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‘What is it, Anna?’ she asked. ‘You have bad news for me?’

‘I hope not.’ Anna glanced along the covered loggia to make sure they were alone. ‘Mama, Andreas has turned up. He is back on the island—has been for several days, I gather—and he wants to see you.’

The silence which followed her announcement seemed to stretch into an eternity as Dorothy assimilated her astounding news.

‘Don’t see him if you don’t want to,’ Anna said at last. ‘He doesn’t deserve any consideration. Not when he went off like that without a word after all you had done for him—the love you gave him freely and the home Papa provided for him.’

‘That was what we undertook to do,’ her mother said quietly. ‘When he was left alone in the world we provided a home for him, but we also gained the son your father wanted. It was a fair exchange, Anna. He owed us nothing.’

‘Except loyalty and—obedience, perhaps.’

‘Your father expected absolute obedience,’ Dorothy Rossides agreed with a sigh. ‘It was no way to handle a young boy of Andreas’ nature. He had a strong will of his own. What is he like now?’ Her eyes brightened. ‘I can hardly wait to see him.’

‘Mama, are you sure?’ Anna was more than doubtful. ‘It will bring back all the pain you suffered when he went away.’

‘I can cope with that,’ her mother said quietly. ‘I know he will be changed, but at least he has come back.’ Anna moved towards the loggia door leading into the residents’ lounge. ‘There’s something else you ought to know.’

Dorothy looked round at her questioningly, as if Andreas coming was all she needed to know.

‘He looks—quite prosperous,’ Anna said, ‘and
very
determined. A man who might force his will upon you if you gave him half a chance, in fact. He also maintains that he wrote to you after he left and got no reply. I don’t believe you wouldn’t answer his letter so I told him he was lying.’

‘Anna, how could you! You should have known him better than that.’

‘I’m convinced I didn’t know him at all!’

‘He never told a lie,’ Dorothy Rossides said. ‘That was the thing I admired about him most. If he had done something wrong he admitted it and accepted the just punishment for his actions. You know that.’

‘It was so long ago it can hardly matter now,’ Anna said. ‘You will find that he has changed in many ways if you want to see him,’ she added.

‘You wish me not to?’ The clear blue eyes searched her face. ‘Why, Anna? Why?’

‘I think he has come back for reasons of his own, even though he says he just wants to make amends.’

‘We can’t be ungenerous,’ her mother said. ‘Where is he now?’

‘Probably knocking on your front door.’ Her tone was flippant to cover the annoyance she felt. ‘He walked up through Candy’s Place when I told him I had to see you first.’

‘Why did you say that?’ Dorothy asked. ‘Because you thought we should harbour resentment for what happened so long ago?’

‘I don’t know.’ Anna paused just inside the door. ‘I thought he was over-confident, for one thing, and— decidedly autocratic. I thought he was sure about having his own way.’

‘Confidence is often necessary when you are fighting your way in the world,’ Dorothy reminded her. ‘He needed self-assurance to do what he did.’

Anna turned. ‘The letter he said he wrote to you,’ she asked. ‘Did you ever receive it?’

Her mother’s eyes clouded at a memory. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I never did, but it could have gone astray.’

‘Letters don’t go missing that easily,’ Anna said. ‘He never wrote it!’

‘How can you be so sure? Anna, this isn’t like you,’ Dorothy chided. ‘You have always been generous in your estimate of people—people like Nikos, for instance, who doesn’t always tell the truth.’

‘Nikos is different! He is loyal and—and caring and he has always been our friend,’ Anna protested.

‘And always will be, I hope.’ Dorothy smoothed her hair. ‘Am I looking respectable?’ she asked, dismissing further argument. ‘Will Andreas see a difference in me, do you think?’

Anna put a protective arm about her thin shoulders. ‘It isn’t so long ago,’ she said gently, ‘and you haven’t changed at all.’

At that hour of the morning they were alone in the sunny residents’ lounge, some of their guests still at breakfast in the adjoining dining-room, the others in their respective rooms preparing to go out for the day to the various archaeological sites in other parts of the island or to spend the long, sun-filled hours relaxing on a sandy beach of their choice. There was so much to do on this magic island of her birth, Anna thought, and soon they would be able to accommodate their guests with a swimming-pool of their own out there on the terrace at the side of the house. It had been her ambition for a long time, but now she thought that they might just manage it for the opening of the summer season, if all went well. It was almost an essential of hotel life these days, although the sea was there, right on their doorstep.

