SERIAL Sanctuary Island by Lydia Jones

Ieros had been their sanctuary, but now it was time to face the wider world together . . .

SOPHIE stared at Helena’s blazing home. Behind the blank front windows, fire was intensifying at the back of the villa. A rumble that shook the ground spread upward through her legs, till the sound seemed to be inside her.

She had to go in and rescue Tatty. How could she explain to her employer and friend that she hadn’t even tried to save her dog?

A bark came from Helena’s study window. Sophie began to run. “Sophie, stop!”

In a nanosecond George was on his feet and rushing to restrain her.

“I can’t let you go in – you don’t know what you’re doing.” “I can’t do nothing!” “I’ll go.” Suddenly there was a calmness about him, almost as if the weeping figure from a few moments ago had been a horrible figment of Sophie’s imagination.

“Stay here,” he commanded, walking around to the patio.

Sophie saw him dive into the swimming pool. “What the . . .?” In seconds he climbed out again, wiping water from his eyes and pushing dark hair back from his face.

“I’ll last longer with wet clothes,” he said grimly and turned to face the fire. “George, wait!”

She grabbed his arm, and kissed him.

“Be careful.”

Light from the fire illuminated his face with a demonic red-gold glow. Then he was gone, a dark figure silhouetted against the menacing orange sky. In a moment his form had merged into the shadows on the face of the villa.

Alone, Sophie was engulfed by fear. Facing the spectacle of the fire felt like standing in the path of a raging beast, a monster that roared and spat and devoured all before it.

Her legs shook and she sank to her knees, praying to whoever was listening.

For what seemed ages that was how she remained, crouched and trembling, unable to drag her gaze away from the fire.

From the corner of her vision she became aware of movement and noise distracting her from the prism of terror.

“Despinis! Miss!”

A man in protective clothing was waving frantic arms in her direction and shouting a torrent of agitated Greek. The firefighters had arrived. Sophie leapt to her feet. “In there – please help! A man, George, is there, and a dog. I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. What are you saying?”

The man jabbed his palm to emphasise his words.

“You cannot stay here. It is not safe. I am Costas, Fire Chief of Ieros.”

Despite the situation, she heard pride in his voice.

“We will take over. You cannot stay – not safe.” “But –”

“You are the young

woman who works for Mama Zabat? She would not want you hurt. Thank the gods that Mama Zabat is from home tonight.”

“But her dog is in there,” Sophie insisted. “And George.”

“George Manolis?” Costas digested this news.

“Yes. He went in after Tatty – after Mama Zabat’s dog. But that was ages ago and he hasn’t come out.

“Tatty was barking before but now it’s all silent –”

“Go back.” Costas nodded to where his crew were hauling up equipment. “Wait back there.” “But I want to be near –” “Please. Then we do not worry about you, at least.”

Sophie obeyed but stared at the advancing fire crew in dismay. George had said it wasn’t exactly a city fire crew.

The water hose sat on a wheeled contraption that wouldn’t have been out of place in Victorian Britain.

It quivered into life, water emerging from its nozzle in a sputtering gush. A second hose joined it and soon two teams were running towards the blazing building.

They looked like figures from Lilliput trying to put down a monstrous Gulliver.

But these were island men, toughened by seasons of fighting scrub fires. In the centre, like a general, Costas directed activities in rapid Greek, his arms flailing pointedly, his grim features illuminated by the blaze’s fierce light.

Remarkably, the hoses took effect: around the front of the building bricks and wood began to spit and sizzle.

Sophie saw steam where there had been flames and smoke. The red wall at the rear still burned, but in her heart a tiny nugget of hope grew.

Was it possible George and Tatty were still OK inside? But if George had found Tatty, why hadn’t he come out with her?

Helena gazed into Dimitri’s eyes in horror.

“What do you mean, let you go?”

They were on the patio of the villa they had shared for so many years. Low sun haloed Dimitri’s head.

Blossom from fig trees was still fresh and fragrant and swallows swooped to drink from the swimming pool in the early evening sunlight.

Dimitri smiled sadly. “Helena, you must.” Panic flared from stomach to chest.

“I can’t let you go! You are my love, my life!” “Listen to me. It is time.” Suddenly Dimitri was walking backwards away from her as if pulled by a string.

She tried to follow but her legs seemed planted on the patio. With an effort, Helena moved to her husband and grabbed hold of his hand.

Then, with a terrifying roar, the patio split apart and Dimitri tumbled into a crevasse. Helena held tight to him, pain from her grip pulsing through her hand.

But then the patio disappeared and they were now on the clifftop road where Dimitri had died, the mangled wreckage of his car clearly visible.

