Hi all,

I'm delighted to announce the launch of my latest book from The Greek Village Series called A Self Effacing Man.

Below is a sneak peak in to the book.

I am also having a competition on Twitter where I am giving away 5 e-book copies. Check out my Twitter profile here https://twitter.com/SaraAlexi

You can also watch a video of me reading from the first chapter here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OawUH...

I hope you enjoy!

Happy reading.

Sara

Synopsis

If it is in your nature to put others before yourself, what do you do when someone makes a play for the person you have secretly loved for years?

Maria is illiterate, and Cosmo, the village postman, is obliged to read the love letters he delivers to her. He stammers over the words and blushes at the feelings he cannot bring himself to voice.

However life is not always predictable and a sudden twist in events throws him in the role of village hero.

But will this change be enough to enable him to overcome his shyness and declare his feelings to the woman he has loved all his life, and will she even be interested after all these years?


Chapter 1

It is her and yet it is not her. Her hands clutch a single white lily, her hair is woven with petals, her white blouse can hardly be seen for blossoms and in such a setting she should look beautiful.

Cosmo fixes his gaze on her mouth. He has never seen it closed for so long, her tongue so still. Such a terrible silence, her lips sewn together. His chest lifts as he draws in enough air to ease the stinging behind his eyes.

‘Silipitiria’ Mitsos leans over Cosmo’s shoulder and whispers his condolences.

It does not feel real to Cosmo, more like a performance in a television drama, and he has the sensation of being outside himself, hovering above the scene, looking down on another Cosmo. The scene before him swims in unspilt tears and he has to make an effort to focus again, to bring back the harsh edges of reality. Then it is all a blur once more, and he forces his thoughts, his emotions, back under his command until his tears are stifled again.

‘Zoi se esena.’ Stella, Mitsos’s wife, adds her own sympathies, and the two quietly step up to the waxen-faced woman lying in his mama’s place and cross themselves three times, finishing with a thumbnail to the lips before shuffling away to the front row of wooden chairs in the gloom. Vasso, who runs the kiosk in the square, is already seated and she acknowledges Mitsos and Stella with a nod. She was the first to arrive to pay her respects to the woman she knew as Florentia. Behind Vasso is Marina, who runs the corner shop in the square, crossing herself earnestly when the priest’s cantations reach certain points. She is with her son, Petta, and his wife, Irini. Beside them is Theo. It is strange to see Theo out of the kafenio where he makes coffee all day long at the top of the square, a commanding place for anyone to sit – as long as he is male. Theo crosses himself too, but hesitantly, and not at the same time as Marina. He is not a regular churchgoer.



The church is so full it could be the Easter service, but instead of happy faces there are slack cheek muscles, downward-curling mouths and watering eyes. Cosmo gazes, almost unseeing, over the sea of faces he has known all his life.

Alongside the people he sees every day are some who are slightly less well known to him: Kyria Sophia, who lives next to Marina and sometimes used to help out in the shop before Marina’s son and wife moved in with her, is here, and so is Sakis the musician, who has taken a seat next to her. On the end of the row, by himself, is Babis the lawyer – the ‘lawyer for the people’ – as he likes to be known. Cosmo cannot help but wonder why he is here: neither he nor his mama knew him. On the next row is the very familiar sight of Poppy, who sells everything and anything out of her tiny one- room emporium opposite the back of their house. His house now, he corrects himself. He bites his lip.

He looks again at the woman who is his mama, who is not his mama. Her skin looks like it is made from church candles – not the brown beeswax ones, but the transparent white ones – and she appears to be sweating, not in droplets through her pores, but with an all-over sheen. To the mouth that will never open again the undertakers have applied lipstick. When did she ever wear lipstick? A snort of mirth escapes him before he can control himself.

With a squeeze of his shoulder, Thanasis returns to his seat next to Cosmo. The church warden has put out six chairs, three either side of the coffin, which is end on to the ornate iconostasis with its renditions of the saints and angels in bright colours, edged in gold. These seats are reserved for family, but there is only Cosmo who can rightfully claim one, and he is relieved that Thanasis has sat next to him, releasing him from his isolation.

‘So they went over the top with the flowers anyway,’ Thanasis mutters, waving his hand at the columns that are decorated with vast swathes of lilies. ‘Have they told you what they are charging yet?’



The psaltis drones, his tuneless song rising to the rafters. Cosmo can just see him standing behind a display of flowers. He wears jeans and a T-shirt as if he does not expect to be seen. His mouth moves and the plaintive call is dramatically echoed around the small church, but his face is vacant.

