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short moped ride to the Villa Argenti high up in the hills on the other side of the island. His boss was leaving the next day and wanted to go through some things with him and that always meant trouble. The sooner he left, the better, Milo thought, and then he would have the place to himself again.
    Cedric Carlson was an American businessman who did something in technology. Milo wasn’t quite sure what it was, exactly, but it was obviously something that made a lot of money because Mr Carlson had homes in New York, Los Angeles, London and Milan as well as the Villa Argenti on Kethos where Milo was the groundsman.
    Milo loved his job at the villa. He had a team of three part-time gardeners working for him but, most of the time, he had the gardens to himself and that was exactly how he liked it.
    When Milo clocked in for work, Mr Carlson was sitting on the veranda with an enormous newspaper obscuring the view and covering almost his entire body. How could he be bothered with such things? Milo wondered. Couldn’t he sit back and luxuriate in the sun and enjoy the view for once? But perhaps that was the difference between the two of them – Milo might be able to enjoy the views that the Villa Argenti gave him but he’d never own them. Owning them took hard work,
endless
work. There was no time to just sit and stare at things.
    ‘Ah, there you are,’ Mr Carlson said as he spotted Milo.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Milo said, running a hand self-consciously through his dark hair. He’d been told to address Mr Carlson as ‘sir’ on his first morning of employment seven years ago and woe betide him if he ever forgot.
    ‘I’m leaving for New York in—’ he paused and looked at the very expensive gold watch he was wearing, ‘thirty-eight minutes precisely.’
    Mr Carlson liked to be precise and his chauffeur would be fired on the spot if he ever failed to match his boss’s precision.
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘And I’ll be gone for a fortnight.’
    Milo nodded.
    ‘I’ve left a list of things I want doing. It’s all quite straightforward.’
    Milo had no doubt that it was. He was used to the lists; his life was dominated by them. Not only would he be handed them by Mr Carlson each week but he would find them all over the gardens too: inside temples, taped to tree trunks and once on the inside of Milo’s favourite wheelbarrow. That had been a classic. It had read:
    1. Take this wheelbarrow to the tip.
    2. Replace with new one.
    3. Store new wheelbarrow away each night.
    Milo had ignored it. What Mr Carlson didn’t understand was that an old wheelbarrow was a good one. Its handles were almost a part of the user’s hands because they had worked in perfect harmony for so long. It might not always move in a perfect straight line but that didn’t mean it was ready for retirement. No. Mr Carlson should stick to things he knew and keep out of the garden whenever possible.
    Milo listened to the rest of his instructions although there wasn’t really anything new and he nodded politely. He said ‘Yes, sir’ wherever appropriate then wished his boss a good journey and got on with his day’s work, walking down the long straight path lined with trees that was known as ‘The Avenue’. He was going to get on with some work in the kitchen garden today. It was one of the few areas that wasn’t open to the public and was hidden behind a large wall which harvested the best of the sunshine and produced bowlfuls of fruit on the trees grown against it.
    Milo loved the kitchen garden because it was private and he was rarely disturbed there. In the other parts of the garden, he was always at the mercy of the tourists with their questions and their cameras. If he had a euro for every photo he’d taken of tourists, he could probably afford to buy the Villa Argenti himself, he thought.
    But, before he could reach his sanctuary, he saw a figure half-hiding in the shadows of a wall and he instantly knew who it was. Sabine – ‘The Pushy French Girl’