Page 93 of Deep Blue Lies

I leave the apartment and make my way through the town towards the seafront.

The sun is still warm on my face, even though it’s late in the day.

I’m glad I took my sunglasses and a hat.

I pause as I pass Maria’s supermarket, but it’s not her waiting at the till this afternoon, it’s another woman instead who I still only know by sight.

I step inside. By the door there’s a fridge with a few bottles of soft drinks and a few of white wine.

I pick one out, feeling the cool, heavy weight of it, and take it to the till, where the woman wraps it in a sheet of paper as I pay the few euros.

She gives me a friendly, sympathetic smile and I guess she knows my story now. It’s a small place, Alythos.

I keep going, passing the harbour, with the fishing boats and the few small yachts resting perfectly still on the mirror-like water.

Each one sits on its own reflection, and you could take a photograph with the sun going down behind and turn it into a postcard, just like the ones that sit in the racks in the restaurants and shops here, for the tourists to remember the beauty of this place when they go home.

Most of the restaurants are already open, getting ready for the evening rush.

But I don’t stop. I walk on, towards the dive centre .

Two of the boats are just coming back from wherever they’ve been this afternoon.

Even from here I can make out the TEAM lettering on the backs of the staff’s T-shirts.

And as the first boat comes nearer, I see that it’s Kostas driving, with his son Theo standing up in the front of the boat.

They slow as they come into the shallow water near the jetty.

Here Theo leaps off expertly, ducking down to secure the boat before running back to start unloading the equipment.

They haven’t been told yet – Theo and Alex – that I’m their half-sister.

But I met with Kostas and his wife Alexa the other night and they’re understanding.

Or at least as understanding as I have any right to expect.

Kostas had no idea of Imogen’s pregnancy, and it all happened five years before he even met Alexa, so it’s not like he’s done anything wrong.

And he needn’t have anything to do with me, but he said he wants to acknowledge the responsibility that he has for me, and Alexa did too, which was kind.

I’m not sure what any of that means though, but it feels like a promising start. To something.

I sit down on the soft, warm sand. Now the equipment has been unloaded I watch Theo push the boat out.

He looks excited because Kostas is going to let him take it along the bay to the harbour where the boats are stored overnight.

Barefoot he leaps aboard and seats himself on the centre console, his back straight and proud.

Alex jumps aboard too. Then Theo very carefully lowers the propellor into the water and backs the RIB out into the bay.

I see Kostas watching them, his face wearing that dark expression that first scared me, but I now see is nothing more than a reflection of his belief that things should be done the right way.

Kostas doesn’t take his eyes off his boys until they slowly and carefully drive the powerful boat around the harbour wall.

And then my new brothers move out of sight.

Sophia is driving the other boat. She had to wait for Theo to clear the jetty before she could get in, but now her and Kostas and the other TEAM members unload the half-dozen oxygen tanks onto the pontoon, and begin to carry them back up to the centre.

I get up now too, and jog down to lend a hand.

Sophia greets me with a hi, a touch of my shoulder.

And then there’s a surprise. There’s a yip, squeaky and excited, and suddenly the puppy is among us, still on the long lead, with Maria on the other end and apologising for the chaos the dog is causing.

But no one minds. Sophia bends down and picks it up, nuzzling her nose against its wet black button, while its pink tongue covers her face with kisses.

It’s the puppy from Nikos Papadakis, the runt of the litter.

I’m not sure what’s going on with Maria and Nikos – Sophia isn’t either – but they’ve been spending a bit of time together, and now Maria has the dog.

She’s called her Callie. It seemed fitting.

Twenty minutes pass and the centre is packed up for the night, and Maria’s taken Callie away too.

There’s another client-instructor meal tonight, but I’ve already said I’m not going this evening, and when I did, Kostas gave Sophia the night off too.

So that soon all the dive-centre staff and clients have left and it’s just Sophia and me left.

The sun is now almost touching the water in front of us.

We sit, with our backs against the warm wooden side of the centre, and I pull the bottle of wine from my bag, while Sophia holds out two plastic wine glasses with a dramatic flourish.

“Ta da.”

“I really shouldn’t, you know. I’m technically a Mormon.”

She pushes me aside in disgust. “Bet you didn’t remember an opener?”

I confess I didn’t, and she climbs back to her feet. She disappears inside for a moment, then reappears holding a corkscrew.

“OK, so I can’t think of everything. Only most things.”

She hands me the corkscrew and I open the bottle, then slosh a serving of wine into each glass.

It’s still cool, sweet and refreshing.

“You know, there’s one thing I still haven’t told you,” I say, without looking at her. When I do, she has one eyebrow raised.

“Go on. ”

I suppress a smile. “When the DNA test said I wasn’t Mandy and Jason’s baby…” I hesitate, but not for long. “I thought that you might be. I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Me?” She breaks into a look of surprise. “Why would I be that baby?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. We nearly have the same birthday. You’re Greek. It just seemed to make sense.”

She thinks about this for a few moments, then settles herself more comfortably on the sand.

“That’s funny. You should have said something.

I always knew exactly who my mother was.

” She shakes her head. “I mean, my mother is Maria as far as I’m concerned, but she never hid from me that I was adopted, and who my birth parents were.

I’ll tell you about it sometime. But not now. ”

She holds up her glass to mine, and we touch them together.

“You’re an idiot, Ava.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Yamas! ” Sophia says. Cheers.

“ Yamas ,” I reply. She looks thoughtful at my pronunciation.

“We’re going to have to teach you some better Greek, if you’re staying,” she says. And I’m quiet, sipping on the wine. “ Are you staying?” She raises an eyebrow to me.

I still don’t speak, but after a few moments I reach out and touch her face. Softly at first, but then pulling her gently around to face me, and then I lean forward and kiss her.

A moment later I pull back. And think. Am I staying?

Right now I’m pretty happy here. Sophia wants to talk with Kostas, to convince him that it makes good business sense to expand the dive centre to include the other water sports she wants to teach, and that sounds like a fun thing to be involved in.

But eventually I think I want to go back to medicine.

To finish my degree. Maybe not in Sunderland – definitely not in Sunderland – maybe not even in England.

And like my old tutor said, maybe only when I’ve grown up a bit.

I take another sip of wine. The sun is half gone now, a perfect half-circle, still too bright to quite see as it slips away .

“I don’t know.” Finally I answer Sophia’s question. “But maybe I don’t need to know right now?”

And finally that thought doesn’t scare me. Because, for the first time in my whole life, I know where I come from.

Finally, I know who I am.

*

If you were swept away by Deep Blue Lies, make sure to check out Gregg Dunnett’s number one bestselling book Little Ghosts :

My sister’s name was Layla. I know who killed her. She told me.

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