Free Songs of Blue and Gold by Deborah Lawrenson

was. ‘Mrs Quiller?’
    It was only then she looked up properly and saw it was Manolis.
    â€˜I hear you want a boat! Why do you not come first to me?’
    â€˜Oh!’ It was as if she’d been caught out.
    â€˜Christos says you were asking about boats!’
    â€˜Yes . . . yes I was, at the tourist office . . .’
    â€˜Many fine boats at Manolis Boat Hire,’ he laughed.
    â€˜I’m sure there are,’ she said. ‘But they probably don’t come equipped with someone who knows how to drive it.’
    He spread his palms. ‘Is easy! Easy boats for tourists . . . I give a lesson to everyone who takes one!’
    Melissa was beginning to shake her head, knowing that would make little difference to her confidence or seaworthiness, when she found herself saying, ‘All right then. I’ll give it a go.’
    The hills opposite were rusting in early evening when she took a wobbly step on to the boat, a basic fibreglass craft about ten feet long with a steering wheel and outboard motor. She had never thought of herself as a brave person physically, but she had a stubborn streak that could be called on to override her qualms if she wanted something badly enough. Sometimes that surprised people who saw her only as the quiet, thoughtful one who loved maps and books, and worked as a keeper of secrets, locking away information in order for it to be found again.
    Richard saw her as his sweet, sensible little wife, who was happy to fall in with his plans; who had once wanted to move to Dorset to take up the job at the maritime museum and live in a house with a garden, but who made do with growing herbs on a grimy kitchen windowsill instead; who enjoyed a comfortable life that gave her no right to complain when he worked late so many nights.
    What would he think if he could see me now?
    She lurched into Manolis’s boat. It rocked alarmingly.
    â€˜You can drive a car?’ he asked.
    â€˜Yes.’ Her legs were trembling.
    â€˜Then . . . no problem. First, the ignition.’ He pushed a button and the engine gurgled to life. ‘This here . . . neutral . . . forward . . . back . . .’ He went through the controls. ‘Now, we go one hundred metres forward – you are driving.’
    And soon, she was.
    Out on the wind-wrinkled sea, Albania was merely the other side of a large lake. Heading south, she held a steady speed, not too fast, as Manolis had advised. Within minutes, confidence rising, she was round the headland and across the bay where she had snorkelled (it was called Yaliscary, Manolis informed her), then puttering past Agni and the cliffs where she had looked in vain for the path going down. If it hadn’t been for the mention in the guidebook, it would have been all too easy to believe the shrine was another of Julian Adie’s personal myths. Would she be able to see it, even from the sea?
    It was there.
    A small square grey-rendered building was perched just above the shoreline. Just as he described it, the shrine seemed to sail on the crest of storm-flung waves, tossed up on the very edge of the island, the moment frozen in stone when it was caught between a sweeping bowl of fractured rock and taller stacks which leant away at a mad tipsy angle. Proud straight cypresses stood watch above, while a curious light turquoise pool glowed below. She nudged the boat in as close as she could, worried all the time that it might snag on submerged rocks if she ignored Manolis’s warnings.
    There was no one else in sight, neither on land nor sea. She was as close as she would ever be to seeing it as Adie and Gracewould have done in the nineteen thirties, before the Ionian was churned by pleasure craft full of brightly dressed tourists.
    She gazed at the narrow chamber of water that gleamed below the drunken fissures and the shrine. Was that the pool where he described her diving for