Page 74 of Deep Blue Lies
I don’t know how to answer this. I think about telling her I have a job and I planned to stay for the summer, but that’s not quite it.
“I was going to stay until I found out the truth,” I say in the end, and it sounds corny. It’s made worse because she doesn’t reply at once, so my words just hang there, in the space between us.
“The truth,” she repeats at last. And then she’s silent again.
“Yeah, so I wondered if it was OK to ask you about it?” I mean, I already have, but she just keeps repeating the questions back to me. But then she surprises me. Big time.
“I can come out there. I can get a flight from Heathrow. Will you let me? Will you wait for me there?”
The idea takes me so much by surprise that I’m unable to answer.
“Will you wait for me?” she asks again. “I’ll look at flights right away, or as soon as I get home. I’ll buy the first one I find. I can take time off here, that won’t be a problem.” I hear her calling out to someone in the room with her. I don’t catch the words exactly but she’s confirming she’s due holiday time. Then she’s back, speakingto me.
“I’ll find a hotel. In Skalio – is that where you are? Are you in Skalio, it’s so pretty there, is it still that pretty?”
“Um, yeah. I’m in Skalio. And yeah, it’s still…” I look around at Sophia and Maria’s little garden, the darkness drawing in close around it. They have a trail of pretty white lanterns that hug the line of the wall, Sophia switched them on when we came out here.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Stay there. Promise me you’ll stay there. I don’t know how long it will take me. There might even be a flight tomorrow. Give me your number, so I can reach you. I’ll tell you what flight I’m on. We can meet. And I’ll tell you.”
“Um, OK.” I feel how wide my eyes are as I glance at Sophia, who’s covering her mouth with her hand.
“Is this your number, on the screen?” Imogen reads my phone number back to me.
“Yeah.”
“I have it. I’ve written it down. Now wait there. And I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
There’s a pause.
“You said you wanted the truth. It’s awful, but I have it. And you deserve to have it too. You always did. But it can’t be on the phone. I have to look into your eyes. I have to be there with you.Foryou. Wait for me there and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Um. OK.”
“You’ll wait for me?”
“Yeah. I guess….”
“Good. Great. That’s… I…” She doesn’t finish either sentence.
And then, just before she hangs up she goes on, her voice almost too soft to hear. “Oh, Ava. You have no idea. No idea at all.”
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone slowly.
“Oh my God,” Sophia says beside me.
SIXTY-FOUR
There’s a moment, after that, when I’m not sure if Sophia wants me to stay the night, or thinks I might want to. But it’s not awkward, somehow. We don’t actually say anything about it, either of us, but I feel there’s an understanding. That, whatever we might want now, there’s no way anything can happen between us, at least until I know who I am. Or maybe I just imagine the whole thing. Either way, I leave soon after.
By the time I get back to my apartment that night, I already have three messages from Imogen. The first two just tell me which airlines fly from the UK to Greece, and to which airports. The third says she wants to fly direct if she can, because of how difficult the bus journey is from Athens. I don’t know if I’m supposed to text back, to tell her it’s not that hard, but I reply in the end, just thanking her and saying I’m looking forward to speaking, but she replies almost at once with links to different hotels. I figure she must be on some app on her phone and just sending me the links as she comes across them. The texts keep coming, it seems she can’t find any rooms at such late notice, at least not at a price she can afford. It’s late here, and I wonder about replying, reminding her that Greece is two hours ahead – and that this is super-weird behaviour and freaking me out – butinstead I just put my phone onto “do not disturb” and try and get some sleep.
In the morning there’s another six messages. At first it seems positive. She’s found a room, in a hotel that’s not that far from Skalio, and she’s actually booked it. But then it seems there was a problem with the flight. She filled in all the details but didn’t hit “book now” until she had the hotel taken care of, and then by the time she’d done that the flight had gone, and there weren’t any more seats until two days later. It’s all a lot more than I need to know, and it’s hard to untangle what she’s actually managed to book, from all the details she’s given me. But in the end I figure it out. She’s booked into the Aegean View Hotel a few miles east of Skalio, and she’s flying into the regional airport in Panachoria, the day after tomorrow. Then I get a message to follow her on Instagram, which I do, even though I haven’t posted anything on my channels for ages. And I see she’s put the details on there, with a link to the hotel. It’s a kind of spa resort. It looks nice. But her words are weird. She says:
