40During the next eight years, Maria Christina spent her free time sitting by the window in her bedroom, knitting, crocheting, embroidering, her hands always busy, determined to leave something of herself behind. Sometimes her thoughts wandered back to Metsovo, to Yiannis’ unfinished house, his vineyard, having a meal at the makeshift table under the sycamore, happy thoughts. She longed for the Southern Alps. She would close her eyes and imagine she was standing in the sun, high in the mountains in November, looking down at the mist which often blanketed the valley in the mornings. Trees glistening with ice, being unable to tell the snow-capped mountain from the clouds. She missed sitting in their old kitchen, snapping the ends off string beans, the smell of yeast filling the room from kne
