Untethered

Chapter One

Chapter One

Eighteen months earlier…

It was at a charity quiz night at The Dreamers Inn in Dromos that Cara, Lillian and Emilia initially joined forces. As first meetings go it was a fairly innocuous affair with most of the drama coming from Table Eight.

“It’s Heracles.”

“No, it’s Hercules.”

“They’re the same man.”

“I can only go with what’s on the card and the card says Hercules.”

“But that’s the Roman name, not the Greek. You asked for the name of the Greek hero.”

“Card.”

Cara, Lillian and Emilia stayed out of the controversy, partly because they were strangers to the quiz scene, but mostly because they had gone with Hercules. As they were in the infancy of their friendship, they were also a little shy around each other.

It was only a week ago, on a bright, January morning, that Cara had met Lillian. Ambling towards the nearest kiosk, through a maze of white holiday villas and expat bungalows, she had seen a blue Toyota Rav4 emerge from a housing complex and proceed, at some speed, towards a well-dressed woman carrying two bags of cat food. Though the driver swerved at the last minute, the woman lost her balance and fell backwards into a wall. Naturally, Cara rushed to assist, and this is how she met Lillian; as a witness to an attempted hit-and-run.

“It’s not the first time,” Lillian revealed, her fine-featured face pale from shock and excess powder. She brushed herself down and picked up her bags.

Intrigued as to what this woman, with her neat floral dress, flat shoes and woollen cardigan, could have done to incur the wrath of someone with such alarming regularity, Cara asked.

“I feed the cats,” Lillian explained. “Not everyone approves. Some think they’re vermin.”

“And their answer is to run you over?”

Lillian smiled, wincing slightly because she had bruised her cheek in the fall. “I’m not sure anyone would actually do it, though this guy comes close at times. I think he just wants to scare me into stopping, or stop me from doing it near his house. I don’t know. Anyway, he won’t win. I’ve had alarms fitted at mine and I usually wear a GoPro strapped to my head. Thing is, I’ve just had my hair done and, well, you know how it is.”

Cara was shocked, partly because it was the first that she had heard of such dangers in the four years she had lived in Cyprus, but also because Lillian didn’t look the type to be into action cameras. She wrote down her phone number, in case Lillian wished to take things further – “and may I suggest that you do” – and bid the older woman a safer day than she’d so far had.

On arrival at the local kiosk, a little later than anticipated, it might have been fate or really bright graphics, but Cara’s eye was immediately drawn to a poster taped to the door advertising The Dreamers’ Inn quiz night ‘in aid of Tala’s Monastery Cats and the Stray Haven dog shelter’. Despite having no one to go with, having done her best to avoid making friends since moving to Cyprus, Cara was taken by a strange compulsion to attend. For some time, she had wanted to give something back to the rescue community, and though it had taken a while, she was finally growing bored of her own company.

Cara initially moved to Cyprus on a whim, nursing the kind of disappointment that comes from loving the wrong man. She arrived shortly before the economy tanked and in time to witness the Cypriot government deal with the crisis by raiding people’s savings to rescue the teetering banking sector.

“Can they do that?” her mother asked over Skype.

“I assume so as they’ve just done it,” Cara replied, and her mum muttered darkly about Greeks bearing gifts, which made no sense at all under the circumstances.

As it transpired, the raid on the rich worked pretty well for the national economy, which must have been comforting to anyone holding bank shares rather than the euros they had worked hard for, saved for and, in some cases, laundered. More out of habit than design, Cara had kept her money in the UK banking system.

After viewing a dozen or more properties ranging from one-bedroom flats to five-bedroom villas, Cara bought a traditional one-storey stone cottage, with title deeds, on the outskirts of Dromos, a large village in the western region of Paphos. It was a sweet and basic hideaway with two bedrooms, a small garden and a courtyard. The neighbours were a mix of English and German, and far enough away so as not to be seen, but close enough to help should she need to scream. At that point in her life, the isolation appealed to Cara. After a lifetime of cities, she was done with living on top of people. Or even near them. In recent years, life had become claustrophobic and she yearned for space. It might have been her age or a deeper malaise, but she had grown sick of the world with its rising intolerance and lack of humanity. But she also needed time to recover, to find herself again, and the stone cottage in Dromos afforded her that time.

With enviable sea views, Cara’s home had solar-powered hot water, wooden beams and a lemon tree in the garden. The air was clean, save for the occasional sandstorm or wildfire, and the noise was minimal. On the downside, there were mosquitoes, venomous snakes and Cyprus Tarantulas. The first time Cara saw one of those, she screamed so hard the Germans came over.

For the first month in her new home, Cara did little more than settle in and wait for the phone to ring, which she then ignored. It was petty and childish, she knew that, but she was heart sore and angry, and she wanted Tom to hurt for a while. She needed him to feel the pain of their separation so he might find a way to salvage their relationship. Cara needed Tom to fight for her. Unfortunately for her, Tom must have interpreted his unanswered calls another way entirely because, eventually, he simply stopped ringing. Cara then tried to deal with this new disappointment by earning a living.

