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Added to all this was the fact that the excavations for the new swimming-pool had begun in earnest, with a mechanical digger chugging away industriously out of sight behind a canvas screen. There was a confusion of noise which most of the guests seemed to accept philosophically with the exception of the elderly Mrs Pope who was heard to remark that they ‘might as well be in Piccadilly Circus’. This caused a smile but little comment from the other guests who considered the pool an amenity they could very well enjoy on their next visit to the Severus.

Anna worried about the upheaval but felt that it was something they could not avoid if the pool was to be in operation by June, and certainly the contractors were doing their best to cause as little inconvenience as possible. The digger, they assured her, would be gone within two days.

Her mother took a great deal of interest in the work going on, reporting to her in the office before each meal. She also mentioned that Martha had been an interested onlooker as the digger scooped out the rich brown earth on the far side of the screen.

‘She is a very intelligent child,' Dorothy remarked, ‘but lonely. I fear that Susan is rather neglectful.’

‘Doesn’t Susan come over here with her?’ Anna asked, surprised.

‘Not always. But then I expect Martha often wanders off on her own. There can’t be much amusement for a small girl who is naturally inquisitive in a large four-star hotel like the Crescent Beach where everyone lies around on the beach most of the day covered in sun-tan oil and dances far into the night. She enjoys the cabarets, though, when she is allowed to stay up to see them.’

‘Her mother is here on business,’ Anna pointed out ‘That’s why Susan is here.’

‘If you ask me,’ Dorothy returned drily, ‘that young woman is here specifically for her own amusement. I see her walking along the beach with a different man in tow most days, obviously forgetting all about the child.’

Anna signed a final letter.

‘Mama!’ You’re fast becoming the village gossip,’ she laughed ‘It isn’t your style.’

‘I don’t like to see children neglected,’ Dorothy said, ‘and it annoys me to see people exploited. Mrs Warrender is paying that young woman to look after her daughter—-quite handsomely, I suspect—and she isn’t doing her job.’

‘Did Martha come over this morning?’ Anna asked ‘I thought I heard her voice.’

Dorothy nodded. ‘We had our usual little walk along the mole,’ she smiled. ‘It always makes me think of you and Andreas toddling out there before Andreas was big enough to help your father build the little lighthouse. It seems to fascinate Martha when she sees it winking in the dark, and no doubt Andreas has told her all about finding the suitable stones to match it with the wall. She wondered if they would dig up more stones at the swimming-pool. They are going rather deep.’

‘I suppose they have to make the proper foundations,’ Anna said, thinking more about those long-ago walks along the tiny harbour wall than the pool they needed so much. ‘There must be six feet, at least, at the deep end where we will have the diving-board, so the digger will have to go much deeper than that.’

‘It’s quite fascinating,’ Dorothy admitted, ‘although I’ll miss my trees.’

‘We can plant some more—between the pool and Candy’s Place,’ Anna pointed out, ‘just in case Andreas changes his mind.’

‘About Candy’s Place?’ Dorothy looked at her in surprise. ‘I thought he meant to keep it just as it is for a bit of atmosphere.’

That’s what he says at the moment, but if it comes to making a great deal of money he might think differently,’ Anna said. ‘Candy’s Place is one of the prime sites along the bay now that the big apartment blocks are closing in on us from the Limassol end.’

‘If he has made a promise he will keep it,’ Dorothy declared. ‘He has changed now—changed completely.'

‘I want to agree with you,’ Anna said. ‘I want to agree with you so much and I know that he has changed, but I think he has become hard and determined now, not looking back at the past with any sort of kindness. Only looking to the future and the full life he will lead.'

‘Has he spoken about the future to you?' Dorothy’s eyes were anxious.

‘Why should he? Mama, he has come back after six years an utterly different person,’ Anna said ‘and I am no longer his confidante.’

‘As you used to be,’ Dorothy sighed.

‘We were children.’ Anna’s heart was suddenly heavy in her breast. ‘Everything changes.’

‘I think things could be the same again if we tried a little harder.'

‘Oh, Mama, you were always an optimist, and always forgiving!'

