The Enigmatic Greek by Catherine George Read Free Book Online Page A

could swim well enough. She smiled hopefully. ‘Could someone take me over to Karpyros now, please?’ If Alexei Drakos wasn’t coming back here was no point in hanging around. Besides, her belongings were back in the
taverna,
and she needed her laptop to get some work done.
    ‘Yannis will take you after you eat,’ Sofia said firmly. ‘I will bring lunch to the tower room.’
    Taking this as her cue, Eleanor left the kitchen and went up in the lift to spend a long time gazing at the spectacularly beautiful view of vine-clad slopes rising from cobalt-blue sea before she settled down to make notes about the day before. She sighed in frustration as she wrote, wishing she could spice the account up with details of the bungled kidnap. But even without it the article on Kyrkiros would be the most interesting one of the series, partly because of the photographs she’d taken of the bull dance and partly because the island was owned by Alexei Drakos. He could hardly object if
his
name was mentioned. It would have been common knowledge to everyone at the festival. She was hard at work when Sofia arrived with a tempting asparagus salad.
    ‘Eat well,
kyria
,’ said Sofia. ‘When you have finished, Yannis will take you over to Karpyros and wait as long as you wish until you are ready to return.’
    Eleanor explained, as well as she could with her limited vocabulary, that she was not returning, that she would stay at the
taverna
there until she flew home to England.
    This news brought heated protests but in the end the woman left her to her meal and departed, making it plain she disapproved of the change of plan. The
kyrie
would not be pleased.
    Pleasing Alexei Drakos was pretty low on Eleanor’s listof priorities now there was no chance of an interview. She finished her lunch, collected her bag and went down in the lift to the kitchen, where she delighted the women by asking to take photographs of them, both in the kitchen and outside in the sun with the Kastro as a backdrop. And, when Yannis came to transport the
kyria
, Eleanor took shots of the youth with his beaming mother.
    ‘I shall send the photographs to you when I get home,’ she promised, and followed Yannis down to the main jetty, feeling regret at leaving Kyrkiros, if only for failing to get her interview.
    Eleanor was touched by her reception back at the
taverna
, where Takis and Petros informed her that until receiving her message they had been very anxious about her the night before. She explained as well as she could about her lack of mobile phone, and when she reached her small, blessedly private apartment she sat in the sun for a while on the veranda and looked out over the harbour towards Kyrkiros. So much had happened since leaving the room to go over to the island, it was amazing to realise that only a day had elapsed. Suddenly Eleanor thought of her camera. She went inside to check it, and heaved a sigh of relief to find it was still in full working order as she transferred the photographs of the festival to her laptop.
    Her first shots of the Kastro and the village houses were good, but the true colour and animation of the day came through with her capture of the festival mood as laughing, chattering tourists toured the stalls for souvenirs. She lingered when she came to the shots she’d taken of Alexei and his mother. In one he was looking down at Talia with a tenderness which gave Eleanor a pang of emotion hard to identify as she went on with the rest of her slideshow. She crowed in jubilation over shots of the torch-lit stage and the bull dancers, who looked even more unreal on the screen,as though she’d flung open a window on the prehistoric past and captured the moment on film.
    The money shots were those of the Minotaur when he first burst onto the stage, and Theseus with golden double-axe held aloft. There was also something very special about the sight of the Minotaur borne off the stage on the shoulders of his conquerors. Perhaps her efforts