‘The cleaner,’ Joe says through a mouthful of omelette. He looks at me. ‘Hazel likes to clean and tidy everything in sight. She’ll take a glass out of your hand before you’ve even finished drinking to wash it.’
Hazel shrugs, clearly bristling. ‘Nothing wrong with being clean, is there? Next to godliness.’
‘Still, I’d hold on to your plate,’ Joe tells me. ‘She’ll take it off you.’
‘And what about you?’ I ask Joe. ‘What do you do?’
He tosses a cherry tomato in his mouth. ‘First aider.’
‘She means, what do you do here, dumb-dumb,’ George says.
‘Oh. Well, I tagged along, didn’t I?’ Joe says. ‘I’m the – provider of medical attention?’
‘House first-aider,’ George interprets.
‘George is the fixer,’ Hazel tells me.
‘And what does that mean?’ George asks.
‘It means you fix things, George,’ Joe says. ‘Unless “fixer” is Mongolian for “grumpy old git”.’
‘I’ll fix you in a minute.’
‘See?’ Joe says to me, arching a thick black eyebrow.
Sariah brings the last of the food, a plate of chopped figs and tomatoes. She removes her apron and slings it on a hook by the oven, then sits at the table beside me while George cups water on his face and armpits at the sink. Despite how terrible I feel, I’m incredibly relaxed in their company, as though I’ve known them for ages. It makes an otherwise alarming situation quite bearable.
‘So, if you can’t remember your name, how come you can remember how to talk?’ Hazel asks.
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Joe tells her. ‘It’s called amnesia. It doesn’t stop people’s ability to function.’
She purses her lips. ‘So, you can’t remember if you’ve got any weird fetishes?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I tell her.
She looks thrilled, a sudden energy sweeping through her. ‘I want to study you for my new book. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?’
I go to say that I don’t mind, but Joe interrupts.
‘Look at you, such a busy-body,’ he tells Hazel, throwing her a wry smile.
She shoos his comment away with a wave of her hand. Then, to me: ‘Do you know what you like to eat?’
‘I guess I liked what I just ate.’
But Hazel isn’t satisfied. She tosses question after question at me: who’s the current President of the United States? What year it is? What’s the name of my primary school? When was I most embarrassed? And so on. I’m still too foggy-headed to answer most of these, though I’m relieved that I’m aware of what year it is. But not who I am.
‘You could be anybody,’ Hazel says, at once exasperated and curious. ‘How do you have a sense of who you are if you don’t remember anything?’
‘Well, how do any of us have a true sense of who we are?’ Joe interjects, making quotation marks with his fingers. ‘We’re all of us many people in a single skin.’
‘I’m not,’ George says. ‘Cripes, you make it sound like we’re all … what are those Russian dolls called?’
‘They’re called Russian dolls,’ Hazel says drily.
‘Identity is performance,’ Joe says. ‘Ask any psychoanalyst and they’ll tell you the same.’
Hazel lifts an eyebrow. ‘Well, next time I bump into a psychoanalyst on this uninhabited island, I will!’
I’m shocked by this. ‘“Uninhabited?”’
Joe nods.
‘This whole island is uninhabited?’
‘An uninhabited paradise,’ Sariah says dreamily. ‘Just this old farmhouse and a few Minoan ruins. And us.’
I glance out the window and see a patch of dry earth rolling down to the ocean, nothing but blue all the way to the horizon. Hazel starts to tell me that the nearest island is Antikythera, which is eight miles away, but this sparks a debate with Joe about whether Crete is closer. I’m no longer listening. Eight miles of ocean to the nearest town. I’d assumed that there would be other people on the island, people we could speak to in order to provide answers to my situation, or who might help locate the missing boat. That I would be able to contact the authorities and find out where I came from.
‘But – how do you get supplies?’ I ask.
‘There used to be a big hotel on the south side,’ Hazel tells me, as if in confidence. ‘There was a restaurant, a few shops, even a bowling alley. But they closed it down last year. The recession, you know. That’s where we got our supplies before. Nikodemos – the man who owns the island – well, he loaned us a powerboat this time round …’
‘… which seems to have sunk,’ adds George.
‘There’s no Internet here, either,’ Joe warns.
No Internet means I can’t use social media or Google to search for reports of a woman of my description going missing from Crete.
‘Nikodemos gave us a satellite phone,’ Sariah says, observing my unease. ‘And thank goodness. With the boat gone, we really would be stranded.’
This, I do remember. The satellite phone that George pulled from his pocket last night. The phone they said they’d use to contact the police on the main island.
‘Have the police been in touch?’ I ask quickly.
‘I called them again first thing,’ George says, and for a moment I feel relieved. But then he adds: ‘No one’s filed a missing person’s report. I asked them to correspond with some of the stations in the other islands and they said they would.’ He shrugs. ‘Sorry it’s not better news.’
‘Maybe we could call the British Embassy?’ I suggest. ‘Anyone looking for me is likely to leave a message there.’
‘Okey-dokey.’
He pulls the phone from the pocket of his jeans and extends the long antenna from the top. Then he rises sharply from the table, dialling a number and heading towards the window, apparently to get a better signal.
‘I need to be connected to the British Embassy, please?’ I hear him say.
My heart racing, I stand and make my way towards him, full of anticipation.
‘Athens, you say?’ He holds the phone away from his mouth and tells me, ‘There’s no British Embassy on Crete. The closest is Athens.’
When I ask how far Athens is, the answer is depressing: about sixteen hours from here by boat, which of course we don’t appear to have.
George turns back to the phone. ‘Hello, yes? Yes, I wish to report a missing British citizen. At least, we think she’s British.’ He glances at me, expectant, but I have no answer to give. I don’t know whether I’m British or not. He turns back to the phone. ‘She’s turned up here on Komméno and can’t remember much about anything. Yes, Komméno. We’re about eight miles northwest of Crete.’
He gives a description of me and nods a lot, clicks his fingers for a piece of paper and a pen and jots something down. Then he says goodbye and hangs up.
‘No one has contacted them about a missing British woman,’ he sighs. ‘Though of course it would help if we knew your name.’
Sariah frowns. ‘They’re based in Athens, though,’ she says. ‘Maybe we should try the