Being Shirley by Michelle Vernal

on Monday night. That’s the only bonus of falling out, I reckon—the make-up sex, which, by the way, was pretty average. Therein lies phase two of my little plan to find things that Tony and I can do together. A shared hobby obviously isn’t for us, so I am going to vamp things up in the bedroom department with a visit to a certain saucy shop (sex shop) on my lunch break tomorrow. Variety is the spice of life, so they say! Do you have shops like that in Crete and more to the point, have you ever been in one? I haven’t but oh well, there is a first time for everything.
    Speaking of lunch breaks, they are the only bright spot in my workday week at the moment. Attila is still awful. Not much else to say on the subject, really.
    Anyway, I am beginning to ramble, which means I need some sleep. I am sorry this email has been all me, me, me but you know you and your gorgeous family are always in my thoughts. Has Alexandros’s little friend—the one in the birthday pic you said was on holiday from Ireland—gone home yet? Gosh, he is a fast worker, that one; shame he isn’t quite so fast when it comes to actual work. Give the boys a kiss from their Kiwi aunty and tell Spiros I hope his writer’s block has passed but if not I looked it up and read that change of scene is a good way to cure it—tell him to go for a long walk or try writing in a different room. Bye for now.
     
    Lots of Love, Annie
     
    PS: Please don’t let Mama see this letter. I don’t want her knowing I have sex before marriage! Or that I frequent sex shops, either, which I don’t—tomorrow is definitely a one-off!
     
    Annie shut the laptop down and yawned before she scooped up a protesting Jasper. She popped him out the door and she tried not to feel guilty about the cold night air she sent him out into. “It’s your own fault you have to go out, Jazz. You know that if you were a bit nicer to Tony, your life would be a lot easier.” The cat turned a baleful yellow eye on her as he swivelled his body back around in the direction of the door. “No, don’t even think about it! Off you go. Go and play with your friends—catch some mice together or something. It’ll be fun. I’ll see you in the morning.” She shut the door before he could attempt his usual dash back into the warmth of the inner sanctum because the last time she had relented, the naughty tomcat had shot straight off to the bedroom and jumped on the slumbering Tony’s head and nearly gave him a heart attack.
    Not much chance of a repeat performance of Monday night’s rumpy-pumpy then. Annie glanced at her snoring fiancé as she pulled the bed cover back a few moments later and slipped in beside him. She snuggled down and closed her eyes but her mind was still on the Bikakis family. That’s what happens when you sat up late typing emails , Annie thought as an image of Kassia flashed before her.
    They had never met in the flesh, never talked on the telephone or Skyped each other. Kas always maintained that with the dodgy Internet at Eleni’s, Skyping would be like trying to communicate with Mars and that when they did finally meet she wanted it to be face to face, not down a computer screen. Instead, they preferred to exchange photos and written words. Somehow there had never been the need to talk to each other over the phone because everything they needed to say they’d already said in their emails. Both women had agreed it was easier to open up and be honest when you wrote things down rather than trying to say them out loud. It was thanks to their letters that Annie felt they knew each other’s lives inside and out and while there might have been nine years between them, it had somehow never mattered.
    A snore from Tony made her jump. Annie thumped her pillow and rolled over as she remembered how she had reached out with that first snail mail letter to Kas as a volatile eleven-year-old, her sister’s death still raw. Kas, who had been shocked to hear what had happened to her