The Innocent's Shameful Secret

by Sara Craven

  I can’t do this, she thought. Whatever Alexis thinks of me, I can’t walk away and leave him with—nothing.

  She folded the note and put it in her shoulder bag. She said, ‘Can I leave my other things here, Kostas? There’s something I need to do before I go.’

  Stelios was standing on the terrace in front of the hotel, talking to an elderly couple. As they departed, he turned to her, his smile fading, his tone formal. ‘Kyria Blake. How may I help you?’

  She said, ‘I need to see him. Will you tell him it’s important—please?’

  ‘He is not here, thespinis. Last night, he went back to his house, and later today he leaves for Athens.’ He added flatly, ‘I do not know when he will return to Rhymnos.’

  ‘His house?’ she echoed, reckoning up the cash she had with her. ‘Then can you get me a taxi?’

  He looked at her in astonishment. ‘There is only one on the island, thespinis. It belongs to Takis, and today he attends his uncle’s funeral.’

  She said, ‘I see. Well, it doesn’t matter,’ and turned away defeatedly.

  ‘Kyria Blake.’ His voice was gentler. ‘I think, maybe, it could matter very much. If you allow, I will drive you.’

  ‘I can’t ask you to do that.’

  ‘You do not ask,’ he said. ‘I offer. Come.’

  As they approached Villa Helios, Selena could see that the helicopter was out of the hangar and waiting on its pad.

  She said, half to herself, ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘No, no.’ His tone was reassuring. ‘See—Panayotis is still working on it, making checks. There is time.’

  Eleni answered the door, red-eyed. ‘Kyrios Alexis is not here,’ she said in answer to Stelios’s urgent question. ‘He has gone to a meeting. I do not know when he will return.’

  Selena stepped forward. ‘Eleni—you’re upset. What’s happened? It’s not—Penelope?’

  ‘My daughter is in New York, with my lady, Madame Constantinou. When the house is closed up, we with Hara will be joining her there.’

  ‘Closing the house? But I thought he was born here.’

  ‘It is true, thespinis, and his mother will be deeply, deeply grieved that he should decide such a thing. She loves this house and hoped her grandchildren would be born here.’ Eleni sighed. ‘So many times she has said so.’

  ‘Then why is he doing this?’

  ‘Because he says his life is now in America. That there is nothing for him here.’ She gave Selena a sorrowful look. ‘He is a changed man, Kyria Blake.’

  ‘Yes,’ Selena said quietly. ‘It would seem so.’

  Stelios said, ‘Shall I drive you back to the town, thespinis?’

  ‘I suppose that would be best.’ She turned back to Eleni. ‘Do you have any idea where Kyrios Alexis is having this meeting?’

  ‘None, Kyria Blake. He took the Jeep and went.’

  Her thoughts were whirling as she accompanied Stelios back to the car, trying to make sense of what she’d just heard. The house—closing. Alexis leaving Rhymnos for ever.

  And at the same time, she found herself re-thinking everything that had happened between them.

  Knowing that she needed to be totally honest with herself.

  Admit she’d hoped that his coldness and contempt would be a kind of salvation for her, releasing her at last from the anguish of loving him. From the utter futility of hoping that—somehow—somewhere—there might still be a future for them both. Forcing her to accept that it was indeed—over.

  Yet aware that here she was again, trapped in a maze of bewilderment, knowing there were now other questions that needed answers.

  Realising that, without them, she would have no peace. Would be left wondering in some bleak wilderness.

  She said under her breath, ‘I have to find out. I have to...’

  And suddenly she realised where Alexis would have gone.

  Stelios was frankly unwilling to set her down at the track through the olive groves. ‘Kyria Blake, this is a lonely place. Visit Apollo’s temple if you wish, but I shall wait for you here.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ she said as she got out of the car. ‘I’m sure I shan’t find it lonely at all.’

  Difficult, she thought. Perhaps, in the end, impossible. But, for a while at least, not lonely.

  ‘I shall still wait, thespinis,’ he called after her.

