Penniless and Purchased (13 page)

He started again, making his tone conversational once more. ‘What did you take up instead to occupy you?’

Carefully, Sophie picked up her wineglass. The tips of her fingers were white.

‘Nothing much,’ she said.

It was like getting blood out of a stone, thought Nikos.

Once they had talked with eager fluency, never at a loss, talking of anything and everything.

The first course was served, and Nikos was glad, but as they started to eat, he resumed his attempts.

‘What sort of “nothing much”?’ He smiled.

Sophie forked up a morsel of her seafood concoction, savouring its delicate flavour. It took her mind off Nikos’s relentless probing.

‘I work,’ she answered.

His eyebrows rose. If she were in paid employment she had clearly failed to live within her salary, running up debts that she’d resorted to trying to pay with that vile escort work.

‘What sort of work?’ He kept his voice pleasantly enquiring.

‘In a shoe shop.’ It was the truth—or had been until she’d not turned up the day she’d been driven here. She doubted the shop would take her back, and that would mean another dispiriting trip to the unemployment office, trying to find something, anything, that kept money coming in, however low paid. Nikos’s five thousand pound loan had only bought her a limited amount of time. Nothing more than that.

For a moment she felt fear, so familiar, so terrifying, bite in her throat. Dear God, how could she keep going? Doing what she had to do—had no choice but do?

Surviving—I’m surviving. Day after day. Week after week. It’s all I can do and I have to go on doing it. Scraping together the money that I need. That I go on needing. And there’s nothing I can do except to go on doing what I’m doing.

‘Ah…’ Nikos understood now. It was a popular option, working in a fashionable boutique, especially when the shop was owned by a friend and run as a little hobby—something to occupy women like her, to while away the time. ‘That must be useful if you want to snap up the latest designs first,’ he remarked lightly.

He named a couple of top shoe designers, the likes of which had never been seen in the downmarket, off-the-rack shoe shop Sophie had worked at every day of the week, morning through late opening. Except for the two precious afternoons
a week she’d insisted on taking off, that made her whole bleak existence, her endless, punishing struggle for survival, worthwhile.

Nikos saw her face shutter again. Did she just not want to talk about herself to him at any level? Even the mundanely conversational? Well, OK then, he would back off even from that. He could understand if she were touchy about anything personal.

Determinedly, he tried another gambit.

‘It was good of you to tackle the walled garden as you did. The gardens, I think, are going to be as great a challenge as the house to restore! Fortunately I understand that the original landscape designs drawn up for Belledon in the eighteenth century are still existing, so they will guide the work.’

Sophie reached for her wine. She felt the alcohol slide into her system and was grateful.

‘Belledon?’

‘Your accommodation,’ he clarified. ‘Although you may not see it as a hotel, it is highly suitable, all the same, for such use. It’s within five miles of the motorway from Heathrow and, fully restored, will be a showpiece for the area. I envisage it will be one of the leading country house hotels in the UK, despite the cost of its restoration.’

He warmed to his theme, and Sophie was glad of it—grateful he had abandoned his unbearable inquisition of her. She let him talk, busying herself eating the delicious food. It would be foolish and wasteful not to make the most of it. The first course had been removed, and a succulent fillet of lamb placed in front of each of them.

‘This is good,’ approved Nikos. ‘Locally sourced, so the menu says. The Belledon chef will have to be on his mettle, I can see! Fortunately the home farm is part of the estate, and it will supply the bulk of the food for the hotel. The kitchen
garden you have been so energetically restoring will also contribute significantly. Ideally, I would like all the food to be organic, although it will take time to achieve certification. But it is something to work towards.’

Again, he went on talking as they ate, and without realising it Sophie found herself being drawn into the conversation. The level of wine in her glass seemed constant, though she was not aware of it being refilled. But she could feel the alcohol entering her bloodstream, warming it. Dissolving, slowly but steadily, thread by thread, the net of tension webbing her at being here with Nikos. But so, too, was the conversation, she realised. As Nikos talked on about the intricacies and challenges of restoring an historic country house, ranging from one aspect to another, she found herself taking a real interest in the undertaking. Unconsciously she started to ask questions, make observations, volunteer opinions.

