Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

David nods.

‘And did you…’

‘I’ve dealt with him.’

Shouldn’t I feel freed by this information? Instead I’m horrified at what has happened, what I set in motion. ‘How? What… What did you…?’

He moves to the open window, turns his back to me, and says, ‘He asked if you could forgive him, at the end. He said he was sorry.’

‘He was sorry?’

‘The police took him away. For a different crime. Another attack. No need for you to testify. It’s done with. You asked me to deal with it, and I did.’

I go to him, press myself against his back, and feel the tension in his shoulders, his legs. ‘Thank you.’

‘Does that help?’

‘Does it?’ I do the only thing I can. I lie. ‘Yes, that helps. Like you say, it’s done with. You dealt with it.’

There never will be a time when it will be done with. No matter what happens to my attacker, no matter what happens to me. It will be inside my head forever, and I will circle it, like a moth around a bulb, forever getting too close to it, forever getting scorched by that memory. Sometimes I think it would be better to be dead, but I go on, just the same.

Yet more cowardice on my part. I don’t deserve David. I’m beginning to think that I never did.

He turns, and hugs me so tight, as if forgiving the untruths we have just told each other. ‘Arnie and Geoff are sharing an apartment on the other side of the complex. Let’s go and get them and plan our next move over pizza.’

‘There is no next move. I’m going to a cave tomorrow, up in the mountains. On my own. You’re going home. It’s the only way I can do this.’

‘We’ll see,’ he says, in a tone I recognise, and I realise this will have to be a negotiation. When a hero walks into a story, he doesn’t do as he’s told.

An Irish bar that claims to serve the best pint of Guinness on Crete is still open, one in a row of seafront eateries that have shut for the season, and it serves two types of pizza: margherita or Irish sausage. Only Geoff plumped for the sausage option. The waiter brought out discs of undercooked dough with scattered blobs of cheese and tomato on the surface. The Irish sausage pizza is huge and floppy, with a peculiarly yellow cheese, upon which the diced sausage floats. Geoff cuts off strips of pizza, folds them up, and pops them into his mouth as if sampling a delicacy. It’s ridiculous to still care about food at a time like this, but I find I do. I can’t help it. That’s part of being human, perhaps: caring about what you smell, taste, see and hear even when you might be dead tomorrow. Because you might be dead tomorrow.

We are sitting outside, between two space heaters that are doing a fine job of keeping the night’s chill away, around a rough, circular wooden table positioned for a view over the pebbly beach and the rippling sea. It makes a shushing sound, only audible when there’s a pause between pop songs coming from the interior of the empty bar. So far we have concentrated on eating, but I have to take control of the situation and turn their attention back to what I’ve come here to do. Without their interference.

‘Here’s what we know,’ I say, hoping I sound like a general addressing the troops in a key moment of a hard-fought war. ‘The Ideon Andron is a cave on Mount Ida, only ten minutes’ drive away. It’s a tourist attraction now, so it’s fairly easy to get to.’ I think of the video footage I watched on YouTube. Holidaymakers stood around the large mouth of the cave in summer heat, waving at the camera, sunglasses reflecting back, and then the scene panned away over to the sea while a Demis Roussos song swelled up to monstrous proportions. ‘There are four chambers, and the… person I’m looking for is in the last one. She’s very dangerous to men, but she won’t hurt me. So I’ll go in alone, retrieve the statue that belongs back on Skein Island, and then call for you to come and take it away, okay?’

‘I thought we were hunting a monster,’ says Geoff, mournfully, like a child being told the trip to Disneyland is off. I remember him from the library. He would come in every month or so and take out an adventure novel – Wilbur Smith or Clive Cussler – and often he’d bring them back late and have to pay a fine. All I really know about him is that he’s a slow reader. Now I find I like him and pity him in equal measure.

‘Who told you that?’ I ask him.

He points at David. ‘I told them what I knew,’ he says.

‘A goddess,’ says Arnie. ‘Fate.’ It’s the first time he’s spoken since his pizza arrived. It lies untouched before him, as does his beer. Pale and with a permanent frown, he looks familiarly hungover. I wonder if he drank too much on the plane.

‘They’ve played the cubes too.’ David shrugs.

Of course. They’ve all had their own visions of Moira, caused by the water containing her essence. No wonder Geoff looks enthusiastic about going to meet her. He probably thinks he’s going to find some fantasy female with flowing hair and bouncy breasts – a Greek pin-up girl. ‘She will kill you if you get too close. Or you’ll kill each other.’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ says David. ‘We’ll take you to the cave, we’ll wait outside. When you shout for us, we’ll come in. We get it.’

But I don’t believe him. I don’t feel in control of them. They have their own agenda; I can read it on their faces.

‘We all need to be there,’ says Arnie. ‘This won’t work unless we’re there. David, go and order me a – an ouzo, is it? Whatever they drink around here.’

‘You’re sure?’

Arnie nods. As soon as David has left the table, he looks at Geoff. ‘Push off for a minute, lad, all right?’ Geoff gets up, uncomplaining, and slopes off in the direction of the sea.

I’m alone with my father for the first time in months. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘It’s like this. This is David’s fight, not yours. It’s not a woman’s place to take on Fate. You know that.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘The only way this is going to work is if you let David take her on. He touched her, on the island, didn’t he? And somehow he survived. It’s made him too powerful. Like in the big stories of old. Like Ulysses, and Theseus, and all that.’

‘Even those heroes couldn’t beat Fate.’

‘But you think you can?’ He slumps back in his chair, and puts one hand on his forehead. ‘Don’t argue with me, Marianne. I’ve seen it.’

And that, in his eyes, should be the end of the argument. He’s a wise man. Born that way. He has a natural advantage over me, over all women.

He is utterly full of shit and he will never see it. How he loves the high ground, doing what he thinks is best, thinking it’s the only way. Forging letters from my mother and destroying the real letters, deciding I should never know the truth, making such decisions in the name of being a father. And yet failing to be a father in the way that mattered – by listening to me.

But he will listen to me now.

I pick up my beer and throw it in his face.

He is astonished. The beer drips from his grizzled hair, his eyebrows, his nose and chin. He opens his mouth and shuts it.

I hand him a napkin. ‘Didn’t see that coming, did you?’

He mops at his face.

‘So it turns out you don’t see everything after all. You don’t see me. You never did. That’s because I am not under Fate’s control. I’m not a hero or a villain. I don’t have to be David’s little helper, and I will never be able to predict the future. That’s because the future isn’t already written for me. Only men are controlled by Moira, not women. Now do you understand why I can win this fight? I’m not under her control. I’m not under anyone’s control. Not even yours.’