  ‘For half an hour, in case you are wrong.’

  But, just as she’d known it would be, the Jeep was there, parked in the usual place.

  She ran for most of the way and she was breathless when she finally reached the ridge and looked down into the precinct.

  He was leaning against one of the pillars, a dark figure in the sunlight, his shoulders slumped as he stared towards the sea.

  Motionless and solitary beyond belief, Selena thought, her heart twisting as she started down the slope.

  Not there this time to make plans for the future, but to accept the defeats of the past.

  And so lost in his thoughts that he was unaware of her approach until she said his name when he turned sharply, almost defensively.

  ‘If you have come to say goodbye, it is not necessary. I thought my note made that clear.’ His voice was harsh.

  ‘It was perfectly clear,’ Selena returned. ‘But I decided I needed to clarify a few issues, too. Because I don’t want us to part like this when there are still things that need to be said.’

  ‘You wish me to apologise for the deal I proposed to you? Very well. The suggestion was shameful. Is that what you wish to hear?’

  ‘No. Although I hated what you said, it was—almost understandable—considering what you were told.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know my aunt hated me so much.’

  ‘You are saying she lied?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am. I never contacted her when I returned to England. I suppose it was cowardice, but I couldn’t bear to hear what I knew she’d say. And I’d always intended to leave what passed for home anyway.

  ‘I moved to a larger town a few miles away where no one knew me. But one night, a few months later, an acquaintance of hers from Haylesford had dinner at the restaurant where I was working and told Aunt Nora that she’d seen me, that I looked well and appeared to have put on weight.

  ‘So—she came to check. She sat at a table in the corner and watched me all evening. When I left, she was waiting outside—and she went on the attack.

  ‘Oh, not physically,’ she added quickly as Alexis took a step forward, his face darkening. ‘Shouting—calling me names—saying that Millie and I were both disgusting little whores and worse. Totally out of control, using words I’d no idea she knew. Screaming that I’d disgraced her—damaged her good name for ever. That she would never be able to hold her head up in Haylesford again.’ She tried to smile. ‘She even mentioned nurturing vipers in her bosom.’

  ‘I think the vipers would be most at risk,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘There were some people passing and a man came over and asked me if I was all right or if I wanted the police to be called, and after that she calmed down a little. Began talking very reasonably and rationally about my pregnancy being still in the early stages, and how it could easily be terminated. That she would pay to have it done privately at some clinic in London and afterwards I could go back to university, complete my training and teach at her school, just as planned.’

  She shuddered. ‘In a way, the shouting was better.’ She paused. ‘When I told her I wouldn’t consider abortion, and was going to have my baby, she became very quiet—very cold. Said I had twenty four hours to come to my senses, or she would make me sorry.

  ‘That all contact between us would end. That I, and my bastard, could starve in the gutter for all she cared. And that she would change her will so that neither Millie nor I would ever see a penny of her money.’ Again she attempted a smile. ‘The ultimate threat.’

  He said, ‘But ignored.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘Millie was furious w
hen she found out and stopped speaking to me. She obviously thought I should have agreed to an abortion. But, now she’s pregnant herself, she probably understands.’

  ‘But I do not,’ he said. ‘If you had a choice, why wait until the child is born to be rid of him?’

  She swallowed. ‘It—it wasn’t like that. After the birth, I—I was in a bad way. I had some kind of breakdown and the doctors and social workers felt I was in no fit state to look after myself, let alone a baby.

  ‘And—and they were probably right. So I agreed to have him fostered until I could get on my feet again, find decent work and provide him with a proper home.

  ‘But although I never saw or heard from Aunt Nora again, she must have been keeping tabs on me and discovered all this.’

  She gave him a steady look. ‘So when you arrived on her doorstep, she saw the perfect way to make me sorry. And did so.’

  There was a silence, then: ‘My God,’ he said quietly. ‘We are neither of us fortunate in our relations, Selene mou.’ He paused. ‘They are good people who are looking after Alexander?’

