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

he asks. In theory, she knows how, sort of. She could take the cover off the boom and undo the mainsail. She could probably figure which ropes to pull to get it aloft but then? She has seen tourists leaving harbour with the mainsail flapping pointlessly, more of a hindrance than an aid. She doubts she would be able to do any better.
    ‘You have no idea, do you?’ Sam asks. He looks at the port police boats behind them. They are getting no closer. ‘I don’t suppose we could outrun them anyway, even if there was a strong wind and we knew what we were doing.’
    Irini wonders at what point he began to see them as a we . She suspects it is a positive sign as far as her safety is concerned. With that thought, she wonders if she had better check in with the port police, find out what is happening. Surely it is just a matter of coming alongside and telling him that he is under arrest. Would he be stupid enough to use his weapon against them? There are two boats and no doubt half a dozen officers on each - all armed, presumably.
    She looks at Sam. He is in a bad position, a sitting duck. Why have the police not come already?
    ‘So, with two parents and a grandmother, how did you end up on the streets? Did you run away?’ He seems to have lost interest in the chess. He leans back and stretches his arms out on either side of him, along where the cockpit seat moulds with the upper decking. His head rocks back and he closes his eyes.
    ‘It was black and white growing up,’ Irini begins. ‘My parents loved me, adored me even.’ A smile crosses her face and she sinks, just a little, into her seat. ‘Sometimes, if they came home late, they would wake me just to see me, which I would love.’ Irini stretches out, mirroring his position but she keeps her eyes open, watching his face. Talking to him has taken such a weight from her, the least she can do is entertain him with a tale, a bit of her history, to keep his mind from the port police.
    ‘But Yiayia treated me like I was a problem. It got to the point as I grew that if I agreed with everything she said, then she was bearable, but I felt like I was living a lie to agree with some of her views. If I disagreed with her, it was as if I had unleashed a dragon.’ The simile amuses her and she laughs in the back of her throat, briefly. Sam still has his eye closed but he actually smiles. The creases on either side of his mouth are exaggerated and dimples form.
    ‘But one day, they did not come home. I went to bed and in my dreams I waited for them to wake me, but they didn’t. The next day after school, I rushed back to the farm expecting to see Mama bent from her hips weeding, Baba lifting and digging. But the field was empty.’
    She stops talking. The emotions are still too fresh even though it was over twenty years ago. Yiayia didn’t need to tell her. She knew something had happened and the world she looked out on stretched away, seeming impossibly big and very, very lonely.
    ‘Irini,’ her yiayia called. She never did call her Rini, always Irini, as if being slightly formal would keep her at a distance. It did.
    ‘Come in,’ the old woman commanded. But Irini could not see the point of moving. There was no van in the drive. There was no Mama or Baba to love her. She stood in the drive unmoving and ever so slowly, she began to tremble. It started with her legs, up into her stomach, which quivered and knotted, seeped up into her chest, strangling her breath as it rose to her throat. Her mouth wobbled, her bottom lip quivered, and her vision blurred, swimming in unspilt tears.
    ‘Come in, do you hear me?’ Yiayia shouted, but her legs no longer seemed to be part of her and so she didn’t move. It took her yiayia’s hand on the back of her neck, gripping and pushing her, to make her walk into the house.
    ‘Where are they?’ she asked, once out of the glare of the late afternoon sun, but she knew the answer.
    Yiayia just looked around the room, her eyes so wide, as