please others, imagining that by doing so she was also pleasing herself. Paolo was a good man, he was indeed the healing salve to her wounds. He was helping her to recover, he was the transition from sadness to joy and she was loving spending a carefree summer with him. Yet her inner voice was telling her that what she now needed and wanted was something different, something else, and Paolo was not it. From now on she pledged to follow her instinct and hear that inner voice which so often spoke to her but which she had mostly chosen to ignore.
11
‘Do you remember what I said when you asked me to give you my assessment of Paolo?’ Maya asked Calli while they walked along the beach one afternoon. ‘Does it make sense to you now?’
‘I do and it does,’ Calli replied, linking her arm through her friend’s as they splashed their way through the shallow surf. ‘It took me a little while, but I now understand. As you said, Paolo has been both beneficial and enlightening for me. I see that now.’
‘I am pleased, Calli dear; you have learned to listen to yourself,’ Maya replied. ‘You have learned to understand, not so much what you want, because often we don’t know that until we find it, but what it is that you don’t want. Paolo has been good for you, that’s obvious. You’ve blossomed through your friendship with him and your spirit has returned . . . but you have discovered that he’s not what you are really looking for, is he?’ Calli could not disagree. Talking to Maya, being able to voice her feelings, brought clarity to her thoughts.
She had enjoyed every minute of her time in Ikaria but now in less than a week this summer idyll would end. Paolo would be leaving for Italy to collect his daughter and continue with his life, and Calli, who had been thinking increasingly of delaying her return to London, was now wavering between island-hopping for a few weeks longer, or perhaps going to Crete. Her decision was finally made for her when she received an unexpected email from her mother while sitting in a cafe.
Calli darling, your dad and I are on our way to the Lake District but just this morning I got a message from my cousin Eleftheria to tell me that my sister is not well at all. You know your thia Froso, she wouldn’t tell us anything about it, not wanting to trouble us – but as you are not so far away, could you please go and visit the family in Crete and find out what’s going on? I’ll come immediately if you think I should . . .
As soon as she was back in her hotel room, Calli called Eleni. Of course she would go, no question about it. Besides, mother and daughter had talked of taking a holiday together after Calli recovered, had discussed the possibility of a joint trip to Crete to visit Thia Froso and the rest of the family.
‘Do you know what’s wrong with her?’ Calli asked.
‘Not really, Eleftheria didn’t elaborate. Probably Froso swore her to secrecy. I can’t imagine it’s that serious. If it was, she would have contacted us earlier.’
Perhaps this wasn’t quite how Calli had envisaged the rest of her holiday, but Crete was only a hop and skip away from Ikaria and it made perfect sense; she had to go, of course she would, and Eleni would follow. Meantime, she thought, she still had some days left to spend with Paolo and the rest of her new friends and she wanted to make the most of them. She had met some extraordinary people on this enchanting mythical blue zone of an island, and the friendships that had been formed during her time there she was certain would continue for a lifetime.
‘So, tell me about Crete,’ Paolo said to Calli one morning as they lay languidly after a swim on a smooth white rock that jutted into the sea like a pier. ‘Is it beautiful like Ikaria?’
‘It’s beautiful, but different,’ she replied, raising herself on her elbow to turn and look at him. ‘It’s quite wild, the landscape I mean, and the village where my relatives come from is quite remote. There is sea and there are mountains and you can go to both with equal ease. And the people are all . . . How can I describe them? I guess intense is one word,