CHRISTINE CLIMBED OUT of the car. Her legs were shaking. How she’d get indoors she did not know. Mrs Hughes, the housekeeper, was there already, having left the church before the committal, and she welcomed her in with a low, sad voice.
‘A beautiful service, Mrs K,’ she said kindly.
Christine swallowed. ‘Yes, it was. The vicar was very good about allowing him a C of E interment considering he was Greek Orthodox.’ She tried to make her voice sound normal and failed.
Mrs Hughes nodded sympathetically. ‘Well, I’m sure the Good Lord will be welcoming Mr K, whichever door he’s come into heaven through—such a lovely gentleman as he was, your poor husband.’
‘Thank you.’
Christine felt her throat tighten, tears threaten. She went into her sitting room, throat aching.
The pale yellow and green trellis-pattern wallpaper was in a style she now knew was chinoiserie, just as she now knew the dates of all the antique furniture in the house, who the artists were of the Old Masters that hung on the walls, and the age and subject of the artefacts that Vasilis had so carefully had transferred from Athens to adorn the place he had come to call home, with his new young wife.
This gracious Queen Anne house in the heart of the Sussex countryside. Far away from his old life and far away from the shocked and outraged members of his family. A serene, beautiful house in which to live, quietly and remotely. In which, finally, to die.
Her tears spilled over yet again, and she crossed to the French window, looking out over the lawn. The gardens were not extensive, but they were very private, edged with greenery. Memory shot through her head of how she’d been so enchanted by the green oasis of Anatole’s London roof terrace when he’d switched the lights on, turning it into a fairyland.
She sheared her mind away. What use to think...to remember? Fairyland had turned to fairy dust, and had been blown away in the chill, icy wind of reality. The reality that Anatole had spelt out to her.
‘I have no intention of marrying you, Tia. Did you do this to try and get me to marry you?’
A shuddering breath shook her and she forced her shoulders back, forced herself to return to the present. She had not invited anyone back after the funeral—she couldn’t face it. All she wanted was solitude.
Yet into her head was forced the image of the grim-faced, dark-suited man standing there, watching her at her husband’s grave. Fear bit at her.
Surely he won’t come here? Why would he? He’s come to see his uncle buried, that’s all. He won’t sully his shoes by crossing this threshold—not while I’m still here.
But even as she turned from the window there came a knock on the door, and it opened to the housekeeper.
‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, Mrs K, but you have a visitor. He says he’s Mr K’s nephew. I’ve shown him into the drawing room.’
Ice snaked down Christine’s back. For a moment she could not move. Then, with an effort, she nodded.
‘Thank you, Mrs Hughes,’ she said.
Summoning all her strength, and all her courage, she went to confront the man who had destroyed all her naive and foolish hopes and dreams.
* * *
Anatole stood in front of the fireplace, looking around him with a closed, tight expression on his face, taking in the objets d’art and his uncle’s beloved classical statuary, the Old Masters hanging on the panelled walls.
His mouth twisted. She’s done very well for herself, this woman I picked up from the street—
Anger stabbed in him. Anger and so much more.
But anger was quite enough. She would be inheriting all Vasilis’s share of the Kyrgiakis fortune—a handsome sum indeed. Not bad for a woman who’d once had to take any job she could, however menial and poorly paid, provided it came with accommodation.
Well, this job had certainly come with accommodation!
The twist of his mouth grew harsher. He had found a naïve waif and created a gold-digger...
I gave her a taste for all this. I turned her into this.
Sourness filled his mouth.
There were footsteps beyond the double doors and then they opened. His eyes snapped towards them as she stood there. He felt the blade of a knife stab into him as he looked at her. She was still in the black, tailored couture suit. Her hair was pulled back off her face into a tight chignon—no sign of the soft waves that had once played around her shoulders.
Her face was white. Stark. Still marked by tears shed at the graveside.
Memory flashed into his head of how she’d stood trembling beside the bonnet of his car as she broke down into incoherent sobs when he yelled at her for her stupidity in walking right in front of his car. How appalled he’d been at her reaction...how he’d wanted to stop those tears.
The blade twisted in him...
