Invincible Summer Read Online Free

clambering out of the car and stretching. ‘I expect they’ll be on the terrace.’
    He led the way through an open gate at the side of the house and along a dusty gravel path running through a herb garden. The late afternoon air was heavy with the scent of thyme and hummed with cicadas. They wound their way around the building and up a flight of stone steps onto an enormous terrace overlooking the sea, where a willowy, fair-haired woman was gazing out over the railing. As she turned and came towards them, arms outstretched in welcome, Eva realised she must be Benedict’s mother.
    ‘Hello, darling. That was quick,’ she said as they reached her. ‘And you must be Eva.’ She released her son from a brief embrace and turned towards her.
     ‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Waverley,’ replied Eva, adopting her best meeting-the-parents manner, and was surprised to notice Benedict shift uncomfortably. Was she imagining it or had Benedict’s mother almost imperceptibly raised an eyebrow at him? What possible blunder could she have perpetrated so soon and with so innocuous a greeting?
    ‘Oh, plain old Marina is fine. How wonderful of you to join us, we’ve heard so much about you. Bunny, why don’t you go and give Eva’s things to Eleni so she can sort out her room?’ she said, spotting the rucksack in Benedict’s hand. Eva struggled to convert her mirth at the pet name into something resembling a grateful smile, but if Marina noticed Benedict’s glowering face and Eva’s faint snort she showed no sign of it. ‘Eva, come and I’ll make you a drink. Did you fly Sleazyjet? Frightfully convenient I know, but leaves you feeling quite soiled and in need of a tipple, don’t you find?’
      
    Standing at the edge of the terrace clutching the cold glass that Marina had pressed into her hand, Eva was finally able to take in the scenery that terror had prevented her from fully appreciating on the drive. The calm sea stretched across to another coastline, where a flat plain led from the water’s edge to a mountain range behind. Here and there, clusters of white buildings were scattered across the plain and the foothills. The azure sky was cloudless and yet just barely hazy.
    ‘This view,’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s breathtaking.’
    Marina smiled. ‘Isn’t it? In all my travels I’ve never found one more perfect. That’s Albania over there across the water. In the mornings the mountains look as if they’re rising up out of the mist like an enchanted land. You almost expect to see unicorns bounding across them. I know everyone bangs on about the light in the Greek islands but really, there’s nowhere on earth quite like it.’
    She took Eva’s arm, led her to the wall at the edge of the terrace where the land dropped away and pointed down the hillside. ‘Down there, you see that peninsula with the house and the beautiful bay? The owners have taken out a hundred-year lease on that bit of the Albanian coast you can see there, just so that no one can build on it and spoil the view.’
    A tall man immediately recognisable as Benedict’s father ambled out of the house and joined in the conversation. ‘Of course, they don’t have half the view that we have up here. It’s all very well being down by the water I suppose, for the swimming and all that, but I’d rather be up here in the heavens.’ He dropped his voice dramatically and turned towards her, gesturing towards the vast expanse of sky. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
    Eva nodded. It felt as if she were being drawn into in a conspiracy, in fact this whole place felt like a marvellous secret that she had stumbled upon, a world she hadn’t quite known existed. She wasn’t at all sure what she had imagined whenever Benedict had mentioned spending summers at his family’s holiday place, but it certainly wasn’t this. It was utterly dreamlike, otherworldly, like being suspended in a thousand shades of blue.
    ‘We like to think that our grandchildren and