The Reluctant Baker (The Greek Village Collection Book 10) (17 page)

‘Hello
, guess who!!’ Ellie steps through the back door into the kitchen with a surge of confidence that everything is going to be alright. Even Brian will turn out to not be quite as boring as she remembers him. The sound of the trains whirring reverberates down from the attic.

‘Guys?’ It is not a house she has spent much time in and she is hesitant, but as Marcus is so friendly with Brian, she supposes she should try to feel more friendly and so, with false bravado, she mounts the stairs, past the bedroom, its door open to a pile of duvet on the unmade bed. The toilet door is also open, and from it comes a strong smell of bleach. The next set of stairs, more vertical this time, go straight up into the attic.

She climbs these stairs slowly and puts her head up through the hole. There is no one there.

The trains are going round and round, but nothing about the track and the model village seems to have changed, which is odd. Marcus said he and Brian were going to rebuild it, and that was why he didn’t come home till late every night the week before she went away. Maybe there is a planning stage, maybe they were ordering the stuff they needed. But why would they leave it running, go out and leave the back door open?

Was Brian’s car outside? Come to that, was Marcus’? She didn’t think to look.

She begins her descent back out of the attic, leaving the trains going. Between the smell of bleach and the bedroom door, there is a muffled sigh from the bedroom. It must be Brian sleeping.

If he wakes up and sees her there, she is going to be mortified. What will she say?

‘Oh, so sorry to be passing your bedroom uninvited, Brian, but I have lost my husband.’ Or maybe she could play it cool: ‘Hi Brian, did you sleep well? Just looking for Marcus, creeping about your house, uninvited.’ No, that would be too weird to contemplate! Maybe the bathroom has a window, maybe she could… No, she is being ridiculous. What is the responsible and adult thing to do? Knock. Yes, why not? Knock on his bedroom door, explain the back door was open, and ask if he has seen Marcus.

That’s what she will do. That, or she will crouch down as she passes the door so he will not see her beyond the end of the bed and she can sneak back down the stairs and out the back door.

The floorboard she steps on creaks. She freezes and closes her eyes, stops breathing. There is another sigh and then a half snore. She takes another step, another creaky board. As she nears the bedroom door, she flattens herself against the wall. She will peek through the crack between the hinges of the door, and if he looks safely asleep, she will tiptoe out. If he is awake, she will knock with aplomb and brave it out.

The crack of the door is wide enough and in amongst the mess of duvet, she can see Brian’s blond hair. He is lying face down, both arms stretched out above his head. He looks quiet sweet when he is asleep, nice looking even. Younger than Marcus.

She watches him for a moment, encouraging positive feelings towards him, telling herself that he is not boring. He is a good friend to Marcus. There’s a grunt and the bedclothes move.

It happens so fast, it is not real. For a moment, she does not respond. Her limbs do not react. Then she moves quickly.

‘What the…’ The words come out like one of the screeching grannies in Greece, so high-pitched and Brian pushes the side of his face into the pillow, but his hands remain above his head. She stands squarely in the doorframe. Brian’s eyes swivel toward her, open and wide, but he makes no attempt to turn onto his back and face her. But it is not Brian she is looking at.

Marcus lifts his head and turns to face her, wipes off the spittle on his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Ellie?’ He almost giggles the words. No shock, no remorse, nothing, just as if her being there is a bit of a funny joke.

‘What…’ Ellie tries again. Marcus sits up, leans back against the headboard, his chest hairs glistening with sweat. Brian cowers lower into the pillow as if he is wishing it would absorb him.

‘Did you find yourself, Ellie? Did you grow, experience, experiment?’ Marcus takes the remains of a hand-rolled cigarette from the ashtray by the bed and lights up. He takes a long drag while Ellie stands there with no idea what to say or do. It feels impossible to move. All she can do is watch. With one hand, Marcus leans over Brian and undoes a loose black band that until that moment, Ellie has not noticed.