With part of her mind she wondered at it. Wondered at herself being here, like this, with Nikos, listening to him, talking to him, sharing a meal with him. As if, she realised, with a mix of emotions piercing her, there were no tormented history between them. As if, impossible though it must surely be, she were simply being wined and dined by him. As if there was nothing dark nor desperate poisoning the air. As if—and this surely must be an illusion—could only be an illusion—as if the heavy, crushing pall of the past that had weighed down on her was lifting away…

It was not real. She knew that. Knew it was only an illusion—an illusion brought on by the sense of unreality enmeshing her at being here, having dinner with Nikos, having him sitting opposite her, so close she could have reached out to him, touched his hand, his face. So close she could see the indentation around his mouth when he gave his quick smile,
the gold flecks in his eyes as his expression became animated at the subject he was talking about, the silky sable fall of his hair across his well-shaped forehead. Yet, illusion though it was, illusion though it must be, she knew she could not deny what it offered her.

A respite—however brief, however illusory—from the endless torment in her head that Nikos evoked.

He’d said he wanted to draw a line under the past. It had seemed, when he’d uttered it, an impossible thing to do! And yet now, as the meal progressed and the conversation flowed so effortlessly, across subjects that were blessedly free of anything sensitive, anything personal, she was finding herself wondering whether it could be done. She felt the landscape of her emotions shift again, altering everything subtly, silently. It was not that the past had disappeared, but it was a different part of the past that was in her mental vision now, it seemed. Not the bitter, tormented past that had scarred and scoured her, but the past that this evening now recalled and echoed.

Familiarity rushed through her. How many times had she and he sat together, talking about everything, anything, the flow of conversation easy, stimulating, engaging, enthralling? This was Nikos as she remembered him in those golden days she had spent with him, with time flashing by, his keen mind a foil to hers, his ready laugh, his easy smile—

Because it had never, never just been his incredible looks that had captivated her—it had been so much more. The sheer pleasure of his company, the ease, the companionship…

Emotion tugged at her—a poignancy she could not avert. She felt it running through her veins like a darting arrow. How much she had lost in losing him! How
much!

Yet counterpointed to the sense of loss was for now, for this fleeting, brief time, a sense of something so precious that
she felt it was like a jewel nestled in her palm. However fleeting this evening was, however illusory, that sense of bitterness was washed away, and the time now was real. However fleeting, she would be grateful for it, glad for it—drinking the sweet, heady wine that it offered her to the very last.

Outside, the evening had darkened into night, and the candle on the table threw its light on to the glass of the conservatory window, creating, as it did, a flickering parallel world. Sophie’s eyes drifted towards it, and she felt her emotions quicken again—they were there, she and Nikos, in that parallel world of light and shadow, illuminated together.

Together…

The word pierced in her heart and she felt its power. There in that shadow world there had been no separation. In that shadow world there was no bitter past. There, in the illusory reality of the candle-light, it was as if they had always been like this—as if the years of parting had never been. She felt her mind run on, seizing a present that could never be out of a past that never was.

If we had never parted that could be us, there, in that other existence! That could be the reality, and these four long bitter years could have been the sweetest of all!

