Page 66 of Deep Blue Lies
“Don’t worry,” Sophia tells me quietly. “It’s all covered by the dive centre. The guests pay, but they get a reduced rate. The instructors get fed free. And tonight, you’re one of us.”
Her words warm me. I like the thought of being one of them.
Then there’s a split. Some of the younger guests want to head on to a bar the other side of the harbour, where there’s a dancefloor. Sophia looks at me questioningly, and I’m tempted, but I don’t think I can actually move after my crashes and all the food. She laughs when I tell her, and very naturally takes my hand.
“Don’t worry then, I’ll walk you home.”
So then we bid goodnight to the rest of the group and moments later we’re alone, walking back up through the town, Sophia still holding my hand.
For just a moment it’s awkward, and I’m not sure what exactly is happening, but there’s an ease to her that relaxes me. And she knows everything. Every building we pass, she tells me who lives there, and she seems to have a story about everyone. On our right is the home of the man her father fished with. There’s a big house on the left, set back from the road, with a lush garden which is where the former owner of the ADR lived, when he was out here and not in England. She shows me Kostas’ house too, more modest, its little front yard almost completely taken up with a RIB in for repair.
We fall quiet as we near the back of town where my apartment is. We’re still holding hands, and though I definitely want to, I’m not sure what this is, or where it’s going. For the first time I sense uncertainty in Sophia too. I glance at her, hoping that she won’t notice, and take in the dark strands of her hair falling across her face. She’s very pretty – beautiful – and it’s not like I hadn’t noticed before. Her skin, her bare shoulders, are smooth and look so soft to the touch. Her hand is tanned and delicate in mine. I think suddenly of Kevin, my last boyfriend. He wasn’t one for holding hands, but when he did they were like plates of meat.Boyfriend.That word stops me in my tracks. Is there something romantic about this?
Suddenly, Sophia stops.
“What?”
Her mood has changed.
“Nothing,” – she looks perturbed – “I just thought I saw someone up ahead.”
I look, but I don’t see anything.
“Where?”
“Up there, they’re gone now. If there was anyone.”
Somehow this pierces the atmosphere, deflates it quietly. She’s already dropped my hand and doesn’t re-take it. Sophia seems to read the shift in mood just as I do, but I don’t know if she shares my confusion about whatwashappening. We stop outside my door and she points to a passageway between the buildings opposite I hadn’t noticed before.
“That’s a shortcut to my house,” she says, with a kind of goofy smile on her lips. I stare at her face a few moments, unsure how to reply.
“Do you want to come in for a while?” I say in the end. “I don’t have much, but I did buy a bottle of Metaxa on my last visit to the supermarket. I wanted to see what my mum saw in it.” The word “mum” comes easier to me now, using it almost like a joke. Or perhaps not, I may be about to confirm that she’s not my biological mother, but that doesn’t mean she’s not “Mum”. I’m beginning to understand that now.
“OK.”
I unlock the outer door and we step inside, cross the dim hallway to the entrance to my apartment. But at once I see there’s something odd. At my front door there’s something hanging from the handle. I get closer and see it’s a plastic shopping bag.
“What’s that?” Sophia asks, but I don’t answer. I take it off and look inside. I think I know before I even look, just from the feel of it. But I’m still baffled.
“What is it?” Sofia asks again, confusion in her voice.
“It’s my laptop,” I say, pulling the shattered glass, plastic and metal parts from inside the bag. The totally smashed-up remains of my laptop. “Someone’s brought it back.”
SIXTY
Neither of us says anything about it, but I feel that whatever might have been about to happen now isn’t. I take the bag, open the door and carry it inside, emptying it carefully onto the kitchen table. It’s clear enough what it is, my laptop had butterfly stickers on the lid becauseeveryoneat university had a MacBook Air. I can still see them, but the lid itself has been ripped off, the screen smashed into black shards of plastic-backed glass.
“What the hell is going on?” Sophia asks, but I can’t answer. I have no idea. “Is it yours?”
I nod. I didn’t tell her, so I do now. “It was stolen from me, a week ago.”
“What?How?”
I tell her about the break-in, how I’d been stupid and left it in view on the kitchen table, and how the apartments here all seem to have the same key, so maybe that’s how they got in. This time we do check, going back outside and trying the key that fits my front door into the two other apartments on my floor. It doesn’t work in either.
We give up and go back into my apartment. I notice the bottle of Metaxa I was going to offer her. I pick it up with a half-hearted shrug, and she laughslightly.
“Not sure I’m in the mood now.”
