‘MY DEAR, IT’S good to see you again. How are you bearing up?’
It was the vicar’s wife, welcoming her into the vicarage where her husband offered her a dry sherry.
‘I miss my weekly symposia with Vasilis,’ he said, after his wife had asked after Nicky, and how he too was bearing up.
This kind of kind enquiry had continued to come her way, and Christine always answered as best she could. But it was difficult. How could she possibly tell people that Anatole had offered her marriage in order to make a family for Nicky? An offer she could not accept, however overwhelming the temptation.
That temptation still wound itself inside her head even now—despite all she felt, all she told herself, all she had forced herself to feel, not to feel, in the endless month that had passed since Anatole had driven away that last time.
It had been a month filled with anguish and torment over what she had done. A month of missing Anatole.
And that was the worst of it—the most dangerous sign of all—telling her what she so desperately did not want to be told. She longed to be able to put him out of her mind, but it was impossible. And made more so by Nicky’s repeated mentions of him, his constant questioning about when Anatole would be back.
‘I want him to come!’ he would say plaintively, and Christine and Nanny Ruth would be hard pressed to divert him, even though summer was coming and the weather warm enough for them to think of driving to the coast, for a day at the beach.
‘But I want Cousin Anatole to come too!’ had been Nicky’s only response when she’d told him. ‘Why can’t he come? Why?’
Christine had done her best. ‘Munchkin, your cousin works very hard—he has lots to do. He has to fly to other countries—’
‘He could fly here,’ Nicky had retaliated. He’d looked across at his mother. ‘He could live here. He said he was coming to look after me—he said. He said my pappou told him to!’
His little face had quivered, and Christine’s heart had gone out to him. Pangs had pierced her.
If she married Anatole—
No! It was madness to think of yielding. Worse than madness. It would be sentencing herself to a lifetime of anguish.
Instead she had to sentence her beloved son to missing Anatole.
When the first postcard had arrived, she’d been grateful. It had been from Paris, showing the Eiffel Tower and a popular cartoon character. Anatole had written on the back.
Will you do me a painting of the Eiffel Tower, with you and me at the top?
Nicky, thrilled, had rushed off to get his paints.
More postcards had arrived, one every week, from different parts of the globe. And now a month had turned into six weeks. Six endless weeks.
The imminent arrival of his puppy was a source of cheer, and learning to ride, being taught as promised by Giles, helped keep Nicky busy—as did the open day at the pre-prep school he would start at in the autumn.
After meeting some of the other boys there who would be his classmates Christine had arranged some play dates. She’d even thought about taking Nicky away on holiday for a week somewhere. Perhaps a theme park. Perhaps the seaside in Brittany or Spain.
She didn’t know. Couldn’t decide. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything except let one day slip by into another and feel a kind of quiet, drear despair seep over her.
Was this to be her life from now on? It seemed so lonely without Anatole.
I miss him!
The cry came from deep within, piercing in its intensity. She tried to think of Vasilis, to use his calm, comforting memory to insulate herself—but Vasilis was fading. His presence in the house, her life, was only a fragile echo.
She felt him most when she attended to the business of his foundation, but that was intermittent, with the meat of the work being carried out by his hand-picked trustees, who followed the programme her husband had set out for them. She did her bit, played her part, had gone twice to London for meetings, but on her return there was only one man she thought about.
Only one.
The one she could not have.
The one she had sent away.
And the one whom she missed more and more with every passing day.
* * *
Anatole was back in Athens again. He’d spent weeks flying from one city to another, relentlessly restless, driven onwards by frustration and a punishing need to keep occupied and keep moving, putting out of his mind all that he had left behind.
The only times he let it intrude was when he paused in airports to buy a postcard for Nicky of wherever he happened to be, scrawling something on it for the boy.
But it did not do to think too much of Nicky. Still less of Christine. Instead, he made himself focus on what had landed on him here in Athens.
His face set in a grim expression. Both parents had demanded that he visit, and both visits had been hideous. His father intended to get yet another divorce, and wanted a way of getting out of the pre-nup he’d so rashly signed, and his mother wanted him to get back a villa on the Italian lakes she regretted allowing her most recent ex to have.