Dimitri dangled precariously over the cliff edge, and still Helena held tight.

“It is time,” Dimitri said calmly, disentangling her fingers. “It’s time to let me go – and live, Helena.”

The cliff edge was crumbling. Behind Dimitri’s head their house from the other side of the island was crumbling, too, huge chunks of masonry breaking away and tumbling into the crevasse after Dimitri.

Helena woke with her heart pounding and her forehead soaked in sweat. Her leg was half on and half off the bed.

With gradually slowing pulse she blinked and focused on shapes around her that gradually morphed into the calming and tasteful décor of Pedros’s apartment.

It was three a.m.

She sat up and reached for her bedside glass of water. It was so strange: she had not dreamed about Dimitri for years.

The sensations of panic and grief were subsiding. Feeling stronger, she moved to the window.

Curtains rippled gently in the soft sea breeze. Soothed as always by the presence of the sea, Helena reviewed the dream.

When Dimitri had first died she had dreamed of him constantly: nightmares that had left her shaking with the sense of loss.

But it had been so many years now, and she had grown to live with the hole in her heart and lately, even, to believe in the possibility of new love.

Was that it? Had Dimitri come to haunt her because of what had happened with Pedros last night?

Helena shook her head to dismiss the thought. Dimitri had never been possessive.

She knew he would not begrudge her the new life that had begun yesterday with the signing of the documents ceding control of Sanctuary Cove Resort to Elysium Holdings. It was a dream, nothing more.

Still a sense of unease persisted. She knew to try to find sleep would be futile so she moved into the apartment’s little kitchen to make a drink.

As she stood cradling her cup and staring out at the moonlit sea beyond the balcony, she became aware of Pedros’s presence.

“OK?” He rubbed her shoulder tenderly.

She twisted round and offered him a weak smile.

“Bad dream.” She shrugged. “I can’t seem to shake it off, darling.” “Tell me.”

Pedros sat on the sofa and patted the space next to him. Helena sat and talked, still staring out at the silver sea.

“So silly.” She gave a little breathy laugh. “It’s not that I think I’ve done anything wrong – or that I believe Dimitri would think so. Letting go of Sanctuary Cove was completely the right thing to do, and –”

She gazed at Pedros’s dear face: his features were creased in concern.

“And everything. It’s just I have a sense that something isn’t right at home, back on Ieros.

“I know it’s stupid, and it’s probably just the dream unsettling me. But those missed calls from Sophie and George . . . They haven’t tried again.”

“Helena, it’s the early hours of the morning. They’ll both be asleep.”

“I know. I told you I was being silly. I just want to go home.”

“So we will. Tomorrow.” He checked his watch.

“In four hours you will ring Sophie and George. Everything will be fine and we will return to Ieros.” “You will come with me?” “Of course.” His smile was warm and full of love. “We will go together. We can pick up some of Vasiliki’s pastries and breakfast on your patio. You can tell her all your news.” He chuckled. “That is, if you are ready for the whole island to know it.” Helena laughed softly. “Darling Vasiliki. I know she will be pleased.” Pedros took her arm. “Come, finish your drink on the balcony. The sea breeze will soothe you back to sleep and tomorrow you will be fresh for the beginning of your new life.”

They stood together looking out at the beach.

Helena sighed. It was wonderful here. If only she could be sure everything at home was all right.

Although Costas and the fire crew had doused the flames at the front of the building, the back was still ablaze and showed no sign of diminishing.

From her perch on the periphery of the action Sophie was increasingly frantic. It had been so long since George had disappeared into the burning building

looking for Tatty. There had been no further barks from the little dog and no other signs of life at all.

“Has anyone got inside yet?” she called to Costas as he turned back to free up more equipment. He shook his head.

“It is still too dangerous. We must wait until we’re sure there will be no collapse.”

As if on cue there was a sound like an explosion. Sophie saw part of the rear roof fall forwards, a beam jutting upwards like the broken limb of a blackened skeleton. She gave an involuntary shriek.

Costas turned. He already had his back to her, striding away, waving with a trailing arm for her to stay put.

If George got out of this, she would tell him she loved him, Sophie vowed.

She didn’t care about what had happened in the past or what would become of them in the future.

She should have told him before instead of trying to be aloof, trying to protect herself. Life could be horribly short.

It was complicated sometimes, but in the end all that mattered was the way you felt about each other.

With a sense of dread Sophie realised she might never get the chance to tell George anything ever again.

Suddenly there was shouting and a frenzy of activity around the front porch.

Firefighters ran from both sides of the blaze with raised fire axes. Sophie heard the sound of smashing glass.

