One Cretan Evening and Other Stories by Victoria Hislop Read Free Book Online

head.
    ‘’Fraid not,’ he said. ‘Not a clue.’
    Slowly and deliberately he took another cigarette from the packet in front of him and, without offering her one, lit up. He inhaled deeply and looked up at her. She had not really looked at Antonis properly before. He had the same beard and almost-smooth head as Fotis, but in other ways they were very different. She took in that Antonis was broader, rounder, and with a nose that seemed disproportionately small for his wide face.
    ‘Right . . . OK,’ she said. ‘Bye.’
    And with that, she headed out into the pale dawn and walked the few kilometres back to her own home, shivering.
    Her friends quizzed her about Fotis, but there was nothing she wanted to tell them. All she knew was that the temperature of her infatuation for him rose by the day and the attention he gave her when they were together was new andoverpowering. She accepted that a few days might pass without him contacting her, not even with a text message.
    After one such gap in their meeting, she collided with him outside the university. He smiled his broad smile and took her arm.
    ‘Irini mou , my Irini, where have you been?’
    Disarmed by his friendliness, she felt herself melt beneath the warmth of his hand. As they walked to his flat later that night, he stopped to light a cigarette. In the dark side-street the bright flame of his lighter cast sinister dancing shadows across his face. It was ghoulish, macabre but no more than a trick of light.
    The following dawn, she woke as before to find him gone. Once again, she found Antonis keeping vigil at the kitchen table.
    ‘Don’t either of you two need any sleep?’ she asked Antonis, trying to make light of it. ‘Are you insomniacs or something?’
    ‘Nope,’ said Antonis. ‘You’re not even warm.’
    ‘Right. Well, never mind. It’s just odd, that’s all. Just odd.’
    With that, Irini was about to leave but Antonis had something more to say.
    ‘Look . . . take care. Please take care.’
    His tone of genuine concern seemed strange and she had no idea what to make of it.
    Classes at university began to become increasingly disrupted. Even when students turned up to seminars, the professors were not always there to teach and if they were, some of them seemed disappointed in those that had made the effort to come.
    ‘So you’re not on the march?’ one of them asked her. ‘Why?’
    Irini had no answer. Explaining why she was not doing something seemed much harder than justifying why she was.
    ‘I had your seminar to attend,’ was all she could think of to say.
    The real reason was her fear of her father’s reaction if she decided to go out on a demonstration. His disappointment would be bitter. And her mother would literally make herself ill with worry. Parading down Panepistimiou street and being spotted by her godmother holding a banner was something she would never risk.
    In the past few weeks, the reason for marching had changed. The police had shot dead a fifteen-year-old boy in the street and the mood was a new and uglier one. There were many more occasions when classes at the university were empty of students and the streets were full of protest. Now the demonstrations became more violent. In the city centre, the stink of tear gas permeated the streets, shops were being set alight and every cash-point machine had become a blackened hole in the wall. Every capitalist institution was a target and even the city’s huge Christmas tree became a flaming symbol of the protesters’ anger.
    One evening, after a journey home disrupted by road closures and police barricades, Irini got home later than usual. She crossed the polished floor of the hallway and through a scarcely open door, she caught a glimpse of her grandfather reading in his study. She heard him call her name.
    ‘Is that you, Irini? Come in to see me, would you?’
    Even though he had been retired for twenty years, hergrandfather still had the manner of a government official and