The car began to climb through groves of cypresses. I wound down the window to inhale their cool green smell.
‘Let’s buy it!’ cried the Poet clattering downstairs from the roof terrace of an enchanting little two-storey villa with a view of the White Mountains.
‘Hold on, Houston,’ said I. ‘We have a problem.’
Vasilios had just informed me that the secret cache of rustic antiques I’d spotted through a chink in the wall was actually the sitting-room of a completely different house. What had been built as a single dwelling had been divided in half by the two sisters who’d inherited it – but only the front half was for sale.
Armed with sticks to fend off brambles and pythons, we edged our way around to the back of the villa, where we found four disused rooms and two derelict stone barns.
‘This half belongs to a nephew in Athens,’ said Vasilios.
‘We’ll buy it from him!’ The Poet’s eyes had acquired a wild megalomaniac glint. All his utterances were ending in exclamation marks.
‘He won’t sell. I’ve already asked him. Prices have risen 20 per cent since last year. He wants to see how high they will go.’
The Poet was unfazed (in this mood nothing short of a Weapon of Mass Destruction can unfaze him). But I was nervous. This nephew sounded the type who’d summon an army of Armenian builders without warning, to crash around four inches from my head while I was trying to sleep. What if he transformed his inheritance into trendy tourist condos? What if he constructed three massive banana-yellow villas on his plot of land next to our garden?
‘Do you have any other houses?’ I asked.
A heatwave struck the island the next day. The wind was like a hairdryer and the sea turned bilious green as algae bloomed in the warm water. The sensible Greeks waded in up to their chins and stood chatting with their hats on, while brain-dead Swedes and Germans basked like greased seals in the 40-degree heat.
Poet and Daught weren’t talking to me. As far as they were concerned we’d already found the perfect Greek house. The Athenian nephew was a charming philanthropist who would eventually sell us the other half for three and ninepence. Why was I being so neurotic? Leaving them slathering on Factor 80, I went off to meet Vasilios.
In deference to the heat he’d opened the car window a crack. ‘I only put the air-conditioning on when it gets really hot,’ he said. My legs stuck to the seat and my face turned puce.
We headed for a mountain village. ‘I didn’t suggest this before,’ Vasilios apologised, ‘because I know you English like the heat. It’s always a few degrees cooler in the mountains.’
The car began to climb through groves of cypresses. I wound down the window to inhale their cool green smell. Snaking up through village after village, we reached the top then turned down a narrow track. At the end was a fig tree and a rusty metal gate.
The gate creaked open and I was walking down a wide flight of steps into a big vine-shaded courtyard. On one side were three adjoining rooms in a row, each with a window and a door to the courtyard. Opposite was another one-room building with a traditional fireplace in the corner. There was a separate store-room, and a barn with a lean-to dry privy.
There were orange and walnut trees in the unkempt terraced garden; damsons and olives; lemons and figs. There was even a traditional stone bread oven.
It was love at first sight. So what if the walls of the main room had cracks I could fit my fist in? So what if there was no bathroom or toilet and half the courtyard was sliding inexorably into the valley? So what if it was miles from the nearest shop or bus stop? I was in love and I had to have it.
More on the way soon. Watch this space!
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