Honey(65)

Her shoelace is coming undone. “Haven’t thought about it.” She walks on past him.

He comes up behind her, squeezes her bum. “You know Blake spent time living in Athens in her twenties?” he says. “I wonder if she ever came up here.”

“Why did she live here?” Yrsa asks.

“She spent loads of time in Europe, I think just traveling around. It’s funny, you’ve barely told me anything about your family and you’re like best friends with my granny.”

“There’s not really much to know about them, we’re a pretty boring family—middle class, repressed.”

“What do your parents do?”

“My dad’s just retired, and my mum isn’t doing anything at the moment. She’s always done lots of different things. Don’t think anything really satisfies her.”

“Do you think you’re more like your mum or your dad?” He’s jolly with his questions.

Yrsa stops to tie her shoelace so she doesn’t have to answer, but when she stands back up Isiah has his expectant eyes.

“Neither.”

“How about your grandparents, do you get on with them like you do Blake?”

“They’re all dead.”

“Shit, sorry.”

Yrsa’s focus is on the ground before her. “My mum’s dad died before I was born, and my dad’s parents died when I was little.”

“What about your mum’s mum?”

“When I was thirteen.”

“Were you close to her?”

“Yeah, really close. I used to see her all the time, she was like my third parent.”

“Blake mentioned that she had Alzheimer’s?”

“Yep. It was pretty aggressive.”

“Was it hard?” he asks. “Losing her?”

Yrsa looks out onto the blue. Below them there seems to be a town, but in the white heat it’s hard to discern something from everything. “We never saw the worst of it,” she says. “She died before it really got her. It’s better that way, I would have hated for her to have been here but not have been here, you know?”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“She was lucid more than she wasn’t. I don’t really remember.”

“Was it quite sudden, then, when she died?”

Yrsa stops walking. “Can I have the water?”

Isiah takes it from the side of his backpack. Yrsa drinks slowly. “No, it wasn’t sudden.”

Isiah looks like he doesn’t know what to ask next, and they walk on a little more in silence. The trees start to dip away, and the sun beats against their backs. Her Grandmother used to love the sun. She would lie out in her back garden, body on the grass, fingers spread. She’d lie there for hours, whole afternoons; only moving to rub oil into her skin, to feel that hot crackle of melanin.



* * *





By the time they reach the temple Yrsa is ready for someone, something, to die. She’s sweated through her deodorant and is sliding out of her trainers, her hair just frizz. Isiah has walked ahead of her. She’s never going on holiday again.

He looks nervous as she approaches and holds out a semi-melted cereal bar as a peace offering. She takes it without looking at him and heads for the nearest, darkest corner she can find. They are in the temple walls. She sits, pressing her back tightly to the cold stone and he comes to sit beside her. The window above them is yellow stained glass.

“Are you overheating?”

“Of course I’m overheating.” She has her legs wide, her head hanging between them. “Why did you make us come here?”

“Well.” He leans his head against the wall. She can hear the amusement in his voice.

“This used to be the temple of Aphrodite.”

Yrsa couldn’t give less of a shit about Aphrodite.

“Some say that this temple was blessed by her,” he continues. “Women used to come and drink the water to help them conceive.”

“Is that it, you’re trying to get me pregnant?”

“We don’t have to stay long, then there’s a bus we can get back down.” He’s talking to her with the upbeat tone you use when you’re trying to negotiate a child down from a tantrum.

“Fine, let’s see your temple.” As she goes to stand, he’s quicker on his feet and gives her a hand.

“It was built in the eleventh century. And—” He’s reading from a sign. “It was also a temple of the Virgin Mary.” Isiah then becomes quite intent about looking at all the walls. Yrsa wanders more slowly and without interest. The ceilings are domed and the rooms echo, the atmosphere quiet and silver. Various paintings of religious figures are dissolving back into the stone.

In the center of the room there is a roped-off section. Being the only two in there, and with Isiah walking into the next part of the church, she steps over the rope. The area is circular and enclosed. Painted angels surround her, they wear white with crosses about their necks. In front of her is a small pool of water; she dips her hands into it.

After lying in the sun her Grandmother would run a cold bath. Submerging herself for as long as she could bear, laughing at Yrsa who couldn’t put a toe in. Not that the water was cold the day it happened.