He smiles, concealing his jealousy. The station vets his scripts thoroughly, taking a few days to make them worse, in his opinion. But it appears that Joyce is spared such editing, that Joyce is their star boy, the one who can go on air at short notice. He remembers Joyce from BUF days—they worked at the Black House together, and even then, Joyce was one of the stars, damn him. But Joyce left the BUF because the leader wasn’t extreme enough for him. He founded his own little party, the National Socialist Party, but it never got more than a hundred members.

It was a mistake talking to Joyce, but it isn’t a mistake seeing Mrs. Joyce. He turns his attention to her.

“And how are you, Margaret?” he asks.

“Very well, thank you. And how are you? How is Eileen?”

It is clear that Margaret isn’t very well at all. Perhaps, as with him and Eileen, she and Joyce are going through a bad patch. This may be an opportunity to find a replacement for Eileen.

“I’m well—Eileen is well too.”

“Not joining us here for the celebrations?”

“Er…no. She’s in bed still—a little poorly.”

“Do send her my best, won’t you?”

“I shall.”

He notices that Joyce is ignoring them; looking around the room. Then, without even a word, he walks off, presumably to look for somebody else to talk to. Mrs. Joyce looks embarrassed.

“Would you like a drink?” he asks awkwardly.

The question takes her aback, and then she looks defiant, determined.

“Do you know? I would,” she says.

The reply startles him. Normally women don’t ever accept drinks off him, but Mrs. Joyce can obviously see deeper than his skin.

AUGUST 1970

Apparently she was in her mid-eighties, blind, and her hearing was nugatory. Amy had been warned, told that the trip to Crete might not be worth it, but she saw it as her duty to visit the mother of one of her father’s fallen comrades. Her research kept coming across one name, that of Manoli Pentaris, and after two years and many letters, she had tracked down his mother. She had been living in the same village all her life, a woman who had lost not only her husband, but both her sons. One had been a priest, executed by the Germans, the other, Manoli, an archaeologist, who had become the leader of a band of partisans. He too had been killed by the invaders, shot outside his hideout on Mount Ida.