Untethered

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Emilia Branza was born some 37 years ago in a village close to the city of Sibiu in Transylvania. Her family wasn’t rich, but neither were they poor, and she attended a decent school where she obtained good enough grades to earn her a place at university to study law.

For a while, everything in Emilia’s world was fine. Until one day it wasn’t.

Perhaps it was the looming reality of long hours, people in suits, and praying for the weekend that caused her to think about what she really wanted from life. And, after thinking about it, she decided she was so far off the right path that she might as well kill herself. It wasn’t that Emilia didn’t have an aptitude for a legal career, it was more the wrong attitude. In short, she was easily bored.

Boredom, or the fear of it, was a state of mind Emilia couldn’t shake off. She recognised it as a potential problem and, after some research, she discovered it was a problem with a name; thaasophobia. Still, recognising it and dealing with it was not the same thing, and try as she might, it followed her everywhere, infecting everything she did and everyone she met until eventually people did their best to avoid her. In many cases, it was wrongly assumed that Emilia was ungrateful for the gifts that life had given her, or that she was simply rude, given her tendency to look through and past people during conversations. However, Emilia wasn’t unappreciative of anything she had, not in any way, but there was a constant and relentless urge to keep on looking for what was coming next, whether it be a job, a boyfriend or a new kind of experience, because whatever state she was currently in, she worried it might be ‘it’. This would be her life until the day that she died.

“Childish, teenage angst,” was her stepmother’s diagnosis, but her stepmother was a fool. Why else would she marry a man still in love with his dead wife?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, and part-way through a three-year internship at a Bucharest legal firm specialising in maritime law, Emilia decided it was time to leave Romania. She felt the need to travel and, for the next 15 years, she never stopped. After taking a bus to Hungary she hitchhiked through Austria, skied over the Alps to Italy, got on a boat to Greece and then took a flight to Cyprus. Along the way she held down a number of jobs, some of which she kept for a few years, some only days. In Salzburg, she acted as PA to a well-known fashion designer; in Milan, she worked as a croupier; in Athens, she became an extra in a film about refugees; and in Cortina d’Ampezzo, an ancient mountain town in the Dolomites, she took a job as a chalet maid. Emilia also took a number of lovers along the way, without ever losing her heart. This was another of her peculiarities; she didn’t fully appreciate love or the dramas that went with it. All over the world, men and women were pining for people who didn’t like them enough to stay with them, or they were compromising lifestyles and life choices for a happiness that remained largely elusive. If this was love, it was lost on Emilia. At least until it found her.

It was while Emilia was living in Dromos and holding down a job as a surly waitress in one of the village’s less popular restaurants that she discovered true love, and it was tethered to a stake driven into the ground in an area of scrubland running alongside the coastal road. A bay-coloured horse with a black mane framing his handsome face, he had a white mark in the shape of India on his forehead. He also swallowed air, a habit that Emilia assumed was due to boredom. However, it was the eyes that struck Emilia most; beautiful pools of chocolate brown that pulled her into a soul she somehow knew. Emilia was no Buddhist, but she felt an unmistakable connection that felt like a past life so, when she eventually tracked down the owner, she bought the horse for far more than he was probably worth. She then named him Adonis.

Adonis was a four-year-old thoroughbred, according to the papers that came with him. Originally destined for the racetrack, he had failed to make the grade, but as he came from good stock he was handed to a government official who then gifted him to his son. Unfortunately, when Adonis failed to make the grade as a horse suitable for an overweight 14-year-old boy, a chain was slung about his neck and he was left to exist, and do little more than that, on a diet of stale bread, an occasional armful of straw and a bucket of water. Emilia’s heart bled for the animal. While her knowledge of horses wasn’t extensive, she had ridden as a child and she knew that horses needed company, preferably of their own kind, and they also needed a proper diet of hay, clover and grains. Dry pita simply wasn’t sufficient.

Emilia couldn’t explain it, but she felt compelled to save him. Of course, having never counted on becoming a horse owner, she had nowhere to put him and no food to feed him so, after fashioning a makeshift halter out of rope she bought from a hardware shop, she walked Adonis three miles to the only stables she knew of in the area. Under the burning noon day sun, it felt like a joyous and heroic march to freedom, until they arrived at their destination.

Greeted by a locked gate, Emilia called, banged, rattled and shouted for attention until it came in the form of an older woman dressed in beige breeches, a white t-shirt and a brown baseball cap. She reminded Emilia of a Frappuccino.

“Sorry, this is a private yard,” the woman replied tersely when Emilia said she was looking for somewhere to stable her horse. “You can’t bring him here.”

“But…”

“There are no buts. There are no exceptions. This is my home, not a business.”

