Jo is on Santorini to marry Michael when she realises that he is only after her inheritance. She flees to Crete with the help of a secret voice in her mind, which leads her to Chania and Dimitri, a new friend. He hides her in his village high in the mountains. Alex, a newspaper reporter, insists on going with her, although she doesn’t know why until later.
Michael follows them into the mountains but is defeated after a series of adventures involving a ruined monastery, an explosives cave, and Jo’s growing love for Alex.
Michael pushed me onto the bed, forcing his lips upon mine. He was breathing heavily, and the stubble on his chin rasped like sandpaper. “Come on, we’re to be married tomorrow. Why wait?”
He fumbled with the buttons on my blouse, his hands on my breasts.
I pushed him back with all my strength, sliding off the bed. “Get off me. You’re an animal. Why I ever agreed to marry you, I don’t know.”
He stood up, backed off and gave me a strange look. “When we’re married, you will regret this,” he said menacingly and stalked out of the room.
I’m usually a strong person. As a successful actress you have to be. So how I got myself into this I don’t know. I suppose I must have been in love with him at some point, but now!
I buttoned my blouse up and went out onto the balcony of the hotel, looking out across the bay to the towering mountains beyond. Michael had gone to his room next door. There were crashing sounds as though he was blundering about in a rage.
I made up my mind. “I can’t go through with it,” I said out loud, my words echoing across the bay.
Then as always, my secret voice spoke to me.
“It’s your choice, Jo.” The words came into my mind, as they always did, like a soft whisper of static.
“Are you there?” I asked.
“Of course, I am always here for you.” The whisper was low, as if it came from a long distance.
I looked back at the town of Santorini, a magical fairyland of twinkling lights against the blue domes and windmills of the island. I went into my room and sat on the bed dangling my feet, thinking hard. Then I got up and stood in the doorway of my room.
“I don’t love him,” I said, feeling the eddies in my mind. “What should I do?”
“It’s your decision. Do what you want to do,” the whisper came back.
The whisper in my mind had begun just after my father’s death. He died in a car accident a year ago. At first, I thought it might be his spirit talking to me from the grave. It was a male voice, but it didn’t sound like him. It was a low melodious whisper of a voice. It helped me in my grief. It was always comforting, and I began to think of it as my guardian angel.
Did other people hear voices? When it first happened, I looked up voices in the mind on Google and found that many famous people had heard such voices. Joan of Arc had been a particular example who’d thought her voices came from God. The thing that really worried me was finding a medical book which told me that the voices might be caused by schizophrenia, especially as it said that the voices might appear to tell you what to do. But this voice never did unless I asked it to. In fact, it reassured me.
“No, you’re not going mad. I’m as real as you are. I don’t know how it is that we can communicate with each other in this way, but I will only ever help you to do things you want to do.”
I looked up thought transference and found that another name for it was telepathy but there was no scientific evidence that it existed. The word came from the Greek tele, meaning distant, and pathos, meaning feeling, which more or less summed up what I was experiencing.
Santorini was a magical island and a marvellous place for a wedding, but after Michael’s behaviour, I realised I didn’t love him and that I had never truly loved him.
I’d had other boyfriends in my twenty-four years but never someone like Michael. From the beginning he had sent me flowers, taken me to nightclubs, concerts, operas, always the perfect gentleman until gradually I suppose I thought I was in love with him, and when he eventually asked me to marry him, I said yes.
He had made contact with a Santorini company that arranged weddings. They seemed to have thought of everything including booking the tickets to fly to Santorini for myself, Michael, his best man, and my bridesmaids, Helen and Eva. I didn’t even choose my ring. It was bought for me. My wedding dress was bought for me.
What sort of a wedding was this?
Since I had no previous experience of a wedding, especially on a Greek island, I went along with it. I did ask my two best friends, Helen and Eva, to be bridesmaids, but that was almost the extent of my involvement. I wasn’t even happy with the wedding dress that had been bought for me. It fitted, but even when trying it on, I felt naked and exposed.
As far as I knew, the company may even have arranged tickets for the guests who wanted to come, but Michael was very secretive about the whole thing. I ought to have known better.
He was a strange-looking man, piercing eyes, high cheekbones, black hair always well brushed back. He was tall, well dressed, and always full of energy—ruthless energy. If he wanted something, he would go for it wholeheartedly, never stopping until he had achieved what he set out to do. At first I had admired this in him, but as I stood in the doorway of my room, looking out to the darkening mountains and still trembling from our last encounter, I recognised that if I married him, I would never be able to have a life of my own. He would always try to dominate me.
