We all know that’s a blatant lie, but obediently, Max rises from the table, and I go with him, like a pair of lambs to the slaughter. He’s probably wishing he’d downed a few more glasses of red wine when he had the chance. How can a defenceless wrinkly old woman instil such fear in two grown men?

  Noni pretends she hasn’t heard us as we open the door, even though I know full well there is nothing wrong with her hearing. She commandeered the front parlour about twenty years ago and hasn’t budged since. Considering how long she’s lived in this room, she has very little clutter and very few possessions apart from the necessary, such as the commode chair and a low table holding an assortment of medicines and a small fan. There is the huge old telly, of course, permanently switched on, but no photographs and only one book—a tatty old black atlas that is falling apart and that we’ve never been allowed to touch. The hot fug of the room is cloying, a mixture of stale wee and dead flowers. I try to take shallow breaths.

  She’s in her usual pose, bundled up under hideous crocheted blankets and propped on a pile of cushions, with the TV remote, a little brass bell, and a jug of water within reach next to the bed. Her thin white hair fans out on the flowery pillow behind her, two bony hands neatly lie across her chest. A grubby tissue pokes out of one of the tiny clenched fists. Max hovers nervously at my shoulder, and not for the first time as I tiptoe over, I wonder whether she’s dead—the frail skin drawn across her face is so chalky, her thin lips so bloodless. Two watery eyes stare sightlessly at the silent episode of Lampsi playing out on the television.

  “Noni, it’s me, Georgios,” I say tentatively and will myself to cover one of those clawlike hands with my own.

  The suddenness of her gaze jerking in my direction takes me by surprise, and I involuntarily pull my hand away. “I’ve brought Max to say hello. You remember Max, don’t you?”

  Painfully, she inches her head in Max’s direction. (There’s not much wrong with her neck either, but from the way she hams it up, you would think her head is about to drop off). Finally, her eyes take in the handsome specimen of masculinity standing at my shoulder. She stares at him coldly for a few uncomfortable seconds before bringing the tissue up to her mouth and spitting into it with elegant disdain.

  “I see him” is all she says in a hoarse whisper, but the hand holding the tissue trembles.

  “Hello, Noni,” offers Max gamely, shuffling forwards. “How are you? You’re looking well.”

  I had no idea he was such a good liar; she looks like she’s been sleeping in a coffin for the last hundred years. One of the claws darts out and seizes him by the wrist, and she pulls him down so that his face is closer to hers, making no attempt to hide a look of intense dislike. “You are more like him every time I see you,” she hisses, not letting him go.

  Oh God, not this again. Max has no idea what she is going on about, and I’m not about to fill in the gaps. Anyhow, it’s an unwritten rule in our family that no one brings it up, not unless we want our arses tanned by Papa Marcos. Let Max carry on assuming it’s his own father, Felix, who she’s referring to, and not ‘he about whom we dare not speak’. I’ve never seen a picture of Felix Bergmann, and I don’t even know if Max possesses any, but he must take after him because he certainly doesn’t take after his dark Greek mother. Apart from inheriting her Mediterranean genes, which enable him to get a devastatingly attractive deep tan without burning, he’s all fair Aryan loveliness. In my humble opinion, at least.

  Conversation is a little stilted after that charmingly effusive welcome, although Max gives it his best shot. He comments on the fine weather, we all agree that the pistachio trees outside the window need scaling back over the winter, and that it’s a shame the soap opera, Lampsi, hasn’t been renewed for what seems like it’s hundredth season. At least she doesn’t instruct either of us to kiss her this time.

  We eventually make our escape from Noni, and Max says his goodbyes to the assembled family shortly after that. He’s parked at the far end of the seafront, and I walk with him down to the port. To be honest, I’m so stuffed after all the various food courses that I need to stretch my legs before bed. It’s the excuse I’m using anyway.

  “I’ve got a teleconference with my events manager first thing in the morning,” says Max conversationally as we stroll side by side. “That will probably take a couple of hours, and then my flight back to the UK is at five in the afternoon, so I won’t get a chance to see you tomorrow, and I imagine you’ll be working anyway.”

  I try to hide my disappointment, my earlier euphoria fading fast.

  “When do you think you’ll be back?” I ask lightly, trying not to sound too keen.

