They climbed up to the empty house and let themselves in. It was so hot that it was more comfortable to lie on the terrace, where Toby had dragged his mattress for the previous few nights. It was there they began kissing.
It was a relief. The tension that had been building up inside her suddenly unwound and she let herself go with an anarchic mood. But they had drunk so much that they soon fell asleep. Before slipping into unconsciousness she looked up and saw a half-moon gloating over the port, both a portent and a warning. She slept for four hours without dreams. But she was aware within that sleep of seabirds wheeling above them and crying into the dark. What woke her in the end was the sound of her own voice. She was sitting upright and a loud scream—her own—had shaken Toby awake as well. His arm was extended across her shoulders in order to calm her down. “What is it?” he was saying, as if talking to a child, and as she opened her eyes she saw someone walk away from the terrace and melt into the darkness. Drenched in sweat, she could see that it was almost dawn. The chorus had begun. They decided to get up and go back down to the port. “Did you have a nightmare?” he asked her. She shook her head and said it was the coke. She shouldn’t have done it. “Yes, but you did,” he said slyly, and he took her hand for the downward return journey. It was an unnecessary thing to say, a slightly cruel thing. Out of character, she thought.
“You don’t have any regrets, do you?” he went on when they were at the port and in a cafe waiting for sunlight.
“Not at all,” she said. “I just don’t remember anything.”
His face fell, but he forced himself to smile.
“Well, there’s that, I guess.”
“I thought there was someone on the terrace.”
“Couldn’t have been. So you did have a bad dream?”
“I must have. But it seemed real.” Her voice sounded empty and disengaged, as if she was not convincing herself.
“No one can break into these houses. They’re like fortresses. That’s how they were built. All the families were once at war with each other.”
An hour later the first ferry came gliding across from the mainland. Its lights were full of swagger, and when it had docked they watched as a sullen crowd of arrivals made their way down the gangplank and onto the quay. They were mostly Greeks, Hydriots probably returning from visits. But after they had all disembarked and fanned out into their hometown, a man who was obviously English in some way came after them, limping and pulling a bag on wheels and dressed in a summer suit that looked forty years out of date. Since he was about seventy himself, however, it was incongruously flattering or at least unremarkable. He wore sunglasses though it was still dark, and he seemed, for a moment, bewildered as he stood alone on the quay, unmet and unknown. His bald head shone under the lamps. He looked around, and for a moment she thought he was going to approach them and ask them for directions. A tremendous dithering tact suggested his provenance.
“He looks lost,” Toby said gallantly. “Should I?”
Without waiting for an answer, he got up and went over to the old man. They talked out of her hearing and then Toby came back affably to the cafe.
“Poor guy is booked at the Bratseras. So I gave him directions. It’s a three-minute walk.”
“Who is he?”
“How should I know? Some old tourist. They’re a dime a dozen.”
“Alone?”
Toby shrugged it off.
“Most old people are alone these days.”
But she wasn’t convinced. There was something oblique and wary about him, a lack of tourist cheer.
As soon as he had appeared, he disappeared, and having disappeared he was forgotten. Sam walked home alone as the sun came up and was in her bed long before her family woke. She slept through most of that day. Out in the fields the olives stood fixed by a manic heat and the world around them had gone dead. Their leaves shone bright as steel in the windless glare. The effects of the alcohol and the coke had worn off, leaving her clear enough to feel keenly the disgust that came in their wake. There was a note on the kitchen table that her parents and brother had gone hiking and would be back for dinner. They were so distressingly active when they were on vacation.
As if in rebellion against them, she took a long bath before dressing in a plain white summer dress and going out to read on the porch. Gradually her level common sense returned. She began to think about Naomi again. She called her, and to her surprise Naomi answered. Sam suggested she come down to the house and they could chat alone. Soon, then, Naomi herself walked out of the gloom and came up to the gateposts at the bottom of the path with a quiet but paradoxically purposeful hesitation. It had been five days since they had seen each other.
FIFTEEN
“Are your parents here?” Naomi said as soon as Sam had gone down to the gates and they were alone together on the path.
“They’ll be back any minute.”
“Should I come up and be normal for them?”
“I guess that would be good.”
“Otherwise they might wonder…”
They went back up to the porch and sprawled on the sofas.
“I went to Mandraki with my mom,” Sam said, “and you wouldn’t believe how annoying she was being.”
“Just be cool with them. We need to be calm right now.”
“They don’t suspect anything. They never would.”
“Have you been all right?”
Naomi was unruffled herself, and anxious to be solicitous.
“I’ve been sleeping badly,” Sam admitted.
“Same.”
“What about Carissa?”
“I let her go for three days to see her family. It seemed better to do that.”
Sam nodded. “She’ll appreciate that.”
“I didn’t want to be in the house alone with her, frankly. This whole time I’ve been wondering if she gave them the tea like she said she did. I’m not saying she didn’t, but it crossed my mind.”
“Are you serious?”
“I can’t prove it. But I just can’t see how he could have woken up like that.”
“Maybe he didn’t want the tea. Maybe she gave it to him but he didn’t drink it?”
“I checked the cups in their room. They were empty.”
“You can’t just blame Carissa.”
Naomi’s pent-up frustration began to reveal itself, but she held it in check.