The Passionate Greek (21 page)

She took her case into the spare bedroom and
hunted around for some clean linen for the bed. Surprisingly she
found a neat stack of laundry in a cupboard, then remembered that
Mark, with his knack of charming everyone into doing things for
him, had a kindly cleaning lady who seemed to turn up whether Mark
was paying her that week or not. She would have to alert her to her
presence in case tomorrow was one of her ‘days’. She scrawled a
note on the kitchen table and left it propped up against the
kettle.

The next week passed in a furious flurry of
activity for Melanie. She found if she kept busy she could keep the
misery at bay. It was always there, rising up to meet her the
minute she let down her guard. She combated it as best she could,
telling herself that this was the rest of her life and she had to
get on with it. She didn’t dare think of the scene she had left
behind on Skiapolos.

Finding a job wasn’t proving easy with her
record. She visited countless employment agencies where often the
staff were sympathetic, but there were too many applicants for too
few jobs. She came back to the flat exhausted after a particular
trying day thankfully throwing her bag down on the hall table and
heading for the sitting room.

Nicos was there, seated on the sofa, looking
as if he had been there for some time. Her breath caught in her
throat. She turned, wanting to run from him. Seeing him had
resurrected all the pain. She wanted him to go.

‘Don’t turn away,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to
cause you any trouble.’

‘How did you get in?’ she stuttered. In
answer he waved a set of keys at her. Mark; they must be his. What
was Mark doing giving Nicos the keys to his flat and how did he
know she was staying there?

‘Your brother guessed you might be here so
he rang his cleaning lady. She told him.’

Melanie took on board the word ‘brother’.
But he had said it without a trace of the bitter irony he once
would have employed.

‘He has told me a lot,’ said Nicos. ‘It’s
clear to me now that you have been his main support. Your loyalty
does you credit. But it has to stop. I have told him he can’t leach
on you any more. From now on he will come to me. I will assist him.
I will give him a job but he will have to prove himself. If he does
not he will be out. But we have had a long talk and I think he is
going to be all right.’

Melanie was stunned. ‘That’s very generous
of you,’ she stuttered. It was so unexpected that for a moment she
was lost for words. Finally she managed, ‘Thank you for coming to
tell me. I hope Mark will repay your faith.’ She couldn’t help
asking, ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘I believe I wronged you,’ he said. ‘I don’t
expect forgiveness. You should have been able to tell me but it
must have been something in me that made you unable to tell me the
truth. Therefore the fault is mine.’ She shook her head in denial
but he went on. ‘I am not asking you to come back to me but I will
make amends.’

I am prepared to give you joint custody of
our daughter and adequate funding so you may take care of her in an
appropriate manner. ’His tone was formal as if he had rehearsed the
speech. Melanie could hardly believe what she was hearing. She
tried to stem the flow of joy she felt. Her hopes had been dashed
too many times.

‘Will you agree?’ he said. No longer formal,
his voice almost breaking, he said, ‘Electra misses you. She is
fretful and crying a lot.’

Melanie’s heart nearly stopped. Her daughter
needed her. ‘Will you take me to her,’ she stuttered. ‘Would you
come back to the island with me then?’ he said wonderingly. ‘Now;
tonight.’

‘Of course, I will. What else would I do?’
She flung her clothes into her suitcase in an agony of impatience,
her daughter uppermost in her mind. She didn’t know what had gone
on between Nicos and Mark but whatever Mark had told him was
leading her back to Electra. Tonight that was all she cared
about.

The Bentley was at the kerb, the private
plane waiting at the airport, the journey was as smooth as all
journeys to do with Nicos were. Melanie blessed the speed and ease
of it all. It hurried her back to her daughter. They didn’t talk.
It seemed Nicos had said all he had come to say.

Electra’s face broke into a beaming smile
the minute she saw Melanie, who flew to her and picked her up in
her arms smothering her with kisses. ‘You’re mummy’s never, ever
going to leave you again, even if I have to tie myself to
railings,’ she promised laughing with pure joy.

The next morning there was a visitor to the
island. Formally attired he sat behind Nicos’s desk. Melanie had
been invited, not summoned this time, to a meeting with him at
Nicos’s request. He was not present.