Then the group of firefighters parted and through their midst a familiar figure staggered forwards. “George!”

In an instant she was running, long legs eating up the distance between them.

He was bent double with head down. She could hear him coughing, his shoulders racked with the movement.

One of Costas’s crew covered him with a blanket and led him to one side. Sophie saw George wave the man away.

He sat hunched over and she realised he was clutching a bundle in his arms. As she got closer she saw the bundle twitch and move.

Miraculously, a blackened but seemingly unhurt Tatty began to lick George’s drooping face.

“Oh, George,” she said gently as soon as she was close enough.

At her voice he looked up. Tatty whined softly and Sophie fell to her knees in front of them.

“I love you, George. I love you. I should have said.”

Breathless, unable to speak, George only nodded and stuck out an arm. Sophie crawled into the smoke-saturated cradle of it, cuddling the whimpering Tatty as she did so.

For long moments they sat together without speaking: motionless except for the shaking of the little dog’s body and her attempts to lick both of them at the same time.

“She wouldn’t leave me,” George croaked at last. “Just as I found her, part of the study wall fell down and trapped me under the desk. I couldn’t move my leg –”

Sophie looked down in the direction of his gaze. “You’re bleeding!” “It’s only superficial. But I was stuck there. I tried to shoo Tatty back out of the window but she wouldn’t leave me, would you, girl?”

He caressed the terrier’s head with his free hand.

“I thought I was going to die in there, Sophie, but then that beam came down and everything shifted. I managed to pull myself out and get to the window.”

“I thought I’d lost you,” Sophie whispered. “Before we’d ever really begun.”

George swallowed painfully. His face was so close to hers she could smell the charred smoke grease on his cheek.

She wiped away the grime and he swivelled his head to kiss her palm.

“You were all I could think about,” he rasped. “When I thought I wouldn’t make it I kept thinking what an opportunity I’d wasted. I should have told you that I knew, from that first day when you followed Tatty aboard the boat, you were special.”

“Shush,” she said softly. “Save your throat.”

She kissed his blistered lips, his nose and his blackened eyebrows.

Then Costas was standing over them with water and more blankets.

“Come,” he said. “We have it under control now. We cannot save Mama Zabat’s home, but we can stop it spreading.

“One of my men will take you to the doctor. I have already telephoned him. Do you have anywhere to stay?”

“Vasiliki’s,” Sophie said. “We could stay with her.”

Costas nodded and strode back towards the team still battling with the blaze.

As Sophie and George stood up there was a further explosion.

A huge section of roof collapsed on to what had been Helena’s study, exactly where George had, moments before, been trapped. The beautiful villa was now nothing more than crushed and burning wreckage.

“Poor Helena,” Sophie cried. “How will she bear it?”

Helena walked through the ruin slowly. From time to time she stopped to stare at a charred or molten lump of something.

Had it been a sofa? A coffee table? Something else? Impossible to tell.

At the rear of the house, where the fire had burned fiercest, nothing remained but blackened earth.

“Oh, Pedros,” she whispered, wrapping arms around herself. “Thank heaven everyone escaped alive. Just think what could have happened.”

He walked beside her, his handsome features grey with shock and disbelief.

Helena turned to offer him a small smile of reassurance and then started to pick her way across the wreckage to where her study had been.

Here things were a bizarre combination of destruction and survival: a smashed photo frame with half the image burned away and the other half still pristine. A book with charred cover lying on the ground, offering its untouched pages to the wind, the fluttering the only sound audible apart from the crunch of their footsteps. It felt unreal.

These were the first moments of stillness since she had found out.

Unable to raise Sophie or George by mobile, she’d waited till the café opened and telephoned Vasiliki. Her friend broke the news.

“I do not know how to tell you such a thing.” The usually direct Greek matron wavered. “So I will just say it.” Vasiliki let everything come out at once.

“I am so very sorry, my friend, most of all that it should be me to tell you.”

“Thank you.” Helena’s voice was a whisper. She could not stop shaking. “George; Sophie! Tatty!” “Everyone is safe,” Vasiliki assured her. “Your little dog is here being fed

loukomades by all my customers.

“The young people are still asleep. The doctor saw them last night and then I sent them to bed in my guest rooms.” “Thank goodness.” Beside her, Pedros paced like a caged animal, aware something was very wrong.

Helena eventually passed him the phone and sat staring out at the ocean as he asked some of the questions she had been unable to.

She hadn’t howled or screamed. She’d sat motionless.

Afterwards, it had all been frenetic action as Pedros had taken charge: contacting the helicopter pilot, driving them to the airstrip. Within a couple of hours they had been touching down on Ieros.

