‘If that’s what he wants,’ Connie’s voice trembled, ‘then Stavros will get another wife, poor woman.’ She added, ‘I just hope he has the guts to tell her this time before the wedding night.’
‘Your father—’
Connie couldn’t bear to discuss it even a moment longer. ‘If you won’t let me see him then I’ll leave him a note.’
‘If he lives to read it.’ Her mother burst into tears again. She had dressed from head to toe in black since the day Connie had gone to their hotel room and told them she could not live this life. She had emerged from their row in this costume, as if someone had died, rather than that her daughter had stood up for herself. ‘I’m going to lie down. You be gone when I get up.’
‘You’re not going to see me off?’
‘Today you should be returning from your honeymoon.’ She sobbed. ‘Today should be my proudest day.’
It was the hardest note she had ever written.
Connie went to her father’s study, which was the furthest room from her mother’s wailing, and closed the heavy door. It was room that had both intimidated and intrigued her as child, all forbidden cupboards and locked drawers, and it intimidated her now, but quietly she roamed, trying to work out what to say in her letter.
The more they told her that she couldn’t leave, the more she realised why she should.
Why absolutely she must.
Her hand moved to her stomach, and her mind moved to the question that had been begging for answer for days now.
She was late—just a day or two, but getting a pregnancy test on the island was impossible without causing gossip.
There were so many reasons for being late, Connie assured herself—the stress of the wedding and the aftermath.
After all, she had started on the Pill in readiness for her wedding. That might mess around with things.
But she hadn’t been meticulous in taking it.
A baby would have been far from a disaster had her marriage been the one she had intended.
‘Oh, God.’ Panic assailed her, as it so often did these days. She took out the card from her purse, the card Nico had left on the breakfast bar, and how badly she wanted to speak to him, wanted to call him to take the help he had offered.
Not for the first time she dialled the number, and though Connie usually hung up before she had finished even dialling, so badly did she need support, someone who would understand the ways here and what she was dealing with, so badly did she want to hear Nico’s voice, this time she let it ring. This time she listened and held her breath as he answered.
‘Nico.’ He said just this one word.
His voice was an abrupt version of the one she had previously heard—and she was reminded then of who she was dealing with. Not the man who had held her in his arms and made such wonderful love to her, not the man who had made her laugh and smile when she had never thought she would, but a shrewd businessman, a man who’d had many lovers, a man who set his sights on a goal and flew directly to it.
She knew for she had found out all she could about him since that night, had trawled the internet, had read about his success and the teary complaints from scorned lovers.
Their only complaint was that he had ended it, that Nico simply refused to even consider a relationship, or, as Nico called it, being tied down.
‘Hello.’ He spoke in English now, his voice harsh and a touch brutal and she drew in a sharp breath and rapidly hung up.
She could not speak to him, could not be the tearful, upset women again to him. She was better than that, Connie told herself. She was stronger than that.
She would get to the mainland and then, when she had got herself together, when she had found a job and somewhere to live, then, if necessary, she would call him.
And if not necessary, Connie thought with a smile, she might still call him!
Thank you. She said it in her head. She said it a thousand times a day, would not regret the potential of a life inside, not even for a second. In fact, it made her decision to leave easier.
There was no way her parents would accept what had happened.
She had, after all, qualified for an annulment given the marriage hadn’t been consummated.
So she wrote the letter, said sorry for the pain she had caused, but truly hoped that one day her father would see she was right, that one day he could again be proud of her. Her third attempt and still she wasn’t satisfied with it and Connie stood and wandered the room again, trying to find the words to tell her father that she loved him, but she had to live her own life.
Her hands explored the ornaments he collected, just as she had as a child, and then went to the drawers, just as she had as a child, too. As the catch gave, Connie realised that in all the drama and haste of her father’s collapse and the doctor being called, for once her father had left things unlocked.
Connie checked each drawer, her heart in her mouth, terrified that her mother might come in and see what she was doing, but she was curious as to what he kept in there. There was nothing of much interest at first, just endless files, her father’s meticulous notes.
And then she opened another drawer, a file marked ‘Housekeeping’ that she almost didn’t bother looking into but she did. Almost immediately she wished she hadn’t. The folder was thick and within was a file with some work for Dimitri, Stavros’s father. She read of some less than legal deals her father had brokered for Dimitri, and the payments her father had received. Her eyes welled up as she realised the stellar island lawyer she had been taught to respect, the man who had been held up as shining example of all that could be achieved by honest hard work and study, was as much a criminal as the clients he at times defended.
Why would he keep this stuff? She went to close the folder, appalled at what she knew, but her first instinct for her father was to save him from the shame and disgrace if this ever came out.
‘Eliades.’
The file caught her eye and the name burnt in her brain as she slammed closed the folder.
Eliades wasn’t a particularly unusual name, Connie told herself. And her father would surely have no dealings with them, given they lived on Lathira. Nico’s family would have lawyers and advisors of their own. They hadn’t even spoken at the wedding. They were friends with Stavros’s family, and, because she’d noticed Nico, she had noticed them but certainly hadn’t seen them interacting with her family.