‘I’ve spoken to Nikos about the pool, by the way,’ she said, ‘and he thought it was an excellent idea. It wouldn’t inconvenience us at all since it would have to be next to Candy’s Place where there’s plenty of room.’

‘I can’t see why people can’t swim in the sea,’ Dorothy said. ‘You did, and Nikos and Andreas. There wasn’t much talk of a swimming-pool then, or water-skiing or snorkelling, for that matter.’

‘All the big hotels have these amenities,’ Anna pointed out. ‘I don’t mean that we should have them for that reason. We could never hope to compete with the big hotels and I wouldn’t want to. Mrs Calder-Bates told me yesterday that was why they came back to us so often— because we were a small, intimate concern and she felt as if she was coming home.’

Dorothy nodded. ‘That’s what we wanted in the first place,’ she agreed, ‘and I wouldn’t like to see it vastly changed, but I suppose we do have to move with the times. Did Nikos advise you about the speed-boat?’ Anna flushed. ‘He offered to pay for it.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Of course, I couldn’t accept that, so he will hire out his own boat from the mole during the summer. One of the boys—Hannibal or Paris—will drive it when he can’t be here himself.’

‘I don’t know what we would have done without Nikos,’ Dorothy mused. ‘He has treated us like his own family and he never left the island.’

‘He had something to stay for,’ Anna said slowly, ‘with all those rich orchards and vineyards he will one day inherit, and acres of carob trees up in the mountains.’

‘He works hard,' Dorothy reminded her, ‘and he is unfailingly kind.’

Her eyes went beyond the open glass doors which separated the lounge from the entrance hall, searching for their unexpected visitor.

‘He may have changed his mind,' Anna reflected. ‘I didn’t encourage him.’

‘No! He’s here!’ Dorothy’s pale cheeks were suddenly tinged with pink. ‘He has not changed so very much.’

The man who had come in through the double doors paused for a moment at the reception desk as if he were taking stock of the changes they had made, and then he came steadily towards them, holding out both hands.

‘Mama!’ he said.

‘It is good to see you, at last.’ Dorothy Rossides went quickly towards him. ‘Andreas!’

He bent his dark head, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘You have been ill,’ he said. ‘What have you been doing with yourself, working so hard?'

Dorothy shook her head. ‘I am better now. Hard work, as you know, never killed anyone. I have a stupid heart, that is all. It lets me down at times,’ she confessed.

‘You look the same,’ he said, appraising her openly. ‘And the Villa Severus is the same, although it is now an hotel.’

‘That was necessary when your—when Papa died,’ Dorothy said, looking away from his questioning eyes. ‘But we will not talk about that now that you are here. You will stay, of course, at least for a meal with us.’

He hesitated, looking across the stretch of parquet to where Anna still stood beside the lounge windows.

‘Why not?’ he agreed. ‘We have much to talk about.’ Anna flushed scarlet. She had no intention of discussing the past, if that was what he was suggesting, and she was half-angry with her mother for asking him to share their meal.

‘I’ll get some coffee,’ she offered. ‘Would you like to take it on the loggia?’

She had pointed the question at her mother, determined to ignore him, but Andreas was not to be intimidated.

‘Let me help you,’ he volunteered. ‘I can carry a tray.’

‘There is no need,’ she told him. ‘Paris is still with us— and Hannibal.’

‘Hanny must be a good age now,’ he mused, following her to the kitchen in spite of her objection. ‘Thirty, if he’s a day.’

‘Thirty-two,’ Anna acknowledged. ‘He and Paris are very loyal servants and we appreciate the fact.’

‘You were lucky to have them when you needed them. How long is it since—your father died?’

‘Five years. We had to make our decision about the house immediately and we wanted to keep it so—here we are!’

She had tried to sound matter-of-fact, although her voice had faltered a little as she remembered that moment of decision which had saved the villa as their home.

‘It was the only way,’ she said.

He followed her through the swing doors into the kitchen where two young girls were busy at the sinks, looking about him at the alterations they had made, the concessions to hotel catering which had been necessary to transform the homely old kitchen he remembered into an efficient unit for its present purpose.

'It must have cost you a lot,’ he remarked with true Cypriot candour. Anna stiffened. ‘In more ways than one,’ she admitted, ‘but it was what we had to do to survive.’

