‘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.
CHRISTINE SAT AT the desk in Vasilis’s study. She could feel the echo of him here still—here where he had spent so much of his time—and found comfort in it.
The weeks since his death had turned into months. Slow, painful, difficult months of getting used to a house empty of his quiet presence. It had been difficult for her, difficult for Nicky. Tears and tantrums had been frequent as the little boy had slowly, unwillingly come to terms with the loss of his beloved pappou.
Pappou—the word stabbed into Christine’s head, and again she heard Anatole’s shock. Her mind closed, automatically warding off the memory of that nightmare encounter with the man she had fled. Who had not wanted her as she had wanted him. Who thought of her as nothing more than a cheap adventuress...a gold-digger who had married his uncle for the wealth he could bestow upon her.
Pain hacked at her at the thought of how badly Anatole regarded her. How much he seemed to hate her now.
She had been right to send him packing. Anything else would have been unbearable! Unthinkable. Yet even as she felt that resolve she felt another emotion too. Powerful—painful. Nicky had done the painting of a train for his pappou and he wanted to know when his ‘big cousin’ was going to come and see it.
She had given evasive answers—he lived in Greece, Pappou’s homeland, and he was very busy, working very hard.
After a while Nicky had stopped asking, but every now and then he would still say ‘I want to see him again! Why can’t I see him again? I painted the picture! I want to show it to him!’ And then he’d become tearful and difficult.
Guilt stabbed at Christine. Her son was going through so much now. And he always would. He would be growing up without Vasilis in his life, without the man he thought of as his grandfather.
Growing up without a father—
Her mind sheared away. What use was it to think of that? None. Instead, she took a breath, focussing her attention on what she needed to do right now.
Probate had finally been completed—a lengthy task, given that Vasilis’s estate was large, his will complex, and it had involved the setting up of both a family trust and a philanthropic foundation to carry on his work.
It was the latter that preoccupied her now. At the end of the week she was going to have to perform her first duty as Vasilis’s widow—to represent him at the opening of an exhibition of Greek art and antiquities at a prestigious London museum. Though she had always accompanied him to the events he’d sponsored, this was the first time she would be alone. It was a daunting prospect, but she was resolved to perform to the best of her ability. She owed it to Vasilis to do so.
Now, in preparation, she bowed her head to read through the correspondence and the detailed notes from the curator, to make sure she knew what she must know in time for the event.
This is for Vasilis. For him who gave me so much!
It was a fraction of what she owed him—the man who had rescued her when her life had been at its lowest, most desolate