  He shrugs. “Not sure yet, but I’ll get a better idea of my schedule after tomorrow. I know I’ve got a gig in Athens around the end of August, but in between now and then, I’ve got Frankfurt, Berlin, at least two trips to Ibiza, and then the regular London stuff, of course.”

  Max has been a drum and bass DJ, and a very successful one, for quite a few years now. He’s a household name across Europe to people who know about that kind of stuff. Which is precisely no one on Aegina. He’s in demand all year round, but naturally, the summer season is massive for him. I knew this trip would be brief, but even so, it sounds like it’ll be a struggle to fit in another visit anytime soon.

  I’ve never seen him do his thing live, though I’ve watched him perform his sets on YouTube. He gets tens of thousands of internet hits, and his fanbase is huge—so big that someone else is paid to do Instagram and other social media stuff on his behalf. He occasionally gets recognised in the street back home. It’s all very glamorous. How can I even begin to compete with that? Max’s plans of us being together are hopeless before they’ve even begun.

  “Come over and see me at the gig in Athens,” he suggests suddenly. “I’ll send you a ticket, and you can stay with me afterwards. It’ll be wild; you’ll love it, Georgios.”

  He can see I’m doubtful. It’s not just that drum and bass music isn’t my thing. It’s a reminder of the real world that he lives and breathes. Aegina and me, we’re just his little retreat from it now and again. For all his proclamations of love, he doesn’t want me there, not really. He’s just being kind.

  “Come on, Georgios,” he urges, “Please say that you will. It would mean so much to me, and I promise you’ll have a good time. And maybe you can see for yourself I’m not the complete waster you’ve always pegged me for.”

  This raises a laugh, it’s a long-standing joke between us that Max’s concept of hard work and my concept of hard work are somewhat divergent.

  “That’s a bit harsh, Max. I know you work hard, if you can call all those gigs, first-class flights, and luxury hotel rooms work…”

  I’m only teasing him, and he knows it. We’re almost at his jeep, parked on its own in the far corner of the makeshift sandy carpark. Wordlessly, he drags me by the arm around to the far side of the vehicle, so we are hidden by a thick hedge from anyone passing nearby. Leaning against the door, he pulls me closer to him, linking the fingers of both of my hands in his own.

  “Why now, Maxi? Why me?”

  He sighs and grazes his soft lips over my jaw. Before I can control it, an embarrassing whimper escapes from my throat.

  “Why you? Because it’s always been you, Georgie. I’ve just taken a rather circuitous route to get here. And maybe I had to have a couple of shitty experiences before I took the time to step back and really examine what I wanted. But believe me when I tell you that every other boy has only been an insignificant steppingstone on the way to reaching you.”

  His words and the touch of his lips kill me.

  “Give me time, Georgios, my sweet. I told you, I’m going to make this work. I don’t know exactly how yet, but I’ll think of something. Up on Moni, I heard what you said about me taking. Well, I’m going to stop taking from you and giving nothing in return. But I need time.”

  And then he leans down and kisses me again, and I want that kiss more than anything I’ve ever wanted before. Being a bloke, I’ve never properly kissed anyone so much taller than me, but it doesn’t feel the slightest bit awkward as he slides his strong arms around me, holding me close to him. I don’t care that he’s taller, and neither do I care that he takes the lead every time we kiss. And I definitely don’t care about the delicious scrape of his soft stubble against my jaw.

  All I do care about is how he’s making me feel right now and how what he is doing with his incredible tongue in my mouth and the pressure of his big hand cupping my arse is making me want to grind my hard dick against his muscly thigh. The painful friction as my sensitive skin rubs against the coarse denim of my trousers is almost unbearable. Max is just as hard against my belly, too, which turns me on even more.

  “God, you have no idea how long I’ve waited for this, Georgie,” he pants into my ear, thrusting up against me.

  Our kissing is messy and frantic; I am being dry humped by my bestest, oldest friend in the corner of a dusty carpark. I never in a million years expected this when I got out of bed this morning, but I’m definitely not complaining. His tongue travels down the side of my neck, his breath hot in my ear. The overwhelming urgency of my desire springs upon me so quickly that before I can do anything to prevent it, to prevent Max from caressing me and loving me so, so perfectly, I ejaculate into my jeans with a deep groan, exploding hot and sticky and…well…humiliatingly.

