Page 53 of Deep Blue Lies

FIFTY-TWO

At the house Maria puts some spanakopita in the oven to warm – filo pastry parcels filled with spinach and feta cheese.

While they cook, she pulls out taramasalata , tzatziki and 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 that feels 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.

“And there’s no way you can ask her?

I shake my head. “We don’t speak about it. We never have. Whenever I’ve asked her about where I come from she…”

“She what?” Maria asks gently.

“I don’t know. She shuts me down. The most she’s ever done is make it a joke – but one she doesn’t want to tell.

She said he was a waiter – like a total cliché, an embarrassing mistake.

Like maybe that’s the reason she won’t say, or maybe she doesn’t even know his name.

Or which one he is.” I think of the parade of men in the diary. “It’s hard to explain.”

“OK.” Maria looks like she understands, but she’s quiet for a long while.

“When we spoke in the shop, I told you about the tragedy at the Aegean Dream Resort, the deaths of the couple managing the resort, and how their infant daughter was left alive?”

“Yes.”

She purses her lips. “Alythos is not a big place…” She stares at the wall, and her words fade out. She turns to me, smiles.

“Ava, would I be correct in thinking you suspect a link between yourself and the child left alive that night?”

I don’t answer for a few moments. Finally though I shrug again.

“The dates seem to fit.”

It’s weird, hearing the idea in the open. I glance at her, not quite looking. From the corner of my eyes, I almost hope she’s going to burst out laughing at the idea, but she doesn’t.

“Yes. They do. It does seem at least plausible, if not probable, that there’s a connection. And the baby listed in the records, born on that date?—”

“Why wouldn’t they tell us about that?” Sophia asks, “at the medical centre?”

“I don’t know.” Maria looks at her daughter. “My guess would be the records were sealed when the baby was adopted. In Greek law this is often done to protect the child whose parents die. So they can grow up without the burden of knowing a difficult truth.”

“But Ava already knows what happened, everyone does. The manager guy murdered his girlfriend then killed himself. So how does that protect her?”

“Well in this case it doesn’t. If Ava really is this baby.

” She turns to me, but I hardly hear her.

In my mind I’m there that night. An infant, lying where, in a crib?

On the bed? While my dad beats my mother to death, and then kills himself.

How long was I there, waiting to be found, their bodies growing cold beside me? Was I even there? Was it really me?

“There must be other records?” Sophia asks. “If Ava was that child she must be able to find out from somewhere. She has a right to know!”

Maria doesn’t answer at once. “I don’t know.

I imagine so. I expect that, if you can prove you were the child, you might be granted access.

But if you can’t prove it…if the only proof is in the files…

I imagine it might be difficult.” She looks at me heavily.

“It could take a long time. It will certainly be expensive.”

“But that’s unfair? Surely she has a right to know who her parents really were?”

Maria doesn’t answer Sophia this time, but turns her eyes on me. I look down at the table.

“I’m not even sure I want to know. If my dad was a monster.”

Maria doesn’t say anything. Instead she gets up and begins to clear the rest of the plates.

I go to help her, but she stops me, then lets me when she sees I need something to distract myself.

We take a break while her and Sophia bring a dessert, something they call galaktoboureko .

When it arrives it’s a sort of creamy custard pie wrapped in layers of filo pastry.

Maria cuts a generous slice and hands me a plate. I can smell the lemons and cinnamon.

“There is one way I may be able to help,” Maria says quietly.

I look up.

“Perhaps two.”

I wait, a forkful of the dessert quivering in front of me.

“The detective who led the investigation into the murders. He’s a man named Nikos Papadakis. He’s retired now, but back then he was the head of the island police. Before that…” – a quiet smile comes to her lips – “A long time before that – we were in school together.”

I stay quiet, unsure where this is going.

“I can’t say if he’ll actually remember what happened to the child.

But it was a big case, and I’m sure he’ll know something.

What’s less clear is whether he’ll speak to you.

But I wonder if I come with you…” She looks thoughtful.

“There might be something he could tell you?” She shrugs, like she barely believes in the idea herself.

I think about it. I’m not sure.

“You said there were two things?” Sophia asks.

Maria turns to her, a sharp look on her face, just for a moment. Then she looks back to me.

“Yes.” She falls quiet.

“This is perhaps a more difficult thing to say. And I see how this is already a lot for you to bear, but I believe I have to say it. You come here to find your father, and you learn he might have been a murderer. I don’t know if that’s true.

I knew Jason Wright. I’m not sure I ever believed that he was responsible. ”

There’s a silence. Finally Sophia breaks it.

“Isn’t that what the police said?” she asks.

“Yes. They did but?— ”

“But what? I mean, surely they’d know, they were there, the ones who?—”

“Ava, there’s something I need to tell you at this juncture.” Maria interrupts Sophia quietly.

“OK,” I say, unsure where this is going. I wait while Maria composes herself, before she goes on, keeping her eyes on me.

“If you are the child that was left alive that day, then I was the person who found you.”

I see my own expression of surprise mirrored in Sophia’s face, but she gives it voice too.

“What do you mean?”

“I was the person who found the bodies. I was delivering groceries to the hotel that morning, and I had to see Jason, a problem with the billing. He wasn’t in the hotel, which was unusual, and I was sent to the room where he and Mandy were staying. Up past the old staff house.”

I look to Sophia. I can see she knows the places that Maria’s mentioning, and I think I’ve seen them too, when I looked over the resort.

“The door was ajar, so I knew something was wrong. When I pushed it open, I saw Jason lying there. He was clearly dead, and I knew he’d shot himself – or been shot. I’d never seen a gunshot victim before, but I knew.” She waits, swallows.

“And I knew about the baby, so I went into the room, looking for her. That’s when I found Mandy.

She wasn’t shot, she’d been hit over the head, but very hard.

There was no doubt she was dead too. And as horrible as it was, that’s when I heard the sound of breathing.

At first I was scared, I thought that perhaps whoever had done this was still there.

But they weren’t, not alive at least. But the baby was.

It was just lying there, in a crib by the side of the bed.

I picked it up and took it out of there. ”

It seems as she’s speaking that she’s not really here, but now she’s finished she comes back into herself. She offers me a smile.

“So if you’re somehow connected to whatever horrible thing happened that day, in a way I am too.”