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to stop me. No one will even notice I’ve gone.’
    â€˜My mother will notice,’ he said, deliberately misunderstanding her. ‘It’s the big family get together next week and you know how she likes everyone to be there. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be helping her to wash the carpet?’
    Washing the great carpet squares that covered the living room floors in Corfiote houses was an important annual event. In a country where carpet shampooers were all but unheard of, the carpets had to be scrubbed and then spread out in the sun to dry, a job which needed at least two women to manage it.
    The suggestion that Maggie should postpone her trip until the carpet wash had been done grated on her already frayed nerves.
    â€˜I should have thought finding my sister was just a little bit more important than washing the carpet!’ she had retorted scathingly. ‘It can be done any time between now and September and if I’m not here your sister will just have to chip in and help.’
    Ari’s mouth had tightened.
    â€˜You are being childish now, getting at my sister. She has her hands full with three small children. Anyway, I’m not very happy about this – you just deciding to pack up and go without consulting me.’
    â€˜If you’d been here I would have consulted you. But you weren’t here. You never are. Where have you been until this time?’
    â€˜You know where I have been – working hard to put food on the table and clothes on your back.’
    That had been the point when Maggie’s temper had finally snapped, and now, looking out of the aircraft at the green sweep of countryside beneath her, she saw only Ari’s arrogantly handsome face scowling at her with displeasure and heard only her own angry voice above the buzzing that always affected her ears when flying, or, more specifically, coming in to land.
    â€˜You haven’t been working until this time of night, surely? What do you take me for, Ari – a fool?’
    He had stared at her, his black eyes narrowing.
    â€˜What do you mean by that?’
    â€˜Just what I say. I don’t believe you have been at your office all this time. You’ve been with her , haven’t you? Melina Skripero. Your secretary or whatever it is she’s supposed to be.’
    For a moment she had thought Ari was going to strike her. An expression of fury contorted his features, an expression so thunderous that a cold hand of fear clutched at her stomach. But Ari was not a violent man. For all his hot Mediterranean temper he had never laid a finger on her and he did not do so now. After a moment his angry expression hardened into something very like guilty defiance.
    â€˜So? What if I have been?’
    It was Maggie’s turn to be shocked.
    â€˜Aren’t you even going to deny it?’
    â€˜What’s the point?’ He shrugged and turned away. ‘Obviously you have been spying on me.’
    â€˜No, I haven’t! I just put two and two together. I’m not stupid. I’ve seen the way she looks at me when I come to your office, smirking like the cat that got the cream. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. And I’ve smelled her perfume on your clothes. You can’t hide something like that. It clings, Ari.’
    â€˜You’ve never said anything before!’
    â€˜I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t, really! I thought if I kept quiet it might all blow over …’ She broke off, tears threatening suddenly. Oh yes, she’d known about Melina for weeks now, for all the reasons she’d enumerated and a dozen others besides, all the tiny pieces of evidence a wife gathers almost subconsciously until they come together to make a whole picture. But it was still a shock to hear him confirm it – and so nonchalantly too, as if he was admitting to having left a ring of scum around the bath instead of telling her that yes, it was true, he had