Naomi flinched, stood up, and picked up the spade.
“This wasn’t my intention,” she said, still in Greek, and to Carissa. “You know that.”
“It wasn’t my intention either,” Carissa retorted.
And yet what did intentions matter? No one took them seriously anyway. Naomi threw the first spadeful of soil onto the bodies and then she began the long task mechanically, indifferent to their efforts.
It took them an hour to refill the grave. By the time they had finished, the garden was flooded with sunlight. They patted down the soil and then awkwardly replaced the torn grass, since they had kept the clumps intact and laid them carefully to one side. When they had finished the garden looked almost as it had before, but not quite. They beat down the grass with the backs of their spades and, at the end, they sat together under the olive tree.
In the late afternoon this part of the port enjoyed the silence of the small mountains. Filled with crows, the sky became an echo chamber for their calls, and at the horizon the haze of the sea had turned violet. Carissa went into the kitchen and brought out a pitcher of cold lemonade, and they drank it from the jug, spilling it everywhere. The bobbing ice cubes rubbing their front teeth revived them and soon a form of peace returned. The maid got up and said, with her simple pragmatism, “We have to clean the house. And we have to clean it well.”
They worked into the evening, washing down the floors and then the walls. Everything in the bedroom and the salon was put back in its place, the poker assiduously cleaned, the minute displacements caused by a violent moment rectified. There were things missing, but no one who was not family would ever notice them unless they were specifically looking for them. The passports were gone, the personal effects. The simple version of the story they were going to tell was that Jimmie and Phaine had left for a trip. Perhaps they had even decided to drive back to London—no one knew.
But people don’t just disappear, Naomi had been thinking all along. The enormity of this problem was as great as the problem of not concealing their bodies. She would have to make it up as she went along.
After all, it wasn’t true that people don’t disappear. They disappear all the time. Any insurance agent could tell you that, and they often did if you asked them.
—
At nine Sam went back down to the port, leaving Naomi and Carissa in the house. At Kamini she stopped for a beer at Kordylenia’s, overlooking the rocks and the moonstone sea, and calmed herself in readiness for the family evening meal. They would ask her where she had been and she would say she had been with Naomi wandering the backstreets of the port. There was nothing more to it than that. She looked down at her hands and the sight of them filled her with revulsion, even though she had scrubbed them so clean that they looked whiter than usual. Yet she was now so tired that she wouldn’t be able to act suspiciously even if her nervousness betrayed her. She would eat quickly and then go to bed and see if it had been a bad dream after all. If her mother started asking questions she would cut her short: Amy was eternally suspicious of the alarming possibility of a Greek boyfriend. Sam would have to disarm her.
She ate a plate of fried sardines and doubled down on the Mythos beers. You couldn’t resist a beer called Mythos. She held her tears back and finally they ceased pressurizing her eyes. It would be all right, she told herself. Time would smooth it over like the grass on their shoddy graves. She turned to look at the interior of the small restaurant, and she noticed that the men sitting there playing backgammon were looking her way. It was as if there was something odd about her now, a stigmata that she couldn’t see herself. She wanted to yell a “Fuck you” at them, or at least a “Skatofatsa.” But instead she raised a hand and called over a waiter.
“May I have some bread? Toasted?”
When it came she ate it with oil, oblivious to the gluten. Somehow she no longer cared about it. She went home afterward, suddenly quickened and emboldened. On the porch the Haldanes were at the table with John Coltrane on the stereo, and in the event she saw at once that they had suspected nothing at all. The faces were open, essentially oblivious.
In fact, her father said as she appeared, “Chris and I spent the whole day fishing. We didn’t catch a damned thing.”
Her mother was gentle toward her, the maternal eyes curiously empty of their normal anxiety. “How was your day, baby?”
Sam sat wearily and helped herself to some of the feta salad which had been set on the table in a large ceramic bowl.
“It was nice, I guess. Naomi and I explored the port up by the mountain. The Codringtons have all these friends up there.”
“Old bohemians, eh?” her father chimed in.
“Yeah, old bohemians. We didn’t see any, though.”
“They all came because of Leonard Cohen, and now they’re stranded.”
Sam turned and looked her brother in the eye. He was the only one among them with a devious turn of mind. Now his gaze was mocking and disbelieving.
“The whole day exploring?” he said.
“It’s better than fishing.”
“Does Mr. Codrington know Leonard Cohen?”
“Probably. He didn’t say.”
“I bet Dad’s jealous,” Chris said.
“Did you have lunch with the family up there?” Amy then asked.
“No, her father and stepmother weren’t there. I’m not sure they’re even on the island right now.”
“That’s funny,” Jeffrey said. “I was sure I saw them last night in the port. I didn’t go up and say hello because I had the feeling they don’t like me. But I’m sure I saw them.”
“Maybe they left this morning, then.”
“Maybe they did. But last night, anyway, they were living it up at the Pirate. I’m pretty sure it was them.”
Sam went up to her room, lying with the lights off for a long time. She let the tears flow as copiously as they wanted, and eventually they dried up of their own accord as well and she became lucid again. She felt betrayed, but not in a way that she could quite explain.
Of course, it was she herself who had insisted on coming with Naomi to her house. But Naomi had let Sam be drawn into the events, as she had all along, but without telling her why she needed her. It was because Naomi wanted an accomplice for the times ahead when things might get unpleasant. She needed a foil of some kind—it was not clear for what.
Ahead of them stretched the rest of the summer, now in ruins. As it evolved she would have to play more and more of a game to keep herself above suspicion. The only solution would be to get off the island and go home, or go anywhere away from Greece. But her parents had already paid for the house in advance, and there was no way they would let her leave by herself. She was cornered, and Naomi held the keys to her delectable open-air prison. It was a reason to wonder if she had misjudged her new friend. But she would wait and see what Naomi said to her from then on. It was possible that she was too upset to understand on the first night of a catastrophe.