‘Ooh imagine! Let’s hope a few of them are bookworms. OK who are they and where will I send their invites?’
Georgios gives me a handful of names. ‘Probably best to find out who their publicists are and email them the invites directly.’
‘They have publicists?’
‘They have everything!’
I shake my head. ‘Well as long as they read, I’ll allow it.’
He laughs. ‘Let’s hope.’
In the end, our invite list is a few pages long and I can’t help but feel this is going to work. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a night-time library?
As I put down the notebook, our hands brush and a charge runs through me. Georgios leans in to kiss me. I can smell the citrus scent of lemon on his breath. Our lips touch and I quickly pull away.
‘I don’t want to rush into anything,’ I say, with a wonky smile. OK, I might be telling a small fib. For some strange reason I want nothing more than to pull him to me and kiss the life out of him. But I’m sure that goes against all the fake-dating rules in the handbook, if there was such a thing. Gran is inside and there’s customers milling about and it just seems too forward to be smooching for all the world to see. Well,again.
‘Of course,’ he says, like a perfect gentleman. ‘Let’s take things slow. I’ve had such a great day with you, Evie.’
Chapter 13
A few days later, Gran relieves my shift at Bibliotherapy, waving me away distractedly as she chats to someone on her phone in an agitated manner. Gran’s always lived her life on hyperdrive but lately her demeanour has been a little less sparkly. Could be the heat. It bears down during the day and saps a person’s strength.
It’s obvious Gran wants me to skedaddle by the way she keeps pointing to me and then the direction of my villa, so I save my invitation design progress on my laptop. I can’t wait to show her when she’s less distracted. The invites resemble vintage library borrowing cards like you’d find in the back of library books before the advent of computers. I know she’ll get a kick out of them, but not while she’s in this mood, so I make an exaggerated bow and hightail it.
New husband Konstantine is still MIA. From what I gather Gran doesn’t have much contact with him. Could be that he’s in the middle of an ocean somewhere and the satellite phone is unreliable, or it could be the guy is a dud of a husband – hard to tell right now. If Gran doesn’t want to confide in me, there’s not much I can do until she’s ready to share her story. One thing I respect is that Gran will always fess up when the time is right. Mom’s been strangely quiet, which is ominous in itself. She probablyhashired a forensic accountant and will know before I do if something is amiss.
I go to my villa and flop on the bed. No sooner have I angled the blinds to block out the bright sunlight than her name doth appear on my phone – I have to remember not to summon my mother just by using the power of my mind.
‘Hello, Mom. No Posy today? To what honour do I owe this brief reprieve?’ It’s like looking into the eye of a storm. I shudder to think what the hell is going on with Mom’s inner ear.
‘Darling! Don’t be mean. You know your sister loves you very much. It’s not her fault she got a bad dose of the sarcasm gene. Blame your father.’
Her face finally appears on screen. ‘There you are!’
‘Here I am!’
I flutter my fingers. How can my eighty-three-year-old grandmother understand how to hack into Facebook and my legal eagle mother can’t understand how a video call works?
Mom does the whole squint one eyeball up to the camera thing. Yikes, I can see why she’s good at interrogation. ‘Have you found out any more about this husband of hers? From what I can gather, he’s a bit of a mooch. Do we know if he’s really working?’
‘I can only take Gran’s word for it.’ I’m reminded of the note I found in Gran’s jewellery box:Your husband isn’t to be trusted.I can’t exactly mention that to Il Capitano of the Fun Police though. And I don’t want to admit to Gran I found the balled-up paper, in case she thinks I’ve been snooping, but it does give me pause.
Are we trying to save a sinking ship with no help on the horizon?
‘And has any of this salary of his arrived?’
Gran hasn’t mentioned any salary and the figures are still squarely in the red. ‘I’ll see what I can find out.’
‘Do that. And look for any mail there, any identifiers on this guy. Social security numbers, or anything I can run a trace on him with.’
‘Umm.’ I’m not going to do that.
‘Have you been listening in on her phone conversations?’
‘No?’ But maybe I should, even if I keep the information to myself. It might give me a lead on just what is going on here.
‘Evie!’ she says exasperated. ‘Listen in, and report back. You do want to help your ailing grandmother, don’t you?’
