Chapter 9

Here we go then, my first (and maybe last!) contribution.
Hope it makes some sense! The punctuation is rather shaky......

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Chapter 9



Eddie didn’t recognise Phillip.

“I’m sorry, I really can’t remember meeting you before.”

“Well, think about it, Eddie.”

Eddie shook his head. “Nope, sorry. You’ve obviously taken me for someone else.”

He turned away, and busied himself with the in-flight magazine. The article on geysers suddenly looked very interesting. There was enough going on without renewing old acquaintances. So far, it was all going according to plan – the last thing he needed was some character from the past to confuse things.

Phillip sighed. Even without knowing who he was, Eddie had just treated him with the same old dismissive contempt. So on to plan B, what to do if Eddie didn’t recognise him. Actually, there wasn’t a plan B, although if he had been honest with himself, Phillip would have realised that with his bland nondescript features there was a very good chance that Eddie wouldn’t recognise him. Might as well enjoy the in flight catering and entertainment and think about what to do next.

Two rows up, Phile was flicking though the in flight magazine and had just come upon the geyser article. “Hmm!” She thought, “This could come in handy!”

The Iceland air staff trundled down the aisle with the drinks trolley. Phile chose a coffee and a small snack – no drinking now, she thought – I need to keep sharp and ready to go.
She was not quite sure what was going to happen, but she needed to be ready for it. Her employers had been plotting this moment for quite some time now, and with Ryan following behind, and Caro already installed in the hotel, it was all finally coming together. But coming together for what? After so many twists and turns, she was getting quite confused. The various machinations involved in getting to this point had had really become quite tiresome. Phile was all for direct action; so all this sneaky sneaky stuff was not what she was used to.
She was beginning to think that Uncle Stavros had been right all along. “Stay with us, girl” he had pleaded “ We need someone bright like you to run the bakery with us. Don’t leave me with your cousin Yannis – he’s my boy, I love him, but he’s useless. He’ll eat us out of business!”
Yet her Aunty Sophia had egged her on, encouraged her to set her sights higher than a small suburban bakery in San Diego. “Go on, Phile, follow your dreams. Yannis will just have to learn to run the business himself. He certainly can’t do that with his father relying on you so much. Sure, it’s up to you, I know you’d expand and make us all very rich, but you can do that anywhere, doing anything you like. And it would do Yannis good to take some more responsibility.”

So she had left San Diego and followed her dreams to head a successful business in Los Angeles and make millions. Unfortunately, what had counted for drive, ambition and business sense in the bakery in San Diego had not quite measured up to the talent that flowed through the veins of her competitors. Over the past few years, she had had to set her sights lower and lower until she ended up in the PR department of a minor telecommunications company.
There was no going back to San Diego. As soon as she had left for Los Angeles, having been bought out by the other members of the family, the business had been sold for an eye wateringly huge amount of money to a local developer who had wanted the land for a new mall. The relatives had then returned to Greece with no forwarding address. She had only discovered this when Yannis’ distraught in-laws had contacted her to find out where their daughter had disappeared to.
Despite an extensive search, with relatives and friends using all their contacts around the world, no trace of them was ever found. For a while, Phile had suspected the developers of disposing of them, but there was no evidence at all. Deep down, Phile suspected that her relatives were ashamed of what they had done. Friends and neighbours had told her so. Her initial indignation and sense of betrayal settled down to deflated resignation after a couple of years. One good thing had come out of the experience – she had discovered a new passion – searching for the lost. She had mentioned this one day to the managing director of Helltel over Christmas drinks in the boardroom. He had nodded and smiled and joked that perhaps she should put it on her CV. This time she suspected something. “They’re going to fire me!” She gasped. In anticipation of a fat redundancy payout, she decided to set herself up as a private detective.
Yet the fat redundancy payment never arrived. Instead she was invited to work on a special assignment. The past few months had been spent laying a trail of plausible contracts, contacts, press releases, all as a set up. At least her employers had been clear about that. It was not for real. It was legal, she had made sure of that, but not for real.
She settled back in her seat. Today would be the culmination of all those months of planning and scheming. The magazine slipped from her lap and whilst leaning down to retrieve it, Phile spotted a nondescript sweaty accountant type sitting next to Eddie.

“Good” Thought Phile “Great. Eddie won’t suspect a thing”