Page 1 of The Silent Sister

Manolis Lucatos burst into the taverna, his eyes blazing.

‘Where is she?’ He spotted his eldest daughter in the corner by the bar, deep in conversation with the man he hated most. Nikos Makris. ‘So, the rumours are true, then?’

Cassia looked in horror as her father approached. She grasped her boyfriend’s hand. Complete silence descended on the bar as her father marched over to where she sat. Grabbing her arm, he dragged her from her seat.

‘You’re hurting me. Get off!’

Nikos came between father and daughter, but was pushed away by Manolis’s free arm and fell to the floor.

‘I’ll deal with you later, Makris.’ He turned back to his daughter. ‘And as for you, you’re coming home with me.’ Her father’s voice rose to a bellow. ‘No daughter of mine is going to be a plaything for a commie bastard.’

Cassia looked back at Nikos, who was being helped up from the floor. ‘You can’t make me! I love him and there’s nothing you can do to stop me seeing him. He’s worth ten of you and your fascist friends.’

Audible gasps reverberated around the bar. No one argued with the generally well-respected village doctor, especially when it came to politics. He raised a hand as if to strike his daughter, loosening his hold on her arm. Cassia ran back to Nikos.

‘You come home with me now! If you choose that communist over your family, you are dead to me! You will never show your face in my house again.’ Manolis’s face was red and blotchy, his stance defiant. ‘Well? What’s it going to be?’

Cassia’s eyes burned with tears. ‘ Antío , Baba. I’m going nowhere.’

Her father turned and strode out of the taverna to the sound of applause from everyone present.