CHRISTINE SAT ON the chintz-covered sofa, tension racking her still as Mrs Hughes set out a tray of coffee on the ormolu table at her side. Her throat was parched and she was desperate for a shot of caffeine—anything to restore her drained energy levels.
In her head, memory cut like a knife.
‘I could murder a cup of coffee.’
Anatole had said that the very first afternoon he’d picked her up off the street where she’d fallen in front of his car and brought her back to his flat. Was he remembering it too? She didn’t know. His expression was closed.
As her eyes flickered over him she felt emotion churn in her stomach. His physical impact on her was overpowering. As immediate and overwhelming as it had been the very first time she’d set eyes on him. The five years since she had last set eyes on him vanished.
Panic beat in her again.
I’ve got to make him go away. I’ve got to—
‘You realise that this changes everything—the fact that Vasilis has a son?’
She started, staring at Anatole. ‘Why?’ she said blankly.
He lifted an impatient hand, a coffee cup in it, before drinking. ‘Don’t be obtuse,’ he said. ‘That is, don’t be stupid—’
‘I know what obtuse means!’ she heard herself snap at him.
He paused, rested his eyes on her. He said nothing, but she could see that her sharp tone had taken him by surprise. He wasn’t used to her talking to him like that. Wasn’t used to hostility from her.
‘It changes nothing that he has a son.’ Her voice trembled on the final word. Had Anatole noticed the tremor? She hoped not.
‘Of course it does!’ he replied.
He finished his coffee, roughly set the cup back on the tray. He was on the sofa opposite her, but he was still too close. His eyes flickered over her for a moment, but his expression was still veiled.
‘I will not have Nicky punished for what you did.’ He spoke quietly, but there was an intensity in his voice that was like a chill down her spine, ‘I will not have him exiled from his family just because of you. He needs his family.’
Her coffee cup rattled on its saucer as her hand trembled. ‘He has a family—I am his family!’
Anatole’s hand slashed down. ‘So am I! And he cannot be raised estranged from his kin.’ He took a heavy breath. ‘Whatever you have done, Tia, the boy must not pay for it. I want—’
Something snapped inside her. ‘What you want, Anatole, is irrelevant! I am Nicky’s mother. I have sole charge of him, sole guardianship. I—not you, and not anyone else in the entire world—get to say any single thing about how he grows up, and in whose company, or any other detail of his life. Do you understand me?’
She saw his face whiten around his mouth. Again, it was as if she had sprouted snakes for hair.
Stiffly, he answered her. ‘I understand that you have been under considerable strain. That whatever your...your feelings you have had to cope with Vasilis’s final illness and his death. His funeral today. You are clearly under stress.’
He got to his feet.
How tall he seemed, towering over her as she sat, her legs too weak, suddenly, to support her in standing up to face him.
He looked at her gravely, his face still shuttered.
‘It has been a difficult day,’ he said, his voice tight. ‘I will take my leave now...let you recover. But...’
He paused, then resumed, never taking from her his dark, heavy gaze that pressed like weights on raw flesh.
‘But this cannot be the end of the matter. You must understand that, Tia. You must accept it.’
She pushed herself to her feet. ‘And you, Anatole, must accept that you have nothing to do with my child. My child.’
The emphasis was clear. Bitter. Darkness flashed in her eyes, and she lifted her chin defiantly, said the words burning in her like brands.
‘I don’t want you coming here again. You’ve made your opinion of me very, very clear. I don’t want you coming near my son—my son! He has quite enough to bear, in losing Vasilis, without having your hatred of me to cope with. I won’t have you poisoning his ears with what you think of me.’
She took a sharp breath, her eyes like gimlets, spearing him.
‘Stay away, Anatole. Just stay away!’
She marched to the drawing room doors, yanking them open. Her heart was thumping in her breast, her chest heaving. She had to get him out of her house—right now.
Wordlessly, Anatole strode past her. This time—dear God—this time she would get him out of the house.
Only at the front door did he turn. Pause, then speak. ‘Tia—’
‘That is no longer my name.’ Christine’s voice was stark, biting across him, her face expressionless. ‘I stopped being Tia a long time ago. Vasilis always called me Christine, my given name, not any diminutive. I am Christine. That’s who I am—who I always will be.’
There was a choke in her voice as grief threatened her. But grief was not her greatest threat. Her greatest threat was the man it always had been.
Her nails pressed into her palms and she welcomed the pain. She turned away, leaving him to let himself out, rapid footsteps impelling her towards the door of her sitting room. She gained it, shut the door behind her, leaning against it, feeling faintness threatening. Her eyes were stark and staring. That barbed wire garrotting her throat.
I will never be Tia again. I can never be Tia again.
The barbed wire pressed tighter yet. Now it was drawing blood.
* * *
Anatole drove up the motorway, back towards London. He was pushing the speed limit and did not care. He needed to put as much distance as he could between himself and Tia.
Christine.
That was what she called herself now, she’d said. What his uncle had called her. His eyes shifted. He did not want to think about his uncle calling Tia... Christine...anything at all. Having anything to do with her.
Having a child with her.