And yet she recalled showing her parents the guest list, and her father’s face had frozen for a moment as he’d read who Stavros had intended to invite.
‘Perhaps a smaller wedding …’ Her father had attempted that night, but that was, of course, impossible. Their only child—of course the wedding had to be stupendous.
She wanted to close the folder, wanted to close the drawer, to forget what she knew, except another part of her wanted to know more.
It was Nico’s family.
The papers were old and yellow and her heart seemed to lift to her mouth as she saw that her father had arranged Nico’s adoption.
An illegal adoption.
She could feel her pulse in her temples, thought she might be the second in her family to collapse this morning as she realised the Eliades had bought a child.
Had bought Nico.
And it was her father who had sold him.
Did Nico even know he was adopted?
She saw the shaky handwriting of a woman, and tried to see the surname, but could only make out the first name and it was Roula. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw the paltry sum the woman had been paid.
How could she contact Nico now? Connie asked herself. How could she face him, knowing what she knew and, worse, the part her father had played in it all?
Her mouth filled with saliva. For a moment she thought she might vomit, the room was so stifling. It was suddenly imperative that she sit down.
And then, as she turned over the piece of paper, Connie realised that she never, ever could contact him, for she was holding a birth certi
ficate. Not the one that had been falsified to create a new identity—this gave the real date of birth, moved his age to a few months older and, far worse than that, there was another name.
Alexandros.
Nicolas had born eighteen minutes later.
In that moment, Connie knew that she had lost not just the man she loved but possibly the father to her baby.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WELL, if the baby’s two months old, I don’t see how the marriage could have been annulled. Clearly there were …’ Everything had gone black then. Somehow Nico had maintained the phone conversation, had listened to his mother spout the latest gossip circling the two islands, had even managed to fire a few questions of his own in a voice that was presumably normal for his mother had not hesitated in her responses.
‘She went to Athens, but Dimitri soon drove her out. She’s in London now apparently …’ his mother said in a loud, stage whisper, ‘completely broke. Naturally, her parents cut her off when all the scandal happened … We’ll see how long she lasts. No doubt she will return with her tail between her legs.’
‘And Stavros?’ Nico demanded.
‘Stavros!’ His mother forgot to whisper. ‘Stavros left the island months ago—after that little tart shamed him. How could you not know that?’
Because they hadn’t spoken in almost a year, Nico could have pointed out to his mother, but he chose not to.
But what a year it had been.
He had flown from Xanos to Lathira after the wedding and walked into a blistering row of his own. Of course he wasn’t adopted. His mother had laughed and pointed to his birth certificate, told him the proof was there in front of him.
‘Where?’ Nico had asked, for they had always been vague with details. ‘Where was I born?’
‘On the mainland. We moved here to start the new business.’ And then, when Nico, unsatisfied with her responses, had requested DNA, she had screamed and raged and ranted, his father joining in, too. Only now, all these months later, had they started talking again, but it was back to talking about the weather. The real issue was too sore to be raised, no matter how many times he tried to.
And now he put down the phone to the news he could be a father.
Nico rested his head in his hands, tried to take the news in. His first instinct was to find and confront Constantine.
How could she not tell him? His first response was anger. She had his number, how dare she take away his right to know? Nico closed his eyes, dragged in a breath and wrenched that thought out, because it simply could not be.
He had sworn he would never be a father.
He was overreacting, he told himself. So what if a woman he had slept with nearly year ago had had a baby? It didn’t mean it was his. Anyway, Nico gave a cynical sigh, if it were his baby, there was no doubt in his mind that he would have been contacted long, long ago.
But, still, he wanted an answer, wanted perhaps to see her, to make sure for himself that she was all right, given all she must have been through. After a moment he had telephoned Charlotte, and it hadn’t taken long. The ever-impressive Charlotte had drawn a blank at first, but when Nico had told her to say she was asking after Connie, rather than Constantine, phone numbers had led to more phone numbers, and then to a few employment agencies and now, a few hours and a plane trip later, he stood at dusk outside a large London home. The heavy iron gate dragged in the dirt and weeds as he pushed it open, sure, quite sure that the address must be the wrong one. The place looked uninhabited. Certainly he couldn’t imagine Constantine living here, but he rang the bell and waited, then rang again, unsure what he was doing there. What he would he say if she did answer the door?
‘Nico?’ Had she not said his name, he would not have thought it was her.
She looked nothing like the woman he had met that day, nothing like the woman he had held that night.
She had put on weight, a lot of weight, her face was puffy and swollen, those gorgeous blue eyes peered out from two slits and that lush, ripe body was bloated now. Her once wild tumble of dark curls hung tired and lank and even that delicious mouth was dry and cracked, but it was not that which made her so unrecognisable, it was more her stance, the defeat in her as she opened the door as if all the fire, all the energy, all the passion that made her her had been extinguished.