‘What are you doing here?’
Her question was terse, tight-lipped, and she did not advance into the room, only closed the double doors behind her. There was something different about her voice, and it took Anatole a moment to realise that it was not just her blank, hostile tone, but her accent. Her voice was as crisp, as crystalline, as if she had been born to all this.
Her appearance echoed that impression. The severity of the suit, her hairstyle, and the poise with which she held herself, all contributed.
‘My uncle is dead. Why else do you think I’m here?’ His voice was as terse as hers. It was necessary to be so—it was vital.
Something seemed to pass across her eyes. ‘Do you want to see his will? Is that it?’
There was defiance in her voice now—he could hear it.
A cynical cast lit his dark eyes. ‘What for? He’ll have left you everything, after all.’ He paused—a deadly pause. ‘Isn’t that why you married him?’
It was a rhetorical question, one he already knew the answer to.
She whitened, but did not flinch. ‘He left some specific items for you. I’m going to have them couriered to you as soon as I’ve been granted probate.’
She paused, he could see it, as if gathering strength. Then she spoke again, her chin lifting, defiance in her voice—in her very stance.
‘Anatole, why have you come here? What for? I’m sorry if you wanted the funeral to be in Athens. Vasilis specifically did not want that. He wanted to be buried here. He was friends with the vicar—they shared a common love of Aeschylus. The vicar read Greats at Oxford, and he and Vasilis would cap quotations with each other. They liked Pindar too—’
She broke off. Was she mad, rabbiting on about Ancient Greek playwrights and poets? What did Anatole care?
He was looking at her strangely, as if what she had said surprised him. She wasn’t sure why. Surely he would not be surprised to find that his erudite uncle had enjoyed discussing classical Greek literature with a fellow scholar, even one so far away from Greece?
‘The vicar is quite a Philhellene...’ she said, her voice trailing off.
She took another breath. Got back to the subject in hand. Tension was hauling at her muscles, as if wires were suspending her.
‘Please don’t think of...of... I don’t know...disinterring his coffin to take it back to Greece. He would not wish for that.’
Anatole gave a quick shake of his head, as if the thought had not occurred to him as he’d stood there, watching the farce playing out in the churchyard—Tia grieving beside the grave of the man she’d inveigled into committing the most outrageous act of folly—marrying her, a woman thirty years his junior.
‘So what are you doing here?’
Her question came again, and he brought his mind back to it. What was he doing here? To put it into words was impossible. It had been an instinct—overpowering—an automatic decision not even consciously made. To... To what?
‘I’m here to pay my respects,’ he heard his own voice answer.
He saw her expression change, as if he’d just said something quite unbelievable.
‘Well, not to me!’ There was derision in her voice—but it was not targeted at him, he realised. He frowned, focussing on her face.
He felt his muscles clench. Thee mou, how beautiful she was! The natural loveliness that had so enchanted him, captivated him, that had inspired him so impulsively to take her into his life, had matured into true beauty. Beauty that had a haunting quality. A sorrow—
Does she feel sorrow at my uncle’s death? Can she really feel that?
No, surely there could be only relief that she was now free of a man thirty years her senior—free to enjoy all the money he had left her. Yet again that spike drove into him. He hated what she had become. What he himself had made her.
‘Anatole, I know perfectly well what you think of me, so don’t prate hypocrisies to me! Tell me why you’re here.’ And now he saw her shoulders stiffen, her chin rise defiantly. ‘If it’s merely to heap abuse on my head for having dared to do what I did, then I will simply send you packing. I’m not answerable to you and nor—’ the tenor of her voice changed now, and there was a viciousness in it that was like the edge of a blade ‘—are you answerable to me, either. As you have already had occasion to point out!’
She took another sharp intake of breath.
‘Our lives are separate—you made sure of that. And I... I accepted it. You gave me no choice. I had no claim on you—and you most certainly have no claim on me now, nor any say in my decisions. Or those your uncle made either. He married me of his own free will—and if you don’t like that...well, get over it!’
If she’d sprouted snakes for hair, like Medusa, Anatole could not have been more shocked by her. Was this the Tia he remembered? This aggressive harpy? Lashing out at him, her eyes hard and angry?
