For the Georgious, the loss of almost every material thing they owned was nothing compared with the loss of their sons. Each day Irini lit three candles in church: for Markos, Christos and Ali. As time passed, her faith had returned even though Christos had not.
Vasilis was determined to be realistic. They might never know Christos’ real fate. It had been discovered that some of those who had been killed in the brief civil war around the time of the coup against Makarios had been included among the number of missing, buried by fellow Greek Cypriots in unknown places.
‘He might have been one of those,’ said Vasilis.
‘I just have a feeling,’ said Irini. ‘And while I am still dreaming of him, I won’t give up hope.’
Hope was all she had. Elpida.
Routine tasks and daily rituals became Irini’s survival mechanism, along with the joys of helping Maria and Panikos look after their children. They provided huge distraction and gave her great joy.
The Georgious lived with the constant anxiety that their house was not their own and that the real owners might come to reclaim it. One day they thought that moment had arrived.
There was an unexpected ring on the bell. Walking slowly, Vasilis went to see who it was. In the old days in Famagusta they had always left the door open, but things were different here.
When he opened it, he wondered if he needed glasses as well as his walking stick. It was a young man. Haggard. Dirty.
Vasilis felt his legs weaken. It was as much as he could manage to say his son’s name.
The two men embraced and Christos realised that he was taking most of his father’s weight. Vasilis seemed to have aged so much since he had last seen him.
Hearing her husband calling weakly to her, Irini hurried in from the bedroom.
‘Yioka mou, yioka mou, yioka mou …’ she repeated over and over again as the tears flowed.
Christos had been released from a Turkish prison camp where he had been for many months, and for a while had been unable to track his parents down. It was disorientating to find that the place he had called home was now behind barbed wire, and it had taken him some time to locate them.
He seemed very fragile in both body and soul, but when they told him the news of his brother’s death it seemed to break him completely. He retreated into the darkness of his parents’ spare room and for more than a year never went beyond his mother’s kipos.
As Christos was beginning to return to life, the family suffered another blow. Vasilis had a fatal stroke.
‘At least we were with him, yioka mou,’ said Irini to Christos. ‘And he knew we were there.’
With the help of her daughter and son-in-law, Irini managed to remain strong for the sake of her son. She had been wearing black since the day Hüseyin had found her the mourning clothes in Famagusta, and she would always do so.
For some time, Panikos had been mulling over an offer from his cousin, who had lived in the UK since the late 1960s. His chain of electrical shops was expanding and he needed Panikos’ expertise to manage three or four of them.
It was hard for Panikos to broach the subject with his brother-in-law. Christos had found work as a car mechanic easily enough, but his mood had remained dark. When Panikos finally plucked up courage to mention the proposition, however, he realised that Christos was ready to make a new start too.
‘What can I do here?’ said the disillusioned young man. ‘Except sit and contemplate how it all went wrong.’
He carried a great guilt with him, too, that his friend Haralambos remained missing while he himself had been freed.
With hindsight, Christos criticised the organisation he had joined for aiding the coup against Makarios.
‘We just opened ourselves up for invasion,’ he said. ‘And look what happened.’
Even Irini proved receptive to the idea of making a break with her beloved island.
‘If you and Panikos want to go,’ she told Maria, ‘and Christos is happy to, then so am I. I can come back from time to time to tend to your father’s grave. He won’t mind that I’m not there every day …’
With help from a myriad friends and relatives who had gone before them, they moved to north London.
In Kyrenia, the Özkans did their best to make a new life too. But it was almost impossible with Ali still missing. More than ever before, they grieved the theft of their family photographs. Without his portrait, Ali’s image was fading from memory. Would they even recognise him now?
Emine got a job in a salon as soon as she could. She could not sit around at home waiting and waiting and waiting. While her hands were busy washing and cutting hair, she was distracted from thoughts of her missing son.
A few tourists started to trickle into the north of the island again after a few years, and Hüseyin got by on part-time work, mostly in restaurant kitchens along with his father. Life did not present him with the same challenges as it had during their time in The Sunrise, however, and he grew bored.
His main focus now was volleyball. He was picked for the Turkish Cypriot team, as had been his ambition from childhood. For a year or so he was thrilled to be fulfilling his dream. But it was not to satisfy him for long. The northern part of Cyprus was not recognised by the international community, and this meant there were many embargoes in place, including for sports teams.
‘It’s meaningless,’ he ranted to his parents. ‘If we can’t play in any of the big tournaments, then what the hell is the point?’
He also found the limitations of being in this restricted area of a small island oppressive. For a young man such as Hüseyin, it was like stretching out both arms and feeling the walls on each side. He wanted to push them until they fell.
When Mehmet came home from school one day with a new question for his mother, Emine began to feel that they should think about leaving.
‘You know our friends from the hotel?’ he asked. ‘Am I supposed to hate them now?’
