Free Those Summer Nights (Corfu, Greek Island Romance) by Mandy Baggot Page A

is, why isn’t he your gardener?’
    He regarded them both. His grandmother puffing on her second cigarette, his cousin looking lost.
    ‘We tried this. Risto does not know the difference between plants and weeds,’ Elpida stated.
    Panos shook his head. ‘Bar work?’
    ‘I try this, Pano,’ Risto replied forlornly. ‘The last person in is always the first person out when business slides again.’
    ‘Well, we all know I had to leave the island to find success.’
    ‘Pfft! We are not talking about success, Pano. We are just talking about earning enough money to live!’
    Her words kicked him. Here he was in his tailored suit, opposite his cousin who, he was told, had barely two Euro to rub together.
    ‘I am trying to do the same for Risto as I did for you,’ Elpida stated firmly. ‘I gave you everything I could spare to start your new life.’
    His fingers reached for the serviette close to hand and he pulled it into his fist, clenching it up.
    ‘Risto lost his job on the farm when the crisis hit. He’s been out of work ever since. I wanted to tell you this before but Risto would not let me.’
    He watched Elpida sit forward and stab her cigarette out in the ashtray. She pushed her glasses up her nose and sat a little further forward in her chair. ‘He needs guidance, Pano. Help from his cousin.’
    ‘It is OK. It does not matter. I should not have come.’ Risto got to his feet, his shirt untucking from his trousers as he moved.
    ‘Sit down, Risto!’ Elpida ordered.
    ‘You want me to guide him?! Guide him where? How?’ Panos asked, throwing the contents of his wine glass down his throat.
    ‘ Yiayia thought you might be able to give me a job.’
    This was why Elpida had berated him on the phone for not keeping better contact with the family. She was hinting at wanting him to give his cousin a way out of Corfu. His grandmother might have given him the airfare to escape but he owed the rest of his success to himself.
    Risto’s dark curly head was hanging so far down it was almost touching the placemat on the table. What was he doing? What was there to think about? Risto was his family. He loved him. He hadn’t been there for him.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in low tones. ‘I just did not know any of this. It is a shock.’
    ‘Sit up straight, Risto,’ Elpida snapped. ‘And stop looking like you have no backbone.’
    Risto snapped his head back up and adjusted his posture.
    ‘You are a Dimitriou,’ Elpida continued. ‘You are both Dimitrious and, as the surviving elder of this family, I want to bash your heads together.’
    Panos remained quiet, looking to his cousin.
    ‘Now, we need to work something out together. Pano, there must be something within your organisation that Risto can do. Awful, bright, metallic bars he can advertise with flyers or posters, yes? Or phone calls he can make?’ She turned to Risto then. ‘You still have your moped, yes?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    Elpida clapped her hands together. ‘Good. Pano?’
    He nodded his head slowly as a plan began to formulate. Smiling, he replied. ‘OK, Risto, yes. I have something coming up that might be ideal.’

14
Acharavi Beachfront
    T he man who gave Imogen directions to the high street was called Spiros. As was the man who sold her a doughnut as she came off the beach. And the man who ran the first shop she came to on the main road. It had taken her fifteen minutes to stomp from the beachfront to the town centre, navigating potholes, a loose goat and a van full of fish. She thought they were all having some Greek joke with her about the name, until Spiros the shopkeeper told her it was tradition to call your firstborn son after the island’s saint, Spyridon. Spiros the shopkeeper had a dog she’d patted and had given her grocery essentials for free, despite her insistence otherwise, and a plaster for her hand.
    There were shops all along the main street of Acharavi selling a multitude of touristy items – coloured friendship