  Bloody hell, I want to roll into a corner and die.

  Max senses it immediately, of course he does—he’s a man too. I’m mortified. I haven’t done that since I was fifteen, and my older cousin Kara got drunk at a family wedding and took a fancy to me, rubbing herself against me during a slow dance in the dark. She’s a distant cousin, I hasten to add, though I’m beginning to wonder if I have a thing about cousins.

  “Hey, Georgie,” Max laughs, not unkindly. “I knew I was good, but I didn’t realise I was that good!” He pulls me back into his embrace. “Come here, darling, I’m flattered.”

  God, this is utterly, utterly embarrassing. I bury my face into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Max, I can’t believe I just did that. I guess…um…this is going to take a bit of getting used to.”

  “I don’t want you to ever get used to it, my love. It’s going to be special every time.”

  We kiss again, more gently, sweetly before he pulls away, pressing his forehead against mine. “I’m going to dream about you tonight, about us doing this,” he murmurs. “You looked so fucking hot when you came.”

  Those intense blue eyes, boring into mine. “Look after yourself, Georgie boy, and I’ll see you very soon.”

  Vagia, April 11th, 1942

  This week at school has been so rubbish. I hate my life. First piece of bad news: Lydia wasn’t at school for three days because she had a high fever and a sore throat. So I had to walk all the way to school in Mesagros by myself. My sister Maria wouldn’t let me walk with her and her friend; she pretends she doesn’t know who I am when we’re at school—it’s like I’m invisible. And it is such a long walk on my own with no one to talk to. An hour is a very long time to spend without speaking to anybody. Dimitris says I can usually only manage five minutes!

  And to make it even worse, the second bit of bad news. My lovely teacher, Mrs Tzabó, was also not at school, so our class had to join in with the class below, and they are so babyish! And their teacher, Mrs Pathitis, is really strict. We just did some colouring in and stuff.

  Having lessons with Mrs Tzabó is so much better. Her husband is from a country called the Kingdom of Hungary, and she has shown us where it is on the map, and it is so interesting. The capital is a massive city called Budapest, and that is where her husband was born. I’m going to go there one day. And in December, she brought in some special potato cakes she had made for him called latkes and, apparently, they were to do with a celebration that begins with ‘h’ but I don’t know how to spell it. ‘Hanika, hinika?’ I don’t know, something like that. Anyway, she’s not here this week, and no one knows when she’s coming back. Melia says that her papa said she won’t be coming back ever because the Germans don’t like her husband. But I don’t believe him. Mrs Tzabó loved our class, and we were just starting to learn about how the heart works. She would never leave without finishing a topic or saying goodbye. Maybe her and Mr Tzabó have just gone on holiday. Dimitris says the doctor in Perdika has suddenly gone away, too, without telling anybody. Maybe they are all on holiday together as he is also foreign, so perhaps they are friends.

  By the way, Dimitris is being very mysterious. He keeps going out at night and won’t tell me where. He says he’s just meeting his friends, but some nights, he doesn’t come back until the next morning. Last night, he came back smelling of smoke, like a bonfire, and Mama sent him outside to clean it all off. And sometimes his friends come to our house with him, and they sit and talk for hours in the yard. It must be very boring. When I ask if I can join them, he tells me to go away. He never used to be like that; he used to let me sit in his lap when his friends came, and he would tickle me and let me stay as long as I wanted. None of them minded at all, but now they get really grumpy when I try to sneak in quietly.

  Vagia, April 28th, 1942

  Melia’s papa was right. Mrs Tzabó hasn’t come back. I asked Mrs Pathitis from the class below if she knew where she had gone, and she got cross and said I should stop asking questions; otherwise, we would all get into trouble. Which is very strange. But I’m never going to learn about the heart now. Dimitris was very angry when I told him that Mrs Tzabó had left—angrier than Mrs Pathitis even, which is silly as he didn’t even know Mrs Tzabó.

  Lydia’s mama told Melia’s mama who told my mama who I heard telling Mr Kleftis, that one of the wooden German lookout sheds in Tourlos had caught fire and burned down a few nights ago. The Germans do smoke a lot of cigarettes, so maybe one of them set fire to it accidentally. It’s a shame after all the hard work that went into building it.

