After the Ferry Read online

  After the Ferry

  C. A. LARMER

  Copyright © 2019 Larmer Media

  calarmer.com

  Discover other titles by C.A. Larmer at Amazon:

  The Agatha Christie Book Club

  Murder on the Orient (SS): Agatha Christie Book Club 2

  Evil Under The Stars: Agatha Christie Book Club 3

  Ghostwriter Mysteries:

  Killer Twist (Book 1)

  A Plot to Die For (Book 2)

  Last Writes (Book 3)

  Dying Words (Book 4)

  Words Can Kill (Book 5)

  A Note Before Dying (Book 6)

  Posthumous Mysteries:

  Do Not Go Gentle

  Do Not Go Alone

  Plus:

  An Island Lost

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  License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to other people. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Larmer Media,

  NSW 2482, Australia

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-9924743-3-1

  Cover design by Stuart Eadie

  Edited by The Editing Pen

  & Elaine Rivers (with heartfelt thanks)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  PART TWO

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  SARISI

  EVE

  TOM

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Nimo and Felix

  my beautiful, beautiful boys

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  Later, much later after they had pulled my battered body from the dark sand and I somehow pulled myself back from an even darker place, I began to wonder, What if?

  What if I had behaved differently on the ferry that day?

  What if I had never locked eyes with a Greek stranger across a crowded stern? Or met a pair of Sydney university lads or set off on a journey with an old school friend with a chip on one shoulder and a crush of her own?

  Instead, for now, it is the mid-1990s and I am filled with the arrogance of youth, the confidence of a child, and my only question is of love and whether it is staring me in the face.

  If that seems a tad dramatic to you, a little schoolgirlish, then forgive me for I am but a schoolgirl, just a few years out. I am lying with my head on a lumpy backpack, a book resting on my chest, my legs sprawled across a gusty deck, staring into the eyes of a man I do not know and wondering: Is this love? And can it be trusted?

  I am watching the Greek guy, and the two Sydney guys are watching me. Or at least one of them is, but I do not know this yet. I do not know this for some time.

  For now, I am focused on a stranger.

  We exchanged words a few minutes earlier, my Greek god and I, while waiting for burnt coffees in the bowels of the boat. No more than pleasantries, a flirtatious banter, but the chemistry was electric, the attraction like a smack in the face. And now, as he chews on his Styrofoam cup half a deck away, cheekily eyeing me above the rim, I wonder how the boat can keep moving, how the earth can keep turning, how this extraordinary, unfathomable attraction has not stopped the world in its wake.

  He has sleepy brown eyes—I remember that—and they are boring into mine across the lurching ferry. I feel his pull, his shameless yearning. It matches my own, a yearning I have stowed since I set off on this trip. No, before that. It’s the reason I set off. The reason I said yes when Monty Brennan asked me to see the world with her. Not because I wanted to see the world—and certainly not with her—but because I wanted more in life. I wanted love, I realise now, and now here it is, staring me in the face.

  “Anyone want to go inside?” someone asks. “Get out of this bloody wind?”

  “No,” I manage. No. I want to stay right here, ogling a man I cannot know but who seems so oddly, giddily familiar.

  The ferry lurches again, and he looks away. I frown, following his eyes down, beyond the bow, towards a speck on the painfully bright horizon. The speck is too rapidly becoming a smudge and now a rocky outcrop that turns into land as my eyes flit from there to him and back again. He is now standing, discarding his cup. He is reaching for his backpack, he is offering me occasional, sad smiles.

  Oh well, his smile says. It could have been beautiful.

  My frown deepens. No, no! This cannot be it!

  And then the blasted place is upon us and he is edging his way towards an exit while my heart does a somersault and I go into panic mode.

  Where is he going?

  Why is he leaving me?

  This must all have taken many minutes, but it seems to happen in a flash. At the top of the gangplank he turns, one final glance back, and he offers me a sliver of a smile, a subtle twitch of his head towards the bobbing beyond. It is a silent invitation, as loud as smashed glass in the dark.

  I worked as a feature writer on a magazine in Sydney before this, telling foolish girls how to find their soul mate. Was I really prepared to ignore my own advice?

  “Where are we?” someone asks. Angus, I realise now, the business student who’s been clinging to me like soggy cardboard since we left Rome.

  “Trust you to score the hot one,” Monty had teased the morning after the night we all met below the Spanish Steps a week ago. I was flattered at the time; smug, too, because she was right. Angus was the better-looking of the two mates, the one with the broader shoulders, the chiselled jawline, the winning smile. And he had chosen me. Well, that was the vibe he gave off. We hadn’t hooked up yet, but everyone knew it was coming. It was as inevitable as the sea.

