Page 53 of Deep Blue Lies
“Well, these things can be tricky,” Maria concludes. “It’s always been better in my view if these things are out in the open, but I know other people don’t feel the same.” She gives me a sympathetic look, and turns the car into the parking area of a small medical centre on the outskirts of Kastria.
“Here we are.”
We go inside, where everything happens in Greek. First we stand at a reception desk where Maria explains what we’re after to a girl not much older than me. She points at me several times as she does so, and I feel the girl looking at me with interest. While they speak, Sophia explains to me in a low voice what’s going on. Then we’re told to wait. Ten minutes later the three of us are led to an office, where an older woman listens again to Maria explaining my situation. The woman then asks for my passport, and turns to the page at the back that lists my place of birth as Alythos, Greece. She nods at it, then focusses on the computer screen in front of her. For a few moments she ignores us while she runs a search. We can’t see the screen, but her face tells us she isn’t seeing what she expects.
“What’s the problem?” I ask, but before anyone can translate this, Maria and the older woman begin speaking in rapid Greek again.
“What’s she saying?” I ask Sophia, but it’s not possible for her to listen and translate at the same time. Eventually she turns to me.
“She’s saying there’s no record for an Ava Whitaker being born on Alythos.”
“What does that mean?”
“She doesn’t know. That’s what they’re discussing. It could be a mistake. The records weren’t put onto computer until about five years ago. So perhaps it was just missed off? Or if you were adopted, you might be entered into the system under a different name. But if we don’t have the original name, she can’t search for it.”
“Can’t we just get a list of all the names, all the children born in that year?” I ask. Sophia considers the question a moment, then interrupts the woman and her mother to translate it into Greek. Again there’s a long conversation I don’t understand, a bit more heated this time. Finally Maria turns to me.
“We’re not allowed a list of all the children born here in 2001. Sophia’s just arguing that she went to school with most of them, but I don’t think we’re going to get it.”
“How about my date of birth? Were any other children born on that date? 20 May? Because that has to be me? Right?” Maria nods, then interrupts, putting the question to the woman behind the desk. We wait again while she enters it into the computer, then she frowns at the results on the screen.
“What? What is it?” I ask, as the conversation flares up in Greek again. It takes a while again, but eventually Maria translates.
“There is one birth registered on 20 May. But it comes up only as ‘unknown female’, and the record doesn’t lead anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t know. There’s no name, not of the parents nor the child, and no other details attached. She says she’s never seen anything like it before.”
It seems we can get no further and we leave, Sophia and I then wait in the car while Maria drops by the pharmacy. She asks again about what happened with Simon, but I’m not ready to answer. Then we drive back towards Skalio. On the way I feel a sort of pressure. That this is an opportunity I have to take. Maria is less talkative now, driving in a thoughtful silence. It’s kind, but also unbearable. I feel the words bottled up inside of me. If I don’t saysomething now, I might never say it. As we pull up outside my apartment I force myself to speak.
“Something happened yesterday. I think it would help if I told you.”
Sophia gives me a sharp, confused look, but Maria simply nods.
“Would you like to come around to the house, Ava? I have a few things I could offer you for lunch?”
FIFTY-TWO
At the house Maria puts somespanakopitain the oven to warm – filo pastry parcels filled with spinach and feta cheese. While they cook, she pulls outtaramasalata,tzatzikiand sliced tomatoes with fresh basil from a pot in the garden and drizzles over olive oil. She warms soft pita pockets in the oven, and Sophia cuts them into strips to dip in the mezzes. Then we carry it all outside, into the pretty garden surrounded by roses. And there I tell them what happened with Simon Denzil-Walker.
“Oh my God,” Sophia says when I’m finished. “That’s wild. Like really, super crazy.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“What does it mean though?” she asks.
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Maria doesn’t say anything for a long while, then she tells us she’s going to make tea. She carries the empty plates back into the kitchen and returns a few minutes later with steaming mugs of mint tea. She hands one to me, but hesitates.
“If you would rather not say, I will quite understand, but may I enquire exactly what it is that makes you believe you’re adopted? I feel there are details I don’t have.”
For a moment I don’t answer. There’s an element of this thatfeels almost like a betrayal of Mum, and everything she’s done for me. But at the same time, I know I can’t move forward if I don’t resolve this, and the only way to do so has to be to pull it all out into the open. And there’s something about Maria that makes her easy to trust.
“My mum always told me I was born on Alythos, when she was working here at the Aegean Dream Resort. But she would never tell me the details. I found a diary she wrote when she was here, and she isn’t pregnant. She doesn’t give birth.” I shrug, at the stupid simplicity of it. “I can’t see any other explanation.”
Maria listens in silence, her clear eyes watching me carefully.
