Page 97 of Villa of Secrets

‘Ah yes, now we come to Irini.’ Nathanial stared at the ground as if searching for words among the wild flowers and blades of grass. He rubbed his hand over his beard. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. I’m sorry, little one. Your friend Irini . . . her body was found this morning.’

Chapter 41

Naomi closed the diary. As the sun rose, she had caught up to Rebecca’s bookmark. She twisted her wedding ring. A family heirloom Bubba had said when she slipped it off her finger and gave it to Costa, before their marriage.

‘It belonged to my husband’s mother and then to me, Costa,’ Bubba had said. ‘Naomi’s mother, Sonia, wore it on her wedding day, and now it must go to her first-born daughter, your wife to be.’

Naomi regarded it as the most special thing she owned.

‘How come it wasn’t lost at sea, Bubba?’ she asked later.

‘Because the fates played a hand, child. Sonia’s fingers swelled when she carried Rebecca. When they went fishing for the very last time’ – her lips trembled and she took a moment – ‘that night, she oiled her finger and pulled it off, because of the discomfort. She intended to get it stretched a little.’ The old lady dabbed her eyes. ‘I found it by her bedside the next day and I’ve worn it ever since.’

Despite Naomi’s questions, Bubba had refused to talk about her wedding or about Naomi’s grandfather, who she now suspected was Giovanni.

She opened the diary and continued reading, eager to discover the reason for Irini’s tragic death.

Nathanial’s news escaped my logic. ‘Sorry, I didn’t understand you,’ I said, his words swimming around in my head, jumbled in my mind, impossible to comprehend.

His eyebrows bunched and a small vein throbbed on his forehead. His eyes flicked up to meet mine and stayed there. ‘The girl – your friend, Irini – from the hut. We found her in the valley. She’s dead. I’m sorry, little one.’ He lowered his voice, his right fist opening and closing.

‘The traitors – whoever Irini passed her information on to – tortured her and threw her body off the mountainside, and they’re going to wish they hadn’t.’

Nathanial’s words seemed delayed in the air between us before arriving in a nightmare of comprehension. My screams came in single file, straight from my heart, piercing the sky and ripping through everything sacred.

‘Irini!’ I shrieked. ‘No! This can’t happen. It’s impossible!’

Nathanial clasped a hand over my mouth and bundled me into the villa. ‘Shush, little one.’ He gave me a glass of raki and ordered me to drink it.

Irini . . . dead! I feared it, yet denied it to myself. She would never stay away from me, not for any reason on earth. Now, I couldn’t tell her the whole truth – that I truly loved her, that although I had secretly married Giovanni, our love was entirely different. How mean were the fates to keep that from us?

I don’t know how long I vented my distress in the villa, but gradually the hysteria left me. With my heart nothing but splintered shards, I continued to hear the echo of Nathanial’s words, ‘Your friend, Irini, she’s dead.’

Oh, Irini, what you feared so much would happen to me has happened to you! Why is life so unjust? I was the one who had killed, yet you suffered torture and murder. Is this my punishment for killing?

I found Nathanial sitting on the wall outside.

‘Where is she? I must go to her,’ I said, my voice thick with emotion.

‘We buried her. You shouldn’t see her, believe me.’

I ran at him, pounding my fists violently at his chest. ‘Please, I have to! You don’t understand, Nathanial. I loved her with all my heart and I never told her! I pretended we were only the closest of friends, and now I can’t tell her at all.’

He stood firm, taking my blows until I collapsed, sobbing, into his arms.

‘Nathanial, please, take me to see her.’

‘Like I said, they tortured her, little one. They blinded her.’

‘Blinded?! Please, I’m begging you!’

Nathanial sighed. ‘All right. We’ll go together.’

We walked side by side, his hand on my shoulder, through the woods, up towards the Catholic Cloisters of Mount Filerimos. The wind howled through the pines above our heads, like miserable ghosts watching us mourning the death of my true love. Outside the walls, between the trees, a patch of freshly turned ground marked Irini’s grave. The nightmare that so far had only been words now became real. My skin shrank over my body.

Irini, sweet Irini!

‘I want to look upon her face for the very last time,’ I said in a whisper.