Theos, it hurt to say her name.
He’d waited over an hour to hear her footsteps treading quietly through the lodge. He’d listened to the soft closing of her bedroom door and the turn of her lock. Only then, knowing she was safely back, did he strip off his clothes and get into bed. It had taken him hours to fall asleep.
He would keep his distance on the yacht, he decided bleakly. He would let her settle on it first then find a space far from her.
‘She left hours ago,’ Natassa replied.
He craned his head round sharply. ‘What do you mean, she left?’
‘She went to the island.’
‘Sidiro?’
She nodded, eyes suddenly wary.
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. I assume she took the boat.’
Theo took a moment to compose his features and lower his tone. ‘Did she say how long she would be there for?’
‘No...’ Natassa raised her shoulders. ‘She gave me a hug and thanked me for everything. My feeling was that she wouldn’t be coming back—she said her work for you was done. Should I have told you? I didn’t think. I assumed you knew.’
‘It’s okay.’ He breathed deeply as he attempted to reassure her. He felt light-headed and blinked hard a number of times to regain his focus. ‘Her work here is complete.’ And Helena had no reason to suffer his company another minute. She had probably decided to get a lift back to Agon from one of the partygoers on the island. ‘Where is Elli? I have something to discuss with you both.’
Fifteen minutes later, Theo borrowed Elli’s scooter to reach his yacht. He assumed Helena had taken his when she’d made her early morning escape, an assumption confirmed when he reached the small cove he kept the rowing boat in. The boat had gone and his scooter was propped up in its place.
Shading his eyes from the rising sun, he squinted. The sea was calm. There was nothing floating on the water.
It was only a short boat ride to the island. Helena could have reached it in ten, maybe twenty minutes. She was nowhere near as strong as him but she was hardly a weakling.
All the same, he borrowed the captain’s binoculars when he boarded his yacht and found he could breathe a little easier when he spotted his rowing boat pulled up high on the beach. She had made it there safe and sound. She had money in her bank account. She had friends on Sidiro. If the worst happened and she couldn’t get a lift off the island, she could catch the ferry.
It was time to put into practice what he’d promised and leave her to get on with her life. Maybe one day he’d be able to get on with his too.
Helena looked out of the window of the bedroom she’d taken possession of barely an hour ago. She’d arrived on Sidiro as all the partygoers were off to bed and had been incredibly lucky the room they’d rented that weekend was still free. Even luckier that Marinella, the owner of the house-hotel, allowed her to swap the room for another. She couldn’t bring herself to sleep in the bed in which she and Theo had spent practically the whole weekend.
Had it really been only twelve hours since they’d left it?
She’d come to Sidiro on impulse after a sleepless night. She hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of travelling back to Agon with Theo on his yacht, so had rowed here intending to spend a night catching up on sleep and then either cadge a lift or get the ferry off the island.
The house-hotel was located high on a hilltop. The only downside with this room was that it faced the peninsula.
About to fall onto the bed and sleep her exhaustion away, she caught a flash of white in the distance.
Theo’s yacht.
Her eyes remained fixed on it until it became a distant speck and then faded into nothing.
Theo had gone.
She would never see him again.
Theo drummed his fingers as he read the email that had pinged into his inbox a few minutes ago from Staffords. His phone, switched to silent, vibrated. Seeing it was an old friend no doubt wanting to make plans for a night out, he let it go to voicemail. He’d been home for five days and had only left the villa for business purposes, but now it was Friday and all his friends, neglected since he and Helena had become lovers, were trying to tempt him out.
He rubbed his eyes and reread the generic email. It was an acknowledgement of the payment Theo had made to them. He printed it off and read it again. Reading it somehow made him feel closer to Helena.
Was she, at that moment, sitting in her open-plan London office working on a new project? Had she spoken to her mother? Had she seen her mother?
His phone vibrated again. He let it go to voicemail again. Sooner or later his friends would get the message. Theo didn’t want to party. He didn’t want to go anywhere.
Without Helena, what was the point?
He’d never allowed himself to grieve the first time he’d lost Helena. He’d done everything he could to deny the pain that had ravaged him. This time he would grieve. He would suck it up because all the pain he was feeling was his own fault.
His phone suddenly emitted a short trill, notifying him of a text message.
His heart stopped.
It was the specific tone he’d set for Helena. He’d set the emergency bypass on his phone so he would always hear if she reached out to him on it, even if his phone was on silent. He’d never dared hope it would happen.
His hand shook so much he dropped his phone. It took a few attempts to get his fingers to work enough to open the message.
His first instinct was she’d sent it to the wrong person.
Greek Doctors and golden sand,