His mind sheared away. No, he could not think about that—about the creation of a child between Tia and his uncle—his erudite bachelor uncle who’d never had a romance in his life.
And still never had, either—whatever lures Tia had cast over him.
His expression changed. No, that was the wrong way to look at it—they could not have been lures. Vasilis would have been immune to anything so crude.
She would just have come across as helpless and vulnerable. Cast aside by me—
His mind shifted away again. He still did not want to think about it. Didn’t want to remember that day five long years ago.
Yet memory came, all the same...
* * *
‘I... I think I may be pregnant.’
The words fell into the space between them.
Anatole could feel himself freezing, hear himself responding.
‘So are you or aren’t you?’
That was what he said. A simple question.
He saw, as if from a long way away, her face blanch.
‘I’m not sure,’ she whispered, expression strained. ‘My period is late—’
‘How late?’ Again, a simple question.
‘I... I think it’s about a week late. I... I’m not sure. It may be longer.’
Anatole found himself trying to calculate in his head when she’d last been...indisposed. Could not quite place it. But that wasn’t relevant. Only one thing mattered now.
His voice seemed to come from a long way away. A long way from where she was sitting, gazing at him, her expression like nothing he had ever seen before. Like nothing he wanted to see.
‘You’d better do a test.’ The words came out clipped, completely unemotional. ‘With luck it’s a false alarm.’
Without luck—
His mind sheared away. He would not think about the alternative. But even as he steeled himself he narrowed his eyes, resting them on her face. There was a stricken look on it, but something more, too.
She’s hiding something.
Every instinct told him that. She was concealing something, pushing it back inside her, so that he could not tell what it was. But he knew—oh, he knew.
I haven’t given her the right answer—the answer she wanted to hear. I’ve caught her out by not giving her that answer, and she doesn’t know how to react now.
He knew what she’d wanted his reaction to be. It was obvious. He was supposed to have reacted very differently from the way he had.
I was supposed to look amazed—thrilled. I was supposed to sweep her up into my arms. Tell her she was the most treasured thing in the universe to me, carrying my oh-so-precious child! I was supposed to tell her that I was thrilled beyond everything—that she’d given me the best gift I could ever have dreamt of!
And then, of course, he was supposed to have gone down on one knee, taken her hand in his, and asked her to marry him.
Because that was what they all wanted, didn’t they? All the women who passed through his life. They wanted him to marry them.
And he was so tired of it—so bored, so exasperated.
All of them wanted to be Mrs Kyrgiakis. As if there weren’t three of them already—his father’s current wife and his two exes. Even his mother had coupled her new husband’s name to Kyrgiakis, to ensure so she got kudos from the family connection as well as her hand in the Kyrgiakis coffers.
So, no, with quite enough Mrs Kyrgiakises in the world, he did not want another one.
Not another one who had only become one because she was pregnant—the way his mother had become Mrs Kyrgiakis the Second. Giving her the perfect opportunity to dump her unwanted first husband and snap up a second. Not that she’d wanted his father for long, or he her. They’d both got bored and taken lovers, and then another spouse each. Creating yet another Mrs Kyrgiakis.
And so the circus had gone on.
I will not perpetuate it.
Not willingly. Never willingly—
His eyes rested on Tia, his expression veiled. She was looking pale and nervous. He reached out a hand as if to touch her cheek, reassure her. Then he pulled back. What reassurance could he give her? He didn’t want to marry her. That would hardly reassure her, would it?
‘Did you do it deliberately? Take a chance that you might get pregnant?’
The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He heard her gasp, saw her face blanch again. As if he had slapped her.
But he could not unsay them—un-ask the question he’d pushed at her.
‘Well?’ he persisted.
His eyes were still resting on her, no expression in them, because he did not want to let his feelings show. He needed to keep them banked down, suppressed.
He saw her swallow, shake her head.
‘Well, that’s something,’ he breathed. ‘So, how did it happen? How is it even a possibility?’
She’d been on the Pill for months now. Ever since he’d made the decision to keep her in his life. So what had gone wrong?
He saw her drop her eyes, her face convulse. ‘It was when we went to San Francisco. The changing time zones muddled me.’
He gave a heavy sigh. He should have checked—made sure she hadn’t got ‘muddled’.
‘Well, hopefully it hasn’t screwed things up completely.’
Her expression changed. Anxiety visible. But there was another emotion too. One he could not name. Did not want to.
‘Would it?’ Her voice was thin, as if stretched too far. Her eyes were searching his. ‘Would it screw things up completely?’
He turned away. Reached for his briefcase. It was going to be a long, draining day—getting through the annual board meeting, seeing his parents again, watching them pointedly ignore each other, pointedly show demonstrations of affection to their current new spouses, glaring testimony to the shallow fickleness of their emotions, constantly imagining themselves in love, rushing into yet another reckless, ill-considered marriage.
No wonder he didn’t want to marry—didn’t want to be cornered into marrying by any woman prepared to do anything to get his ring on her finger. Including getting herself pregnant.
