Page 56 of Deep Blue Lies

FIFTY-FIVE

Fifteen minutes later when we’re back in Maria’s car, she’s driving this time, with Sophia in the back, sitting forward between the two front seats.

“You actually know this woman who had the child?” Sophia asks.

“Not well, but yes.” Maria glances at me now. “Ava, I think you know already I am not Sophia’s biological mother, she is adopted?”

The question surprises me, but I nod. “Yes. She told me.”

“I thought so. She doesn’t tell this to so many people.”

I wait as Maria turns back to the road. “When my husband and I were working through the adoption process, we became familiar with many of the people involved in such things. On Alythos and the mainland.”

She slows the car now. Up ahead is a group of three white houses, around them olive trees and a small vineyard. We stop outside the first house. In the distance, where the olives finish, is a large, low building within high walls.

“The old monastery,” Maria says, nodding towards it. “Just wait for a moment, I’m not sure which house we need.”

I don’t say anything as she gets out and goes to the front door of the first house.

She knocks, and there’s a long delay until it’s opened by a young woman in an apron.

We’re too far away to hear anything that’s said, but moments later the door shuts again, and Maria moves to the third of the three houses.

She knocks again, and this time when it’s opened it’s an older woman.

Again there’s a conversation, and at one point Maria points to the car.

I feel the lady’s eyes on me. They speak some more, and then disappear into the house.

“So, do you know that woman?” I ask Sophia, more to break the silence than anything.

“No. But it looks like Mum does.”

We wait, rolling down the windows as the heat in the little car rises. About fifteen minutes later the door opens, and Maria emerges again. Without hesitating she moves over to the car and then speaks quickly with Sophia in Greek. Then she turns to me.

“Would you mind coming inside? She would like to see you.”

So then we climb out of the car, walk towards the front door, and the whole experience feels super freaky. Did I once stay here, after my mother was killed by my father? I can’t say, I have no memory of it. It doesn’t look familiar, but maybe it feels it? I can’t say.

Maria leads us into a small and bare living room. The blinds are closed, not completely but enough to keep the room dark and cool. The woman I saw answering the door gets to her feet. She’s maybe seventy with very dark skin, her hair covered with a scarf. She stares at me, her eyes unblinking.

“Ava, this is Eleni Kouris. She took in the baby, in the weeks after the murder. Unfortunately she doesn’t speak English.” Maria says something then in Greek, but I catch my name. Eleni moves towards me, her eyes not leaving my face. She takes both of my hands and holds them in hers.

“I have asked her if she knows what happened to the child after she was taken to the orphanage,” Maria goes on.

“But she was not told. She says she tried to find out, but it was not allowed…” Ma ria’s explanation is interrupted by a long stream of Greek from Eleni.

At first she directs it at me, but then seems to realise I have no idea what she’s saying, so instead she turns to Maria. A few moments later Maria translates.

“She says she tried to find out. That the orphanage where the baby was taken was a very bad place. That it was widely known children there were abused. She has articles about it, from a national newspaper. But they would not allow her to care for the child. They would not tell her what became of her.”

Eleni is still holding both of my hands, and she goes back to staring at me, her unchanging smile showing yellowed teeth.

I take in more about her, the black shawl that she’s wearing, the TV in the corner of the room, an old-style boxy design, the plain white walls, stained in places.

Was this how I nearly grew up? Was I taken from this place, or saved from living this life?

Or was I never here? It’s suffocating, the not knowing, the being here.

And still the woman has both my hands in hers.

I look down, at her bony fingers. There’s more Greek.

I wait for Maria to translate it, but she hesitates.

“She says that obviously you turned out OK.” Sophia does it for her.

“Um, what does that mean?”

Sophia gives a dry laugh. “She’s just saying she remembers you,” Sophia tells me, watching me carefully. “She says you have her eyes.”

There’s a silence.

“She wouldn’t actually be able to remember though, would she?” Sophia goes on, in English. “I mean, if the baby was only a few weeks old when this woman had her, she’s not going to know for sure?”

“No,” Maria agrees. “Probably this is just—” She breaks off to translate something and then finishes the sentence, looking at me with a concerned smile. “Probably this is just an emotional time for her, remembering. ”

“Does she know the name? Can you ask her the name?” I say, and Maria nods.

“Yes, that’s why we brought you in. Eleni wanted to tell you herself.” Then there’s more rapid Greek, back and forth, between Maria and the old lady. I look to Sophia for help, but she doesn’t translate.

“What’s she saying?” I ask in the end.

“She has something for you,” Sophia says at last. And now the woman finally releases my hands, and – nodding at me the whole time – she leaves the room.

“What’s going on? Where’s she going?”

“She said—” Maria stops, she looks perturbed. So it’s Sophia that translates again.

“She said she has fostered many children, over many years, and all were special. But of all the children she cared for, it was…” She glances at Maria, like she’s not sure she ought to continue.

But Maria nods, and Sophia turns back to face me.

“It was you that meant the most, because you needed her the most.” She shrugs.

“I’m sorry Ava, this must be so difficult. ”

Eleni comes back into the room now, and instantly her eyes lock onto me.

Then her hand does too, onto mine, only it’s just the one hand this time, the fingers tight against mine.

In her other hand she’s holding something.

I don’t see what it is at first. There’s more Greek. This time Sophia translates it for me.

“She’s saying that for every child she looks after, she likes to keep a…

memento, like something to remember them by,” – Sophia sends me a look – “a bit like a serial killer I guess.” She laughs at her own silly joke, and I see she’s doing it only to stop herself from crying, then she keeps translating as Eleni hasn’t stopped speaking.

“OK…In the case of the baby from the murder, she already had one…It seems when the child was born, the mother made a…I don’t know how you say that, a lefkoma gennisis ?

” But then she finds the phrase herself.

“I guess you’d call it a birth memory book – something like that.

Like it has an image from the mother’s pregnancy scan, a handprint of the newborn, that kind of thing…

” Eleni holds it up to me now. It’s light pink, and on the front it has a name, but I can only make out the first letter, a C.

But I hear Eleni say it now. Callie. Callie.

“Callie?”

“Callista,” Maria says. “In Greek it means beautiful…”

I know it. I’ve always known it. Of course I have.

It’s my middle name.