Left with no other choice, Eléni followed the others, piling into the Mini.
‘Eléni, you and Marie are the smallest so you sit in the front. And, Gabbie, I know you don’t want to be parted from Dishy Dave here, so you two and Paul sit in the back. It’s not far.’ Andy lifted the front seat for them to get into the back. Eléni sat on Marie’s lap reaching for the handle above the door. Andy started the car and revved the engine. ‘Isn’t she a beaut?’
He drove out of the park and soon they were out on the open road leading from Porth Gwyn. ‘Go on, Smithie. Show us what she can do.’ Dave egged his friend on.
‘Everyone want some music?’ Andy handed Marie his box of cassettes. ‘She’s even got a cassette player. Cool, eh?’
Marie chose the Stones. Very soon everyone, except for Eléni, was singing ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’at the top of their voices.
Eléni’s pulse raced as Andy drove faster and faster.
‘Andy, please slow down. Please.’ She gripped the handle until her hands hurt. She was sick with fear. Why hadn’t she stuck to what she wanted to do?
The car approached the bend just before the old mill at the entrance of Nant Melin when Andy yanked the wheel to the right. The tyres screeched along the road into a skid as Andy tried to brake. ‘Jeez! I’ve bloody lost it.’
The singing abruptly stopped. Screams filled the car as the Mini left the road and rolled over onto its side into the hedge. Eléni shot forward, banging her head on the windscreen and her arm snapped free of the handle. For a few seconds, she heard the others yelling and scrambling over each other to get out.
‘Run to the phone box and call an ambulance. Eléni’s in a bad way.’ It was Gabriella’s voice.
‘Oh, my God. Is she still breathing?’ Marie shouted at Andy. ‘Andy, do something. Don’t just bloody stand there like a zombie.’
Excruciating pain shot down her left arm and then it all went black.
Chapter Thirty-Three
CASSIA
Tom led Cassia into the sitting room. ‘She’s right. We can’t stop her, but how is she going to get there? She has no money to speak of. She’s never even travelled to Cardiff on her own. She’ll have to organise flights, a place to stay and how would she start looking for a man whose name appeared in a newspaper article and who may or may not even be her uncle? We’ll ride this storm, Cassia, and you mustn’t worry. All families have rows, don’t they?’ He pulled Cassia in close and kissed her forehead.
After all the upset of the earlier row with Eléni, Cassia and Tom were spending a quiet evening together. Quiet apart from the thump, thump, thump of rock music blasting out from Bronwen’s record player in the bedroom above. Tom was following the TV highlights of a football game where his beloved Bluebirds had struggled against their arch-rivals, the Swansea Jacks. Cassia sat reading, smiling at the expletives coming out of her husband’s mouth that continued long after the match had finished, as well as after the pundits had completed their post-mortems.
‘I take it they lost, then?’
‘Bloody ref. The last goal was clearly offside.’
Normally Cassia would have been so engrossed in her book that she wouldn’t have been interrupted, but tonight she was going through the motions. Her mind was on Eléni. She looked at her watch again. It wasn’t like Eléni to be out late.
‘Why don’t you go up? I’ll wait up for her.’
‘I hope she’s all right.’ Cassia stood and kissed her husband. ‘I’ll tell Bronwen to turn the music down.’
She went upstairs and knocked on her younger daughter’s door. ‘I’m turning in now, Bron. Baba’s waiting up for your sister. Turn the music down a little, will you?Kalinýchta.’
Bronwen opened the door and hugged her mother. ‘Nos da, Mamá. She’ll come round. I know she will.’
Although both her daughters were bilingual and she’d taught Bronwen Greek as she’d done Eléni, Bronwen always answered her in snippets of Welsh she’d learned at school in Cardiff. Bronwen was proud to be Welsh as well as half-Greek. Cassia reflected on the change of circumstances the day had brought. Usually, it would be sensible Eléni reassuring her that her extrovert sister would not come to any harm and that she was having so much fun she’d lost track of the time.
But Cassia shivered as a sense of foreboding washed over her. A feeling that all was not well. She opened her bedroom door as the telephone in the hall rang.
Tom answered. ‘Yes, I’m her father. I’ll come straight away. Is she badly hurt?’
* * *
Cassia’s heart thumped as she and Tom were led to the ward where their daughter lay in bed and looked to be asleep. She’d been involved in a car accident and because her injuries were serious, she’d been transferred from Porth Gwyn Cottage Hospital to the larger one in Credenford. Tom had raced along the roads in order to cut down the journey time that normally took at least an hour. Cassia had gripped the handle above the car door until her knuckles were white, begging him to slow down.
‘Tom, please. At this rate, we’ll be in hospital beds with injuries of our own, or worse...’
Ward Sister Evans, who accompanied them to Eléni’s bedside, explained that although they’d given her something tohelp her sleep, she was conscious. Now almost midnight, the lights in the ward were dimmed.