  ‘The Talbots,’ she said. ‘Yes, good—and kind. Sticklers over visitation arrangements with me, but loving to him.’ She paused. ‘Maybe too much so because it will be hard for them when I take him back.’

  She added, stumbling a little, ‘But not as hard as it’s been for me being without him all this time. Not able to watch him grow. Learn about things. Missing his first smile, first tooth, first step.’

  She reached into her bag. ‘Having to depend on things like this.’ She handed him the photograph. ‘I want you to have it. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.’

  He looked down at the photograph. He was very still but Selena saw a muscle move in his throat.

  At last, he said quietly, ‘You plan to take him back—to be with you.’

  ‘I always did,’ she said. ‘I just had to prove, among other things, that I could find steady employment, which I now have and a decent place to live. I’m working on that.’

  She hesitated, her heartbeat quickening. ‘And when it happens, I’ll have a deal to offer you. Access to your son. The right to visit him, and have him visit you wherever you happen to be living. To share in decisions about his education, well-being and future. To be his father.’

  There was a long silence, then he turned away. He said, ‘You are generous, but my answer must be—no.’

  She was shaken to the core. ‘You—don’t want to see him—be with him? I—I don’t understand.’

  ‘When we first met, I told you how it was when my parents parted. How I was pulled between them, spending time with one, then the other. I remember seeing my mother cry when the car came for me and I had to say goodbye. Later, I realised she always feared that one day my father would decide to keep me. Demand sole custody.

  ‘I swore then I would never do this to my child, or to his mother.’

  ‘But—Alexis—you’re not your father. I know I could trust you...’

  ‘How do you know?’ He swung back to face her, almost savagely. ‘When I have kept the truth from you, believed insane lies about you, and offered you a bargain which was an obscene insult. Holy Mother, I hardly know myself any more.’

  Her voice shook. ‘I thought maybe we could put that behind us. Start again—for Alexander.’

  ‘Tell me something.’ He walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders. Looked down on her, his gaze searching, intent. ‘Why did you refuse to consider a termination of your pregnancy?’

  ‘I—I don’t know. It just seemed the wrong thing to do.’ She tried to pull away. ‘Let go of me, please.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is an evasion. I insist the truth, or there is no hope for us.’

  She said with sudden bitterness, ‘Oh, you want your pound of flesh, don’t you, Kyrios Constantinou? Then here’s the truth—for better or worse and to hell with you!’

  She swallowed, aware that slow tears were trickling down her face. ‘Because all I could think of was that this baby—this tiny thing growing inside me was part of you. All I had left of you. And I could not bear to let that go.

  ‘And when he was born, I wanted to die of unhappiness knowing that you would never know him—’ her voice cracked ‘—or even hold him.’

  Alexis’s arms were round her, drawing her close. ‘Don’t cry,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘My beloved, my precious girl. I have you now, and I shall never let you go again.’

  ‘But you’re leaving,’ she sobbed into his shoulder. ‘Closing the house and going to America.’

  ‘Because I could not bear to stay here without you. There wasn’t one place without some memory of you to torment me.’ He paused. ‘I tried so hard to stop loving you, agapi mou. I told myself that I could take you—use you, then dismiss you without emotion. Make you suffer as I had done.

  ‘Yet when you walked on to our balcony yesterday, I knew how impossible that was. That it would be like tearing the living heart out of my body. But I could only think how much I must have made you hate me.

  ‘Today I came here only to say goodbye for the last time. Instead, once again I began to think, and I realised that the name you had chosen for our son might mean you still cared a little. That I should not give up hope.’

  ‘And I couldn’t understand why you’d changed your mind—decided to let me go,’ she said. ‘And I needed to know. So I made the photograph my excuse to come and find you.’

  ‘And, of course, you knew where I would be.’

  ‘Yes, I knew.’ She remembered something. ‘Oh, God, Stelios is down on the road, waiting for me.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He will have gone by now, probably to the house to tell them I will be staying—after we return from England with our son.