“But please…”

“Sorry, no.”

And with that the woman promptly turned on the heel of her Italian leather boots and walked away. No doubt she would have continued walking had Emilia not screamed.

Julia Watson would later say it was one of the most agonising sounds she had ever heard come out of a human mouth, so much so it set the hairs on the back of her neck on end. When she turned around, she found the dark-haired woman at the gate now on her knees with the horse standing next to her, gently nuzzling the side of her face. Julia felt her resolve crumble. Any other horse, let alone a thoroughbred, would have been on its hind legs at such an unholy commotion. But not this guy; he simply didn’t have the energy. Slowly, she walked back to the gate.

“Are you injured?” she asked.

Emilia shook her head, not bothering to look up. “Not injured, just desperate.”

It was only meant to be a temporary stay because Julia had made it crystal clear from the start that her yard was a private yard. She also wanted €300 a month for livery, leaving Emilia with nothing from the pittance she earned at Zorbas once she’d paid her rent and the various bills that went with it. Thankfully, it only took a fortnight for Julia to thaw because some people don’t know they’re lonely until they’re forced to have company.

In spite of herself, Julia was touched by the care and devotion Emilia lavished on her horse. When Emilia wasn’t working at the restaurant, she would be at the yard; grooming, washing and generally pampering Adonis. After Julia lent her a head collar and lead rope, she would take Adonis for walks down to the Sea Caves and, after a while, she permitted them to use the arena to free school. When Julia watched them play, because this was no kind of free schooling she knew of, she was reminded of a child with a puppy. Not that it mattered. It was clear the two of them had found a rare happiness in each other’s company. Unfortunately for Emilia, Adonis was not only handsome, but also a windsucker, a vice rarely welcomed in most stables. Julia understood it was a habit borne of stress, and it was as addictive as smoking when learned. She also knew that Adonis would be prone to colic as a result, and Emilia would need someone around who knew what to do when it struck.

Almost from the outset, Julia saw that Emilia and Adonis had found each other at the right time, in much the same way they had found her. And though she couldn’t say why, she let them stay, telling Emilia that if she helped around the yard, her horse could remain at the yard, rent free. When Julia made the offer, Emilia assumed the older woman was a lesbian. Not that Emilia had anything against lesbians; she simply couldn’t see why anyone would be so generous for relatively little in return. The woman only had four horses so there wouldn’t be that much work to do. A year or so later, when their friendship had reached the point where delicate issues could be discussed with no offence taken, Julia laughed like a drain.

“Christ, if I was a lesbian, I’d hardly choose a pierced little punk like you,” she told her.

“Why is it Americans only ever say ‘punk’?”

Julia was in her mid-50s and came from Tallahassee, Florida. She wasn’t the usual type of foreigner the island attracted; expats were mainly made up of retired Britishers, high-rolling Russians and economically-challenged Romanians, although the Chinese were starting to make an impact on the housing market in return for a backdoor entrance to Europe. But the Americans, not so much. In fact, Julia was the first American Emilia had met in Cyprus.

Julia moved to the island 20 years ago, after enjoying a successful jumping career on the international stage where she fell in love with a Cypriot guy, an equestrian who also achieved better-than-average success abroad. Even so, it wasn’t enough to earn them serious money. Though the two of them possessed talent and a passion for the sport, they recognised their limitations and so, after building their reputations, they retired to his homeland and opened a livery yard for a select number of clients looking to compete internationally. They also made a handsome living from tutorials, private lessons and schooling. It was a fantastic partnership and a true meeting of minds and hearts, until, ten years into their marriage, Julia’s husband was killed by a drunk driver on the highway from Ayia Napa. Julia was inconsolable.

As the couple never had children, because they believed they had plenty of time, Julia felt her husband’s loss all the more keenly when she realised there was nothing left of him to hold. Her family begged her to return to the States, but she refused to step away from the ground in which he was buried. Indeed, it took her a long time to recover from his death and though she retained her passion for horses, she no longer had the stomach for people. So, she closed the business. She hardly needed the money. And she continued to walk through life, one day at a time, getting by with the help of her horses.

From the moment she found Adonis, Emilia could think of little else, but she still needed to work so she kept her job at Zorbas, which is where she came into contact with Lillian.

Emilia knew of Lillian long before they met because she used the restaurant’s leftovers to feed the cats in the area. Though she usually came in the mornings, one Monday Lillian was running late and arrived midway through Emilia’s afternoon shift. With a polite knock at the back door, Lillian popped her head into the kitchen where Emilia was piling plates by the sink. When she explained who she was, Emilia was surprised; Lillian was different to how she had imagined; more groomed and curiously uptight, even for the English. When the kitchen staff talked about the ‘crazy cat lady’, Emilia had pictured someone older and cuddlier. But Lillian was a well-presented woman in her fifties with razorblade cheekbones and a fine head of auburn hair. She was also polite enough to answer Emilia’s questions despite being in a hurry.