And Connie was painfully aware of that.
She could see the shock in his features, the same shock she felt sometimes when she stared dull eyed at her reflection in the mirror and tried to reconcile what she saw with the woman she once had been.
She wanted to close the door, to hide—for never, ever would she want him to see her like this.
‘You didn’t call.’ It was not the words he would have chosen to greet her with if he could do it again, but he had not rehearsed this. In fact, he had pondered all the way what he might say to her, and had decided he would see when he got there. ‘I said, if ever you needed anything …’ He looked her slowly up and down. ‘And clearly you do …’
It was a touch brutal and again he wished he could retract his words as he saw her chin rise in defence.
‘So sorry!’ Connie snapped. ‘Had you given me some warning, I’d have put on make-up, and answered the door in something a little more fetching …’
She missed the slight twitch of his lips as he realised not all of that energy in her had died. She missed it because an angry, sinewy voice came down the stairs and then several loud thumps as his stick hit the floor and Connie’s heart raced again, for she was not allowed visitors. ‘Connie,’ the voice demanded, ‘who is it?’
‘Just a delivery,’ Connie called, and then looked at Nico with urgent eyes. ‘You have to go. I’m not allowed to entertain.’
‘I’m not asking to be entertained,’ Nico said,’ just to talk.’
‘I’m not allowed guests,’ Connie said. ‘Please, Nico, just go.’
‘So what time are you off?’ He saw her eyes screw closed, saw her shake her head and go to close the door, but he blocked it with his shoulder. ‘When do you have a day off?’
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘I don’t get time off. I have to be on call …’ She saw him frown, saw incredulity flicker across his gorgeous features and she just wanted him gone, did not want to be seen like this, but Nico just stood there. ‘He’s bedridden,’ Connie explained. ‘He needs someone here at all times.’ Still Nico stood. And for a fleeting second she saw escape, that maybe Nico could help. Maybe she didn’t have to tell him about her father. It was so wonderful to see him. His beauty, his presence she had never even for a moment forgotten, but somehow, to be kind perhaps, her mind had dimmed it; somehow she had convinced herself that he was surely not quite as stunning as she remembered. Yet here he was and she didn’t want it to end. ‘I’m going to the shops in the morning …’ Connie attempted. ‘Maybe we could meet for a few minutes for coffee.’
‘A few minutes …’
He heard something else then, the wail of a baby, and clearly it irritated the old man, because the thumping on the ceiling became more insistent and he demanded that she shut up that noise.
And Nico was furious, incensed on both her and the infant’s behalf, and he would not leave her there, not for a single night. There was no sensible thought pattern, no grandiose gesture. He just felt sick at what was taking place here, and he watched her eyes widen in horror as, without invitation, he pushed easily past where she held the door.
‘You can’t come in …’ Connie whimpered, but he could, and Nico put a finger to his lips and stood in the hallway. Connie stood shaking, wondering how she could get rid of him without making a noise.
‘Connie,’ came the reedy voice, ‘I need you …’
Nico’s jaw tightened. He stood in the dingy hall of a home that must once have been beautiful but now smelt of neglect and old man. Constantine did not belong here and surely neither did the baby that was still wailing. ‘I’m coming, Henry …’ She turned to race up the stairs, but he caught her wrist.
‘It sounds as if your baby needs you first.’
‘And I’ll tend to him soon,’ she whispered, but she was terrified to leave her baby. She could see Nico was angry and assumed it was at her. What if he simply took him? What if, as she tended to Henry, he simply plucked her son from his from the crib and left?
His son.
Connie felt her breath tighten in her chest, could not leave her babe, yet could not dare keep Henry waiting, especially as the banging was nonstop now.
‘Go to him,’ Nico said in a low voice. ‘I will wait here …’
‘No.’ She dared not trust him. She ran to the kitchen and scooped up her baby, and hushed him for a moment, but he was fretful as he nestled into her chest and heard his mother’s hammering, panic-stricken heart. She fled up the stairs with him, then gently placed him on the carpet outside Henry’s room where his screams intensified, but he was safer surely on the floor than in reach of a father who might choose to take him.
Henry was not best pleased. Connie had taken an hour off this afternoon to visit the doctor and he hated the baby that demanded his aide’s attention, and the noise, he told her, as she repositioned his pillows and rubbed his back, was not acceptable. ‘He’ll be quiet soon,’ Connie assured him. ‘He needs feeding and then he’ll settle.’ Then she felt Henry’s eyes linger on her heavy, aching breasts and she wanted to slap the disgusting old man, for his leers, for the endless silent innuendos, for the smile on his face as she washed him.
For so many things.
Except it was here or the street.
‘I’ll check on you later,’ Connie said when Henry was settled, but still her baby wept.
‘I’d like that.’
She did not respond, tried to ignore his veiled meanings, because, as she told herself so very often, he was all talk—but how she loathed it.
A Shameful Consequence Page 6
