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suppress the thought that, fond as she was of Mike, she would far sooner be going to Chania tomorrow than the Villa Ione.

Chapter Two
    GEMMA had the same feeling, but doubled and redoubled in spades, the following day as she stood beside the battered signpost stating Loussenas was one kilometre away, watching James reverse the car with infinite care.
    They’d wanted to drive her to the door, but she wouldn’t allow it. The road was getting steeper all the time, and deteriorating at every yard into a lacework of potholes. They’d been climbing, it seemed, since the moment they’d left the main road. At first, it had been easy to admire the scenery, but as the road narrowed, and hair-pinned, they all became very quiet, and started averting their gazes from the sheer drop only a foot or two from the car wheels.
    Gemma found herself wondering all the time what they would do if they met another vehicle coming down, but by some miracle that problem did not arise.
    The little hamlets they passed through, each with its gleaming church, were a relief. They’d stopped in one and drunk lemonade under the awning of a tavema, telling each other that Loussenas couldn’t be much further now, although the truth was they had no idea how far it was. They’d asked Takis, but he’d only given the map a cursory glance, stabbed it with his finger and said, ‘Loussenas is somewhere above here.’ And that, it turned out, had been putting it mildly.
    So when they reached the signpost, Gemma had insisted on getting out. The road was slightly wider just here, sufficient to turn the car anyway.
    ‘I really don’t like leaving you.’ Hilary had peered at her worriedly. ‘If Mike is as absent-minded as you say, he might have forgotten you and gone off somewhere, and then where will you be?’
    ‘Stuck,’ Gemma returned robustly. ‘But it won’t happen. He’s living at this villa, after all, so someone will be expecting me.’
    Hilary looked unconsoled. ‘If only we knew where we were staying tonight, or if the villa had a phone, we could keep in touch,’ she wailed. ‘It’s so wild up here. God knows how many thousands of feet we are above sea level. Much higher, and we’d need oxygen.’
    ‘Understating the case as always,’ James said wryly. His fingers closed warmly round Gemma’s wrist. ‘When we get to Chania, we’re hoping to stay at the Hotel Dionysius. If anything goes wrong, leave a message, and we’ll get back somehow and take you off this bloody mountain.’ He paused. ‘And you have our address in England, so whatever happens, we want to know how this little adventure turns out.’
    They drove off, Hilary waving frantically. Gemma waved back until the car rounded the first bend and vanished from sight. As she started up the road towards the village, she could still hear the sound of the engine growing fainter and fainter, until at last there was nothing but her own footsteps.
    In fact, no sign of life but herself, plodding up the road, and a large bird that might have been a buzzard wheeling and circling against the faultless arc of the sky.
    She sighed and transferred her case to her other hand. It was hardly the hilarious reunion she’d envisaged.
    She didn’t hurry, but she was tired and breathless by the time she reached the first houses. About half a mile earlier, the ground had levelled out into a small plateau. The land had been cultivated, and there was a little cluster of windmills, their sails turning gently in the breeze. Two women were working in one of the fields, black-clad, with the familiar head scarves round their hair and faces, but they didn’t look up or make any sign as Gemma passed, and she found this odd. In every other village they’d passed through in the car that day, there’d been waves and smiles from almost everyone, from the bearded priest to the smallest toddler.
    A donkey was grazing a small patch of scrub at the side of the road, and it turned its head, fixing her with its