Brian pulls his hands down from above his head quickly as they are released, casting off the bonds, and reaches for the cigarette that Marcus is drawing deeply on, sucking air in with the smoke and holding it before exhaling at length. He gives the remains to Brian, who has hidden as much of himself as he can under the duvet. Just the two fingers holding the cigarette and his face are visible. Ellie continues to stare. One drag from Brian and the cigarette is down to the butt. His mouth dips under the duvet; leaving just the fingers waiting for Marcus to take the glowing end, and a pair of wide scared eyes.

There is nothing she can do but stand there. She seems to have lost her senses. A ringing in her ears is matched by specks of light that spin before her eyes. Her mouth is hanging loosely open and there is a vague feeling that she might be dribbling. Her legs have locked and will not respond and her hands have gone numb. If she could be granted one wish, it would be to be able to move, to run, to take this sight away from her, to be somewhere, anywhere else. On top of the moors, fighting the rain, throwing stones at a goat, anywhere but here.

Marcus takes the cigarette end, drops it in the ashtray, and folds his arms across his naked chest, relaxed, unruffled as always.

‘Well?’ he asks her with the air of a teacher waiting for an answer. Then she is released and everything moves at once. She trips over her own feet in her rush for the stairs, bangs her head against the top newel and sinks to the floor.

‘Ellie, you alright?’ Marcus calls after her and she can hear the rustle of bedclothes. On her feet again, she takes the steps as many as she can at a time. Holding tightly to the banister, she leaps the last four, sprawls on the floor but grovels on her hands and knees to stand and continues to run.

‘Ellie, El, hey. Isn’t this what life is about? Exploring, learning…’ She can hear Marcus’ tread on the stairs.

Flinging the back door shut behind her, it slams—but not loudly enough, and the shattering of the glass in its window is not nearly enough damage.
 

Now her legs won’t stop, her feet pounding the pavement, past the patisserie. Past the travel agents, they don’t stop until she is back at the main road, and it starts to rain. As she speeds past shops and houses one hand scrabbles in her back pocket, for reassurance that the thin booklet that gives her some security, that gives her hope is there nestled next to her credit card. If she was not out of breath she would sigh with relief.

Then, of course, it starts to rain! What else would it do? What else can she expect? Becky and Penny are no doubt off to university, her parents have a lodger for her old room, she has blown it with the guy of her dreams, her husband is shagging Brian the boring history teacher, and she is standing in a busy road in the rain! Of course!

With hair plastered to her head, she looks up to the skies, lifting away strands that cling to her cheeks. The rain hurtles at her like stair rods now, an infinite number of spears, as if nature herself wants to impale her. Leaning against the sharp edges of the dry stone wall that borders the pavement by the road, it seems hardly worth taking another breath. The jagged edges of the granite dig into her back. There is her and there is the rest of the world, and the rest of the world looks intent on squeezing her into the outer darkness, denying her a place, robbing her of any comfort.

The cars that speed by throw up spray, the drivers seeing her too late to slow down and reduce the arcs of water that reach the pavement. The first drenching is a shock, the cold biting her skin but then that too fits with her life. What has she left? She may not technically be homeless but she has no home to go to. Her existence is loveless. If she disappeared from this spot, it would alter no one’s life. She could just climb over the dry stone wall, crouch down in the shadow it casts, out of sight of the cars, and wait for hypothermia to end her miserable little life.

‘So
you ask no one if you can take the bar job but you storm back in here, throwing customers out, and expect your place to be waiting for you as if you were never gone?’ The old woman flings these words at Loukas as he slams the bolt home on the inside of the shop doors.

‘Don’t start, old woman. I am in no mood for your tongue.’ Loukas faces her, meeting her gaze, staring back, letting the anger in his eyes show until she has the sense to back down.
 

‘Steady…’ the old man mutters.

Loukas turns his steady look on him. ‘Or what, old man?’ The title Loukas uses to address his father-in-law is laden with sarcasm. ‘Will your old body straighten and life come to your limbs so you can whip me like I am a child?’ Loukas pushes past them both. In the kitchen, he yanks open the oven to find it is bare. There is a loaf of
tsoureki
on the table. The old woman hurries in at the sound of the oven door.

