LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘HEAD LACERATIONS ALWAYS look worse than they are. If you’ll help me to a washbasin I’ll stop wasting your time. I’m not dizzy any more. Really.’

      The woman’s voice drifting from the treatment room was warm, husky and a little bit shaky. She was speaking the Tovahnan language, with an English accent overlaid.

      Dr Leo Aretino knew this voice well. For the last few weeks he’d been expecting her arrival on the island, but hoping he could avoid her.

      He hadn’t been expecting her here, in his territory.

      The language she was speaking was Leo’s native tongue. The first time he’d heard her use it had been over ten years ago. She’d been standing over a microscope, trying to focus. The ’scope had been fiddly, but Anna had been patient. She’d started humming, and then softly singing to herself. In Tovahnan.

      It was a tune his mother had taught him as a child.

      Leo had doubted if anyone at their prestigious English medical school had even heard of his birthplace, the island of Tovahna, much less known how to speak its language. He’d cut across her song, incredulous. ‘Where did you learn that?’

      ‘From my mother,’ she’d said. She’d had the slide in focus at that point and had been looking intently at the nasty little pathogen the tutor wanted them to see.

      ‘Your mother’s Tovahnan?’

      ‘Yes, she is. Or she was. She left Tovahna before I was born.’ Anna had checked the slide again. ‘But it’s this little guy we’re interested in. You want to look?’

      There was a queue. He needed to look at the bug.

      His attention was solidly diverted.

      Tovahna was a Mediterranean island, sparsely populated, fought over for centuries until its big neighbours had decided it wasn’t worth the bother. It was now mostly ignored by the outside world. Few foreigners made the effort to visit, much less learn the language. The women of Tovahna were generally olive skinned and dark haired. Anna had red hair and freckles. This didn’t make sense.

      ‘Your mother taught you Tovahnan songs?’

      ‘She taught me the language.’ She’d moved away from the microscope, allowing the student after Leo access. ‘I think she used it to assuage homesickness. But you’ve missed your turn,’ she’d told him, switching effortlessly into speaking Tovahnan. She’d smiled, a wide, happy smile that had made him feel even more astounded. ‘Don’t tell me you’re…’

      ‘Tovahnan.’ And suddenly he’d been close to tears.

      Tovahna was tiny, impoverished, its assets gouged for generations by a single family dynasty. Most of its people were trapped in a ceaseless cycle of poverty, but Leo had been so smart at school that the community had rallied to send him to England.

      ‘Get yourself a medical degree and then come home and help us,’ they’d told him, and off he’d gone, aged all of fifteen.

      At nineteen he’d been doing brilliantly. His English had been flawless. He’d fitted in with his fellow students. He’d even been enjoying himself, hardly homesick at all. So there’d been no reason why he should gaze at this redheaded, freckled, fellow student speaking his language and feel like…he’d wanted to take her into his arms.

      Of course, he hadn’t. Not right then. It had been two whole days before he’d kissed her.

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