They ate their lunch in a preoccupied silence, although Anna knew that her mother’s thoughts were still in the past and on the conversation they had just had. Dorothy wanted to forget the years between when she had suffered so much disappointment and sorrow. She wanted to wipe the slate clean and start again, but could that ever happen? The years had changed them all, and Andreas more than anyone.

‘I’ll have my little rest,’ Dorothy said as they walked from the buffet bar adjoining the terrace. ‘Do you have to work this afternoon?’

‘Only for an hour till I finish the letters.’ Anna halted at the office door. ‘Would you like a run into Limassol when the shops open again at three o’clock?’

‘That would be nice,’ Dorothy agreed. ‘I’ll take a little stroll first and perhaps Martha will come over to have another look at the digger. It seems to keep her enthralled.'

‘Don't stand about too long in the heat,’ Anna warned, ‘and take a hat with you. I’ll come for you at half-past three.’

An hour and several interruptions later, she sat back from her typewriter surveying what was left of the pile of correspondence on her desk, deciding that it could wait because it was almost too hot to work, even in the office.

Crossing to the open window she became aware of an unaccustomed silence, the sound of the busy digger no more than an echo beyond the garden trees. No doubt the excavation was finished, as the contractor had promised, in record time, but the silence seemed intense, blotting out everything. She walked to the door, coming into the brilliant sunshine which dazzled the beach and the blue- green water beyond until the sound of men’s voices came rushing towards her, urgent, harsh, demanding. Paris came running from behind the canvas screen, white-faced and dishevelled, his clothes covered in grey dust, his eyes widely alarmed. She ran then, meeting him halfway, clutching at his shoulder in an effort to calm him.

‘Paris, what is it? What has gone wrong?’

He stared at her for a split second without answering, shock taking away his immediate power of speech.

‘Paris!’ She looked beyond him to the screen where other men were appearing. ‘What has happened?’

‘Your mother,’ he said, clutching at his throat as if to tear the words out. ‘She has fallen. There has been an accident and all the ground caved in.’

Anna did not wait for details, running as fast as her trembling limbs would carry her towards the canvas screen.

‘The little girl,’ Paris said, running beside her. ‘She will be all right.’

But not my mother! Not Mama, who is so frail from all those years of sickness and defeat. What could have happened? What could possibly have gone wrong?

Before she could reach the screen the contractor came swiftly towards her.

‘Could you phone for a doctor?’ he asked urgently. ‘And perhaps an ambulance.’

Anna attempted to pass him.

‘I must go to my mother! She will need me and I have to be there with her—to see her.'

‘There’s nothing to see,’ he told her gently. ‘The ground just gave way as we had finished digging and she was standing there with the little girl. Nobody could have done a thing, Miss Rossides—it just happened. One minute we had stopped work and the next there was a great, gaping hole beneath the foundations. Please try to get a doctor,’ he urged. ‘We are doing all we can back there, I assure you, and we'll get her out, but a doctor could be essential in the circumstances. It will be easy enough to phone from the villa.’

Easy? Yes, it would be easy to phone. She ran back along the terrace with Paris panting at her heels.

‘Get blankets, Paris, and some brandy,’ she commanded. ‘Ask in the bar...' She reached the office, dialling the well-known number automatically, her fingers trembling with urgency while the fatal words rushed round in her head. ‘She has fallen. Your mother has fallen. .. There has been an accident. All the ground just fell away ...’

There had been no sound, the rumbling of an earth tremor which was often felt on that erratic coastline or an eruption from some other cause—nothing!

And no sound, either, from the instrument she held in her hand. The line was dead, cut off somewhere by fallen rubble or cascading earth.

She was half-way to the Crescent Beach before she realised that her high-heeled shoes were sinking into the sand, impeding her progress in her frantic attempt at rescue. Kicking them off, she left them on the beach, running freely now but still half blinded by the tears she could not shed. People were sitting on the rocks when she came to the wall, people in bright costumes under the blue and white umbrellas, people laughing, people enjoying themselves in the bright sunshine and nobody aware of what had happened on the other side of that dividing wall.

Climbing it without difficulty, she threw herself on to the sand on the far side, running blindly up the beach where someone rose languidly from a chair.

