‘Sixty-three!’
‘Good. Nine times nine?’
‘Eighty-one! And there’s no point in doing this.’
‘Why not?’
‘I know them.’
‘But you haven’t practised.’
‘I don’t need to. You just have to see the pattern. If you ask me what seven times nine is, I will know that the answer begins with a six. I know that the second number is always one lower than the previous one. So, eight times nine is seventy-two.’
‘You’re too cheeky for your own good, you know? I’m going to test you anyway.’
‘Go ahead. If it helps you.’ Aliki sighed and shrugged as if she had resigned herself to this pointless fate of learning something that she already knew. She had every bit the spunk of a nine-year-old girl.
Yes, I remember it all very well, the way that Aliki was munching and yawning and shouting out the answers, the way that Nisha kept her attention on my daughter, saying hardly a word to me. The TV flickered in the background. The news was on with the volume turned low: footage of refugees rescued by coastguards off one of the Greek islands. An image of a child being carried to the shore.
I would have forgotten all of this, but I have been over it again and again, like retracing footsteps on the sand when you have lost something precious.
Aliki lay on her back and kicked her legs up in the air.
‘Sit up,’ Nisha scolded, ‘or you will be sick in your mouth. You’ve just eaten.’ Aliki made a face but she listened: she perched on the sofa and watched TV, her eyes moving over the faces of people as they trudged out of the water.
Nisha refilled my glass for the third time, and I was starting to get sleepy. I looked at my daughter then; a monster of a child, she’s always been too big for me, even her curly hair is too thick for me to get my hands around. Curls so thick, like the tentacles of an octopus; they seem to defy gravity, as if she lives in an underwater world.
In the light of the fire, I noticed that Nisha’s face was pale, like one of those figs blanched in syrup that have lost their true colour. She caught my eye and smiled, a small, sweet smile. I shifted my gaze over to Aliki.
‘Do you have your bag ready for school?’ I asked.
Aliki’s attention was on the screen.
‘We are doing it now, madam.’ Nisha got up hastily, gathering the bowls from the coffee table.
My daughter never really spoke to me anymore. She never called me Mum, never addressed me. At some point a seed of silence had been sowed between us and it had grown up and around and between us until it became almost impossible to say anything. Most of the time, she would talk to me through Nisha. Our few conversations were functional.
I watched Nisha as she licked a handkerchief and wiped a stain off Aliki’s jeans and then took the bowls and spoons to the kitchen. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the trip up to Troodos, but I was feeling more tired than usual, a heaviness in my mind and my limbs. I announced that I was going to bed early. I fell asleep straightaway and didn’t even hear Nisha putting Aliki to bed.
3
Yiannis
T
HE DAY THAT NISHA VANISHED, before I even realised she’d gone, I saw in the forest a mouflon ovis. I thought it was odd. These ancient sheep, native to the land, are wild and rare. With a yen for solitude, they usually roam secluded parts of the mountains. I’d never seen one on flat terrain, never this far east. In fact, if I told anyone that I saw a mouflon on the coast, nobody would believe me; it would make national news. I should have known at the time that something was wrong. A long time ago, I understood that sometimes the earth speaks to you, finds a way to pass on a message if only you look and listen with the eyes and ears of your childhood self. This was something my grandfather taught me. But that day in the woods, by the time I saw the golden ovis, I’d forgotten.
It began with a crunch of leaves and earth. A late October morning. I’d returned to collect the songbirds. I’d driven out to the coast, west of Larnaca, near the villages of Alethriko and Agios Theodoros where there are wild olive and carob groves and plantations of orange and lemon trees. There is also a forest of dense acacia and eucalyptus trees – an excellent spot for poaching. In the small hours of the morning, I’d put out the lime sticks – a hundred of them strategically placed in the trees where the birds come to feed on berries. I’d also hidden amongst the leaves devices that played recordings of calling birds, to lure my prey. Then I found a secluded spot and lit a fire.
I used olive branches as skewers and toasted haloumi and bread. I had a flask of strong coffee in my backpack and a book to pass the time. I didn’t want to think about Nisha, of the things she had said the night before, the stern look on her face when she left my flat, the tightness of the muscles in her jaw.