Emine reassured him that he was not, but she realised that little by little her youngest son’s memories of close co-existence with the Greek Cypriots were fading. As more and more victory monuments were erected in the north, place names and street names were changed, and an increasing number of settlers came from Turkey bringing with them their own culture and ways, Emine pressured her family to leave. She had fallen out of love with the country of her birth, and when she discussed it with Halit, she realised that so too had he. The only thing that had been holding them back was that Ali had never returned.
‘He’s missing whether we are here or somewhere else,’ said Halit. ‘If he comes back, somehow we will find out.’
They knew many Turkish Cypriots who had left for London. Apparently life was not easy there, but for those prepared to work, opportunities were plentiful. A few months later, with some names and addresses of friends who had done the same, they purchased one-way tickets for themselves and left. There was no sentimentality in saying goodbye to a house that was not really their own, but it was a great wrench to leave their island.
In London, Hüseyin easily found work in the catering trade and soon worked his way up to managing a restaurant.
Water polo was now a memory, but he still loved sport and made time to play volleyball on Sundays. During the rest of the week he worked for eighteen hours each day. His reward to himself was a second-hand Ford Capri, and Mehmet loved it when his big brother gave him a lift to school.
From the time they had first moved to London, there was something that Hüseyin had been determined to do.
One day, he took a morning off and went to Hatton Garden to search in the shops. Few of them had anything that resembled the diamond necklace as he remembered it, so he tried Bond Street. There was something similar in one of the window displays, but no price. A uniformed doorman guarded the entrance.
Once Hüseyin was inside, a man in a suit politely asked if he could help him.
Trying not to be intimidated – he did after all have a flashy car parked round the corner and wa
s now wishing that he had parked directly outside – Hüseyin said he was interested in the necklace.
‘These are premium quality,’ said the assistant as he politely and carefully laid the string of blue diamonds on a purple velvet tray, knowing full well that this customer would not be buying it. ‘This one is in the region of thirty thousand pounds,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
The diamonds were approximately the same colour and size as the ones Hüseyin remembered. At least he now knew.
Nostalgia for Cyprus was great for them all. Memories of their once delightful lives remained strong. The air, the scent of flowers, the flavour of oranges. None of these things could ever be as sweet again.
In Hackney, close to where both the Georgious and the Özkans lived, there was a community centre where Turkish and Greek Cypriots met together.
Maria heard about it and thought her mother might like to go, so one afternoon she drove her there.
Irini walked into the draughty hall full of tables and chairs. There were a few faces she knew, and she paused, briefly overwhelmed by the exuberant sound of Greek and Turkish mingling.
In a corner of the room, Emine and Halit were drinking coffee. Suddenly something caught Emine’s eye.
‘Halit,’ she said. ‘Those women over there … the ones who just came in …’
‘Which women?’ Halit’s eyesight was fading a little.
Emine had already stood up and was weaving her way through the tables, almost stumbling in her haste to reach the doorway. Tears were streaming down her face.
Beside Irini, Maria gasped and seized her mother’s arm.
She gently turned her towards her old friend.
Emine and Irini embraced as if they would never let go. Then they sat down together and shared stories of their lives since they had been separated.
There were moments of immense sadness. Irini had to tell them that Vasilis was dead. Halit immediately lowered his head, trying to conceal his emotion. The continual clack of worry beads ceased. He was a man of few words these days, but was now utterly silent.
‘I’m so sorry. You must miss him so much,’ said Emine, her eyes glistening.
Irini rested her hand on Halit’s arm, and a few seconds went by. There was no need to say anything.
And then she had to ask.
‘And Ali …?’
It was hard for Emine to say the words, especially after learning that Christos had returned.
‘Still missing,’ she said.
They discovered that they were neighbours once more, their houses only half a mile apart. From then on the families met every week and visited each other’s homes, sharing dishes such as gemista and dolma that were identical in all but name.
As the years passed, Hüseyin had taken out a loan for his own restaurant and then a second. Both were doing well and his savings had grown.
When the time came, it was not hard for him to find Aphroditi. Emine remembered that her parents had lived somewhere in Southgate, and he tracked her down.
During the first months of her time in England, Aphroditi had hoped to regain some of her physical strength. The cool climate in itself had given her a little more energy, but she remained frail. She had spent all day at home, as had her mother, but they tried to keep out of each other’s way. They rarely left the house and shopping was brought in by the charwoman.
Even after Aphroditi’s mother died in the late 1970s, Savvas had stayed in Cyprus. He had less reason to leave than ever, and he barely missed his wife. He was an optimist and still believed in the potential of the island. He had started his business with nothing and was determined to do so again. His fledgling hotel empire in Famagusta still stood: The Sunrise, the twisted skeleton of The New Paradise Beach and, of course, the major acquisition from his former rival.
Like forty thousand others, he was waiting for the revival of his city, sometimes referred to now as Cyprus’ Sleeping Beauty. He was sure that one day she would awaken.
Meanwhile, he had new projects under way. At some point the banks might begin pulling in their loans, but until then he continued to borrow money for further acquisitions. Savvas was the kind of man who kept the bankers in business.
