‘I’ve also made supper for tonight – just cold meat, rice and salad, you understand, and Greek yoghurt with fruit for afters. I thought you mightn’t want to go out again this evening. But you’ll have to buy what you need for the rest of the week another time.’
‘Thanks so much,’ Edie said. ‘We weren’t expecting you to provide supper.’
Peering inside the shop, she could see the shelves were well stocked with tins, jars and packets of assorted shapes and sizes. In one corner was a giant-sized rotisserie with delicious-looking golden chickens roasting on the spit, while outside two stands were stacked with fresh fruit and vegetables: white and green asparagus, cucumbers, juicy red tomatoes, big heads of garlic, peas and beans, peppers, radishes, courgettes, fennel and aubergines, plus apricots, loganberries, lemons, peaches, strawberries and mounds of pistachios.
Her mouth watered and she found herself looking forward to eating big salads drizzled with local olive oil good enough to dip your bread into, and even your finger.
Katerina was about to get going again when she and Edie heard a screech behind them.
‘Look out!’
Edie spun round to see Hannah and the others pointing, wild-eyed, to a spot by her feet.
Glancing down, she was startled to see a very small, dark child in nothing but a nappy squatting in front of her, trying its best to pick up a pebble from the ground.
One more step and she’d have fallen over, or worse, on top of the infant.
Her heart fluttered, then started banging against her ribs.
‘Naughty boy!’ came a strange, strangled voice. ‘Put that down!’
A blonde woman with a red face was hurrying out of the shop. She barged past Hannah and Jessica, who were standing side by side, and raced in Edie’s direction.
Just in time, Edie noticed the child succeed in picking up the pebble between finger and thumb and raising it to his mouth. Quick as a flash, she bent over and snatched it from his pudgy little fingers, causing him to wail in high-pitched fury.
‘Sorry, sweetie,’ Edie said, at once relieved and also stricken with guilt. She squatted down to comfort the child.
‘There there… sorry, darling… it’s all right…’
She would have picked him up but his mother got there first.
‘Bad boy, naughty Nikos,’ the woman repeated over and over again, scooping the sobbing toddler into her fleshy arms and squidging his grimy wet cheeks in a hand.
Amid much jiggling and scolding, she kissed him hotly on the lips, forehead and nose.
‘Mamma’s told you not to eat stones. You might’ve choked.’
After a while, the woman glanced up and caught Edie’s eye. Feeling rather as if she were being ticked off herself, Edie quickly popped the offending pebble into a pocket, noticing its hard, sharp edges and thinking it could have done some serious damage.
While all this was going on, a fair-sized crowd had gathered round.
Katerina starting shooing them away as if they were geese, in a rather confusing mixture of Greek and English.
‘Everything is all right, there’s no need to gawp,’ she said fiercely, flapping her arms like imaginary sticks. ‘Elá!Will you please give us some space.’
Reluctantly, the crowd began to disperse, but not until Edie heard some busybody Englishwoman mutter, ‘Irresponsible mother!’ to which her friend replied, ‘Poor child. Did you see its dirty hands and knees?’
When at last the toddler stopped crying, Katerina gave a satisfied nod.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Vasillis,’ she said to the blonde woman, as if the drama of the last five minutes or so had never taken place. ‘I was just pointing out your shop to my new guests. They’re spending a week at Villa Ariadne.’
The blonde woman, who seemed somewhat recovered, blew a straggle of hair off her face and smiled apologetically. She was really rather pretty when she wasn’t shouting, with a round face, dimples in her cheeks, a small squashy nose and sparkly grey eyes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, still clutching the little boy while looking at each of the visitors in turn. ‘He’s that quick, one minute he was there, the next he’d vanished into thin air.
‘One of the others usually looks out for him when I’m serving, but they’ve done a disappearing act on me, too.’
‘The others’, as it turned out, were her three older children, a boy and two girls.