  Jürgen Bergmann came to our house by himself last night, and Maria crept out of bed to go and see him without Mama knowing. I did a few pretend snores as she was putting her clothes on. I’m surprised Mama didn’t hear her, too, because the floorboard creaked ever so loudly at the top of the stairs, and our house is tiny. When she had gone down the stairs, I watched her out of the window. Jürgen Bergmann was waiting for her in the olive grove opposite, smoking a cigarette, and then when she left the house, they walked together down the road and out of sight. Which was very annoying as I couldn’t spy on them. So I decided to stay awake until she came back, but she was gone for ages, and eventually, I fell asleep. She was so grumpy today though—I think she was must have been very tired.

  Lydia says they probably do a lot of kissing. She says that’s what her older sister does with her boyfriend. But I said that Jürgen Bergmann isn’t Maria’s boyfriend because he is married, and so they probably just talk about stuff. However, Maria isn’t very interested in the war or anything else at all as far as I can tell, unless it is to do with clothes or boys, so I don’t know what they talk about. And he doesn’t speak Greek very well either. Perhaps she’s managed to explain to him about pistachios. Lydia and I still don’t think he understood us when we tried to describe them to him last week.

  Actually, we’ve had a rather busy week. Mama had a letter from Papa saying he isn’t going to be home soon. His letter was very long but lots of bits of writing had black lines through it, so it didn’t tell us very much at all really, except that he likes Aegina more than where he is at the moment. Him not coming home yet makes me feel sad as I’ve got loads to tell him. And that is partly why I’m keeping this diary—so I don’t forget anything when he does eventually come home. His army is fighting near a country called Albania, which I had to look up in Mr Kleftis’s atlas. I’d never heard of Albania. According to the atlas, it is quite a long way away, almost at the top of Greece, and its capital is called Tirana. Mr K said he didn’t know much about Albania either except that the ‘Greeks were going to push the Italian bastards back into it’. Italians live in the Kingdom of Italy, not Albania, but I didn’t say that to Mr Kleftis as he’s quite old, and I don’t want to upset him. By the way, the capital of Italy is Rome.

  Hauptmann Ernst visited us two days ago for some goat cheese. It’s funny because when Mama was getting it for him from the back larder, he asked me about Papa. As we’d just received his letter, I was luckily able to inform him that my papa was stuck near Albania and not coming home for ages and ages. I think he was surprised I knew all about Albania. He told me I was a very clever little girl and gave me a piece of chocolate he said had come all the way from Switzerland! The chocolate was a bit melted and squashed because it had been in his pocket, but it tasted amazing. The capital of Switzerland is Bern by the way.

  Even though Hauptmann Ernst gave me the nice chocolate, I still don’t like him. He has nasty piggy little eyes, not like Jürgen Bergmann, who has big smiley blue ones. And I’m not a little girl. I’m ten and a half.

  Max

  Autumn is trying to establish itself in the middle of August in London. I’m perpetually cold, and Aegina and Georgios seem a world away. From the moment I step off the plane, I’m immediately caught up in a publicity shoot for my next gig, and a massive club in St Moritz wants me to sign up for a weekly set throughout the ski season and commit to the following year too. My management company—that’s business-speak for Charlie and me—are cautious. We think we can hold out for more money; London is a better draw at the New Year; thus, the negotiations are endless. Within days I’m back in the thick of it; the gigs, the after parties, the booze, the drugs, the sex…

  Not the sex, actually. And very little of the drugs. I haven’t forgotten my nadir back before my last trip to Aegina, nor the psychobabble from my trip to the spa, which by pointing out that my behaviour was threatening whatever I had with Georgie, had managed to strike a nerve within me when so many other people’s wise words had failed. I’m a young, single, horny chap, and I’ve been happy to share the love around, but waking up in a grotty flat, covered in vomit, with a grubby bloke I didn’t even recognise was a particular low, even for me. Not to mention publicly humiliating myself and Berg ProMusic Ltd, which Charlie and I have worked so hard to build. Since the grotty flat incident, I’ve got myself checked out, health-wise, and I’m clean, thank goodness, but it was definitely a warning shot across my bows.