On one of his rare visits to the UK, he told Aphroditi that he had begun to build a hotel in Limassol. It would be the jewel of the entire resort, with seven hundred rooms. Aphroditi knew immediately that she would never see it. She had no desire to. Savvas read this in her response. It was clear that their lives could never be lived together again. The divorce was complicated, but Aphroditi’s lawyers, Matthews and Tenby, negotiated a settlement to extricate her from the debts that Savvas had built up.
All these years on, she remained like one of the broken caryatids that still lay shattered in the ballroom of The Sunrise.
One day Aphroditi received a letter from Emine. She replied politely, inviting her for a cup of tea. (‘How English she must have become!’ exclaimed Emine when she opened it.) Mother and son would go together the following week.
Aphroditi did not open the door herself. A carer let them in and they went into the drawing room, where Aphroditi sat alone, a stick leaning against her armchair. She did not get up to greet them and Emine immediately noticed that she was painfully thin. Her hair had gone completely white and was so thin her scalp showed through it. It was fourteen years since Emine had seen Aphroditi, but she had aged by thirty. Her appearance was a shock.
Emine took in every detail of the home Aphroditi had inherited from her mother. It was even larger than she had imagined, and very comfortable, if getting a little faded now. There were bone-china cups and saucers and a teapot on a low polished mahogany table.
They gathered that Aphroditi lived here by herself but Emine did not ask too many questions. It seemed impolite.
Aphroditi wanted to hear about the Özkan family. She recognised Hüseyin from the beach and wanted to know when exactly they had left Cyprus and where they lived now. Was Emine still in touch with Savina Skouros from the salon?
They spoke in English.
Emine loved to talk and went into plenty of detail. Then, a little more tentatively, she started to tell Aphroditi about their time in The Sunrise.
‘We were there with Irini and Vasilis Georgiou, our neighbours,’ she said. ‘Their son suggested it.’
Hüseyin was looking at Aphroditi and saw her visibly pale. He wished his mother would just stop talking. The last person he wanted her to mention was the nightclub manager; besides, talk of The Sunrise might upset Aphroditi. It was more than just a symbol of what she had lost.
In spite of herself, Aphroditi said the name.
‘Markos Georgiou.’
‘He was killed, sadly,’ said Emine.
‘Yes, Mr Papacosta was informed,’ said Aphroditi rather curtly.
Emine and Hüseyin noticed her change of tone and there was an awkward silence.
‘He wasn’t all he seemed,’ she added.
And then they thought they heard her say:
‘I was such a fool.’
The words were under her breath, almost inaudible.
Mother and son glanced at each other, pretending not to have heard.
Emine took a small sip of her tea. How awful it tasted with milk, she thought, putting the cup down again. She looked at Hüseyin, silently urging him to tell their hostess why they had come.
On cue, he leaned in. It was the first time he had spoken.
‘The reason we’re really here, Mrs Papacosta,’ he said clumsily, ‘is to give you this.’
He handed Aphroditi a purple velvet box.
She looked at him with bemusement and then opened it. For a few moments she simply stared at what was inside.
‘Where did you find this?’ she breathed.
‘It’s not the original, I’m afraid,’ explained Hüseyin. ‘We had to sell yours to pay for our passage out of Famagusta.’
There was a strained silence.
‘Without your necklace, we wouldn??
?t be sitting here now,’ he added.
For years, Hüseyin had been saving, every month putting money into a separate bank account and working overtime to do so. Finally, he was paying the debt for their freedom.
She looked at his earnest face and realised that he could not possibly know the significance of his gesture and how it proved to her beyond doubt that Markos had betrayed her in every way. She did not touch the necklace.
‘I’m sorry but I don’t want this,’ she said firmly, snapping the box shut. ‘I really don’t want it and I can’t accept it. Emine, please make him take it away.’
Aphroditi put the necklace on the table in front of them.
‘I am touched by what you have done, Hüseyin, but I want nothing from those days. It will only remind me of awful things and awful times. You must sell it again and spend the money on yourself.’
‘But …’ Hüseyin tried to interject.
‘I’m owed nothing.’
Hüseyin leaned forward, awkwardly took the box and tried to stuff it back in his pocket.
The atmosphere had changed. Aphroditi had withdrawn from them and Emine could see how upset she was. Even in her weakened state, she was forcefully resolute.
Emine suddenly thought of something that might relieve the tension.
‘I nearly forgot,’ she said. ‘We found a couple of things that were yours.’
She produced from her handbag the little embroidered purse and the pouch, and held them out.
Aphroditi looked at the miscellaneous items without a flicker of recognition.
At that moment, the carer came in to ask if they needed more tea.
‘I don’t think so,’ answered Aphroditi.
Hüseyin stood up. It was more than clear that it was time to leave.
His mother took her son’s cue, placing the two small items on the tea tray as she did so.
Aphroditi remained seated.
Even as they drove away, Hüseyin knew that they had outstayed their welcome. Both of them were shocked by the reaction to the necklace that Hüseyin had worked so hard to buy. And her words about Markos would echo in their ears for weeks to come.