Read Watching the Wind Blow (The Greek Village Collection Book 9) for Free Online Page B

and the gull is silhouetted black against the sun.
    ‘Well, I don’t suppose we have any water in the tank.’ Irini watches his face to see his reaction. ‘Captain Yorgos usually rings the water man on a Tuesday and he comes about the time I am finishing to fill up, and I doubt there will be any bottled water.’
    ‘What day is it?’ he asks. Her eyebrows raise. Is this a joke or is he serious?
    ‘Tuesday.’ She is about to add that the fuel man does not come until she is halfway through her cleaning each day either but decides that he does not need to know this. Maybe running out of fuel and the port police catching them up would be the best outcome. ‘Also, there will be no food, as Captain Yorgos buys it every day depending on how many clients he has.’
    The colour changes in his cheeks and the muscle there twitches. His eyes are green.
    ‘But we can stop at Orino Island and stock up.’ She tries to sound cheerful. Orino Island is where Petta was born and where they lived together for a year before they moved in with Marina. Orino Island, so safe and close. She grabs at her heart through her t-shirt, as she mouths the word Petta to herself. Tears prick her eyes and her hand slides from her chest to twist the ring on her finger. She catches the pirate watching her.
    ‘Are you married?’ she blurts out, almost accusingly. Hasn’t she read somewhere that it is best to become a real person to your captors? Read where? In a magazine in their corner shop? She would give anything to be back there right now.
    ‘I do not want to tell you.’ Cold, emotionless.
    ‘Oh.’ She hadn’t expected that and could never imagine saying something so blunt to anyone. Her sights rest on one of the ropes she coiled earlier and the realisation comes that she will not be there to see Stathoula today. She cannot stop her bottom lip quivering; her vision blurs. In fact, with this man wielding a weapon, she might not be seeing anyone else on any other day, either.
    The thought that she may never see loved ones again sucks her dry. Her head drops and her arms become limp and for a minute, she is boneless and motionless. The sun continues to shine and her body responds. The sweat drips from her forehead, making dark circles on her jeans which dry as quickly as they are formed. Something twists in her chest, and for a panicked moment, she wonders if she is having a heart attack, but then her fists clench, her mouth sets hard, and one side of her upper lip curls and twitches. The rawness of her emotion frightens her. The shadow of life before Stathoula and after her parents died passes over her. A memory igniting long-buried responses. She survived that; she will survive this.
    She sighs a long out breath and her stomach settles and her fists unclench. The layers in between that time and this fall away. Her life with Petta, although the most important thing that has ever happened to her, recedes. Angelos, and the love she never believed she would feel, is neatly packed away, a velvet curtain drawn over him. Stathoula’s successful attempt to build up her trust and belief in the world evaporates, and her eyes widen with the ease at which it all drops away and she is emotionally transported back in time. Nothing she has learnt since seems useful here, today.
    She is the child again, the person she was from fifteen to eighteen – blasé but with adrenaline coursing, living by stealing, one eye always open, sleeping in hallways. Fighting with police and other street children. Avoiding Omonia Square where Indians and Pakistanis squatted in misery to sell mechanical toy rabbits with red glaring eyes. Whoever was forcing them to do their bidding was the enemy, to be watched for. There too were the Eastern-block men, quick to pull displaced people into their windscreen washing ‘services’ that were inflicted on drivers at red lights, a rap on the window and a hand out for spare change. But Omonia also felt like the centre for all homeless