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

have known him a while but . . .’
    Spread out before her on the kitchen table was a series of newspaper cuttings.
‘Pendelis . . . Areopolis . . . Artemida . . . Kronos.’
    As she read the place names out aloud, she knew immediately what the link was between them.
    ‘Fire,’ she said. ‘All devastated by fire.’
    ‘But not just that,’ said Antonis. ‘Arson was suspected with all of them.’
    ‘And you think Fotis may have something to do with . . .?’
    ‘Well, what do you think?’ said Antonis. ‘And I suppose you saw this picture on the front of Kathimerini ?’ he added.
    ‘Holding the torch? I did.’
    ‘And look at this.’
    Antonis led Irini by the arm towards Fotis’ room. As soon as he opened the door, an acrid stench of burning almost choked her. In the middle of the room a small pile of clothes and papers had been burnt. The furniture was blackened, and the bed-clothes still dripped from Antonis’ frantic attempts to extinguish the flames.
    ‘My God. He could have set this whole block alight!’ she gasped.
    ‘If I hadn’t come back when I did . . .’
    ‘How could he?’ she said, her throat dry with the shock and the still-lingering fumes from the fire.
    ‘I don’t think he cared,’ answered Antonis. ‘That’s the nature of an arsonist. He just wouldn’t have cared . . .’
    Once again she looked at the picture on the front of the newspaper and examined the familiar features. For all those weeks she had only seen their perfection but now she saw them twisted by an all-consuming rage and noticed again the devilish look she had seen in the street that night. And in that moment the flame went out. Even the memory of it chilled her, right to the heart.
    The name ‘Irini’ means ‘Peace’, and ‘Fotis’ comes from the Greek word for ‘Fire ’.

Read on for an extract from Victoria Hislop’s new novel, The Thread .

The Thread
    This story is about Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city. In 1917, the population comprised an even mixture of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Within three decades, only Christians remained. The Thread is the tale of two people who lived through the most turbulent period of the city’s history, when it was battered almost beyond recognition by a sequence of political and human catastrophes.
    The characters are entirely fictional, but the historical events all took place. Greece still carries their legacy today.

Prologue
    Thessaloniki, May 2007
    I T WAS SEVEN thirty in the morning. The city was never more tranquil than at this hour. Over the bay hung a silvery mist and the water beneath it, as opaque as mercury, lapped quietly against the sea wall. There was no colour in the sky and the atmosphere was thick with salt. For some it was the tail end of the night before, for others it was a new day. Bedraggled students were taking a last coffee and cigarette alongside neatly dressed, elderly couples who had come out for their early morning constitutional.
    With the lifting haze, Mount Olympus gradually emerged far away across the Thermaic Gulf and the restful blues of sea and sky shrugged off their pale shroud. Idle tankers lay offshore like basking sharks, their dark shapes silhouetted against the sky. One or two smaller boats moved across the horizon.
    Along the marble-paved promenade, which followed the huge curve of the bay, there was a constant stream of ladies with lap dogs, youths with mongrels, joggers, rollerbladers, cyclists and mothers with prams. Between the sea, theesplanade and the row of cafés, cars moved at a crawl to get into the city, and drivers, inscrutable behind their shades, mouthed the words of the latest hits.
    Holding a slow but steady path along the water’s edge after a late night of dancing and drinking, a slim, silky-haired boy in expensively frayed jeans ambled along. His tanned face was stubbled from two days without shaving, but his chocolate eyes were bright and youthful. His relaxed gait was of someone at ease with himself and