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‘You must choose for yourself,’ she said. ‘I don’t know your tastes.’ Not now, she thought. Not any more. ‘Francis believes in one or two tried and accepted dishes rather than variety, especially at lunch time.’ She helped herself to prawns and salad. ‘If there is anything else you would like I can get it for you.’

He shook his head, approving the dishes set out before them. ‘Everything is fine,’ he agreed, Tor a small hotel. Variety isn’t really essential, although it is often expected.’

She watched him add some fat black olives to his plate, remembering how they had picked them from the trees as children, carrying them back to the house on the hill where they had spent their holidays away from the tiring heat of the plain.

‘How long were you in England?’ Dorothy asked as they sat down. ‘Three years. I spent most of them in London and Cambridge getting the experience I needed. After that I went to America,’ he explained. ‘I suppose it was something of a revelation to me, altering the pace of life I had known for so long.’

‘You made friends there, I dare say,’ Dorothy suggested almost jealously. ‘Good friends.’

‘Only one,’ he said, looking out over the garden. ‘There wasn’t time for more.’

‘Was he in the hotel business?’ Dorothy asked.

He smiled at her interest. ‘She was Madam Hotel herself!’

‘Oh!’ Dorothy couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘A woman. Naturally, I thought ’

‘Women can be business tycoons in their own right these days.’ He laughed at her simple assumption that it must have been a man. ‘Especially American women, though this one was Swedish. She was married to an American, however, and that was how we met.’

‘Oh?’

Dorothy waited for him to enlarge on the confidence, but he changed the subject almost abruptly, enquiring about old friends in Limassol and Nicosia until the meal was at an end.

Half impatiently Anna pushed back her chair.

‘The flowers will be in,’ she explained. ‘I have to arrange them while I have a moment to spare and my mother should rest for an hour.’

It was dismissal and he seemed to accept it.

'I'll see you again,' he promised, holding her mother’s Hands. I'm here for a week or two at the moment and I’m practically on your doorstep.’

‘Where are you staying?' Dorothy asked eagerly.

For a fraction of a second he hesitated as he looked in Anna's direction. ‘At the Crescent Beach,' he said. ‘I find it very comfortable.’

It was the hotel next door. The four-star hotel next door!

Anna walked across the hall like someone in a dream seeing her mother into the lift.

‘Do you still play tennis?’ Andreas asked. ‘When you have time, that is.’

‘Not too often.’ She crossed to where the flowers had been delivered to Reception. ‘I must see to these right away.'

'I thought you might use the Crescent courts,’ he suggested. They are excellent.’

'And new and expensive,' she retorted. You'll enjoy playing there.'

‘I would need a partner,’ he said. ‘That’s why I asked.’

'I am not on holiday,’ she reminded him, picking up the flowers she had yet to arrange.

‘Neither am I, but I expect to have some leisure time ’

She turned as she reached the office. ‘Does that mean you are here on business?’ She hadn’t meant to be inquisitive or even faintly interested. 'Of course, it’s no affair of mine.'

'It could be,’ he said enigmatically, ‘if you were prepared to listen to me, but you are not. Not at the present moment, anyway.’

And not ever, she thought defiantly. ‘I must go,’ she declared. ‘I am wasting time.’

He put a hand out to stop her. 'Think about it,. Anna,’ he said.

‘About playing tennis at the Crescent Beach?’

'About listening to what I have to say.’

'Why should I?’ She met his eyes over the sheaf of
flowers, her cheeks as pink as the flush on the magnolia blossoms she held in her arms. ‘I don’t need advice, Andreas—especially from you.’

She saw his jaw tighten, knowing that she had stung him to anger.

‘I think you’ll ask for it one day, all the same,’ he told her on his way to the door.

It
was three days before she saw him again. She was cutting mimosa from the garden trees when he came along the beach from the Crescent Hotel, dressed informally this time in light trousers and an open-necked shirt. It was very hot, and even the wind which blew up with unfailing regularity each afternoon at that time of year had failed to disturb the silvery eucalyptus leaves above her head.

‘I’ve given you time to be less busy,’ he pointed out. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘I can’t think what we have to discuss.’