Tia saw the shock in his face and could have laughed savagely—but laughing was far beyond her on this most gruelling of days. She could feel her heart-rate going insane and knew that she was in shock, as well as still feeling the emotional battering of losing Vasilis—however long it had been expected—and burying him that very day.
To have in front of her now the one man in the entire world she had dreaded seeing again was unbearable. It was unbearable to look at the man who had once been so dear to her.
She lifted a hand, as if to ward him off. ‘Anatole, I don’t know why you’ve come here, and I don’t care—we’ve nothing left to say to each other. Nothing!’ She shut her eyes, then opened them again with a heavy breath. ‘I’m sure you grieve for your uncle... I know you were fond of him and he of you. He did not seek this breach with you—’
She felt her throat closing again and could not continue. Wanted him only to go.
‘What will you do with this place?’
Anatole’s voice cut across her aching thoughts.
‘I suppose you’ll sell up and take yourself off to revel in your ill-gotten inheritance?’
She swallowed. How could it hurt that Anatole spoke to her in such a way? She knew what he thought of her marriage to Vasilis.
‘I’ve no intention of selling up,’ she replied coldly, taking protection behind her tone. ‘This is my home, with many good memories.’
Something changed in his eyes. ‘You’ll need to live respectably here...’ there was warning in his voice ‘...in this country house idyll in an English village.’
‘I shall endeavour to do so.’ Christine did not bother to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Why should she? Anatole was making assumptions about her...as he had done before.
A stab went through her, painful and hurtful, but she ignored it.
Again something flashed in his eyes. ‘You’re a young woman still, Tia—and now that you have all my uncle’s wealth to flaunt you can take your pick of men.’ His voice twisted. ‘And this time around they won’t need to be thirty years older than you. You can choose someone young and handsome, even if they’re penniless!’
His tone grew harsher still.
‘I’d prefer it if you took yourself off to some flash resort where you can party all night and keep your married name out of the tabloid rags!’
Christine felt her expression harden. Was there any limit to how he was going to insult her? ‘I’m in mourning, Anatole. I’m not likely to go off and party with hand-picked gigolos.’
She took another heaving breath, turning around to open the double doors.
‘Please leave now, Anatole. We’ve nothing to say to each other. Nothing.’
Pointedly, she waited for him to walk into the wide, parquet-floored hall. There was no sign of Mrs Hughes, and Christine was glad. How much the housekeeper—or anyone else—knew about the Kyrgiakis clan, she didn’t know and didn’t want to think about. Providing everything was kept civil on the surface, that was all that mattered.
Anatole was simply her late husband’s nephew, calling to pay his respects on his uncle’s death. No reason for Mrs Hughes to think anything else.
With his long stride Anatole walked past her, and Christine caught the faint scent of his aftershave. Familiar—so very familiar.
Memory rushed through her and she felt her body sway with emotion. For a second it was so overwhelmingly powerful she wanted to catch his hand, throw herself into his arms, and sob. To feel his arms go about her, feel him hold her, cradle her, feel his strong chest support her, feel his closeness, his protection. Sob out her grief for his uncle—her grief for so much more.
But Anatole was gone from her. Separated from her as by a thousand miles, by ten thousand. Separated from her by what she had done—what he had thought she had done. There was nothing left to bring them together again—not now. Not ever.
This is the last time I shall set eyes on him. It has to be—because I could not bear to see him again.
There was a tearing pain inside her as these words framed in her head—a pain for all that had been, that had not been, that could never be...
He didn’t look at her as he strode past her, as he headed for the large front door. His face was set, closed. She had seen it like that before, that last terrible day in Athens, and she had never wanted to see him look like that again. Like stone, crushing her pathetic hopes.
A silent cry came from her heart.
And then, from the top of the staircase that swept up from the back of the wide hallway to the upper storey of the house, came another cry. Audible this time.
‘Mumma!’
* * *
Anatole froze. Not believing what he had heard. Froze with his hand on the handle of the door that would take him from the house, his heart infused with blackness.
