Free One Way Ticket by Evie Evans

it was. What’s she
meant to have done?”
    Aunt June lowered her voice even though we
were the only ones in her villa. “I asked around, discreetly, about the thefts
at the CrossGlobal club. That’s the name I got back. You must be careful though,
I don’t want it to come back to me. Alright?”
    “Alright!” I got up and ran to where I’d
dropped my bag earlier. “Thanks Aunt June, I’ll tell Addi now.” The poor little
soul was probably crying into a glass of beer, this would cheer him up.
    I had a few numbers of people from the
office programmed into a new mobile phone. Sergeant H had insisted every staff
member provide a mobile phone number so we could be contacted at all times. It
was a bit rich as the department wasn’t prepared to pay for our phones themselves.
My cheap pay as you go phone lived, permanently switched off, at the bottom of
my bag.
    Addi’s mobile phone number wasn’t in my
list but I had his landline so I gave that a ring.
    “Yassas?” came the response in Greek.
    The voice was female and sounded middle
aged. Was this Addi’s infamous mother?
    I asked to speak to Addi in my best Greek.
    “Who is this?” the woman replied in English.
That answered the question of whether I speak Greek with an English accent.
    “Can you tell him it’s Jennifer? I’m a work
colleague.”
    “Jennifer? You are not a police officer.”
It wasn’t a question. This was definitely Addi’s mother, I was getting a sense
of dragon from her imperious tone.
    “No, that’s right. Is Addi there?”
    “My son is busy with important things. You
should leave him alone, I think.”
    That told me. Before I could say anymore,
she put the phone down. Poor Addi. I could understand now why he looked
depressed.
    “Was he pleased?” Aunt June asked when I
got back to the kitchen.
    “Didn’t get through. His mother doesn’t
want me talking to him.”
    “Did she say why?” Aunt June asked,
getting two plates out of the cupboard.
    “No, just put the phone down. Is dinner
ready?”
    “Yes, sit down.”
    She didn’t need to ask me twice.
    “Perhaps she thinks you’re going to run
off with her son,” Aunt June added, putting a plate in front of me.
    “What?”
    “It’s a worry for some people, that their
child could marry a foreigner, someone not of their religion. You’re a xenos
here, you know.”
    “I have no intention of marrying anybody.”
    Aunt June began dishing up her stew.
“Thought we might eat a bit earlier tonight. Now it’s not hot in the day, there
doesn’t seem so much point in waiting.”
    “It’s quite hot in here,” I pointed out,
taking off the thin cardigan I’d been wearing. The windows had steamed up and
were completely opaque.
    “I put the heating on, it’s been such a
cold day.”
    “Cold? This would be a summer’s day in Swindon!”
    “I’m used to summers here.” As if to
demonstrate, Aunt June pulled the zip higher on her fleece. “Now the nights are
closing in, you’ll need something warmer on your bed. I’ll try to find my spare
hot water bottle too.”
    “I’ll be alright for a while yet, it’s
still a lot warmer than home.”
    “You had a bad winter last year, didn’t
you?”
    Did she mean me personally or Swindon in general? The answer was yes to both.
    “There was a lot of snow, wasn’t there?”
she added.
    “Yes, it wasn’t very nice. Made it hard to
get around.”
    “I miss the snow.”
    I looked up from my plate. This was the
first time Aunt June had really mentioned Swindon or the past. “Yes?”
    “We used to go up Cooper’s Hill with the
sled, me and your grandfather, when it snowed.” She had a faraway look on her
face.
    “But you’ve never been back in all these
years?”
    “Don’t hold with looking back. It doesn’t
do any good. Moving forward is the only way.”
    Looking round the kitchen, it didn’t seem
that Aunt June had moved forward much since the 1970s, but I dismissed it from
my mind. I hadn’t thought before about why