He was interested in neither demand, nor in the flurry of social invitations that had descended upon him to functions at which women would make a beeline for him, as they always did, his unmarried status a honeypot to them. It had always been like that and he was fed up with it—more fed up than he’d ever been in his life.
I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want these people in my life.
Neither the women fawning over him, trying to get his interest, nor his parasitic parents, who only contacted him when they wanted something from him and otherwise ignored his existence, were anything other than repellent to him. And as he headed back to his apartment—alone—he knew with a kind of fierceness that ran like fire in his veins that in all the six punishing weeks he’d spent travelling the world there had been only one place he wanted to get back to. Only one place he wanted to be.
He walked out on to his balcony and the heat of the city’s night seemed suffocating. Clogging his lungs. Memory sliced through him, pushing a different balcony high up in the London rooftops into his mental vision. A greenish glow lit the greenery...a soft voice exclaimed at the sight.
A soft voice that had cried out to him again after so many years as they had reached ecstasy together once more. Before that same voice, soft no longer, had banished him.
A vice seemed to close around him, crushing him. He had lost her once before, through his own blindness. Now he had lost her again and he could not endure it.
I have to see her again. I have to try again—I can’t give up on her. I want a family—a family with her, with Nicky.
And why should she not want that too? What impediment could there be?
Across his mind, her words drifted like a ghost intent on haunting him.
‘You would know it—’
What had she meant? What did she want that he was not offering her? What was necessary to a good marriage other than what he had set out in plain words, in every caress that he had lavished upon her?
It made no sense.
He shook the thoughts from him, impatient to be gone, to close the yawning space between where he was and where she and Nicky were.
Within hours, those parting miles had vanished, and as he sped out of Heathrow, heading south, gaining open countryside, for the first time since he had left he felt his spirits lighten, his breathing ease.
Elation filled him. And hope renewed. This time—surely this time—he would persuade Christine to finally make her future with him.
This time she won’t refuse me.
Hope, strong and powerful, streamed within him.
* * *
Christine turned in between the wrought-iron gates, the wheels of her car crunching over the gravel. She’d just collected Nicky from another riding lesson at the Barcourts’, and now he was imparting Giles’s equine wisdom to his mother.
‘You mustn’t let ponies eat too much grass,’ he informed her. ‘It blows them up like a balloon. They might pop!’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Christine dutifully.
‘And you have to groom them after every ride. I groom Bramble—but not his tail. Giles does that. Ponies can kick if they get cross.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Christine said again, thankful that Giles had performed that tricky office.
‘I did his mane. I stood on a box to reach,’ continued Nicky. ‘Bramble is a strawberry roan. He’s thirteen hands. That means how high he is. When I’m grown up I’ll be too big for him. Now I’m almost just right.’
Murmuring appropriately, Christine rounded the bend in the drive, emerging from the shade into the sunshine that was bathing the gracious frontage of the house, with its pleasing symmetry and the dormer windows in the roofline. The sunshine that was gleaming off the silver-grey saloon car just drawing up ahead of her.
She felt her stomach clench. Her pulse leap. Her breath catch. Anatole was emerging from the car, looking round as he heard her approach, lifting a hand in greeting.
Nicky stopped in mid-word and cried out, ecstatic delight and excitement in his voice, ‘He came—he came! I wanted him to and he has!’
The next few minutes passed in a blur as, trying urgently to quell the tumult inside her, Christine drew her car up beside Anatole’s. Nicky, overjoyed, scrambled out to hurl himself at Anatole, who scooped him in a single sweep up into his arms, clutching him tightly.
Exhilaration streamed through Anatole at the feel of the little lad embracing him. It was good, so good to see him again—more than good. Wonderful!
‘Oof!’ he exclaimed laughingly. ‘You’re getting heavier and heavier, young man!’
He ruffled the dark hair—as dark as his own, thought Christine, and felt the familiar ache shooting inside her—then lowered Nicky to the ground. He looked across at Christine.
‘Hi,’ he said casually. Determinedly casually. Determinedly suppressing the urge, the overpowering desire to do to her as he’d done to Nicky—sweep her up into his arms and hug her tightly! But he must not do that. He must be calm, casual. Friendly, nothing but friendly.
For now.
His expression changed slightly. ‘Sorry to drop in unannounced. I hope it’s OK.’ He paused, then said deliberately, ‘I’m booked in at the White Hart.’