Slowly he turned. Saw, as if in slow motion, a middle-aged woman in a nanny’s uniform descending the stairs, holding by the hand a young child to stop him rushing down too fast. Saw them reach the foot of the staircase and the tiny figure tear across the hall to Tia. Saw her scoop him up, hug him, and set him down again gently.
‘Hello, munchkin. Have you been good for Nanny?’
Tia’s voice was warm, affectionate, and something about it caused a sliver of pain in Anatole’s breast, penetrating his frozen shock.
‘Yes!’ the little boy cried. ‘We’ve done painting. Come and see.’
‘I will, darling, in a little while,’ he heard her answer, with that same softness in her voice—a softness he remembered from long, long ago, that sent another sliver of pain through him.
The child’s eyes went past her, becoming aware of someone standing by the front door.
‘Hello,’ he said in his piping voice.
His bright gaze looked right at Anatole. Clearly interested. Waiting for a response.
But Anatole could make none. Could only go on standing there, frozen, as knowledge forced itself into his head like a power hose being turned on.
Theos—she has a son.
He dragged his eyes from the child—the sable-haired, dark-eyed child—to the woman who was the boy’s mother. Shock was in his eyes still. Shock, and more than shock. An emotion that seemed to well up out of a place so deep within him he did not know it was there. He could give it no name.
‘I didn’t know—’ His voice broke off.
Did her hand tighten on the child’s? He could see her face take on an expression of reserve, completely at odds with the warmth of a moment again when she’d been hugging her child.
‘Why should you?’ she returned coolly. Her chin lifted slightly. ‘This is Nicky.’ Her eyes dropped to her son. ‘Nicky, this is your—’
She stopped. For a second it seemed to Anatole that a kind of paralysis had come over her face.
It was he who filled the gap. Working out just what his relationship was to the little boy. ‘Your cousin,’ he said.
Nicky cast him an even more interested look. ‘Have you come to play with me?’ he asked.
Immediately both his nanny and his mother intervened.
‘Now, Nicky, not everyone who comes here comes to play with you,’ his nanny said, her reproof very mild and given as if it were a routine reminder.
‘Munchkin, no—your...your cousin is here because of poor Pappou—’
The moment she spoke Christine wished desperately that she hadn’t. But she was in no state to think straight. It was taking every ounce of what little remaining strength she had just to remain where she was, to cope with this nightmare scenario playing out, helpless to stop it. Helpless to do anything but hang on in there until finally—dear God, finally—the front door closed behind Anatole and she could collapse.
‘Pappou?’
The single word from Anatole was like a bullet. A bullet right through her. She stared, aghast at what she’d said.
Grandfather.
She could only stare blindly at Anatole. She had to explain, to make sense of what she’d said—what she’d called Vasilis.
But she was spared the ordeal. At her words Nicky’s little face had crumpled, and she realised with a knife in her heart that she had made an even worse mistake than saying what she had in front of Anatole.
‘Where is he? I want him—I want him! I want Pappou!’
She dropped to her knees beside him, hugging him as he sobbed, giving him what comfort she could, reminding him of how Pappou had been so ill, and was now in heaven, where he was well again, where they would see him again one day.
Then, suddenly there was someone else hunkering down beside her and Nicky. Someone resting his hand on Nicky’s heaving shoulder.
Anatole spoke, his voice a mix of gentleness and kindness, completely different from any tone she’d heard from him so far in this nightmare encounter. ‘Did you say that you’ve been doing some painting with Nanny?’
Christine felt Nicky turn in her arms, look at the man kneeling down so close. She saw her son nod, his face still crumpled with tears.
‘Well,’ said Anatole, in the same tone of voice but now with a note of encouragement in it, ‘why don’t you paint a picture especially for...for Pappou?’
He said the word hesitantly, but said it all the same. His tone of voice changed again, and now there was something new in it.
‘When I was little, I can remember I painted a picture for...for Pappou. I painted a train. It was a bright red train. With blue wheels. You could paint one too, if you like, and then he would have one from both of us. How would that be?’
Christine saw her son gaze at Anatole. Her throat felt very tight. As tight as if wire had been wrapped around it—barbed wire that drew blood.