  Angus Tower seemed intriguing to me at first, with his lofty ambitions—“I’ll be a millionaire before I’m twenty-five, just you sit back and watch”—and his dapper way of dressing, all turned-up shirt collars and Polo logos and certainly more intriguing than his scruffy mate, Thomas Wilson,
whose only claim to fame was an uncanny memory. He knew all the words to almost every song and could recite his Visa card number from scratch, as if that mattered. As if anyone cared.

  I glance at Angus and wonder what I ever saw in him. His smile seems smarmy, his stiff collars so inappropriate.

  “Says here it’s Sa-ree-see Island,” says Thomas, wielding his battered Lonely Planet like the bible it has become. “Nothing but a crusty old convent and a couple of tacky tavernas. We’ll keep going on to Santorini. This one sounds like a bore.”

  How could it be boring with him on it?

  I glance from Thomas to Angus and then to the back of my Greek god’s head. He is fast vanishing. Then I notice the book in my lap, and I smile because I know I have no choice. It’s as clear as text.

  I get up and grapple for my backpack.

  “Hey, Millie, just chill,” Monty says, barely looking up from beneath a crisp Akubra. Her head is rested on Thomas’s lap, his wide-brimmed hat covering her face from the scorching sun. I wonder momentarily if they have hooked up. “Thomas is in charge of the schedule, remember? We’re heading for Santorini, right, Thomas?”

  “Right, babe,” he says, his eyes twinkling brightly at me.

  Yet I ignore them both. My heart is thumping, blood is rushing through my ears, and I know in that moment that if I do not follow that man, I will never forgive myself. What I don’t acknowledge then, what I cannot contemplate in my stupid youthful ignorance, is that if I do follow him, I will have so much more to forgive. I might survive this journey, but at what cost?

  This is a story of choices—two choices—as clear as the glassy Aegean, each one with consequences that will reverberate not just across my life but across all the lives to come. One choice will see me finding a deep, everlasting love. The other will find me lying in the sand, battered, brutalised, bereft.

  Do I stay cushioned in the belly of my faithful friends to finish my holiday and return to my predestined path—career, marriage, kids? Or do I swallow my nerves and take a leap of faith?

  I do not ask the question, I do not stop to think. I make a choice that will alter absolutely everything.

  But what choice do I make? Which way do I go?

  I haul the pack onto my back, free my ponytail from beneath the canvas, then turn towards the blinding sun.

  This is the story of two Millie Malones and how only one of us will live to tell the tale.

  PART TWO

  Thirteen years later

  SARISI

  Fog gathered like cotton wool, loosened into stringy wisps on the shores of Sarisi Bay. The fishermen ignored it like they did their creaky boats, even creakier bones, and simply went about their business, checking sails, freeing ropes, rolling one for the road. A whistle, a cooee, and in waves they set off, first one boat, then another, then two more, each slicing through the silence until the fog rejoined to gobble them whole with only the faint scent of their cheap tobacco left to prove they were even there.

  From the esplanade, a woman watched as though staring at a screensaver—blank, dispassionate, not really taking it in. Even as the tobacco dissipated, she watched, her hands thrust into her too-thin coat, its pockets so high up she had to bend her elbows to keep them contained. Her coat is vintage velvet in chalk-pink, falling just below the knees. “On trend,” apparently, and now so inappropriate. What she needed was a full-length puffer coat with a hood. God, what she’d give for a decent, waterproof hood. Instead, she had a flimsy cotton beanie, a white Adidas one better suited to a teenage boy than a grown woman. She’d pilfered it on her way out, and it offered little comfort to ice-cold hair that had become limp with dew.

  Still, the chill was not entirely unwelcome. It numbed her a little, matching her mood. Beneath the coat, the edge of her black pleated skirt was caught in her leather ankle boots, and she noticed for the first time in hours that her feet had ceased to ache. They were numb too. She made no effort to move, though, simply stared out to sea, surprised by its oily darkness and the mist that her breath was now making, clouding her view. Something else quickly replaced it. A memory from a lifetime ago: a man and a woman, laughing as they gulped in the crisp air between two long fingers pushed against swollen lips. Their fingers moved away swiftly as they exhaled, their lips upturned Hollywood-style into the sky, and they watched as the condensation conjured up imaginary cigarette smoke before their eyes.

  He pulled her to him then, thrust one arm behind her neck and pushed his fingers to her lips this time.

  “Inhale,” he demanded, his voice deep, commanding. “Inhale deeply.”

  She giggled nervously, did as he said and then whispered, “I should probably go.”

  “Stay” was his reply, his thick fingers now making their way down her chin, her neck, towards her décolletage.