‘The
tsoureki
is for…’ she begins, her hands reaching towards it, but Loukas is there first.

He says nothing, ripping off a big piece and stuffing it in his mouth to make his point that anything they have to say has no meaning for him. He takes the old man’s bottle of ouzo from the shelf above the sink. The old man is also in the kitchen now and he hurries to open the cupboard where the glasses are kept, but Loukas leaves the room, bottle and sweet bread in hand. The house resonates with his boots on the wooden stairs, and the bare bulb hanging from the kitchen ceiling swings in response to the slam of his bedroom door.

Stella arrives back at the eatery in the village to hear a door slam somewhere in the closed depths of the bakery. The raised voices of the old man and old woman sound through the muffle of the walls. They are arguing. Having left Ellie to sleep with Sarah looking in on her, she wonders if there is anything she can do right now. The eatery, in comparison to the rest of her life and the turmoil in her head, is pleasantly calm. The farmers are talking in a hushed, lazy tone that suggests they have already eaten. Mitsos is scraping the black burnt bits from the grill.

‘Here comes trouble,’ Iason calls through to them, looking out of the eatery’s open door. Stella follows his gaze but she is at the wrong angle to see anything. She steps back from the fridge that she is restocking to look out of the double door in the grill room.

The old woman trundles with purpose across the road towards her.

‘Stella!’ The old woman stands, hand on thin hips, her cheeks sucked in, lower jaw pushed out, brows lowered. ‘Come here, we speak!’

Stella wipes the condensation off her hands with a tea towel.

‘Easy, Stella. Don’t let her get to you,’ Mitsos says.

But she feels no unease. She was taunted and bullied all her childhood, and this old woman holds no fear for her.

‘What do you want, Stheno?’ Stella faces her, still wiping her hands in the sunshine.

‘You did this. You and your swanky hotel.’

Stella does not feel the need to reply.

‘Well, are you happy now?’ The old woman waits for a response. Stella’s instinct is to turn on her heel and continue restocking the fridge, but this will only inflame the situation.

‘What do you want from me?’ She speaks quietly.

‘What do I want from you? Ha! I want nothing from you. Nothing, not even if you beg! You are not content with bullying the people of the village to run around for the crumbs thrown to them from your business, your hotel, what with hinting you will take rental cars from the garage and selling olive wood bowls to the tourists, you make yourself even more grand by upsetting and snubbing people that you have no use for. What right do you have to interfere into peoples’ lives as you do? Well, you may find your life is not so easy.’

Stella sighs and her shoulders slump. She has heard this all before, but she really thought the last of the villagers would have got past all this by now.

Her poor Greek baba would turn in his grave. How he had tried to protect her all his life, even on her first day at school! But children can be cruel and it seems some never grow up.

Stella recognises now that the village eatery was her first attempt at trying to contribute to the village, in part an offering to buy her redemption for having a gypsy mama. It altered a good many people’s minds, mostly those of the hungry farmers, but it has not been enough. Still there are those with these streaks of bitterness which they occasionally throw at her.

The hotel, which Stella considers as her biggest offering to this community, is likely to be her last. She has no energy for any more. From now on, they must take her as they find her. The hotel offers work to a number of local businesses. The garage, the wood carver, the beautician, the hairdresser. It will bring more tourists into the village, so the corner shop and the kiosk will benefit. If the stubborn villagers cannot see who she is and how her heart beats by now, they never will. They are remaining stubborn out of pride. She cannot alter that and would be a fool to try.

Nevertheless, Stheno’s words sadden her. But other than that, they have little effect. She has heard it all before and the threats the baker’s wife is making are hollow, hot air. She has no real ammunition. But it is utterly demoralising to hear Stheno use the hotel, the very things she is offering to the village, against her.

She waits till the old woman subsides and then looks her in the eye.

‘Life has never been easy, so what threat is this?’ Stella’s words are calm.

Stheno’s puckered mouth opens and then closes and Stella turns away and continues to refill the fridge. It is only by the flapping of the old woman’s slippers across the road that she knows Stheno has left.