It’s a very hot day, a leaden sun bearing down on the small fishing village by the Ionian Sea. For a girl from Northern Europe, not the best day to go out and be active, she decides.
Her phone rings. “Do you know how to kill a chicken? No? OK, bye!” Five minutes later: “Do you know how to pluck a duck? No? OK, bye!” She knows the caller well, Miki, the kind, mildly eccentric, nature-loving, middle-aged Greek who’s helped her to feel at home in the village in the four years she’s lived there now. She is puzzled – kill a chicken? pluck a duck? Wanting to know more, she calls back: “I’ve never done any of those things, but hey!, I can learn! I’ll come over right away!” And off she drives in her dusty, battered 4×4 Suzuki. As Miki does his socializing mostly at the local pub by the harbour, a summons to come out to his place is special and not to be missed.
The narrow, unpaved road leads to the house, she knows, but the building is blocked from sight by trees, flowering oleanders and bamboo.