He wanted to give her no excuse for sending him away again. To do nothing to scare her off.
Wordlessly, she nodded, feeling relief for that, at least. She was trying to get her composure back, but it was impossible. Impossible to do anything but feel the rapid surge of her blood, the hectic flare of colour in her cheeks as her eyes hung on him.
He was in casual clothes—designer jeans and a sweater with a designer logo on it, and designer sneakers. He looked totally relaxed and like a million dollars. She felt her heart start to thump.
‘I’d better let Mrs Hughes know you’ll be here for dinner,’ she said, finally managing to speak.
He tilted an eyebrow at her. ‘Not if you have other plans.’
She had no plans—nothing except helping Nanny Ruth with Nicky’s tea, bath time and bed. Then her own TV supper in her sitting room.
She made herself smile. ‘I’m sure Nicky will want to eat with you.’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Her son tugged at Anatole’s jeans. ‘Come and play with me. I’ve been for a ride. And I groomed Bramble. Giles says I’m going to be jumping him soon!’
‘Are you, now?’ Anatole grinned, letting himself focus on the lad.
He didn’t look again at Christine. It would not have been wise.
She was looking...beautiful—that was what she was looking. Beautiful, with her hair pushed off her face by a band, wearing a summery skirt in a blue-printed material, gathered at the waist, and a pale yellow blouse with a short cardigan in a deeper yellow. Her legs were bare, showing golden calves, and her narrow feet were in espadrilles.
He felt desire leap instantly within him. And an emotion that he could not name kicked through him, powerful and unfamiliar. He wanted to go on looking at her. More than look. Wanted to close the distance between them, take her face in his hands and kiss her sweet, tender mouth—as a husband would a wife.
Determination swept through him. I have to make her mine. I have to persuade her, convince her how right it is for us to marry! Overcome her objections...
Into his head came her words again—the words he could not understand but needed to understand, about just what it was that she was holding out for.
‘You would know it—’
Frustration ground at him again. What would he know? What was it she wanted of him that he was not offering her?
I have to find out.
And that was why he had come, wasn’t it? To try again—and again.
I’ll never give up—never!
The knowledge seared in him, infusing every brain cell with its power. But then Nicky was tugging at him again, chattering away, reclaiming his attention—which he gave with a leap of his emotion to see the boy so eager to be with him. He grinned down fondly at him, and let Nicky drag him off.
Christine watched them go indoors, feeling as if a sledgehammer had just swiped her sideways. Jerkily, she put her car away in the garage, went indoors via the kitchen to seek out Mrs Hughes about revising dinner plans, then she hurried to the sanctuary of her bedroom, her heart hammering, her emotions in tumultuous free fall.
She knew she couldn’t keep Anatole out of Nicky’s life indefinitely, but how could she possibly bear to keep on seeing him turn up like this...turning her upside down and inside out all over again?
Of their own volition her eyes went to her bed—the bed where she had made love with Anatole in that insane yielding to her own impossible desire for him.
Biting her lip, as if to bite off a memory she must not allow, she headed for her bathroom.
Her cheeks were far too hot. And there was only one cause of that...
* * *
As Mrs Hughes wheeled in dinner, it was like déjà vu for Christine, as she remembered that first time—so long ago now, it seemed—when Anatole had invited himself.
Nicky, in fine fettle and fresh from bath time, in pyjamas and dressing gown, was exclaiming to Anatole that it would be pasta for dinner. Anatole was saying it would liver and spinach.
‘No! No!’ cried Nicky, unconvinced. ‘That’s for you!’ He gave a peal of laughter.
‘Yummy!’ retorted Anatole, rubbing his midriff. ‘My favourite!’
‘Yucky-yuck-yuck!’ Nicky rejoined, repeating it for good measure, with another peal of laughter.
Christine calmed him down—getting him over-excited was not sensible. But then, dining here with her son and Anatole was not sensible either, was it? It was the very opposite of sensible. It was little short of criminally stupid.
But how could she deprive her son of what he was clearly enjoying so much? Emotion slid under skin. If she succumbed to Anatole’s proposal, this might be their way of life...
