Page 75 of Deep Blue Lies

SEVENTY-FOUR

Mum offers to drop me back in Skalio with the car she’s rented, but I refuse.

I don’t know why exactly. Maybe I just want to be alone.

Maybe it’s that I don’t want her to see the horrible little apartment I’ve been living in.

But the bus takes ages to arrive so I just end up walking, and then I’m committed, and I have to walk the whole five miles from Kastria to Skalio.

It’s good for thinking. Or maybe for not thinking.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing. Finding ways to let time pass by without having to examine this – wound – that I’ve opened up in my life.

Maybe Mum was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here and dug into this?

What has it actually achieved? So, I know I was adopted, what does that get me?

But the more I do actually start thinking, the more my mind drags me towards Imogen.

Why did she come here? Even if she is taking anti-psychotic drugs because she’s crazy. What is it she thinks she can tell me?

I wonder if maybe it’s just the baby thing.

Perhaps she knows about what happened with Mum and Simon, and she wanted to confess to that.

If so, it would make sense that maybe Simon had his men attack her – maybe he regretted telling me the story?

But at the same time, what does that have to do with me , really?

And as bad as it was, it was a lucky escape.

It didn’t harm the child, so why try and kill over it?

Unless…unless it somehow contributed to what happened that night?

It seems an impossible coincidence that it happened and then that night they both died. But what happened to link those events?

And if it wasn’t Simon who attacked Imogen, then who was it?

Kostas? Duncan? Or are the police right, and it was just bad luck?

She was careless with her money, and a gang of thieves saw her?

It’s hard to accept. But then, the police are the police.

And they’re going to know far more about this kind of thing than me.

I have to stop off at a little shop that’s on the way, and I buy a bottle of water and a bag of peaches.

I eat two of them quickly, sucking the sweet juice as I bite.

I think for a moment without really thinking, just that the fruit here is totally different to what I’m used to at home.

But then I realise what I’d just said in my mind.

This is my home. I’m twice as Greek as I thought I was.

I believed I had an English mother and a Greek father, probably a waiter.

But now I know that’s not true, both my parents were Greek.

It’s just that I’ll probably never know a thing about them.

The one thing I do know is that Alythos isn’t my home after all. I’ve nothing to do with this island, no connection at all. Everything that happened here might be part of Karen Whitaker’s history, but it’s not part of mine. There’s no reason for me to even be here.

Sophia calls me half an hour later. She’s finished work at the dive centre, and she offers to borrow Maria’s car and come and pick me up. But I tell her not to bother, I’ve almost walked the whole way back to Skalio now and I’m shattered. I just want to get back to my apartment and crawl into bed.