  ‘So will you break the rules, matia mou, and live with me until Father Stephanos can marry us?’

  ‘Oh, I think so.’ Her eyes were still misty, but her dawning smile was radiant. ‘S’agapo, Kyrios Alexis. M’agapas?’

  ‘For as long as we both live, Kyria Selene.’ He bent his head and began to kiss her slowly, even gently at first, the first touch of his mouth on hers a promise of future joy as they sank down to the grass, breathless and laughing, in each other’s arms.

  EPILOGUE

  IT HAD BEEN a wonderful party, thought Selena, gazing dreamily through the window of the saloni into the gathering darkness.

  There’d been tables in the gardens, groaning with food and drink, music, dancing, and what seemed to be the entire population of Rhymnos there to celebrate not just the first anniversary of her wedding to Alexis, but to drink to her health and happiness as she awaited the imminent birth of their second child.

  There were exceptions, of course. Anna Papoulis had been one absentee and Kostas had been there only to deliver Millie and baby Dimitri to the festivities and collect them when it was over.

  Although Alexis had allowed them to keep the tavern and stay, Kostas clearly still felt awkward around his powerful brother-in-law.

  Millie, however, had no regrets about her mother-in-law’s absence.

  ‘Miserable old witch,’ she’d muttered. ‘Honestly, Lena, she’s a nightmare. Every time I put Dimitri down for a nap, or if he makes the slightest sound, she’s there, picking him out of his cot, so now he expects it and screams blue murder if he doesn’t get instant attention.’

  She’d looked across the courtyard to where Maria Constantinou, Alexis’s mother, was sitting quietly with Xander on her silk-clad lap, the pair of them engrossed in the story she was reading to him. ‘Really, you don’t know how lucky you are.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Selena said gently. ‘I really, really do.’

  She’d been a bag of nerves when Alexis first took her to America and the big rambling house on Long Island to meet his mother, only to find there’d been no need to worry as Madame Constantinou had come running to meet her, folding her into a scented embrace, and smiling through happy tears.

  ‘At last,�
� she said. ‘At last Alexis brings me a daughter to love.’

  From the first, she’d been wonderful with Xander, unfazed by his small serious face and silent bewilderment at finding himself among strangers in such very different surroundings, coaxing him gently out of his shell and even persuading him to call her Ya-ya.

  By the time they left Long Island, he had also come to accept that the tall young man who carried him on his shoulders, taught him with endless patience to swim and played ball with him as long as there were hours of daylight was ‘Papa’.

  And that ‘Mama’ was no longer the sad, quiet girl who had come each week to visit him in that other house which was already becoming a distant memory, but someone who sang and laughed and cuddled him as well as devising with Papa some wonderfully noisy games at bathtime.

  Also that a visit to the kitchen at the house in America and here on Rhymnos was invariably rewarded with beaming smiles, petting and some freshly baked and delicious treat.

  It had not taken long for him to see that he was on to a good thing, Selena reflected tenderly, and she was thankful for it. Thankful, too, that the Talbots’ angry predictions that he would be traumatised if he left their care had been counterbalanced by the love that had surrounded him since the first day, turning his acceptance of his new life into a minor miracle.

  She put a hand to her throat, gently fingering the exquisite diamond pendant that Alexis had fastened there only hours ago.

  ‘A small memento, my dearest love, of a wonderful year,’ he’d whispered, his lips caressing the nape of her neck. ‘And of a perfect day.’

  Their sole disagreement had been when Selena had suggested that if their new baby was a boy, they should follow custom and give him his grandfather’s name Petros, which Alexis had firmly vetoed.

  ‘He would see it as a sign of weakness,’ he declared.

  ‘But, darling, he’s still your father,’ Selena protested. ‘No matter what he’s done, you can’t want this estrangement to last for ever. Besides,’ she added, ‘if we make the first move, then we occupy the moral high ground.’

  ‘I doubt he knows such a thing exists,’ he returned, his mouth twisting. ‘And the baby will be a girl. My heart tells me so.’