For a moment she saw the glitter of fairy dust over the scene. She and Anatole, Nicky with them, day after day, night after night. A family. A fairytale come true.
Into her head she heard the words that Elizabeth Barcourt had spoken. ‘He’s a natural with him!’ And the half-sentence that had followed. ‘Almost as if—’
No! The guillotine sliced down again and she busied herself helping Mrs Hughes.
In yet another replay of that first time Anatole had dined here, the housekeeper proffered wine for Anatole’s inspection—and this time it did not grate with her, Anatole taking his uncle’s role.
Vasilis seemed so very far away now—and she found it hurt her to realise just how long ago their marriage seemed. As if she were leaving him behind.
‘You’re thinking of my uncle, aren’t you?’
Anatole’s voice was quiet and his eyes were on her, Christine realised, as Mrs Hughes left the room.
She nodded, blinking. Then she felt a gentle pressure on her arm. Anatole had leant across to press his hand softly on her sleeve. The gesture was simple, and yet it made Christine stare at him, confusion in her gaze. There was something in his eyes she’d never seen before. Something that made her throat tighten.
For a moment their eyes held.
‘Mumma, please may I start?’ Nicky’s voice broke the moment.
‘Yes—but say Grace first,’ said Christine with a smile at her son. A smile that somehow flickered to Anatole as well, and was met with an answering flicker.
In his sing-song voice Nicky recited Grace, with an angelic expression on his face and his hands pressed together in dutiful reverence, rounding off with Giles Barcourt’s reminder that puddings came to those who were good.
Anatole laughed and they all tucked in—Nicky to his beloved pasta, Christine and Anatole to a delicious chicken fricassee. As she sipped her wine she felt the difference in atmosphere at this meal from the meal when Anatole had first descended on them.
How much easier it was now.
How much more natural it seemed.
As if it’s right for him to be here.
She felt the pull of it like a powerful tide, drawing ever closer. A dangerous tide of overwhelming temptation. But if she indulged—
She tore her mind away, focussing on the moment, on Nicky’s chatter, on Anatole’s easy replies and her own deliberately neutral contributions when necessary.
As the meal ended, with pudding consumed, Nicky started to yawn copiously. Between them, she and Anatole carried him up to bed, saw him off to sleep, then slowly headed downstairs.
The Greek words of the night-time blessing Anatole had once again murmured over the sleeping child, resonated in Christine’s head. And, as if it did in his too, Anatole spoke.
‘What arrangements are being made to ensure that Nicky grows up bilingual? I’m sure Vasilis would have wanted that. Obviously I’ll do my best, but if I only visit occasionally he may well lose what he has already.’
There was no criticism in his voice, only enquiry.
Christine nodded, acknowledging his reasonable concern. ‘Yes, something must be arranged.’ She gave a slight smile. ‘Our vicar promised Vasilis that he’d teach Nicky classical Greek in a few years, but that won’t be enough, I know. I can manage a little modern Greek—enough to teach him the alphabet, but nothing more. Maybe...’ she glanced cautiously at Anatole ‘...maybe you could chat to him regularly over the Internet? And ensure he has contemporary Greek language children’s literature to read?’
She started to walk downstairs again. It was not unreasonable to encourage Nicky to keep up his Greek with Anatole—surely it wasn’t?
I have to learn to live in harmony with Anatole. Whatever happens, I can’t refuse him that.
Her mind skittered away, not wanting to think about the rest of her life with Anatole interacting with Nicky over the years. It was too difficult.
Instead, she went on, ‘I could have a word with his headmaster—see if he can recommend a tutor in modern Greek when he starts school in September?’
‘School?’ Anatole frowned.
‘Yes—Vasilis enrolled him at the nearby pre-prep school. It’s the same one Giles Barcourt went to. Very traditional, but very well regarded. We both liked it when we visited—and so did Nicky. He’s looking forward to starting.’
‘Is it a boarding school?’ There was a harsh note in Anatole’s sharp question.
Christine stared at him. ‘Of course it isn’t! I wouldn’t dream of sending him to boarding school! If he actually wants to board, when he’s a teenager, then fine—but obviously not till then...if at all.’
She saw Anatole’s face relax. ‘My apologies. It’s just that—’ He broke off, then resumed as his heavy tread headed downstairs ahead of her. ‘I was packed off to boarding school when I was seven. I was a nuisance to my parents, and they wanted shot of me.’
