Edie curled into a little ball on her lounger and hugged her knees. She wished none of this was happening and it was just a bad dream. It felt like one.
‘What about us? What can we do?’ she asked, pressing her palms together and squeezing.
Ralph stood up and stretched his back; he’d been sitting for too long.
‘We wait here for a bit, then the police want to meet us in the village at 5p.m. They’re obviously going to be asking round to see if anyone’s seen or knows anything. They’re based in Chania, so we’ve arranged to meet in a café. They might take this whole thing more seriously once they’ve put faces to our names and they’ll be able to see how worried we are. To be honest, though, they sound pretty competent, like they know what they’re doing. I suspect people, visitors I mean, probably go missing on the island all the time.’
Edie and Hannah nodded.
‘I can’t help thinking about Michael Mosley,’ Edie said with a shiver, remembering the UK doctor who’d recently gone for a walk on a different Greek island and who’d tragically died, most probably of heatstroke.
‘He was much older than Jessica,’ Ralph pointed out. ‘And the circumstances were completely different. We haven’t had lunch,’ he added, deliberately changing the subject. ‘What is there? I don’t mind making something.’
Neither of the women was hungry but he insisted they should eat to keep up their strength.
‘I think we’ve got bread and there should be some leftover cheese,’ said Edie, rising too. ‘And a few tomatoes. Let’s have that. We can buy some other stuff in the village for later.’
As they all walked towards the villa, Edie suddenly stopped in her tracks and let out a small cry.
‘What about Mac? I completely forgot about him. Do we even know where he is?’
Ralph and Hannah looked blank.
‘Oughtn’t we to find him and tell him what’s happening?’ Edie went on. ‘Shouldn’t we ask him to come with us later, too?’
Hannah’s body stiffened and her face twisted into a grimace. ‘Absolutely not. I expect he’s upstairs in our room, sulking, waiting for me to go and apologise. If he was at all concerned about Jessica, he’d be down here with us now. I really don’t think he cares about her at all,’ she added, narrowing her eyes. ‘To be honest, he’d probably rather she was dead.’
* * *
Hannah’s comment left Ralph and Edie speechless and the three of them barely spoke over lunch or opened their mouths on the walk to the village.
The Libyan Sea in the distance was deep turquoise and it glittered and gleamed like the surface of a brand-new car, but Edie barely noticed.
She was reflecting on the fact that though she couldn’t take Hannah’s words seriously, they’d still managed to shock her.
Edie wouldn’t have believed her friend could even think such a terrible thing about her husband, let alone say it out loud – and with such conviction.
Hannah must hate Mac yet, at the same time, she seemed to want to stay with him and he with her. Edie couldn’t understand it.
Compared with those two, her own marriage seemed pretty good. Yes, Ralph had strayed, but he’d owned up, apologised and said he bitterly regretted it. And Edie was as certain as she could be it hadn’t happened again.
They both missed the kids terribly since they’d left home, and they’d stopped doing things together and having fun. But despite all the dramas on this holiday, it had proved she did still like and fancy Ralph. And his calm strength had reminded her just how wonderful he was in a crisis. Perhaps there was hope for them yet.
On reaching Porto Liakáda, the three of them soon spotted two police officers, a man and woman, in dark blue peaked caps, pale blue shirts and navy trousers.
They had official-looking badges and guns on their hips, but they didn’t seem threatening.
The man, who was tall and broad, with a pot belly and a big black moustache, seemed to be sharing a joke with a waiter in the café where they’d all arranged to meet.
Meanwhile, the woman, in dark sunglasses, had long, loose blonde hair, an attractive face and a large, shelf-like bust, straining at the buttons of her shirt. It was quite difficult to ignore.
After a moment or two, she left her male colleague chatting to the waiter and made her way towards April’s shop. Edie, Ralph and Hannah were a few minutes early and watched her go in.
When the male officer looked round and saw them at the bottom of the stone steps leading to and from the village, he ended his conversation and headed in their direction.
Soon, he was shaking hands and introducing himself as Police Officer Ioannis Karanasios, from the local Tourist Police department. He seemed very friendly and approachable.
Edie noticed he was holding a clipboard, attached to which were some of the photos of Jessica that she and Hannah had forwarded.
