Angel of Death

‘Good. The boat is well equipped. There’s a bathroom and a tiny galley – a kitchen, so we can have tea or coffee on the way.’

‘It sounds fun.’

Four hours later they were approaching Greece. Miranda was sitting by the window, leaving the aisle seats free for Charles and his wife, if Pandora needed to go to the lavatory en route. Leaning her face against the cold glass Miranda stared down at the brilliant, blue sea beneath them, at tiny, grey and green islands scattered across it and then at the indented coast of the Greek mainland, frilled like the neck of a lizard.

‘We should be landing soon,’ Charles told her as the plane dropped suddenly, leaving her stomach churning. From the air Athens appeared to be a sea of white buildings with flat roofs and the occasional tower or spire.

What nobody had warned her about, what she had not expected, was the violent heat.

As she came down the steps from the plane the sun beat on the back of her neck like a brazen gong.

‘It’s so hot!’ she said, only just able to breathe.

Charles looked surprised. ‘Didn’t you realise it would be? It is usually around ninety or a hundred degrees here in summer.’

‘Usually?’ she gasped and he laughed.

‘You’ll get used to it.’

She wished she could walk faster, to get out of the sun, but she could only scuttle along on her crutch like a crab. By the time she was inside the airport building her skin was so hot it felt as if it was blistering. How could anyone get used to this temperature?

They somehow made their way through the crowded terminal, collected their luggage from the carousel and managed to find a porter to push it outside for them.

A long, black limousine was waiting for them. The chauffeur took charge of their luggage while she and Pandora got into the back of the car. To her enormous relief it had air-conditioning and was blissfully cool.

Ten minutes later they were driving through the Athens suburbs on their way to the coast. Miranda stared out of the window, fascinated. The buildings, set in gardens full of trees and shrubs, were mostly white and often had a strangely unfinished look, with wire sticking up out of the top floor.

‘There’s a tax on finished buildings,’ explained Charles. ‘So builders leave them not quite finished, to avoid paying the tax. Also people often plan to add another floor, when they have more money, so it is cheaper to do that if there is no roof.’

She wished she had had a chance to see the city – to visit the Acropolis or the great museum Pandora had told her about as they were flying here, where the gold of Troy could be seen, the mask of Agamemnon, the necklaces of Helen, and marvellous bronze statues of the Greek gods.

When she said so Charles regretfully said, ‘We still have quite a distance to travel, there’s no time for sight-seeing, I’m afraid. You’ll have to tour Athens on your way home.’

‘Why do so many houses have a gap under them?’ she asked.

‘They’re built on stilts, for earthquake protection – this is an earthquake area, although in fact they rar

ely have quakes in Athens. Two or three times a century, maybe.’

‘That’s often enough for me!’ she said, surprised and horrified.

‘And for the Greeks.’

‘I remember the last one,’ Pandora said. ‘I was in Athens at the time. The house shook violently, and a wall split from ceiling to floor. Everyone began screaming and running out into the street, away from buildings. I’ve never forgotten.’

The sky was a startling, vivid, cloudless blue. The sun burned in it, gold and round and dangerous to look at; she did not dare to try, already half-blind with the sunlight. They pulled up at traffic lights and she stared at a garden in which grew a tree she had never seen before, bark peeling from the trunk to show a strange orange-brown skin underneath.

‘What’s that?’

‘A strawberry tree.’

She began to laugh. ‘You’re kidding! It grows strawberries?’

‘It has a berry, you can see some developing, but they aren’t really strawberries although from a distance they look like them once they’ve ripened and turned red.’

Most of the trees and plants were familiar, but here and there she noticed something she had never seen before. So much of the suburbs seemed to be new, recently built, there were very few older houses and many blocks of flats. Perhaps that was the result of earthquakes?

Pandora leaned back and closed her eyes. Miranda watched her anxiously. She was pale and sweat dewed her forehead. The journey must be tiring for her.