The priest, centre stage, answers with his own lament. His hair is neatly tied back, his beard combed and his cassock covered with a gold-edged white habit that drops to his waist. His eyes drift around the church, unfocused; his lips move but the sounds coming out of them seem disconnected from him. He looks down, picks at a mark on his tunic, then lifts the fabric to inspect it. Satisfied, he drops the garment, all the while continuing with his monosyllabic wail. An edge of irritation begins to build inside Cosmo, but it snuffs out before it has gained any hold. Theirs is just a job like any other; why should they care?

He is not going to look at her again. It is not her anyway. He shifts in his seat, eager for the ordeal to be over. Thanasis’s hand squeezes his shoulder again and Cosmo tries to concentrate, take his mind anywhere except to where it is unwillingly drawn. He has never understood the words of any of the services, although he has been to them all, fifty-five times. Fifty-five Ascensions, fifty-five Pentecosts, and fifty-five of everything else, sitting next to his mama, and last Sunday was his - he painstakingly does the maths, blocking from his mind any other thoughts of emotion for a good two minutes -two thousand, eight hundred and sixtieth Sunday service by her side. But the ecclesiastical Greek of the ceremonies has always been unintelligible to him, and he has sat blankly though every one of the performances he has witnessed ever since he can remember. If it had not been for his mama nudging him to cross himself, to stand, to sit, as she mouthed along with the service as if joining in with a pop song, he would have slept through every one of them. Or not gone at all, given the choice.

He looks at her unmoving face again, an empty shell. She is no longer there, and he has choices now.



The priest is on the move. The censer swings back and forth, releasing incense- permeated smoke that twists and coils up towards the ceiling. A shaft of sunlight from the open doors highlights the plumes as they disperse towards the heavens.

Cosmo breathes in deeply, enjoying the heady scent. He can identify frankincense and myrrh, but also, perhaps, cedar? She burns cedar and myrrh on a Sunday, at home, he thinks to himself, and then corrects himself – burnt, not burns. The priest makes his way down the central aisle of the church, spreading clouds of incense from the censer, which he swings, jangling it on its chain. For Cosmo, the smell is synonymous with a day of rest and one of her good dinners, but today the familiar scent gives him no comfort. He should have brought a handkerchief. He did not expect to experience these waves of emotion, this lifting in his lungs, a tightening across his chest, a panic in his heart, a stinging behind his eyes. His lips tremble and Thanasis shoves a pristine white hanky into his hands, and even though Cosmo feels he might be swamped by these unfamiliar emotions, a part of him calmly wonders why Thanasis has a hanky and where in his little cottage he could possibly keep such an item clean. Thanasis’s life is all dusty donkeys and manure.

Then the service is over and the congregation stands as the men from the funeral parlour heave the coffin onto their shoulders. Cosmo is carried along with the throng, out of the church doors and into the hot sunshine where people shake his hand and pat his shoulder and whisper words of kindness and sympathy again and again. Most of the men light up, and there is a low murmur of relieved conversation.

‘She could have been carried by one person,’ Cosmo tells Thanasis as they watch the men load the coffin in the car. ‘She was so thin, never ate.’

‘Ah, but she could cook,’ Thanasis replies, and a new wave of panic flutters in Cosmo’s chest. Who will cook for him now? Who will mend his shirts and keep house? A wife would have softened that blow, but oh no, there was never one good enough for her son. The one or two girls he brought home when he was younger were not made to



feel at ease, and now he is too old and she is dead and he is alone. She didn’t think of that, did she? She kept him to herself to chide and deride, and to ensure there was someone to look after her in her old age, but now who will look after him?

And what of the orange orchards? She didn’t share the running of them with him either, so now that is also a problem.

He follows the car as it starts off towards the cemetery, inching past Marina’s shop, a slow right turn into the square.

Take the job of postman, she said. The pension is good, and how hard can it be to deliver a few letters around the village? Huh! What did she know!

‘Don’t you fuss over how the orchards are run,’ she used to say. Well, there is no avoiding that fuss now, is there, because who is there to teach him the ways of the farm in her absence? Who else is there to deal with the workers and organise the harvest and the buyers when that time comes? She didn’t ever think how that would be for him, did she!

‘Eh, Cosmo, come, we’d better keep up until we get to the cemetery, so there is someone to greet her.’ Thanasis takes hold of his elbow and leads him a little faster behind the car.

Stella and Mitsos walk arm in arm by his side, supportive, but clinging to each other. He is older than her by a good few years, and it is Stella who will find herself alone. But she will manage – she can manage anything. Irini holds Petta’s hand. Those two are about the same age. Which one of them will be left to face their old age all alone? At least they have a son, and he will never desert them.

Why could he not have had a normal life, Cosmo wonders? Why would she not let him have a normal life? Did she not realise that he would have loved her all the more for it?

‘Ela, Cosmo, we are here.’ Thanasis guides him through the cemetery gates.

Enjoyed this preview? Buy the book on Amazon >>