I didn’t think Tia was like that. I thought what we had suited her, just like it suited me. I thought that she was fond of me, as I am of her—but there’s nothing about love. Nothing about marriage. And, dear God, nothing about babies!
But it looked as if he’d been wrong—
He didn’t answer her. Couldn’t answer her. Instead he simply glanced at his watch—he was running late already.
He looked back at her as he headed for the door, not meeting her eyes. ‘I’ll have a pregnancy testing kit delivered,’ he said—and was gone.
There was a tight wire around his throat. He felt its pressure for the rest of the day. All through the gruelling board meeting—his parents behaving just as he’d known they would, constantly pressing for yet more profits to be distributed to them. And after the meeting was the even more gruelling ordeal of an endlessly long lunch that went on all afternoon.
‘You seem distracted, Anatole. Is everything all right?’
This was his Uncle Vasilis, taking the opportunity to draw him aside after the formal meal had finally finished and everyone was milling about, lighting up cigars, drinking vintage port and brandy.
‘Call me old-fashioned,’ Vasilis said, ‘but when a young man is distracted it is usually by a woman.’
He paused again, his eyes studying Anatole even though Anatole had immediately, instinctively, blanked his expression. But it did not silence his uncle.
‘You know,’ Vasilis continued, ‘I would so like you to fall in love and marry—make a happy marriage! Yes, I know you are sceptical, and I can understand why—but do not judge the world by your parents. They constantly imagine themselves in love with yet another object of their desire. Making a mess of their lives, being careless of everyone else’s. Including,’ he added, his eyes not shifting from Anatole’s face, ‘yours.’
Anatole’s mouth tightened. Making a mess of their lives... Was that what he was going to do too? Had he already done it? Was he simply waiting to find out whether it was so?
Does she have the results already? Does she know if she’s messed up my life—and I hers?
But a darker question was already lurking beneath those questions. Would being pregnant by him mess up Tia’s life or achieve a dream for her? Attain her goal—her ambition.
Have I given her a taste for the life I lead, so that now she wants to keep it for herself, for ever?
Having a Kyrgiakis child would achieve that for her. A Kyrgiakis child would achieve a Kyrgiakis husband. Access to the Kyrgiakis coffers. To the lavish Kyrgiakis lifestyle.
‘Anatole?’
His uncle’s voice penetrated his circling thoughts, his turbid emotions. But he could not cope with an inquisition now, so he only gave a brief smile and asked his uncle about his latest philanthropic endeavour.
Vasilis responded easily enough, but Anatole was aware of concern in his uncle’s eyes, a sense that he was being studied, worried over. He blanked it, just as he was blanking the question that had been knifing in his head all day. Did Tia have her results, and—dear God—what were they?
He wanted to phone her, but dreaded it too. So much hung in the balance—his whole future depended on Tia’s answer.
As everyone finally dispersed from the hotel—Vasilis departing with a smile and saying he was looking forward to accepting his nephew’s lunch invitation the next day, an invitation Anatole now wished he’d never made—he found that he actually welcomed his father catching him by the arm and telling him, in a petulant undertone, that thanks to the booming profits Anatole had just announced his latest wife had suddenly decided to divorce him.
‘You’ve made me too rich!’ he accused his son ill-temperedly. ‘So now I need you to find a way to make sure she gets as little as possible.’
He dragged Anatole off to a bar, pouring into his son’s ears a self-pitying moan about greedy ex-wives, and how hard done by he was by them all, while he proceeded to work his way through a bottle of whisky.
Eventually Anatole returned him to his hotel room and left him. Finally heading back to his apartment, he felt his heart start to hammer. He could postpone finding out Tia’s results no longer.
Yet when he reached his apartment, close to midnight, Tia was asleep. He did not disturb her. Could not. Of the pregnancy test kit there was no sign, and he had no wish to search for it in the bathroom, to see the result—to know what his future would be. Not now, not yet...
With that wire tightening around his throat, he stood gazing down at her. She looked so small in the huge king-sized bed. Emotions flitted across the surface of her mind. Emotions he had never had cause to feel before. Thoughts he had never had to think before.
Is she carrying my child? Does it grow within her body?
Those emotions flickered again, like currents of electricity, static that could not flow, meeting resistance somewhere in the nerve fibres of his brain.
Yet he could feel the impulse to let it flow, connect, let it overcome him—so that almost, almost he stripped off his clothes to lie own with her, take her into his arms, not to make love to her, but to hold her slender, petite body, to slide his hand across her abdomen where, right now, secret and safe, their baby might be taking hold of life. To hold them both, close and cherishing...
He stepped away. He must not let himself succumb. Must do what he was doing now—walking away, taking himself off to another bedroom, sleeping there the night, his dreams troubled and troubling.
He woke the next morning to see Tia standing in the doorway, her body silhouetted in her nightgown by the morning sun.
‘I’m not pregnant,’ she said to him. ‘I’ve just got my period.’ There was no emotion in her voice. Nor in her face.
Then she turned and left.
Anatole lay motionless, his open eyes staring at the ceiling, where sunlight played around the light socket. It was very strange. Her announcement should have brought relief. Should have made everything well between them.
Yet it had ended everything.