Now Pedros encircled her shoulders with an arm.

Some long-imbued instinct made her glance sideways to see if anyone were watching, the years of being cautious still igniting a spark of guilt and unease at this open sign

of affection. She supposed it would take time to get used to the idea that it was OK.

“Look what I found – completely untouched.”

“My Mont Blanc pen! Heavens, I didn’t know they were supposed to be fireproof.”

She stroked the enamelled shaft of the fountain pen. Dimitri had bought it for her in the early days of their marriage when they’d set up the company to run Sanctuary Cove Resort.

“Can’t have my Chief Executive signing business documents in Biro,” he’d joked.

Although used to Dimitri’s wealth by then, Helena had still thought it an insanely expensive price to pay for a pen.

She had kept it in a special drawer in her study desk and it was only used to sign important documents and, on one day each year, when Helena had written her Christmas cards.

“It has certainly proved itself.” She smiled softly. “Perhaps it’s also earned the right to be used.”

“Are you OK?” Pedros swivelled to face her. “Sorry, a stupid thing to ask. I only meant . . .”

“Darling Pedros.” Helena stroked his cheek. “To be honest, I don’t know what I feel. Do I want to wail and tear out my hair? No, despite all I have lost. I feel sad – goodness, I feel sad.

“So much of my life has been spent here. So many good memories. A few bad ones, too.”

She took both his hands in hers.

“But when I said that I would marry you last night, I didn’t want to do it with half an eye always looking over my shoulder. This house belongs to my past.

“The memories will always be a part of me, but I have lived too long in the past. I want to look forward to our future together.” She shook her head. “This terrible destruction has been a shock, but I can’t help feeling it’s like a sign from the gods telling me it is time now to move forward with my life. Does that sound foolish?”

“Not at all.” Pedros’s smile was soft. “Sometimes terrible things happen for a good reason.

“Sanctuary Cove Resort is in safe hands now. You have done that for the people of Ieros: you’ve secured their future. Now it is time to live your own life.” He kissed her gently. “With me.”

“Darling Pedros.” Helena smiled. “Let’s not wait. Let’s get married quickly! Vasiliki is already beside herself planning a feast the like of which Ieros has never seen.

“We can get married in the little church here on Ieros and have a street party at Vasiliki’s. I want to be your wife now, today. Though I know that’s not possible.”

Pedros’s face was alight with happiness.

“For a woman who made me wait so many years, you are in an awful hurry.” “I’m done with waiting.” At that instant Tatty, who had seemingly already recovered her spirits, barked at an overhead seagull.

Helena glanced over to where Sophie and George sat cradling the little dog, gazing at the scene of the previous night’s horrors.

“Come on.” She grinned. “Let’s go and tell them.”

Sophie’s eyes were filled with tears she knew were not just the left-over effects of last night’s smoke.

“Helena, that’s the most amazing – oh, wow! I’m so happy for you.”

In the last 24 hours her emotions had somersaulted so much that she felt she could cry at the slightest stimulus. And this wasn’t small news.

“I didn’t even know you two were thinking of getting married!”

“Neither did I.” Helena giggled and Sophie thought what a gift it was to be able to find joy in the midst of all this destruction.

“But darling Pedros asked me and I just knew in that second that it was completely the right thing to do.

“I feel stupid for not realising it before and delaying for so many years. I suppose I was always so preoccupied.”

“Where will you live?” Sophie glanced at the blackened site over Helena’s shoulder.

“Goodness, don’t ask. We haven’t nearly thought it through. I suppose, to begin with, we’ll split our time between Pedros’s Athens apartment and his place in Glyfada. Tatty will adore the beach there.”

She cradled the little dog’s head pensively.

“But we’ll have to have a home on Ieros, too. I always want to be a part of this enchanted place.

“Perhaps we’ll build somewhere down by the harbour. Near Vasiliki’s, so we could pop in for breakfast!”

“She’d love that.” Sophie chuckled.

Helena’s face was suddenly serious.

“But . . .” She shot a regretful look at her ruined home. “All of this – it’s made me realise I really don’t want to look back any more.”

“The book?” Helena nodded. “Now that Sanctuary Cove Resort’s future is in safe hands, and I don’t need the money from the book to rescue it –”

“You’re not going to write it after all.”

“I’m so sorry, Sophie. You can, of course, stay here as long as you want. I’m sure Vasiliki . . .”

Sophie put a hand on her wrist.

“Helena, it’s OK. I was going to talk to you about it.”

She turned her head towards where George was shaking Pedros by the hand.

