Free Watching the Wind Blow (The Greek Village Collection Book 9) by Sara Alexi

attention back to the chess board.
    He is a wanted man, the port police are following, and he is serenely considering his next move in chess!
    ‘It’s your go,’ he says and gnaws on the side of his thumb in concentration.
    She looks blankly at the board. Well, what is there for him to do? They are not trying to arrest him. The boat is still motoring along through billowing waves under a blue sky … The whole situation is all pretty calm, really. Chess does seem like the best option to take their mind off an unknown future. The only option, really. What else would they do?
    She opens, a new move.
    ‘Me too,’ he says.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘I have held a good man whose leg was gone.’ He makes his return move. Irini is open-mouthed, the chess game forgotten. She wants to hear of someone else just like her. Find out how he has coped. She is scared that he will not say more. He points at the board, encouraging her move. It is hard to concentrate.
    He looks at the dangling flesh on his little finger.
    ‘Did that happen at the same time?’
    He says nothing, just stares at the board.
    ‘It’s still your go.’
    Perhaps it is better that he doesn’t say any more. Her own images are enough to cope with. She makes a move but the moment she takes her finger off the piece, she knows it is the wrong move. Besides, witnessing all she has witnessed is not the issue, really. It is how she got to be there in the first place that eats away at her.
    Sam makes a counter move and looks at her and narrows his eyes as if to chastise her for her mistake. The sadness she saw earlier is still there, but it is not so evident. He could easily have been one of the people she knew back then.
    The next move she makes is defensive. What chance did she have?
    ‘I grew up on a farm. Well, a sort of farm. It was some fields up on the edge of Athens. It would be worth a fortune now. But we only rented it.’ With him bent forward over the board like that, she has time to study the top of his head. His hair is short but it grows strongly in two different swirls, a double crown. Is that unusual? They had a goat like that on the farm with a double crown. Sort of. Its fur grew in the normal direction up from its nose until it got to its forehead and then it swirled in the other direction, giving it a little fringe that stuck out.
    ‘Mama and Baba grew vegetables and took them to the laiki – the market. Every day, wherever there was one. Some days, they would be up at two in the morning and drive for three hours to sell what they could and then drive home, tend the fields, and go to bed to do it all again the next day.’
    Marina, back in the village, grows vegetables. In the courtyard, she grows winter lettuces and tomatoes along the wall and out in their nearest orange orchard, she has cleared a space and has planted carrots and onions, herbs and squashes. Now that they live there too, Petta has planted potatoes, which Marina has avoided in the past because they are too hard for her to dig, and cheap enough at the market.
    She sighs. A coffee in the courtyard, Angelos playing with… She stops herself. Thoughts like that serve no purpose.
    Sam still hasn’t taken his turn. He looks back at the port police boats. She wants to distract him from thinking about them.
    ‘So from when I was a baby, they left my yiayia, my grandmother, in charge.’ She sighs again but with this sigh, her mouth draws into a straight line. ‘You know what I can remember, and people have told me it is not possible, that our memories don’t go that far back, but mine does. I remember my yiayia passing me when I was still young enough to be in a cot. You know the sort, with bars all the way around.’
    Sam watches her face as she talks. He will not be shocked, he will not need comforting.
    ‘I didn’t like the cot because when everything was quiet, sometimes the rats would come out through the holes in the corners and from behind the few bits of furniture we had, sniffing