‘I know how Mama must have felt.’

She faced him angrily. ‘You couldn’t have known!’ she declared. ‘Otherwise, you would never have left as you did or stayed away so long.’

‘We’re back to the letter again,’ he said as the two maids left the kitchen. ‘You refuse to believe that I tried.’

‘We haven’t any proof.’

He laughed a little harshly. ‘Is that what you need, Anna? Absolute proof of everything?’

‘I prefer to believe the facts. My mother never had your letter and no matter what it contained it could never have softened the blow of your desertion.’ She filled the coffee jug, her hands shaking over the task. ‘If you had explained before you went off as you did it might have helped as far as she was concerned.’

‘But not with you?’ He watched her automatic movements with the filter. ‘I’m not here to apologise, as you said before. Only to offer help.’

She spun round to confront him face to face. ‘And what does that mean?’ she demanded. ‘Perhaps you have come with the idea that you can buy your way back into our affections. Or is that too conceited a suggestion on my part?’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You evidently don’t feel the need for forgiveness.’

He continued to look at her, faint surprise mirrored in his eyes. ‘I have asked for it where I need it most,’ he said blandly. ‘Your mother is prepared to accept my return without rancour. Why can’t you?’

‘Because ’ She watched the coffee filtering through the paper, unable to offer him any real explanation of the way she felt. ‘Because it was a betrayal and I can’t think of it as anything else.’

‘If I had still been here when your father died I couldn’t have done very much about it,’ he pointed out reasonably enough. ‘I was a liability to him before I left the island, a constant threat to his authority, and a heartache for Mama. I realised that later when I had managed to curb the temper I had inherited from my own father. We Cypriots are all alike, you know, one minute vivacious and full of the joy of living, the next confined to the depths, like Hades in the Underworld.’

‘I never saw you “confined to the depths”,’ she told him.

‘I have been, nevertheless, but at the age of twenty one recovers quickly. You see,’ he added slowly, ‘I had this overpowering desire to improve myself. Can you understand that or are you determined to be stubborn?’

‘If you mean that you now have a great deal of money perhaps I should accept it as an improvement, but it certainly can’t mean anything to us now. When we needed you most you weren’t there.’

‘I regret that, but I could hardly help it since I didn’t hear about your father’s death until recently.’

‘And by then you were well on your way to the success you needed,’ she suggested, laying out two cups and saucers on a tray. ‘Andreas, you don’t need to explain to us. I’m sure we understand.’

_t
At least, Mama does,’ he decided, picking up the tray. ‘You have only set out two cups. Does that mean you refuse to join us?’

She added a bowl of sugar and a cream jug to his burden.

I haven t got the time,’ she said. ‘I generally drink mine in the kitchen.’

‘Who does the cooking?’ he asked, pausing at the swing door. ‘Don’t tell me you accomplish that, too.’

‘We have an excellent chef who comes in from Limassol each day,’ she told him remotely. ‘You will sample his culinary expertise if you intend to stay for lunch.

He took up her challenge immediately. ‘That has already been settled,’ he pointed out. ‘I have your mother’s invitation.’

‘We serve it in the terrace room at one o’clock—early because some of our English guests like to have a long afternoon at their disposal to bask in the sun or go sightseeing. 1 don’t think they can quite reconcile themselves to no twilight, you see, and everything getting dark around six o’clock.’

When he had gone, the doors whispering shut behind him, she stood by the table looking down at its immaculate white surface for a long time, watching the procession of the past filing before her eyes in heartrending detail, seeing the years between his abrupt departure from Cyprus and his return in all their cruel reality, the uncertainty and the worry and the final realisation that they would have to give up their beloved home. It had come as a shock to both her mother and herself that George Rossides had died practically penniless with nothing of value to leave them but the Villa Severus itself. That and the equivalent of a few thousand pounds, most of which had been used to settle his considerable debts, had been the full amount of their benefit, and they had to find a reasonable solution to the future. Her own future as well as her mother’s, Anna realised, because she had never taken up a profession. Vaguely she had thought about teaching, but the blow had fallen before that day arrived. At fifteen she had been happy and carefree, like most of her school companions; at sixteen she had been faced with a decision which had concerned them both. Further education was out of the question as far as she was concerned, although it was many weeks before Dorothy Rossides would concede the fact.