The Island by Victoria Hislop Read Free Book Online Page B

with her hands held softly in her lap in a demure pose while her sister had her arms folded and glared, as if in defiance, at the person taking the photograph.
     
    ‘That’s Maria,’ said Fotini, pointing at the child who smiled. ‘And that’s Anna, your grandmother,’ she said, indicating the other. ‘And those are their parents, Eleni and Giorgis.’
     
    She spread the pictures out on the table, and occasionally the breeze lifted them gently from its surface and seemed to bring them to life. Alexis saw pictures of the two sisters when they were babes in arms, then as schoolgirls, and then as young women, by that stage just with their father. There was also a picture of Anna arm in arm with a man in full traditional Cretan dress. It was a wedding picture.
     
    ‘So that must be my grandfather,’ said Alexis. ‘Anna looks really beautiful there,’ she added admiringly. ‘Really happy.’
     
    ‘Mmm . . . the radiance of young love,’ said Fotini. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice that took Alexis by surprise, and she was about to quiz her further when another picture surfaced which seized her interest.
     
    ‘That looks like my mother!’ she exclaimed. The little girl in the photograph had a distinctive aquiline nose and a sweet but rather shy smile.
     
    ‘It is your mother. She must have been about five then.’
     
    Like any collection of family photographs, it was a random selection that told only fragments of a story. The real tale would be revealed by the pictures that were missing or never even taken at all, not the ones that had been so carefully framed or packed away neatly in an envelope. Alexis was aware of that, but at least she had now been given a glimpse of these family members that her mother had kept so secret for so long.
     
    ‘It all began here in Plaka,’ said Fotini. ‘Just behind us, over there. That’s where the Petrakis family lived.’
     
    She pointed to a small house on the corner, a pebble’s throw from where they sat sipping their coffee. It was a tatty, whitewashed building, as shabby as every other home in the ramshackle village, but charming nevertheless. Its plastered walls were flaking and the shutters, repainted time and time again since Alexis’s great-grandparents had lived there, were a shade of bright aqua that had peeled and cracked in the heat. A balcony, perched above the doorway, sagged under the weight of several huge urns from which flame-red geraniums cascaded downwards, as though making their escape through the carved wooden railings. It was typical of almost every home on every Greek island and could have been built at any time in the past few hundred years. Plaka, like any village lucky enough to have been spared the ravages of mass tourism, was timeless.
     
    ‘That’s where your grandmother and her sister grew up. Maria was my best friend; she was just over a year younger than Anna. Their father, Giorgis, was a fisherman, like most of the local men, and Eleni, his wife, was a teacher. In fact she was really much more than a teacher - she more or less ran the local elementary school. It was just down the road in Elounda, the town you must have come through to reach us here. She loved children - not just her own daughters, but all the children who were in her classes. I think Anna found that difficult. She was a possessive child and hated sharing anything, especially her mother’s affection. But Eleni was generous in every way and had enough time for all her children, whether they were her own flesh and blood or simply her pupils.
     
    ‘I used to pretend that I was another of Giorgis and Eleni’s daughters. I was always at their house; I had two brothers so you can imagine how my own home differed from theirs. My mother, Savina, didn’t seem to mind. She and Eleni had been friends since childhood and had shared everything from an early age, so I don’t think she worried about losing me. In fact, I believe she always harboured a fantasy