A spray of the mimosa she had gathered fell at his feet and he picked it up before he answered her. ‘Several things,’ he said.

‘If it’s tennis ’

‘No, it isn’t tennis.’ He fell into step beside her as she turned back towards the villa. ‘I’d like you to come to Paphos with me to look at a flat.’

‘Why me?’ She could hardly believe that he had made such a personal request. ‘Surely you are able to make that sort of decision for yourself.’

‘I need a second opinion—a woman’s opinion, if you like—and you know Paphos very well.’

Her mind flew back to the times they had spent there as children and, later, when they were growing up, to the memory of a dawning awareness that they were, after all, not brother and sister but two impressionable adolescents responding unconsciously to their romantic surroundings on this magic island where legendary Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, had come up from the sea.

‘There must be someone else you can ask,’ she suggested.

‘Not at the moment.’ They walked up the terrace steps. ‘Everyone else is too busy.’

‘It’s a common complaint!’

‘So I understand. But you will come?’

‘No. Not today,’ she amended for no very obvious reason.

‘Then, tomorrow, perhaps?’

‘I don’t know. I never make promises I may not be able to keep.’

‘We could take your mother.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘That wouldn’t be any sort of solution. She doesn’t like motoring in the heat.'

‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said, not taking her refusal as a final answer.

‘I can’t promise. We’re short of staff now that the season has begun in earnest.'

‘I meant to ask you about that.’ He stood between her and the glass door leading into the hall. ‘Do you have a winter season yet—ski-ing and that sort of thing?’

‘No. We would need a place in the mountains for that and it’s a short-time luxury we can’t afford.'

‘It would add to your amenities,’ he pointed out. ‘Something extra for the winter months when the snow is there.’ He looked at her keenly. ‘Have you thought about it at all?’

She shook her head, wondering where their conversation was leading. ‘It’s much too grand an idea at present, having a second string to our small little bow, so why should I waste time thinking about it?’

‘Because you are now a businesswoman.'

‘Not like that. Not like your American friend.’

‘Ah! Lara,’ he said. ‘No, you are not at all like her.’ She flushed at the implication, knowing her own limitations in that respect.

‘Perhaps I shall learn, in time.’

‘You will never be hard enough to be completely successful,’ he predicted. ‘I can see that in you, Anna, at least. You may be disappointed—even bitter—but not hard deep down at the core.’

‘You imagine you know me very well!’

‘We were brought up together,’ he reminded her deliberately. ‘We shared a great many things.’

‘Except trust!’

He took the mimosa from her, following her across the hall.

‘That’s as may be,’ he said. ‘I hope I can prove you wrong.’

Her mother was in the small sitting-room overlooking the loggia and he went in to talk to her while Anna arranged the last of the mimosa in a blue porcelain bowl on the reception desk, adding a few pale mauve irises she had picked earlier in the sunken garden at the side of the house to give a more dramatic effect. She went to the kitchen after that and did not see Andreas leave.

‘What did Andreas want?’ she asked when she joined her mother for a belated lunch.

‘Just to be friendly, I think.’

‘And were you?’

‘I hope I was polite,’ Dorothy said. ‘Anna, he is trying so hard to make amends.’

‘By offering us help now that we don’t really need it? You must see that he is trying to ease his conscience because he knows how wrong he was.’

Your father pushed him too hard—in the wrong direction, I’m afraid.’ Dorothy said, ‘but that’s all water under the bridge now and we can afford to be tolerant.’

‘But not to accept him back into the family as if the past had never been!’

‘Perhaps not.’ Dorothy looked distressed, toying with her salad as if the heat had become too much for her. ‘I think Helen Stylianu phoned, by the way. Paris took the message.’

‘It will be about the tour,’ Anna decided. ‘Let’s hope nothing has gone wrong.’

‘Why don’t you go with Helen tomorrow?’ Dorothy asked. ‘It would be a respite for you and we are never very busy on a Thursday.’

Anna hesitated. ‘I might think about it,’ she agreed.

It was a long time since she had been round the coast or up into the mountains; too long, she thought as she went in search of Paris to find out why Helen had phoned so unexpectedly.

