replying he gave Maya a long lingering look. ‘I think you of all people, as Anna’s godmother and my good friend, must know very well that my daughter always comes first.’
‘Yes,’ the older woman retorted with a smile, ‘I do know that, but then I believe you are something of an exception, my friend.’
Calli, watching them, wondered if perhaps Maya’s little sermon had been for her benefit. Had she sensed Calli’s attraction to Paolo and wanted to make a point of emphasizing that Paolo was a good man? She wouldn’t have been surprised if that was true. The woman seemed to sense so much else about her, she was a regular little sorceress – so why not this? Her mother always boasted that she could predict the future in dreams and in the coffee cup, but Maya was something else. Her name alone, Calli suddenly realized, sounded like the Greek word for magic. This new friend of hers, she thought with wry amusement, was like a modern-day Circe, goddess of magic, the daughter of the mighty Titan Helios.
‘Drink up, everyone!’ someone suddenly called out and stood up. ‘A toast to the moon!’ he cheered, lifting his glass.
‘And to love!’ a voice from the other end of the table added. And they all raised their glasses in agreement, eager to continue with the previous night’s festivities, putting an end to the conversation which was beginning to become a little too sombre for the occasion. More wine was brought to the table, after which Kyrios Tassos, the owner of the taverna, appeared from the kitchen carrying a guitar in one hand and a bottle of raki in the other. Not long after he was followed by his son-in-law, who had an accordion slung over his left shoulder and was dragging a couple of chairs to the table.
‘Time for song,’ the old man shouted, and sat down.
‘We are all in for a treat.’ Sylvie clapped her hands, shifting to make space for the two men.
As soon as the music and singing began, a sweet wave of nostalgia washed over Calli, bringing to mind warm Cretan evenings under the stars in her grandparents’ garden. Aunts and uncles, cousins and neighbours, all eating, drinking, singing and dancing. There had been countless memorable nights like that during her summer visits to her beloved grandmother’s house. Children playing hide and seek with a myriad of places to hide, women diving in and out of the kitchen with plates of food while the men, when enough raki had been consumed, would bring out the musical instruments and the assembled company would sit down and start to sing – the Cretan harp, she remembered, had been her brother’s favourite. The little boy was capable of sitting transfixed, listening to his uncle play for hours; later, when he was older, he tried to learn it.
Eleni would take the children to stay at her mother’s house for the entire summer. Sometimes Calli and her brother would be sent on ahead while Keith would join them later with Eleni and stay for as long as his work permitted. Calli remembered her excitement as the summer holidays approached, knowing she would be spending carefree weeks in the sun and sea and have her every whim granted by her yiayia. In the absence of Keith’s mother, who had died before she was born, the little girl adored her Greek grandmother, so much so that when she died Calli refused to go back to Crete for years, much to Eleni’s despair.
‘What about your bappou and Thia Froso?’ she pleaded. ‘They want to see you.’ The old man and her sister were still living in the family house, but Calli couldn’t imagine the house or the village without her yiayia. She loved her grandfather well enough and her thia Froso was nice, if a little overbearing. In fact, the sadness of losing her yiayia followed Calli through to adulthood and she maintained a warm affection for old ladies, always looking for a grandmother substitute.
‘You can share my grandma if you want,’ Josie had offered when they first met at school, sealing their friendship for life. Josie’s Jamaican family seemed not unlike Calli’s own Cretan relatives, and her friend’s grandmother ran the household and looked after Josie and her siblings in a familiar way. There were plenty of similarities in the generous meals, love, laughter and the old women’s ample size.
That balmy Ikarian night brought Calli’s childhood memories flooding back, and when Kyria Erini finally freed herself