Songbirds(24)

I stood at the gate, as Nisha would have done, and watched as Aliki walked to the entrance of the school. She was slow in her movements, avoiding the puddles as if they were landmines. Normally she would jump in them in order to make Nisha scold and laugh. Nisha would tell me about it later: ‘That daughter of yours! She drenched her shoes and trousers. She jumps in those puddles like she is Indiana Jones!’

As Onasagorou is pedestrian only, I parked in one of the back streets and made my way on foot through the rain. By the time I arrived at Sun City, Keti was turning over the open sign on the shop door. She stepped aside to let me in and ran to get me a towel and a coffee. Always eager to please and to learn, she was an aspiring eye surgeon, training at the university of Nicosia, who worked part-time as my assistant. She was brilliant at her job, attentive, meticulous. Sun City attracted an elite clientele; indeed, the city’s most important politicians, actors, hotel owners – and even an Indian prince – came to us so that they could see the world more clearly and with style, so I only hired the best staff. Keti had 20/20 vision, but shrewdly wore a pair of Chanel tortoiseshells without prescription: she knew how to represent our interests. We sold the latest designs from Tom Ford, Cartier, Versace, Dior, Bvlgari and Chopard. I even had embroidered eyewear by Gazusa, and in an alarmed cabinet behind the counter, I kept the most expensive pair – gold framed with pink lenses and encrusted with 2.85 carats of pink diamonds. I loved the craftsmanship of the individual glasses, each a work of art.

‘Where is Nisha?’ Keti said, handing me a warm mug of coffee.

‘Nisha?’

‘It’s Thursday,’ she said. ‘And you are late – we were meant to go through the stock and you have a client in’ – she looked at her watch – ‘twenty-three minutes.’

‘Thursday?’ was all I could say at this point. Thursday was the day I brought Nisha in to clean the shop. She would be relieved of her household duties for the day and join me at Sun City to mop and clean the floor, wipe down the shelves and polish the glasses. She would then clean my clinic, followed by the kitchen at the back. She put her heart into it: she knew how important it was to make the shop sparkle.

‘Are you OK?’ Keti had lifted her glasses, as if this would make her see better, and she was examining my face closely.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘So where is Nisha?’ she asked again.

‘Nisha,’ I repeated.

Once again, she waited, glasses hovering above her eyes.

‘I have no idea.’

She creased her brow.

‘I have no idea. I don’t know where she is. She’s gone.’

‘Gone?’ She now lowered the glasses onto her nose and bombarded me with questions: Where did she go? Did she say she was leaving? Do you think she went back to Sri Lanka? Any chance she had enough of you? (‘Joking – don’t look at me like that!’)

I answered her questions as best I could. I was exhausted. I realised in that moment that the last few days had caught up with me.

Soon, our first customer came in to collect her prescription sunglasses: Porsche Design with an 18 carat gold frame. She was a new client, with an accent I didn’t recognise. Tall, severe blonde bob, sharp fringe, dressed all in black. She’d first visited the shop a couple of weeks earlier when I’d given her an eye test. She put the glasses on now, and stared at herself in the mirror for a while, then she popped the case into her handbag, paid the rest of the money – she had left a deposit of 250 euros – and went out into the rain wearing her new sunglasses.

Keti would normally have had a great deal to say about a customer like this. She would have mused about who she was, where she might have come from. She would have come up with ludicrous and yet at the same time almost plausible stories about why she needed to wear such an expensive pair of sunglasses in the middle of a storm. But today she was quiet, and she looked over at me from the back of the store, where she was checking the stock, and I could see that she was concerned.

The morning proceeded with a few more appointments, some cancellations due to the weather, and just one or two browsers, but it was a mercifully quiet day. Keti went out at lunch and came back with warm haloumi and tomato sandwiches for us both; she closed the shop and brewed coffee. We sat in the kitchen to eat, while the rain continued to fall outside.

‘So, let’s examine this,’ she said, placing one hand on the table, opening it, palm facing up, as if she was holding an eyeball that she was about to dissect.

I nodded.

‘She decided to waste her one day off to spend it with you and Aliki in the mountains?’

I nodded again, ignoring Keti’s little embellishments, which I had been expecting anyway.

‘And while you were there, she asked if she could take the evening off – seeing as she had spent the day practically looking after Aliki – in order to visit—?’

I nodded.

‘To visit whom?’ Keti prompted.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, and added reluctantly, ‘I interrupted her before she could finish her sentence.’

‘So, you told her, quite clearly, that she couldn’t go.’

‘I didn’t say no, as such. But it was clear that I disapproved.’

‘And you have no idea whom she might have wanted to visit?’

‘None whatsoever.’