the three of us all together like old times. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my sister.’
‘Good to be here, Thia,’ Calli replied and meant it more than ever.
She tucked into a morning feast: goat’s cheese and olives, fried tomatoes and eggs and chunky village bread for mopping up the bright orange yolk. Then, just as she sat back in her chair having eaten more than enough, Costis’s wife Chrysanthi breezed through the door carrying a plate of mizithra and a pot of heather honey from her own hive. How could Calli resist one of her favourite dishes? This soft fresh cheese served with a spoonful of honey and a sprinkling of cinnamon was in her opinion more delicious than the best ice cream she had ever tasted in London.
‘Kalimera!’ her cousin’s wife greeted them cheerfully. ‘Costis told me how much you love mizithra with honey, so I brought you some.’ She drew up a chair to join them. This too was another fond memory for Calli. She loved the impromptu visits from friends and relatives, especially from the women, who would gather during the day and sit under the shade of the trees, drinking coffee and gossiping until one or the other would jump up and run home to prepare the table for the midday meal before the men came home from work. No one lived far away; they could call to each other across their gardens or from their kitchen windows, and if they were visiting, they could even keep an ear and an eye out if food was cooking on their stove.
Calli liked her cousin’s wife, a primary school teacher, an open-hearted cheerful young woman with large round eyes the colour of roasted chestnuts and an equally large, full-lipped mouth that seemed to be perpetually set in a smile. Her hair, Calli noticed, was lighter than that of other young local women, who mostly seemed to possess velvety coal-black tresses. Chrysanthi’s hair framed her face in soft light-brown curls with shades of gold when catching the sun.
‘Costis often talks about you and your brother,’ she said, busying herself with the food. ‘He even talks to the children about the two of you,’ she continued as she poured honey over the cheese. She paused for a second and then looked up with smiling eyes. ‘I feel so happy to meet you at last, Calliope!’
‘And I’m very happy finally to meet you too, Chrysanthi,’ Calli said with genuine sincerity, struck for the second time that morning by a pang of regret for the lost years.
‘Costis told me they call you Calli in England. Do you prefer me to call you that?’ the young woman asked, spooning a portion of cheese into a bowl for her.
‘You can call me whatever you prefer,’ Calli replied with a smile, and reached for the bowl. That morning the three women sat in the kitchen talking cheerfully, until Froso announced that she had errands to do in the village.
‘You girls sit and chat,’ she told them, reaching for a basket hanging on a hook behind the door. ‘I need to go and see Manolis for the fish.’
There was no shortage of conversation between Chrysanthi and Calli that day; they sat at the kitchen table over their cheese and coffee until the heat in the room banished them to the garden, where a breeze was blowing from the shore.
Calli felt as comfortable with her cousin’s wife as she had done a few weeks previously with Sylvie and Maya on that other enchanting island in the Aegean.
‘I love being a teacher,’ Chrysanthi said at one point when they were discussing their work. ‘Apart from the children, I also love having the summers free,’ she giggled apologetically. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘they say it’s free, but between looking after my own kids and the house it’s not exactly a holiday.’ Calli couldn’t quite imagine what the responsibility of running a home and a family was like. She loved her work too and kept a fairly neat apartment with the help of her cleaning lady once a week. But with no children to look after she could work whenever she liked, sometimes well into the night if she had a deadline. Without the restrictions of a family, she and James could please themselves.
‘Tomorrow night you will come to our house,’ Chrysanthi suddenly declared enthusiastically. ‘I shall cook dinner for all the family and friends. I want everyone who doesn’t know you, to meet you. We must celebrate