather her thoughts and reminds herself why she is on the island. Irini ’s boyfriend is from the island. She can rule him out as he is engaged, but maybe he’s the right age? She decides to be more subtle than she was at the port with the donkey man. Irini is clearly a modern girl, and her fiancé will be the same age as her, or thereabouts. Hers is obviously not an arranged marriage – thank goodness those days are over. Marina sighs.
    ‘ How old are you, Irini?’ she asks.
    ‘ Twenty-five.’ Marina rules him out. She is only interested in men aged thirty-five.
    Her own girls are twenty-three and twenty-eight. To Marina it makes no sense that the younger one has been married twice and Eleni not yet once. But, she reflects, there is hope now, God willing. It was such a happy moment when Eleni told her that she had asked to be stationed on the island because she had met someone who was important to her.
    Irini smiles at her. She is feeding pieces of cake to a stray cat that has followed them into the garden. She has a smile