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‘Just a few lines of coke, not much. Kept saying she was tired and wanted to go to sleep.’

As they sat in the car afterwards, Demetrios looked bleak.

‘I pushed her too hard, trying to make her do what I wanted. Shauna, if anything has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I should have been a better father to her. If her mother and I had been less selfish, she wouldn’t be so wild.’

‘You don’t know that. I seem to remember that you had that wild side too. She’s young, and she’s got to work out what to do with her life.’

‘When she was little, I used to take her with me out on the boats. She can sail as well as I can, you know.’

Shauna smiled. ‘I bet you’re a good teacher.’

‘Sometimes … She helped me to build my boathouse. She was only eight when I started to work on it, but she wanted to get involved in everything I was doing. I would bring her with me and she would help until she tired herself out, then I would find her curled up inside one of the boats, asleep under a blanket.’ His eyes were shining at the memory.

‘Oh, my God, Demetrios! Christian said he’d searched the boathouse, but would he have thought to look …?’ They looked at each other, eyes wide.

‘The boathouse …’

He turned the key in the ignition and slammed his foot on the accelerator, and didn’t stop until they reached the harbour.

Chapter 34

Roxy looked at her Bulgari watch; the sun was setting and it was time to head back to the villa. Delphine and Alex would be wondering where she and Shauna had got to.

After leaving an enormous tip – Níko had refused to take any money, no matter how much she had argued with him – she packed her purse, her glasses and her phone into her handbag, a ROX black snakeskin satchel accented with her signature shield and R charm dangling from the handles. Then she stood up and pushed her chair back. She didn’t fancy the long trek up the hill with darkness falling, so she was planning to take a taxi; there were always a few idling by the harbour. As was her habit, instilled by her mother, she paused to make a final check that she hadn’t left anything behind. Nothing on the table, or the seats … but what was that under the table?

She bent to pick it up and saw that it was a passport. Like hers, it was an EU passport, but she could have sworn hers was back at the villa. She flipped it open at the photograph page and saw the unsmiling face of Grace looking back at her with that slightly wide-eyed statue look that characterized passport photos.

A postcard marked the page where she’d had her passport stamped on arrival in Greece. It was an old faded postcard of Ithos that had been torn in two and then stuck together again with Sellotape, which was now yellowing with age and peeling away.

Roxy felt as if the world had stopped turning for a moment. She hadn’t seen this postcard for a very, very long time, but she recognized it immediately. As she turned it over and read the words on the back, she was transported back in time to the moment it had been ripped apart …

Manchester, 1983

Shauna was sitting on the side of her bed in their shared flat in Manchester. Her face was desolate, and Roxy knew that it could only hint at the inner turmoil she was going through.

‘I’ve made you a cup of tea, chuck,’ she said, taking Shauna’s hand and wrapping it around the handle of the mug.

Shauna looked at her blankly. ‘Thanks.’

For once in her life, Roxy was utterly at a loss. What could you say to someone who had just given away the child that they loved? With no words of comfort to offer, she made do with sitting down next to Shauna and wrapping her arms around her. They sat like that, with Roxy holding her tightly, for what seemed like ages. Finally Shauna spoke.

‘If I’d known how I’d feel today, Roxy, I’d never have taken that job on St Helena. I’d have walked away as fast as I could in the opposite direction.’

‘I know, honey.’ She looked down and realized that Shauna was holding a postcard. ‘What’s that.’

Shauna handed it to her. ‘It’s his goodbye to me.’

Roxy read it. ‘“Don’t wait for me”? Funny way to say goodbye.’

‘When I look at it now, it makes me feel sick.’

‘Then why don’t you throw it away?’

‘Something keeps stopping me.’

‘Want me to do it for you?’

Shauna nodded, a lone tear carving a path down her face. Roxy’s anger flared at the reminder of what that bastard had done, dumping her friend like this. He was the one who should have been suffering the consequences, but instead it was poor Shauna. When they had left Ithos, Roxy had thought that it was herself who was pregnant, but that, thankfully, had turned out to be a false alarm, only for Shauna to discover instead that she was. It was a horrible, cruel twist of fate.