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long adventurous holidays. Have a child, maybechildren, maybe not. It would all happen for them, evolve as it should. She was already one of the Livakian pleasure seekers, one of the beautiful people, and in love. It seemed so natural to her to be who she now was. Who she had been seemed suddenly unnatural.
    She hadn’t meant what little she had told Manoussos about herself to be a lies, more evasions. When she had told him she had been born into a well-to-do family: conservative, strait-laced even, the youngest of three, a sister and a brother, all close in age and loving and caring for each other because their parents were dead, it had made sense to her, a sort of truth. She had had a childhood romance that led to marriage then the man died … not exactly fabrication. All partly true, none of it real lies, she told herself. And what did it matter anyway? Manoussos hadn’t questioned her. It had all been said casually in conversation; things that could, if necessary, be corrected at a later date. She liked the new identity she was creating for herself.
    It didn’t occur to her that she was creating, at the same time, a life of denial for herself. Why kill the momentum of happiness, contentment as she had never known, by analysing her actions? Chadwick was brimming with too much pleasure for that. ‘Let’s live.’ D’Arcy’s words to Max were now her own sentiments.
    Dimitri broke into Chadwick’s thoughts when she boarded the
Black Narcissus.
‘He’s a good man, the chief. I thought you might like to know that.’
    ‘I do know that, Captain.’
    ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to talk out of line.’
    ‘No, please, that’s all right. What I meant was, I agree with you even though I hardly know him.’
    ‘Too bad he couldn’t have sailed with us. He’s a good sailor. Almost as good as he is a policeman.’
    ‘I don’t understand. Why a policeman?’
    ‘Well, police chief – quite a high-profile one at that. They’re lucky to keep him here in Crete.’
    Dimitri Cronos had astonished Chadwick, that was clear by the expression on her face. ‘You didn’t know? Now I’m the one whodoesn’t understand. Are you all, right? Have I spoken out of turn?’
    Chadwick was nonplussed by this news. Was fate playing some ghastly trick on her, giving her a police chief for a lover, the man she hoped to make a life with? Too cruel, too cruel. It was impossible to blank this news out of her mind. She would have to deal with it, make it a part of her life. Now she would have to bury her secret deeper than ever; never must it come to light, not only her own but his happiness,
their
future, was at stake. Chadwick willed herself to calmness over this news and the colour returned to her face.
    She smiled, exuded her dazzling charm, and answered Captain Dimitri. ‘I’m fine, and no, you certainly did not speak out of turn.’ She laughed, and her mirth brought a smile to the face of the captain of the
Black Narcissus.
‘No, I didn’t know Manoussos was a chief of police, not even when you called him “Chief”. I took that to mean something flattering to him, as if you were intimating he was in charge. Incredibly, I realise now we never bothered to ask much about each other.’
    ‘He’s a man of substance, well respected. Much more than just a chief of police. He’s a kind of folk hero here in Crete because he fights off and catches art smugglers and saves the island’s antiquities. He’s a handsome, quiet, unassuming man, as hard as he is soft, courageous and brave, all the things Cretan men are known for and the things women admire. He is also the definitive detective. It was he who within days found and trapped Melina, the killer of his friend Arnold Topper. It happened in Livakia. He found her, entrapped her into a confession and brought her to justice. Even that was not enough for Manoussos Stavrolakis. The girl was fifteen years old, there were mitigating circumstances, enough to raise Manoussos’s social