Although Cara had bought her home outright, with savings to spare thanks to the money generated by the sale of her London flat, she hadn’t counted on the cost of Cypriot electricity nor the cash-collecting vagaries of the government, so work was not only a distraction but a creeping necessity. Of course, having chosen to live in Cyprus to distance herself from people, as well as past love, she hardly relished the thought of having to deal with them to pay her bills. So, she compromised and chose her targets wisely, a wedding planner here, a tour guide there, and a beautician; exactly the kind of chat-friendly professionals that expats and tourists flock to. From experience, Cara knew these professions were a goldmine for stories, which made them ideal contacts for feature writers, such as Cara, and as wages were not what they ought to be on the island, no hard sell was needed. Cara offered a 15% commission on a*********s or interviews that she managed to get published.

As Cara half-expected, this working relationship got off to a slow start, partly because non-journalists struggle to identify potential stories and partly because they actually have jobs to do. However, after a few successful hits, the arrangement started to work, meaning her contacts enjoyed some tax-free beer money and Cara could pay her bills without dipping into her savings. The money also came in handy when she unexpectedly found herself with another mouth to feed.

Within six months of arriving in Cyprus, Cara’s solitary lifestyle came to an end when she discovered a puppy dumped in one of the communal bins. Barely three months old, the dog had, literally, been thrown away like rubbish. This was Cara’s first indication that animal rights might not be high on the national agenda.

After balancing precariously on the lip of the bin, Cara managed to grab hold of the black and tan dog without joining him. The puppy was filthy, half-starved and covered in ticks. Even so, she held him gently in her arms as he started to shake, either from cold, fear or shock, or a combination of all three. Cara was no expert, but the long ears and velvet coat suggested the puppy was a hunting dog or at least a hunting dog mix, and she knew that if she had passed by an hour or so later, the bin men would have done their job. The thought of that haunted Cara for the rest of her days.

Having no idea of what she should do, Cara took the puppy to the local vet. There, they cleaned him up, told her “this is Cyprus”, and tested him for all manner of diseases she’d never heard of and, thankfully, he didn’t have. As they worked, she asked about shelters only to be told she could try ringing, but the good ones were usually full.

“What about the bad ones?” she joked.

“You’d be better off leaving him in the bin,” was the reply.

So, once he was jabbed and beautified, Cara took the puppy home and named him Cooper.

In her 43 years on the planet, Cara had never owned a dog, which meant she was totally unprepared for the impact Cooper would have on her life. Yes, there were accidents requiring bleach and restrictions regarding restaurants, but from the moment she rescued him, nothing was more important to Cara than Cooper. Unaccustomed to the concept of unconditional love, both in terms of receiving it and giving it, Cara’s world suddenly took on a strange and brighter hue. At last, she had found something to truly live for, to nurture and protect. It was liberating to love and never consider that love as some kind of betting chip that needed to be seen and raised. She loved Cooper. She loved the way he crept onto her pillow at night and slept with his nose pressed against the back of her neck. She loved the way he watched her every move and the sight of his gums flapping in the breeze as he rode shotgun in the car with his head out of the window. She even loved that she could smell his farts and find them comforting. In all the years she had lived with Tom, not once had she thought of his farts with any kind of affection, and she wondered whether this was actually a sign that should have been heeded. Still, what was done was done and though she was more alone than she had ever been, she was surprised to find she was happy; Cara genuinely enjoyed the company of her dog, which was fortunate because four months after she rescued Cooper, she took in Peaches.

Peaches was a tiny, sandy coloured Kokoni dog and Cara almost cried when she first laid eyes on her. She was emaciated and nursing a broken jaw and burns to her back, most likely from scalding water. Found by the side of the road, and as close to death as it’s possible to be without dying, a couple of passing tourists folded her in a blanket and took her to the nearest shelter they could find. The shelter’s Dutch volunteers then brought Peaches to their favoured veterinary practice, which happened to be the very place where Cooper was getting his anal glands squeezed.

“Will she live?” asked the tall, blond man who had brought her in.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Hopefully,” the vet replied.

“Doesn’t sound great.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We’ll need to keep her for a week or so. We’ll know more once she’s x-rayed. Can you find a foster to take her while she recovers?”

“Possibly,” the man replied. “I guess she’ll need special care and meds?”

“For the burns, yes. The jaw can be set, though it could take between six and eight weeks to heal and she may require a feeding tube.”

“I’ll take her.”

Having quite forgotten that Cara was standing in the corner of the room waiting for Cooper to recover from the recent exploration of his anus, both men turned to look at her with surprise.

“You want to take her?” asked the vet.

“You want to foster?” asked the shelter guy.

“Yes, I’ll take her and, yes, I’ll foster her if you want, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather keep her.”