For precious moments she let herself revel in the sweetness of the thought, the beguiling, wondrous fantasy that she and Nikos were simply here together, man and wife, come down to visit his beautiful abandoned house, to plan its restoration, to fill it once more with life and love, envisage it as a place for them to live in. She and him…a family…a happiness to last a lifetime…

She knew it was not real,
could
not be real, and yet in her mind it was. In her mind as she sat there, sipping at her wine, eating the delicious morsels of food, and gazing, oh, just
gazing—and gazing and gazing—at the man so close to her, it was all the reality she craved. All the reality she yearned for. The other reality, the one she had been condemned to, which weighed and crushed and pulled her down, had slipped away. Now there was only this sweet, wondrous reality. And it was enough…

Waiters came to clear the table, presenting her with a dessert menu. She chose randomly, and something duly appeared, together with a glass of sweet, delicate Beaune de Venise, which she sipped as she spooned up the delicious concoction before her. Her mind was getting hazy, but she didn’t care. The outer world, her consciousness of it, seemed to be receding. A strange sense of dissociation drifted down on her. She found she could sit, sipping her sweet wine, and let Nikos’s voice wind about her as her eyes rested on him. It was strange, so strange, she found herself thinking bemusedly. How she could just sit here…gazing at him. Taking him in…all his male perfection…her eyes drifting over him…

Nikos—only Nikos…only ever Nikos in all the world for me…

Her heart was full with emotion, the jewel in her palm rich and rare and so, so precious…

‘Sophie?’

Her name sounded in the air, sibilant and questioning. Nikos was looking at her enquiringly, his chair half pushed back. The dining room was almost deserted, the candle burnt low. The couple in the glass had vanished.

Or had they?

She got to her feet, as Nikos did the same, and then he was there, ushering her out as they were bowed away by the waiter—the last diners to leave, she saw. And Nikos was at her side, falling in beside her, as they stepped through the open French windows into the garden beyond the conservatory
restaurant. She felt his presence, his closeness. Felt the rightness of his place at her side.

This is where he should be—where I should be…

Like the couple in the glass. Together.

‘Are you cold?’ Nikos’s enquiry was solicitous as he walked beside her on the dimly lit path.

Sophie shook her head. She wasn’t cold. The wine in her veins and the soft summer night warmed her. So did the heat in her blood. Was her pulse heavier than it normally was? Or was she just more conscious of the beating of her heart?

More conscious of the tall figure at her side?

What am I doing here?
she thought. Surely she could not be here, with Nikos, having dined with him, talked to him, listened to him. Reality was prickling at her mind, penetrating the hazy miasma that had been cocooning her. Yet its entrance was unsure, uncertain.

She glanced about her. What was real? The night air? The scent of honeysuckle teasing her senses? The fall of their footsteps on the path? The massed dimness at the edge of the garden?

Nikos at her side?

Could
he
be real?

Oh, yes—oh, yes…He was real!

Nikos—Nikos, Nikos…

She tried to silence the voice in her head, for it had no right to cry out like that—nor reason, either. But reasons seemed a thousand miles away, and all that was left was a burning consciousness of his presence—a consciousness that became even more vivid as he paused at the top of a short flight of steps, looking upwards into the sky.

‘Look at the stars,’ he said.

She followed his uplifted gaze. Overhead the heavens
shone, pricked with gold, the faintest wisps of cloud scudding over them.

‘There’s Jupiter,’ he said.

She gazed blindly. He raised his hand, to point, and as he did so his other hand closed on her shoulder, to alter her position slightly. Suddenly his breath was warm on her neck, and the stars blurred in her eyes. The warmth of his palm on her shoulder seemed like a brand. Imprinting her with his presence.

For a moment, timeless and motionless, she stilled completely, every cell in her body piercingly aware of Nikos’s closeness, his touch, his breath, his scent, his very being. Emotion lifted her.

Then, abruptly, the hand at her shoulder fell away.

‘The car park is just through here,’ he said. His voice was terse suddenly, and his pace as they walked towards the gate that led from the garden quickened. She felt the emotion that had lifted her hang, quiveringly, inside her.

As he gained the car, opening the passenger door for her, Nikos set his jaw tensely. What was happening to him?

What had been happening all evening?

As he gunned the engine and manoeuvred the car out of the car park, he tried to get his head around it. The evening had had a clear, unambiguous purpose: to put the past behind him. To make him see, finally, that the past was over and done with. That Sophie had no power to arouse emotions in him. That he could gain immunity from her, from what she could do to him…

Liar…