‘Do you need help?’

She did not hear the question, running on until another man caught her in his arms.

‘Anna, where are you going?’ Andreas demanded. ‘What has happened?’

‘It’s Mama!’ She used the old, well-beloved name automatically, the name they had both used as children all these years ago. ‘We have to have a doctor. I tried to telephone from the villa but the line was dead—cut off when the earth fell in ’

He took her completely into his arms, holding her for a moment with a tenderness which soothed the wild tumult in her heart before he led her quickly towards the hotel.

‘Try to tell me what happened,’ he commanded as they mounted the terrace steps. ‘As much as you can without the details.’

‘It was at the swimming-pool. The digger had been working all day and there was a lot of noise, but they hoped to finish before six. Mama must have gone to see how it looked ’ She turned to face him, her eyes wide in her pale, anguished face. ‘Andreas, they were both there—Mama and Martha.’

‘Martha? What happened to her?’

‘She’s safe, I think. Paris said she would be all right.’

His jaw tightened. ‘She said she was going to visit your mother. I told her not to be long.’ They had reached the vast entrance hall which was mercifully empty at that time of day. ‘We’ll get them out, Anna—don’t worry,’ he said. ‘If you want to go back to the villa I’ll follow you after I’ve phoned.’

She turned blindly back across the crowded terraces where people were drinking tea and iced orange-juice, back to the wall and along the beach on the other side where her shoes were still lying on the sand, but she did not seem to see them, two scraps of pink canvas lying there beside the water with the wind blowing over them.

By the time she reached the excavations a small crowd had gathered, but Paris was keeping the too-inquisitive back, allowing only the workmen to enter with the spades they had abandoned when the mechanical digger went to work.

‘Paris ?’

He shook his head.

‘Not yet, but we will find your mother. The little girl has been taken to the house,’ he added. ‘She is not hurt.'

‘I’ll go to her soon.’

Her mother was uppermost in her thoughts as she pushed her way through the crowd, seeing that the contractor was there, standing on the edge of what seemed to be a great chasm and looking down in perplexity at what he saw. Anna ran to his side...

‘Mr. Zacharakis ?’

He turned towards her, outlined against the gaping hole where his digger had sank.

‘It is terrible,’ he said. ‘Incomprehensible! It all just caved in while we were standing there, looking on. We’ve done all we can, but it looks as if there were other, earlier excavations, like those farther along the coast, and the ground just gave way.’

‘My mother ?’

‘She’s down there.’ He looked stricken. ‘Poor lady! She did her best to shield the child, but a beam fell across her—the lintel of a door, perhaps, although we can’t be sure till we’ve cleared away the rubble.’

‘Mr. Zacharakis—do you think she is still alive?’ Anna whispered.

‘Most certainly, she is,’ he said, patting her arm, ‘but we must not move her until we make sure that nothing else will fall, you understand?’

Andreas pushed his way through the bewildered crowd.

‘Martha is at the villa. She’s all right,’ Anna assured him.

‘And Mama?’

‘She’s—down there.’ Anna was still gazing into the cavity. ‘Oh, Andreas, she could be hurt—seriously hurt. Why had this to happen to her, of all people?’

Without answering, he moved to the edge of the crater, followed by the contractor and two workmen carrying spades. Dazed, she watched as they eased themselves over the edge, inch by careful inch, while far beneath them, deep beyond the excavated swimming-pool, a silence reigned which seemed to engulf the whole world.

How long she waited there while the men worked she did not know, but presently she heard the banshee wail of an ambulance siren and the doctor Andreas had summoned was by her side. She knew him well; he had brought her into the world over twenty years ago, helping her mother through a difficult birth.

‘Doctor Ioannu ’

He kissed her cheek.

‘Go back to the villa,’ he said.

‘They are both down there, my mother and Andreas.’

‘I know. I will see that they come to no harm.’

‘They could both be dead. He took a risk—’

‘I do not think they are dead. Andreas is a strong man and your mother has a will to live. I know that from experience, but you must help me. The ambulance is here but we may have to take them both to the villa first. Get blankets, and hot soup for the others, and you must look after the little girl till her mother arrives.’