The Girl Below(78)

He looked over his shoulder at me and frowned. “No, I’m not.”

He waited this time while I examined the horizon in both directions, looking for some kind of landmark. But there was nothing. I was completely lost.

“You’ll just have to trust me,” he said.

His stride was confident as we set off in the direction he indicated, but my legs had become jellylike, uncooperative, and I struggled to keep up. For another five minutes we walked in silence, then a chugging noise that had been in the background grew louder behind us and I turned to see a lantern bobbing in the air, some fifty meters offshore.

“What’s that?” I said, peering at the ghostly vision.

“Have you totally lost your mind?”

I looked again at the bobbing light, and saw that it was bolted to the top of a pole, that behind it was rigging and a white cabin. It was a fishing boat, heading back to port, and as it pulled alongside, a couple of fishermen who’d been pouring fish guts over the stern waved at us.

“Kalimera!” yelled Caleb, and one of the fishermen called back, “Kalimera!” and held up a still-flapping fish.

“That means good morning,” said Caleb, turning to me. “Come on, race you there!”

I tried to run but could manage only to trot, and as we neared the wharf the sky began to lighten and I saw, with relief, that we were back on the docks where we had started. Circled by screeching cats and gulls, the fishermen had already started unloading their catch, and the salty smell of fresh seafood wafted over to us.

Caleb bounded toward the boat and started negotiating with the fishermen in a flurry of pidgin Greek. While he did so, the first sun of the morning burst over the horizon, dipping everyone, including Caleb, in soft, golden light. Despite having had no sleep, Caleb’s hair, cheekbones, eyes, and lips were at their pristine best. In three years’ time those features would be testosterone coarsened, ravaged with stubble, but that morning he was caught in the last instant of perfection before boyhood ends, and staring at him gave me a pain in my chest.

I hadn’t noticed that one of the fishermen—so tan he looked like a sandal—was nodding in my direction and saying something to Caleb that was making him shake with laughter. He handed Caleb a fish wrapped in newspaper and slapped him on the shoulder. When he trotted back, Caleb was still chuckling. “Guess what he wanted to know?”

I looked at the giant fish. “If you had a refrigerator?”

“No.” Caleb grinned. “He asked if we were on honeymoon!”

“Who?”

“You and me, dick.”

“And what did you say?”

“That you were my mother!”

His insult hurt, and I was too tired to hide it. “I’m not that old.”

“I know you’re not,” said Caleb, giving me a friendly biff on the arm. “And that’s why I told him you were my sister.”

Daylight arrived quickly, and with it, heat. There hadn’t been time to shower the night before, and I was desperate for one now. As we retraced our steps along the port, the surrounding streets clattered to life. Roller doors flipped up to reveal hidden shops, and awnings unraveled over café tables that had been stored away for the night. Searching the sun-glazed streets for a familiar landmark, I realized for the second time that day that I was utterly lost.

“Do you have any idea how to get back?” I asked Caleb, who had stopped at a kiosk to buy sweets for breakfast.

“I was following you,” he said, shoving a square of lurid pink bubble gum in his mouth.

After clumsy negotiations, Caleb got directions to a Hotel Triton, which we thought was the name of our accommodation. We’d found the port easily enough that morning, but the route back was convoluted and seemed to take longer than the way there. We cantered the last few streets, and as we piled into the Triton’s lobby streams of sweat ran down the groove of my back. Harold stood at the desk grilling the night concierge—“How could you not have seen them leave?”—and barely keeping it together.

“Here we are!” said Caleb, heroically.

Harold whipped around and glared at him. “The ferry leaves in twenty minutes—I’m not even going to ask where you two have been.”

“Fishing,” said Caleb, and held up his prize.

“Not now,” I said, and shooed him toward the stairs.

In a state of panic, we stuffed clothes into suitcases, and hurriedly checked under the bed for stray socks and underpants. Clothes sprouting from his half-zipped backpack, Caleb called out to me, “I don’t care if we miss the ferry. This hotel’s fucked, and Harold’s a cock.”