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calculated that the woman in dark clothes who greeted them with twinkling brown eyes and a strong, character-lined face was old enough to be his grandmother.
    Her affection for Leon was clear from the start, but suddenly as they were speaking the woman burst into what to Kayla’s ears sounded like a fierce outpouring of objection. The woman was waving her hands in typically European fashion and sending more than a few less than approving glances Kayla’s way.
    ‘She isn’t happy about my staying here and why should she be?’ Kayla challenged, taking in the abundance of framed family photographs and brightly painted pottery and feeling as much mortified as she felt sympathetic towards the elderly woman.
    ‘She’s happy, Kayla,’ Leonidas told her, breaking off from a run of incomprehensible Greek. He started speaking veryquickly in his own language again, which brought forth another bout of scolding and arm-waving from a clearly none-too-pleased Philomena.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Kayla apologised through the commotion, hoping the woman would understand as she picked up her suitcase and starting weaving through the rustic furniture towards the door.
    ‘No, no! No, no!’ A lightly restraining hand came over Kayla’s arm. ‘You stay. Stay Philomena, eh?’ The look she sent Leonidas shot daggers in his direction. Her voice, though, as she turned back to Kayla, was softer and more encouraging, her returning smile no less than sympathetic as a work-worn, sun-dappled hand gently palmed Kayla’s cheek. ‘You come. Stay.’
    A good deal of gesticulation with a far warmer flow of baffling Greek seemed to express the woman’s pleasure in having Kayla as her guest.
    ‘You see,’ Leonidas remarked, looking pleased with himself as Philomena drew her gently away from the door. ‘I said she would want you to stay.’
    The appreciative look Kayla gave her hostess turned challenging as she faced the man who had brought her there. ‘Then what were you arguing about?’ she quizzed.
    ‘Philomena has no one to scold nowadays, so she likes to scold me.’ His mouth as he directed a look towards their hostess was pulling wryly. ‘Philomena bore seven children, but her one claim to fame, as she likes to call it, is that she delivered me. I’m eternally grateful to her for introducing me to this universe,’ he expressed with smiling affection at Philomena, ‘but she does tend to imagine that that gives her licence to upbraid me at every given opportunity.’
    ‘For what?’ Kayla was puzzled, still not convinced.
    One of those impressive shoulders lifted as he contemplatedthis. ‘For leaving the island. For coming back. For not coming back.’
    Kayla noted the curious inflexion in his voice as he made that last statement. Her smile wavered. ‘And what about just now?’
    ‘Just now?’
    Leonidas looked at the woman who had pulled him screaming into the world. She had been there—never far away—throughout his childhood. A comfort from his father’s strict and sometimes brutal regime of discipline, his rock when his mother had died.
    ‘I don’t think she’s happy with the way I’ve turned out,’ he commented dryly to Kayla, and thought that if it were true he wouldn’t blame Philomena. There were times lately, he was surprised to find himself thinking, when he had been far, far from happy with himself.
    ‘Oh?’ Kayla clearly wanted to know more, but he had nothing more to offer her.
    Gratefully he expressed his thanks to Philomena, adding something else, which brought Kayla’s cornflower-blue eyes curiously to his as he started moving away.
    ‘I’ve told her to take care of you,’ he translated, with a blazing smile that made Kayla’s stomach muscles curl in on themselves. And that was that. He had gone before she could utter another word.
    Kayla settled in to her new accommodation with remarkable ease, and as she had suspected, despite the language barrier, she found Philomena Sarantos to be a warm and generous