Lillian told Emilia she used the scraps from the restaurant to feed the colony of cats that congregated at the back of the village church.

“I thought I’d seen some there,” Emilia said as she bagged up the leftovers.

“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t. The cats have been there for about five years. Before that, we fed them in the car park a little further down the road, but people kept poisoning them.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Unfortunately, not.”

As the two women continued to talk, Lillian let slip that she was looking for volunteers to cover a couple of feeding stations dotted around the village. The woman who used to help had recently returned to the UK. Well, the stars might have been in alignment or it could have been the talk about poison, Emilia couldn’t be sure, but she suddenly had an urge to protect Lillian’s homeless cats.

“How much do you pay?” she asked.

Lillian winced. “Well, nothing. We have no money to pay anyone, it’s just a few of us volunteers. We buy all the food and look for scraps, we just need help to…”

“Relax, I’m joking,” Emilia eventually told her.

“Oh, I see.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“But you pay the social, yeah?”

Confusion again clouded Lillian’s eyes until it dawned on her that the younger woman was having another joke at her expense. Though she tried to smile, she actually found such humour exhausting, and she wasn’t sure she could cope with it on a daily basis. In fact, if they hadn’t already agreed to meet at the church the following day, she might have drifted quietly away, being careful to only return to Zorba’s in the mornings.

As Lillian left the restaurant with her plastic bags loaded with the cold remnants of half-finished dishes and half-chewed kebabs, Emilia half-regretted her teasing. She guessed Lillian to be the same age as Julia, or thereabouts, but there was a beaten look underneath that well-preserved exterior. A few days later, when she started feeding Lillian’s cats, she understood why – people were shits and they were especially s**t to cats.

“The cats here are dying in every way possible,” Lillian explained. “Burned alive, beaten, chopped up, kicked to death, run over… I’ve seen it all. For more than ten years I’ve fed the cats here and, in all honesty, they have been the hardest ten years of my life.”

“So, why do you do it?”

“Because if I don’t, who will?”

“Ah, Lillian. She’s a funny one, but her heart is in the right place,” Julia said when Emilia revealed her latest commitment to the island’s unwanted animal population. “I don’t know her well, but I’ve donated to her cats and met her on a few fundraisers.”

“She’s typical British,” Emilia replied.

“Well, yes and no. She’s a bit stuffy, which fits the stereotype, but she tends to keep away from all that expat drinking and meddling.”

“I think I make her uncomfortable.”

“You surprise me.”

Julia nodded to the wheelbarrow in front of them. “Right madam, go and get those stables finished and I’ll bring you a coffee.”

“A biscuit would be nice.”

“I’m sure it would.”

Julia smiled, Emilia scowled, but they both knew there would be biscuits coming with the coffee.

Looking back on that day, as Julia often did in the years to come, she would occasionally be surprised by the small details that stuck. She recalled watching Emilia push her wheelbarrow up the aisle of the stables and noticing the sun’s rays bounce off her jet black hair, like light on polished stone. She remembered switching on the sprinklers to water the arena and finding a half-eaten lizard by a cavaletti jump. There were two pigeons overhead, balancing on an electrical wire, and she wondered whether they might be to blame. She recalled sighing as she entered her home because she’d left on the aircon, and though it was always nice to step into a cool room, it was wasteful and bad for the planet. She debated whether to make real coffee or instant and went with the latter after glancing at the clock and realising Emilia would have to be at Zorba’s in an hour. The coffee was made and she chose a red mug for Emilia and a yellow one for herself. Only just remembering to grab a packet of Hobnobs, she tucked them under her arm and walked back to the stables, wondering what saddle pad and bandage set to put on Apache. She called Emilia’s name, but it sounded distant in her ears. Turning the corner, she glanced up the aisle of the stable block and saw a familiar boot sticking out from under one of the gates. ‘She’s with that damn horse again,’ she half-laughed to herself until she remembered Adonis was in the paddock. She called again. Nothing. She walked up the aisle, feeling the world slow down as the blood started to charge through her veins. There was something wrong. She set the mugs on the floor and ran.

When Julia reached Adonis’ stable, she found Emilia on the floor with her head jammed against the wall. Julia crouched down carefully, startled by the tears rolling down Emilia’s flushed face.

“I can’t move,” Emilia whispered.

“What do you mean you can’t move?”

“I can’t move the left side of my body. Help me, Julia. I think I’m paralysed.”