‘Despinis
Stylianu will not come tomorrow,’ Paris informed her gravely. ‘She is unwell with her throat. It is impossible for her to speak at all.’

Which meant the tour would have to be cancelled, Anna decided, unless someone else would drive the minibus which they used to bring guests from the airport and to motor them round the island on sightseeing tours twice a week with Helen as their knowledgable guide. She realised that it would have to be someone who knew the history of the various archaeological sites they visited, someone with at least a part of Helen’s skill. It would be no use sending Paris, who really only knew about the beach-bar and the hotel.

‘I’ve decided to take the mini-bus myself,’ she told her mother the following morning. ‘We can’t very well afford to disappoint twelve people who are terribly keen to go and who have already paid their fare.’

‘You’ll enjoy every minute of it,’ Dorothy predicted. ‘You can do it as well as Helen can.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Anna laughed. ‘I’ve forgotten a lot of my classical mythology, for one thing, but I can certainly drive!’

Now that she had decided to take the mini-bus herself she saw it as an excuse to refuse Andreas’ invitation to go with him to Paphos, a legitimate reason for turning down his request to walk back with him into the past, which would only prove traumatic and lead to further argument in the end.

When she phoned the Crescent Beach she was put through to him immediately. ‘I’m sorry about the trip to Paphos, Andreas,’ she began, ‘but Helen Stylianu, our guide, is ill and I have to take her place on one of our tours. She is a most efficient guide and our guests look forward to the trips, so I can’t afford to disappoint them. I’m sure you will understand.’

‘Of course,' he said immediately if a little drily. ‘Business before pleasure, Anna. You might have known I would understand, although you don’t sound particularly deprived.’

‘Deprived? Oh—of the pleasure of your company, you mean! Well, I hadn’t thought of that, but I have apologised and perhaps you will find someone else to go to Paphos with you.’

‘No doubt.’ There was a lengthy pause, although the line remained open. ‘Perhaps another time,’ he said pleasantly before he rang off.

There was no point in feeling aggrieved, she assured herself as she replaced her own receiver. He had accepted her excuse and that was that!'

The idea of going away for a whole day’s motoring along the coast and into the mountains of the Troodos was certainly very pleasant, although she had acknowledged that her talents as a guide to the ancient temples of the gods and the vast areas of excavations which dotted the landscape could never match those of Helen Stylianu, who was a natural guide. She had no time to make notes, however, and she would just have to do the best she could and hope that people wouldn’t ask too many difficult questions.

Deciding to arm herself with a bunch of reference leaflets, she was ready by half-past ten to pick up the small group which had gathered in the hall with cameras and extra film at the ready and woollen jackets in case it might be cold in the mountains. Mrs Walsh, a middle- aged divorcee, was dressed conspicuously in red ‘because it came out well in the pictures against all that colourless stone’, and the two Miss Crabtrees, from Cornwall, in England, were each armed with a heavy tome called
Footprints Among The Ruins,
which they would probably refer to along the way.

The others, Anna discovered, were vaguely interested in mosaics, so she turned the mini-bus in the direction of Limassol, hoping to interest them in the scenery along the way. She loved her ancient island home, glorying in its history and its roots planted firmly in the past, and she would do her best for everybody.

Mimosa and eucalyptus trees lined the bay and the Mediterranean sparkled in the brilliance of another perfect day.

‘I’ve been so looking forward to this,’ Mrs Walsh declared, sitting in the best seat beside her. ‘I’m sure you will do just as well as the official guide, although it isn’t your job.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Anna assured her, ‘and we can always check on details. I think we ought to go straight to the castle first and another day you can concentrate on the town.’

‘The castle will be just fine,’ Mrs Walsh agreed. ‘They always fascinate me with all their drama and history going right down into the past. We don't have anything like that in the States—well, not as far back, anyway, and I just loved being in England last fall when we went on a guided tour of castles. There were so many—and each had a different story to tell. Yes, it was sure fascinating!’

‘We have a great many links with England,’ Anna told her as she turned the mini-bus into the castle courtyard. ‘This is where Richard the Lionheart married Berengaria of Navarre whom he crowned Queen of England on his return.’