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‘My housekeeper brings this down from the house for me when I come to look at the olive trees.’ She indicated a chair. ‘Please, sit down and rest.’

She poured Shauna a glass of the juice and handed it to her. Shauna was desperately thirsty, but tried not to gulp it down greedily.

‘Do you grow olives yourself?’ Shauna asked.

‘Sadly, yes. I have some gardeners who come and help me, but this was my husband’s passion. And now he is no longer with us …’ Elana said this with a tilt of her head, lowering her eyes. Despite herself, Shauna felt a touch of sympathy, knowing what it was like to feel grief.

‘I’m so sorry, I also lost my husband not long ago.’

Elana looked up. ‘You are young to be a widow, and for that I am sorry.’ She topped up Shauna’s glass. ‘You are young and beautiful; you will find love again.’

Shauna suppressed a smile; this woman who had done so much to break her heart all those years ago had the nerve to talk about love!

‘It would make me truly happy if my son could help me out here, there is much to do, but he never has the time.’

‘What does your son do?’ Shauna couldn’t help this streak of deviousness, telling herself it was only her Irish nosiness at work.

‘He is head of our family business, but these days he seems to prefer hiding in his boathouse to running the company.’

Shauna tried to imagine Demetrios working in a boathouse, but her mind’s eye could only conjure up the young man he had been. She found it hard to remember the glimpse she’d caught of the man he had become.

‘Perhaps it’s time for him to do something different?’

‘He may think that,’ Elana sniffed disapprovingly, ‘but the business needs him, and the family needs him at the helm.’

Nothing had changed, Shauna thought; still the same demands, the same pressures on him. Was that why he was divorced? she wondered.

‘I am being rude. Tell me about yourself,’ Elana said.

Shauna trotted out the line she always used when she met people who didn’t know who she was. She hated bragging and, when she wasn’t promoting a movie, she disliked all the attention her life in the spotlight brought. ‘Oh, I work in the media. I’m here because … well, let’s just say I’m looking for some peace.’

‘Well, this is a wonderful place for a holiday. We have a saying in Ithos: “Óla káto apó to fengári eínai edó”, which means “everything under the moon is here”.’

‘That’s a lovely saying.’

‘I hope you find what you are looking for. Now, can I get you something to eat?’

‘No thank you, I really must be going.’

‘Well, it is very nice to have met you. To get to the beach path, walk in a straight line through the grove,’ she said, pointing the way. ‘At the end is a wooden gate; walk though it and the path will take you straight down.’

‘Goodbye, thank you again for the drink. It was very kind of you.’

As she headed off following Elana’s directions, the woman called out after her, ‘Goodbye, I didn’t catch your name …’

But Shauna carried on her way and pretended not to hear as she walked through the gate and headed down the path towards the beach.

Chapter 28

After hours of snorkelling and swimming, the afternoon had passed into evening and they both realized how hungry they were. There was still plenty of food left over in the cool box Christian had brought: slices of soft, fresh pitta, creamy taramasalata and tzatziki as well as slices of spanakopita, which combined the delicious crunch of filo pastry with salty feta and fresh spinach. They spread it all out on Grace’s sarong, which stood in for a picnic blanket. Christian had even remembered to bring a chilled bottle of retsina, which he poured into the two mismatched glasses he’d found in the boathouse. The finishing touch was a large candle in a storm lamp he’d lit. It danced and flickered with hypnotic golden light in the balmy night air.

Now that they’d eaten, the candles were starting to gutter and Grace felt sleepily relaxed as they sat side by side.

‘Look at the colour of the full moon.’ He pointed into the sky. The moon was rising from the east and was already quite high in the sky. The moon was bigger and brighter than she’d ever seen it; there was a pink tinge to it that she had never seen before, and a million tiny points of light seemed to sparkle in the sky like a jewelled canopy.

‘I’ve never seen the moon look so beautiful,’ she said, transfixed by its hypnotic luminescence.

‘We have our own moon on Ithos,’ he told her.