‘Can my train be blue?’ Nicky asked.
Anatole nodded. ‘Of course it can. It can be blue with red wheels.’
Nicky’s face lit up, his tears gone now. He looked across to his nanny, standing there, ready to intervene if that were needed. Now it was.
‘What a good idea!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Shall we go and do it now?’
She held out her hand and Nicky disengaged himself from his mother, trotting up to his nanny and taking her hand. He turned back to Christine. ‘Nanny and me are going to paint a picture for Pappou,’ he informed her.
Christine gave a watery smile. ‘That’s a lovely idea, darling,’ she said.
‘Will you show it to me when you’ve done it?’ It was Anatole who’d spoken, rising to his feet, looking across at the little boy.
Nicky nodded, then tugged on his nanny’s hand, and the two of them made their journey back up the stairs, with Nicky talking away animatedly.
Christine watched them go. Her heart was hammering in her chest, so loudly she was sure it must be audible. A feeling of faintness swept over her as she stood up.
Did she sway? She didn’t know—knew only that a hand had seized her upper arm, was steadying her. A hand that was like a vice.
Had Anatole done that only to stop her fainting? Or for another reason?
She jerked herself free, stepped back sharply. To have him so close—so close to Nicky...
He spoke, his voice low, so as not to be within earshot of the nanny, but his tone was vehement.
‘I had no idea—none!’
Christine trembled, but her voice was cool. ‘Like I said, why should you? If Vasilis chose not to tell you, I was hardly likely to!’
Anatole’s dark eyes burned into hers. She felt faintness drumming at her again. Such dark eyes...
So like Nicky.
No—she must not think that. Vasilis’s eyes had been dark as well, typically Greek. And brown was genetically dominant over her own blue eyes. Of course Nicky would have the dark eyes of his father’s family.
‘Why does the boy call my uncle pappou?’ The demand was terse—requiring an answer.
She took a careful breath. ‘Vasilis thought it...wiser,’ she said. Her mouth snapped closed. She did not want to talk about it, discuss it, have it questioned or challenged.
But Anatole was not to be silenced. ‘Why?’ he said bluntly.
His eyes seemed to be burning into hers. She rubbed a hand over her forehead. A great weariness was descending on her after the strain of the last grim months—Vasilis’s final illness, the awfulness of the last fortnight since he’d died, and now, the day of her husband’s burial, the nightmare eruption into her life of the man who had caused her marriage to Vasilis.
‘Vasilis knew his heart was weak. That it would give out while Nicky was still young. So he said...’ Her voice wavered and she took another difficult breath, not wanting to look at Anatole but knowing she must say what she had to. ‘He said it would be...kinder for Nicky to grow up calling him his grandfather.’
She had to fight to keep her lips from trembling, her eyes from filling with tears. Her hands clenched each other, nails digging into her palms.
‘He said Nicky would miss him less when the time came, feel less deprived than if he’d thought of him as his father.’
Anatole was silent but his thoughts were hectic, heaving. And as troubled as a stormy night. Emotion writhed within him. Memory slashed across his synapses. He could hear Tia’s voice—his own.
‘I have no intention of being a father—so do not even think of forcing my hand!’
Christine looked at him, her expression veiled. Seeing his—guessing what he was remembering.
‘Given what has happened,’ she said quietly, ‘Vasilis made the right decision. Nicky will have only dim memories of him as he grows, but they will be very fond ones and I will always honour Vasilis’s memory to him.’
She swallowed, then said what she must.
‘Thank you for suggesting he paint Vasilis a picture. It was a very good idea—it diverted him perfectly.’
‘I can remember—just—painting the picture for my uncle that I told Nicky about. He’d come to visit and I was excited. He always brought me a present and paid attention to me. Spent time with me. Later I realised he’d come to talk to my father, to tell him that, for my sake, my father should...mend his ways.’ His mouth twisted. ‘He had a wasted journey. My father was incapable of mending his ways.’
He frowned, as if he had said too much. He took a ragged breath, shook his head as if to clear it of memories that had no purpose any more.
Then he let his eyes rest on Tia.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.