The Island Read Online Free PDF Page B

arrived.
     
    ‘This is today’s catch,’ said the waitress, setting down an oval platter. ‘It is barbouni . I think that is red mullet in English. I hope I have cooked it as you like it - just grilled with fresh herbs and a little olive oil.’
     
    Alexis was astonished. Not just by the perfectly presented dish. Not even by the woman’s soft, almost accentless English. What took her by surprise was her beauty. She had always wondered what kind of face could possibly have launched a thousand ships. It must have been one like this.
     
    ‘Thank you,’ she said finally. ‘That looks wonderful.’
     
    The vision seemed about to turn away, but then she paused. ‘My husband said you were asking for me.’
     
    Alexis looked up in surprise. Her mother had told her that Fotini was in her early seventies, but this woman was slim, scarcely lined, and her hair, piled high on her head, was still the colour of ripe chestnuts. She was not the old woman Alexis had been expecting to meet.
     
    ‘You’re not . . . Fotini Davaras?’ she said uncertainly, getting to her feet.
     
    ‘I am she,’ the woman asserted gently.
     
    ‘I have a letter for you,’ Alexis said, recovering. ‘From my mother, Sofia Fielding.’
     
    Fotini Davaras’s face lit up. ‘You’re Sofia’s daughter! My goodness, how wonderful!’ she said. ‘How is she? How is she?’
     
    Fotini accepted with huge enthusiasm the letter which Alexis held out to her, hugging it to her chest as though Sofia herself were there in person. ‘I am so happy. I haven’t heard from her since her aunt died a few years ago. Until then she used to write to me every month, then she just stopped. I was very worried when some of my last letters went unanswered. ’
     
    All of this was news to Alexis. She had been unaware that her mother used to send letters to Crete so regularly - and certainly had no idea that she had ever received any. How odd during all those years that Alexis herself had never once seen a letter bearing a Greek postmark - she felt sure she would have remembered it, since she had always been an early riser, and invariably the one to sweep up any letters from the doormat. It seemed that her mother had gone to great lengths to conceal this correspondence.
     
    By now Fotini was holding Alexis by the shoulders and scrutinising her face with her almond-shaped eyes.
     
    ‘Let me see - yes, yes, you do look a bit like her. You look even more like poor Anna.’
     
    Anna? On all those occasions when she had tried to extract information from her mother about the sepia-toned aunt and uncle who had brought her up, Alexis had never heard this name.
     
    ‘Your mother’s mother,’ Fotini added quickly, immediately spotting the quizzical look on the girl’s face. Something like a shudder went down Alexis’s spine. Standing in the dusky half-light, with the now ink-black sea behind her, she was all but knocked backwards by the scale of her mother’s secretiveness, and the realisation that she was talking to someone who might hold some of the answers.
     
    ‘Come on, sit down, sit down. You must eat the barbouni ,’ said Fotini. By now Alexis had almost lost her appetite, but she felt it polite to co-operate and the two women sat down.
     
    In spite of the fact that she wanted to ask all the questions - she was bursting with them - Alexis allowed herself to be interviewed by Fotini, whose enquiries were all more searching than they appeared. How was her mother? Was she happy? What was her father like? What had brought her to Crete?
     
    Fotini was as warm as the night, and Alexis found herself answering her questions very openly. This woman was old enough to be her grandmother, and yet was so unlike how she would expect a grandmother to be. Fotini Davaras was the antithesis of the bent old lady in black that she had imagined when her mother had handed her the letter. Her interest in Alexis seemed totally genuine. It was a long time - if it had ever