Page 53 of The Little Greek Guesthouse

Nina didn’t need to speak.

‘Both, eh? What they do?’

And so she found herself sitting at Maria’s table, sipping coffee and eating baklava, and sharing all her woes. Maria, who had been walking with almost no trouble at all without her boot, nodded and patted her arm, sucked in her lips and shook her head, pushed the plate of pastries over to encourage Nina to take another. She did.

‘I just feel kind of annoyed,’ Nina said, taking another bite and registering, despite her misery, the delicious sweet, moist almond flavour filling her mouth.

‘With which one?’

She shrugged. ‘Both,’ she said, the word muffled by food. ‘More than annoyed with Vassilis, I’m done with him. But Baba – even though he did what I asked him to and found out the plans for the hotel, I’m a bit fed up with the way he laughed at me suggesting we stay and run the house ourselves.’

‘Okay.’ Maria placed her coffee cup on the table with a clip, folding her arms and leaning forward. ‘First things, I am glad you are done with this Vassilis. Not a good boy, like I told you before.’ She pulled a face and lifted her shoulders. ‘Not like my grandson, he’s a good boy.’

She smiled, looking smug. Nina couldn’t disagree.

‘But this with your baba –’ She blew out a breath, her cheeks rounding out like peaches. ‘He always was a silly boy, so stubborn. You want me to tell him off? He is scared of me, I know it.’

Nina smiled. ‘I think I can handle it, I have an idea. Thanks, though.’

Maria sighed and patted Nina’s arm. The skin on her palm was plump and calloused. ‘Don’t be too hard on your baba. He grew up – not like you.’

‘He was just saying that they struggled . . . I didn’t really know. He never talks about it.’

‘Things were hard and so this is why he came to Metalios for the summers and stayed with his uncle, his mama and baba, they had to work and it was hard with money, so this gave them a bit of help. But Theo – I think perhaps this is why he was such a naughty boy, he always felt not so good as Sofia and Yiannis and all the others.’

‘Poor Baba,’ Nina said, her voice soft. She’d never thought much about Theo as a boy, and had never realised that he’d had it so hard. The image of him as a child, away from home and feeling inferior to his friends, brought a lump to her throat.

Maria grunted. ‘Well. He still was naughty. Very cheeky. But I think this is why he wants all this money.’ She shook her head, pulling the same face she used to make at Nina’s attempts at cooking. ‘He wants to make sure you have a better life.’

‘That’s what he said,’ Nina agreed. ‘But Maria, why can’t he see he’s already given me a better life? I don’t need all this money to be happy. I love this place.’

She looked up as she said this, gazing wistfully out of the open door, expecting to see the view of the sea. But her gaze fell on George, standing in the doorway, a smile playing on his lips as he listened to her.

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘Ah, at last, I thought you were never coming home, leaving your poor yia-yia all alone,’ Maria said, the grouchiness of her words at odds with her wide smile and hurried steps to greet George. She reached up to pinch his cheeks and then kiss them. He grinned past her at Nina.

‘Still plenty of time, what are you making such a fuss for?’ he said, his tone affectionate.

‘Time for what?’ Nina asked.

Maria turned to her, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Snorkelling.’

There was a time when Nina would have laughed at the idea of this eighty-year-old woman snorkelling. Now, she barely batted an eyelid. ‘What about your foot?’

Maria looked down at her foot as though she’d forgotten it was there. ‘Pfft. Fine now. All better, eh? Paddleboarding next.’

‘Okay, well let’s hold off on that for a while,’ George said. He placed his arm gently around her shoulder and guided her back towards the table. ‘Not quite that recovered!’

Nina stood. She was aware, as George smiled at her, that her tangled hair was tied haphazardly into an old scarf and the tatty t-shirt and shorts she wore were faded and paint-splattered. Her nails were ragged, the varnish chipped, and she wore no makeup.

And none of it mattered.

The shame that she’d always felt if she hadn’t worked on her appearance, and the associated image of her mum groomed and ready for an evening out, failed to appear. The sense that she was somehow letting Clare down if she didn’t strive to emulate that glamour had gone, leaving her with a clear, calm sense of knowing who she was, and who her mum had been.

She smiled up at George. His gaze on her was warm. He focused briefly on her lips, and cleared his throat, his cheeks colouring a little. She realised that she felt no self-consciousness at him seeing her like this, confident to be her unvarnished self in his presence. He, in turn, smiled, apparently unable to look away. An intensity that, from someone else, would make her feel awkward. But she felt only that she wanted to stay here, in the warmth of his gaze.

Maria’s dark little eyes snapped between the two of them. She lifted her eyebrows.