  She inhaled. Shivered. “Really,” she said, her voice catching. “I’ll miss the boat.”

  His body stiffened. He did not let go.

  A dog’s howl snapped the woman’s lips shut, and she glanced around, pulling her coat closer to her chest from within, feeling her pounding heart beneath the fabric. She took a calming breath, released one hand from its warm cubbyhole, and scooped her bag up again. She must get on. She had no time to waste. Everything depended upon it.

  But what if I can’t find him? she thought. And then more terrifyingly, What if I can?

  She jiggled her head a little as if trying to refocus and returned to the cobbled road just as another memory hit her like a slab of concrete: a piercing scream, a smattering of blood. So much blood, so much pain.

  Her knees buckled, her legs wobbled, but she steadied herself, swallowing the memory down as she has done every day for almost five thousand days, and kept on walking.

  From a distance someone was watching. Curious at this point; unconcerned.

  Nicholas Xydis was in a good mood. It was his favourite hour, 5:00 a.m., and even the early risers of Sarisi were only just beginning to twist and turn in their beds, one last dream before reality rushes in. He has been up for ten minutes, watching the fishermen depart, dragging on his own rollie, a cup of thick black coffee recharging his batteries. He would be joining them soon, but he was in no hurry. His livelihood did not depend upon it.

  In the bedroom beyond, the sheets are rumpled, the mattress dipping and diving where fervent limbs have beaten it out of shape. Catalina had dropped by again. His mood darkened. He liked her well enough but was glad she was somebody else’s wife.

  He grimaced. At least Theo didn’t catch them this time. He knew he was botching everything up, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Couldn’t find another way. And so he ploughed on towards certain failure, certain regret. Resigned to it, in fact.

  Slurping his coffee, he revelled in the aroma, the warmth of it in his belly, the comfort of a decent cup. Perhaps he’d spark the coffee machine up again, he thought as he stumped out his smoke and stood up, but then he saw the woman turn, a slight silhouette against the silvery sea.

  He stepped back quickly into the shadows of the balcony even though she had not looked round, could not possibly have seen him. But there was something about her stance that warned him off. It was a private moment. He felt like an intruder. Yet he continued to watch, curiosity getting the better of him. And he squinted, as though that would somehow sharpen his focus, as all thought of coffee vanished.

  He could tell she was not a local, not even Greek. The thin coat, the awkward stance, the way her arms wrapped around her body tightly, all told him she was a stranger here and an anxious one at that. He stepped forward slightly to get a better view. It was early for tourist season. Had she veered off track? She turned suddenly, directly towards him, and for a second he feared he had been spotted, but she looked away easily, her face caught momentarily in the amber streetlight. Her lips were shut, her jaw clenched tight, her eyes barely visible below a hat of some sort. He watched as she bent down to collect her bag, long hair sliding across her chest and then flying back up with a
flick as she stood and turned away from town.

  Nicholas’s first reaction was to call out to her, to tell her she was going the wrong way, but something about her stride stopped him. She no longer looked apprehensive. She was hurried, determined. Without doubt. It was clear she was heading towards Coso Point and, he assumed, the castle. He had better alert his mate. The tourists had come early this season.

  As Nicholas returned inside to change, he had a niggling feeling the woman wasn’t a tourist after all. There was something about those eyes, that jaw, the way she walked that told him she was no stranger to Sarisi.

  He wasn’t sure why, but he felt like he had seen her somewhere before.

  A tiny shiver trickled down his back.

  EVE

  The young woman felt a trickle of annoyance and scowled benignly at the phone. It hadn’t stopped nagging her all morning. She sighed heavily, wedged a fake smile on her face and answered it with a gruff, “Eve magazine, Amelia Malone’s phone.”

  She knew it wasn’t how her boss liked her to answer it, but then Amelia—once nicknamed Millie, apparently, although Brianna couldn’t picture it—hadn’t been spotted for two days and reprimanding her for her phone manner seemed a moot point.

  “Please tell me she’s turned up,” came an even gruffer voice at the other end.

  Brianna Miles sweetened her tone. “Good morning, Gerry. I’m sorry, sir, no, she has not come in. Again.”

  The publisher exhaled, or perhaps it was a growl. “It’s bloody deadline week for Christ’s sake! Where the hell is she?”

  “I’m not—”

  “What about Monty?”

  “She’s not due back until later this afternoon, sir. She’s at—”

  “I don’t give a flying toss where she’s at! It’s Amelia we need to find for f—” He swallowed the rest of that sentiment and took a calming breath. “What about her place? You check there?”

  “Yes, sir, not answering.”

  “Not the phone, you imbecile, did you think to go over? Make sure she hasn’t gassed herself or something?”