Free One Cretan Evening and Other Stories by Victoria Hislop Page B

belly. The dress had been perfectly tailored to conceal her pregnancy but, in the final few months, the darts would be pulled to straining point.
    ‘I’ll be back in a fortnight,’ Komninos said, kissing her lightly on the top of her head. ‘You’ll look after yourself, won’t you? And the baby.’
    They both looked in the same direction, out of the window towards the sea, where the rain now lashed in against the curtain. A streak of lightning cut across the sky.
    ‘Send me a telegram if you need me desperately. But I’m sure you won’t.’
    She said nothing. Nor did she get up.
    ‘I will bring some lovely things back for you,’ he finished, as though he was talking to a child.
    As well as a ship full of silk, he planned to return with jewellery for his wife, something even better than the emerald necklace and matching earrings that he had brought last time. With her jet-black hair, he preferred her in red and would probably buy rubies. Just as with tailored clothes, gems were a way of showing your status and his wife had always been a perfect model for everything he wanted to display.
    As far as he was concerned, life had never been so good. He left the room with a lightness of step.
    Olga stared out at the rain. Finally the intense humidity had given way to a storm. The darkened sky now crackled with lightning and in the slate-grey sea a frenzy of white horses reared and fought and fell into the foam. The street below the Komninos house was soon submerged. Every few minutes a great arc of water curled over the edge of the promenade. It was a tempest of exceptional fury, and the sight of the boats rolling up and down in the bay was enough to bring back to Olga the terrible nausea that had blighted the past few months.
    She got up to secure the window but, catching the strange but pleasing odour of rain on damp cobbles, decided to leave it open. The air seemed almost fresh after the stifling heat of the afternoon, and she lay down again, closed her eyes and enjoyed the gentle breaths of salty air on her cheeks. Within a moment, she was asleep.
    Now she was the lone sailor in a fishing vessel struggling with the rage of the waves. With her dress billowing around her, her loosened hair stuck to her cheeks and the briny waterstinging her eyes, the sunless sky and the landless horizon gave her no indication of the direction she was going. The sails were filled by a powerful southwesterly wind that carried the boat along at an alarming speed, its steep pitch allowing the water to lap over its sides. When the wind suddenly dropped, the sails were left empty and flapping.
    Olga clung on, one hand on the boat’s smooth gunwale and another on the oarlock, desperately trying to keep her head clear of the swinging boom. She did not know if she was safer in or out of the boat as she had never been in one before. The water was already beginning to soak her dress and the spray on her face and inside her throat was starting to make her choke. Water continued to gush into the boat and, as the wind picked up again and filled the mainsail, a gust caused its fatal capsize.
    Perhaps death by drowning would be painless, she thought, giving herself up to the weight of her clothes, which began to pull her down. As she and the boat began to slip steadily beneath the waves, she saw the pale shape of a baby swimming towards her and reached out for him.
    Then there was an almighty crash as if the boat had hit a rock. The naked infant had vanished and now Olga’s gasps for breath were replaced by sobs.
    ‘Kyria Olga! Kyria Olga!’
    Olga could hear a faraway voice, breathless and distraught.
    ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’
    Olga knew the voice. Perhaps rescue was at hand.
    ‘I thought you had fainted!’ Pavlina exclaimed. ‘I thought you had taken a tumble! Panagia mou! I thought you had fallen! It was ever such a loud crash downstairs.’
    Covered in confusion and somewhere between the state of dreaming and waking, Olga