The Vacation House by Jane Shemilt

Author:Jane Shemilt [Shemilt, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Sofie

Paxos, 2003

Nico was missing.

Babas’s face became very still. Sofie had never seen him frightened before: tired, angry, worried but never afraid. It made her frightened too. She hadn’t seen him running either, but he ran out of the kitchen ahead of Dimitrios, jowls shaking as he thudded past the window. Athena told Sofie to stay put, but how could she sit quietly and wait if Nico was missing? She followed them down the garden, each step slamming through her head like a hammer. All the cicadas were screaming.

Christos had remembered about Nico, but she hadn’t. She knew what must have happened though, and it was her fault. They went to the beach every day, so he had become very used to it, it was their routine. When he woke this morning and saw she wasn’t there, he must have thought she was on the beach already. He would have hurried to join her; running down while she was crawling back, they had missed each other. There were so many twisty little paths and so many trees.

The water would have been choppy after the storm. He might have waited for a little while, but he loved waves, he would have been lured in. He would have stepped in carefully at first. No, he would have run in, talking to himself, jumping over the waves, one jump after another until he jumped too far, and the water came up to his chest. He would have been in much deeper than ever before. One of the waves need only to have been a little bigger than the rest and he’d have lost his balance. He wouldn’t have known how to right himself, especially if his feet couldn’t reach the bottom. If someone had walked onto the beach at that point, they would have seen a disturbance in the water like the thrashing of a fish, but it would have stopped after a little while.

She met Dimitrios and Athena on the path near the wood. Dimitrios’s face was running with sweat. They had been to the beach, but Nico wasn’t there. Dimitrios said Nico couldn’t have gone into the sea, because his flip-flops weren’t on the beach. Sofie didn’t tell him that Nico always ran to the beach barefoot, there wasn’t any point, it was too late. Christos was looking in the woods and Babas, among the olive trees, but she knew there was no point in that either.

“Let’s go back.” Athena was gasping for breath. “Nico could be in the kitchen. He might have come back while we’ve been away.”

The sun was blazing. Athena’s hand holding Sofie’s was slippery with sweat as they hurried back through the gardens. Everything was quiet. The guests would be on the beach in Lakka by now, and Jay and Ginger might now be sleeping in the back of Peter’s car on their way home. They would be splayed out, heads back, mouths open, snoring. Their phones would be on the seat beside them. What if they

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