There was harshness in his voice. More than harshness. Pain.
She caught up with him as he reached the hall, grabbed his arm. ‘Oh, Anatole, that’s awful! How could they bear to?’ There was open shock and sympathy in her voice.
A hollow laugh was her answer. ‘I wasn’t a priority for them—’
He broke off again, and into Christine’s head came a memory from five years ago, when she’d told him how much she missed her father, and he’d told her she was lucky to have any good memories of him at all.
‘In a way,’ he said, and there was a twist in his voice that was very audible to her, ‘Vasilis cared more for me in his abstract manner than either of my parents did. Maybe,’ he went on, not looking at her, but looking inwardly, ‘that’s why I so want Nicky to have me in his life. So I can be to Vasilis’s son what he was to me. But...more so.’
His eyes went to her, and there was a veiled expression in them.
‘I want you both, Christine. You and Nicky. That will not change.’
His eyes held hers, and what she saw in them told her why he had come here.
She made herself hold his gaze. Made herself speak to him. ‘And nor will my answer, Anatole.’ Her voice was steady, though she felt her emotions bucking wildly inside her. But she must hold steady. She must.
Frustration flashed across his features. ‘Why? It makes such sense for us to marry!’
Her throat was tight, and her hands were clasping each other as she faced him. ‘It made sense for me to marry Vasilis. At least...’ she took a painful breath ‘...it seemed to at the time.’ Her eyes were strained, her cheekbones etched. ‘I won’t—’ She swallowed, feeling the tightness in her throat. ‘I won’t marry again for the same reason.’
And not you, Anatole! Not you over whom I once sprinkled fairy dust only to have it turn to ashes.
She lifted up her hands in that warding off gesture she had made last time. It made him want to step towards her, deny her negation of him. Frustration bit in him, and more than frustration. A stronger emotion he could not name.
But she was speaking again, not letting him counter her, try to argue her down, make her accept what he could see so clearly.
‘Anatole, please!’ There was strain in her voice now, and her face was working. ‘Please. I cannot—will not—marry you to make a family for Nicky!’ She gave a weary sigh. ‘Oh, Anatole, we’re going round in circles. I don’t want what you want.’
‘Then what do you want?’ he cried out, with a frustration that shook him in its intensity.
Yet even as he spoke he heard her words, spoken to him the last time they’d stood here, going round in the circles they were caught in, round and round, repeating the impasse of their opposition.
‘You would know it—’
The words mocked him, taunted him. He wanted to knock them to the floor, get them out of the way, because they came between him and what he wanted so much—to crush her to him and smother her with kisses, to sweep her up the stairs and into her room, her bed. To make her his own for ever!
But he did not. For yet again they were caught in that endless loop they were trapped in, and she was doing what he had seen her do before.
He saw her walk to the door, open it, to usher him out—out of her life again. As she always did. Always had from the very moment she had left him to marry his uncle.
On heavy tread he did as she bid him, feeling as though gravity were crushing him.
‘May I visit tomorrow?’ The words sounded abrupt, though he did not mean them to be.
She nodded. Nicky would expect it. Long for it. How could she deprive her son of what gave him such delight?
How can I deprive him of what Anatole is offering?
Like a serpent in her veins, temptation coiled in its dangerous allure. Tightening its fatal grip on her.
‘Thank you,’ Anatole said quietly.
He paused, looked at her in the doorway. Behind her in the hall he could hear the grandfather clock ticking steadily, measuring out their lives. Their separate lives. The thought was anguish to him.
Then he made himself give her a flickering smile, bid her goodnight. He walked out into the summer’s night, heard an owl calling from the woodlands, smelled the scent of honeysuckle wafting at him.
From the doorway she watched him go...watched the car drive off, its headlights sweeping through the dark, cutting a path of light. And then he was gone. Gone yet again.
Was this what her life was to be now? Anatole arriving and departing? Spending time with her only to see Nicky, watching him grow up as year followed year? How could she bear it?
In the quiet hallway she heard the clock ticking past the seconds, the months, the years ahead.
A sudden smothered cry broke from her and she turned away, heading back indoors, shutting the door.
Alone once more.
So alone.