Σπίτι

Ever since her grandparents had uprooted her from Athens and enrolled her in University College London – για το καλό της, they said – Katarina had felt like her life needed subtitles, or footnotes at the very least. Not for herself, to be clear. She'd been learning English since she was small; even Yiayia and Pappou spoke it fairly well. No, she could understand the people around her perfectly fine; the people around her were the ones who seemed to need help understanding her.

"I can't believe you're studying already," mumbled Pippa, nursing her hangover with a large mug of black coffee. She cracked open one heavily made-up eye to peer at Katarina's color-coded notes. "It's not even reading week yet. Have a little fun for once."

Katarina shook her head and a few wiry tendrils came loose from her ponytail. She ignored them. She turned the page in her notebook from her notes on the Black Death to her notes on the Great Plague and got to work trying to remember which was which. "This keeps my mind busy."

Pippa wasn't listening. "You do realize that the purpose of reading week is so that you can put this off – " she gestured vaguely in the direction of Katarina's notebook " – as long as possible."

"Argh!" Katarina grunted, shoving her notes aside. She hid her olive-complexioned face in her palms and exhaled a shaky breath that could have been a laugh if it hadn't been filled with despair. "Απλά θέλω να πάω σπίτι," she murmured.

"Uh-uh," Pippa intoned as she put down her empty mug. "Nope. You know I hate when you do that. I've got no idea what you're saying and it always sounds like you're insulting me."

βλάκας, Katarina thought with a faint smile playing at the corners of her lips. She gazed out the grimy window of their flat at the heavy raindrops plummeting to the asphalt below, and just as quickly, the smile was gone.

"It shouldn't be this hard," Katarina mumbled.

"It's not that bad, it's just that Barnes is a wanker," Pippa said, reaching for Katarina's abandoned notebook across the Formica table. "I vote that if you don't know something, you write some nonsense about the Great Fire and move on. That usually works, in my experience."

"No, not the studying." Katarina stood from the table and shuffled to the window, her legs stiff from a long morning of stillness. Outside, she watched a large figure in a dark raincoat dart along the pavement, sidestepping puddles and glancing at his watch. Katarina pitied him. Russell Square tube station was six blocks away.

Katarina sighed. "I – ." She didn't know where to begin. There were too many ways to finish the sentence. I miss Athens; I miss Yiayia and Pappou; I miss my friends; I miss home-cooked σπανακόπιτα; I miss knowing I can go home. She settled for something easier. "London is nothing like Athens."

Pippa let out an exaggerated sigh. "No idea what you mean." She lurched to her feet, clutching her empty mug like a life raft. "Need some more coffee. Want some?"

Katarina shook her head, her leaf-green eyes fixed on the falling rain. "It's so grey," Katarina sighed. "I feel like I haven't seen the sun in years."

"You've only been here since August."

"And it's the beginning of November. That's a long time for a Greek to go without sun." She leant her forehead against the cold windowpanes, remembering the view from her window at home. How the light would glint off the windows and metal chimneys, how the restaurant across the street had a vibrant pink bougainvillea creeping across its brick walls. She tried to imagine a bougainvillea growing on any of the buildings she could see from her window now, the white stone flats with wrought iron railings, or the red awning of the Costa on the corner. It was impossible. Bougainvillea couldn't grow without sun.