“Three years.” The big Cretan grinned under his moustache, which was already vast for a twenty-three-year-old. He kissed Anna’s hand with a flourish, which caused her to raise her eyebrows in amusement. Lockhart was aware that Manoli had a reputation as a ladies’ man. He spent most of his spare time chasing girls in the bars in nearby Heraklion. Lockhart knew that he would be the first to regard their new arrival as “an entertainment.”

Lockhart introduced Anna to the other Englishman, Andrew Worstead. Like Lockhart, Worstead was also still at university, at King’s College in London. Lockhart liked Worstead, although many didn’t. He could be chippy and aggressive, as he imagined most people were out to get him. Lockhart suspected that he had been teased about his weight at school and was thus cursed with an inferiority complex. But when he was relaxed, Worstead was good company—witty and, like Lockhart, a good drinker. The Cretan climate didn’t suit him though. He found the heat hard to deal with, and his shirt was permanently drenched with sweat.

Thus it was a sweaty palm that shook Anna’s.

“How nice to have you here, Miss Green,” he beamed, laying on the charm a little thick, Lockhart thought. He doubted that Worstead would be much of an adversary.

After Anna had met the rest of the group, she and Lockhart made their way around the site. As he told her about the various rooms, he noticed that she wasn’t really listening. Lockhart did his best to sound authoritative, but as he was talking about the origins of the antechamber, he realized that he was wasting his time.

“You can’t have been studying for very long,” she said. “In fact it may even date from much earlier than that. Look here at the shape of these bricks.” She squatted down and pointed them out. “Do you see how different they are from the ones back there?”

She looked up at Lockhart and smiled, a little too smugly for his liking. She really was a bloody know-it-all.

“I bet you were head girl at school,” said Lockhart.

“How did you guess that?”

“I wonder.”

“Are you making fun of me, Mr. Lockhart?”

“Maybe, Miss Green.”

Lockhart was smirking at her, and she was clearly doing her best to look serious.

“Because if you are, then I shall—”

“What? What will you do?”

“Then I shall put you across my knee. I was allowed to beat people as head girl, you know.”

As she said it, she tapped his chest. He wanted to grab her hand and kiss her there and then, but he thought better of it. His time would come.

Three weeks later, it did. Lockhart had borrowed a motorcycle, and one Sunday morning, they rode out to see the spectacular monastery at Arkadi. After a couple of hours walking around the cloisters, with Anna having now assumed the mantle of lecturer, they decided to climb a few hundred feet to the top of Mount Petrotes.