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‘The school were furious; they banned me from swimming lessons for the entire term.’
‘So they refused to teach you the one thing that might have saved you?’
‘I guess... Anyway, it didn’t matter. I changed schools soon after that.’ She looked down at him. ‘Who taught you?’
‘I don’t know.’ Costa shrugged. ‘I just swam...’ She frowned. ‘Galen and I used to swim in the sea each morning, further out each time.’
‘Galen’s your friend?’ she checked, for she’d heard Kristina say his name.
‘Not really a friend. We were at school together for a while, and then in the military. Now we share an office building and I’m constantly being warned not to borrow his miserable PA...’
‘Sounds like a friend to me.’
‘Maybe,’ he agreed. ‘We used to call himrompótat school—robot.’
‘That’s so mean.’
‘No, it was a compliment. He’s brilliant—like, seriously so.’ He smiled then. ‘Very serious. He’s why I can’t fly you on a private jet...’
‘And I thought you were principled?’
‘Nope.’
She thought he was about to haul himself out, but then he noticed her eyes on the water, as if he saw her longing to get in.
‘No diving allowed,’ he teased and offered his hand.
There was absolutely no ulterior motive behind it, she told herself. To Costa the pool was for swimming, and it was clear he found the water relaxing.
So Mary accepted the invitation and took his hand and dropped in, feeling the embrace of the water and the steadiness of his hand as she searched for the bottom.
‘Should we move to the shallow end?’ Mary asked, because while Costa appeared to be standing, she could not feel the floor.
‘There isn’t one,’ he told her. ‘This would have been afrigidarium. People would come here after their time in the warmer pools.’
‘It’s warm, though...’
‘We’re not in Ancient Greece now.’
Still holding his hand, she took a breath and submerged herself, and came up to see his smile.
‘If you want, I can teach you to swim.’
She gave a slightly mocking laugh, for she wassonot falling for that, but Costa did not return it.
‘I told you the night we met. I don’t do double speak.’
Mary rather wished he did, though, as he placed her hands back on the stone edge. She wishedhishands could be on her, and that they might linger and events might unfold. Yet Costa had told her it was for her to make such a move.
‘Stretch out on your front...just get used to the water,’ he told her, as he did the same, and she clung on to the edge with both hands, slowly getting used to the weightlessness of the water. ‘My office is in Kolonaki in Athens,’ he said, and then he began to tell her more of what she might need to know—that his office looked over an ancient square, that his apartment was a drive away and overlooked the ocean. ‘I swim every morning. You’d know that.’
He gave her a smile as they lay on their fronts and she turned to him. ‘And I don’t join you?’ Mary smiled.
Not yet, Costa was about to say, but instead he looked away. Even if it was the type of thing he might say when they were playing their parts, there was no room for blurred lines here.
They lay on their fronts, holding the stone edge, not touching, just floating, as the worries of the world dispersed into the mineral-rich water.
‘How did your boss take it?’ he asked.