The older man had an arm on George’s shoulder, his expression earnest. Sophie guessed he was asking for details about last night and about George’s heavily strapped leg.

“I need to go home to London,” Sophie said. “I left a mess behind me and I should go back and face everyone. I don’t regret what I did – apart from the fact that other people got hurt – but running away here to Ieros was a cowardly thing to do.”

“No.” Helena was firm. “Whatever you are, and whatever you have done, you are not cowardly.

“Ieros has always been a sanctuary and it is no accident that you were drawn here.

“You needed some time and space and a little of Ieros’s peace.” Her glance flickered over towards the two men. “And perhaps a tiny bit of perspective?”

“Thanks, Helena.” Sophie smiled. “I knew you’d understand.”

“But you will stay for the wedding, won’t you? Both of you. It will be very soon – we don’t want to wait.” “I’d be delighted.” Helena put out her arms. “I think I’ll just take a final tour of the past with darling little Tatty, though goodness knows she needs the services of the dog groomer to get rid of that smell of smoke!”

Sophie laughed and transferred Tatty into her owner’s arms.

She watched as, cradling her little dog, Helena walked towards Pedros. Pedros twisted and tickled behind the dog’s ear.

Even from a distance Sophie saw the flash of Tatty’s little pink tongue licking Pedros’s hand: her seal of approval.

Sophie’s mind went back to her first meeting with George on the yacht, when he had joked about Tatty giving her a character reference. So much had happened since. It already seemed an age ago.

George was limping towards her as Pedros and Helena turned back towards the ruins. Sophie’s heart was flooded with the heady mixture of excitement and love that had mushroomed inside her since last night.

“Did you mean it?” he’d asked as they’d sat slotted together like spoons on Vasiliki’s flat roof watching the sun rise.

They were supposed to be in bed asleep: that’s

where Vasiliki thought they were.

After the island’s only doctor had checked them both over and cleaned and stitched George’s leg wound, the Greek matron had fussed over them both, running baths and fetching clean bed linen.

“Sleep,” she’d ordered, looking stern. “It is the greatest of healers.”

But alone in the pristine little guest bedroom, Sophie had found sleep elusive, her mind replaying the shocking images of Helena’s burning home.

Then she thought further back, to the scenes of her idyllic day with George: their kiss on the deck of the

Helena, then the moment when they’d spotted the fire and all else had been forgotten.

In her borrowed white linen nightgown Sophie had slipped out and taken the building’s external staircase up to the flat roof terrace with its views across the harbour.

“You couldn’t sleep either?”

George’s dark form was already seated on the ground. He patted the place in front of him and Sophie snuggled into his embrace.

The moon was still bright, though it was clearly sinking. The pastel cubes of Ieros’s harbour houses basked in its light: monochrome blocks of black and grey against a flat silvered sea.

“So beautiful, isn’t it?” George’s voice was reverent. “You’d never guess, to look at this scene, that there had even been a fire.

“But that’s what a fire does – roars and destroys, then moves on, leaving silence and even serenity.”

“Will you go back to it, do you think? Fighting fires, I mean.”

“I don’t know.” George’s voice was blank. “Maybe this was a one-off. Maybe, another time, I’d let people down again.

“A fire crew is a team and you need to be certain you can count on every member.”

“There must be counselling, or something, you could have.” “Maybe.”

His embrace around her had tightened.

“Did you mean it? What you said when I came out of the fire?”

“Yes.” She’d swivelled to look into his dark eyes, so black in the emerging light of dawn.

“I didn’t think you felt the same,” he said wonderingly. “When I almost kissed you in the sea – I couldn’t help it. I thought I must be crazy to be so certain.”

“I know, it’s ridiculous when we’ve only known each other for a few weeks! But perhaps, sometimes, that’s all it takes. If it’s really right, you just know.”

They had watched the rising sun gild the harbour buildings and then slipped back to their rooms.

In spite of everything that had happened, Sophie had felt calmer and happier than she had for months.

She moved now to meet the limping George.

“Will Helena be OK, do you think?”

He nodded over to the couple picking their way through the villa’s remains. Pedros put out a hand to help Helena over a charred beam in her path.

“I think so. She has Pedros now. Helena was never happy looking back – that’s why I had so much trouble getting her to work with me on that book. She is a forward-facing kind of person.”

“Like us,” George said, taking both her hands. “Whatever London has waiting for us, we can face it.”

With arms encircled, they walked together along the clifftop into the cerulean sky of a Greek island morning.

Ieros had been their sanctuary, but it had only been a temporary haven. Now it was time to face the wider world together.

The End.