The visitor introduced himself to Melanie as
Mr Chalambrous’s lawyer for family affairs. He held a sheaf of
papers out to her and said, ‘You will find joint custody
arrangements for your daughter here and financial arrangements to
be made for you both. I must stress that this documents has been
prepared in some haste as Mr Chalambrous was keen to get it
finalised. But I must advise you to check it with your own
lawyer.’

‘No.’ said Melanie. ‘I trust Mr Chalambrous
to be fair. As long as I have my daughter that is all I care about.
Just show me where to sign.’

‘You will see from the documents that Mr
Chalambrous has stated that you are to have full custody and care
of your daughter. I think you will find that the financial
arrangements are more than adequate.’ Melanie did her best to read
through the documents, but the lines were blurring with her unshed
tears. She made out the words ‘full care and custody of Electra
Sophia Stafford Chalambrous’ and could read no further. She wrote
her name quickly where the lawyer indicated and the tears that
started to flow smudged her signature.

She knew she and Nicos would have to meet
soon. A million things needed to be discussed between them about
Electra’s care. But for the present all she wanted to do was spend
time with her daughter and revel in the future with her.

She learned from Anna that Nicos had left
the island but would be back in a week. She was glad of the
breathing space. She was at a loss what to say to him. He had told
her that he didn’t expect her to come back to him. He had said he
blamed himself. But now she began to question that. Here was the
man who told her he couldn’t change, who had never even tried to
listen to her attempted explanations and was now insisting the
fault lay with him. His distress that Electra was pining for her
mother was genuine enough. Was he shouldering the blame in their
past in order to get her to return to the island? He’d said he
didn’t expect her to come back to him. Was it simply his way of
saying that he needed her as the mother to his child, but not as
his wife?

Her thoughts circled ceaselessly. ‘I don’t
expect you to come back to me,’ echoed round and round in her head.
Did he mean ‘I don’t want you to come back to me?’ But perhaps he
really did feel guilty. Mark must have told him at least something,
but knowing her brother she suspected it would have been a
sanitized version of his chequered past. Had it been enough to
change Nicos’s mind about her?

The more she thought about it the more she
came to believe that whatever Mark had told him about their shared
past Nicos deserved to hear it from her own lips. He had refused to
listen to her when she had tried to tell him about Mark. But she
had kept a secret from him and when he discovered it she couldn’t
find it in her heart to blame him for the action he took. If Nicos
was to blame, then so was she. ‘Perhaps we were both guilty.’ she
fretted. ‘He deserved more from me. Regardless of what he has
learned from Mark I will tell him everything, in my own words,’ she
resolved. ‘I won’t spare myself.’

He was back without warning. She had been at
the other side of the island with Electra when the motor launch had
brought him from the mainland and she hadn’t heart his arrival. Now
it was evening and looking out of her window she saw him below on
the terrace. She steeled herself for the encounter. Puling herself
together she went downstairs.

He was no longer on the terrace. She looked
about her uncertainly. Where would he have gone? He must be
somewhere in the villa's grounds. She set off to look for him.

He had told her once that when he had a lot
of thinking to do he liked to go where the hillside cascaded down
to the sea and he had built a vine-covered gazebo. He called it his
‘contemplation suite’. All his staff knew that when he was there
nothing and nobody was to disturb him. He was there now. He looked
up surprised at her approach and frowned. Melanie wanted to turn
and run but stuck to her guns.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said with a
determination she didn’t feel.

‘My lawyer told me you signed the custody
agreement. He is fining tuning the details of access and when they
are complete we can talk,’ he said shortly.

‘This is not about Electra,’ she said, ‘it’s
about us.’

‘I expect nothing from you. You need not
think I will try to come back into your life.’

His words seared at her heart but she
continued. ‘This is not about the future. It’s about the past.’

She couldn’t read his expression but she
ploughed on. ‘I don’t know what Mark has told you but I think you
need to hear it from me.’

His sigh was audible. ‘Mark told me he had a
fight with a man and knocked him down some stone steps. The man
ended up in a coma. Mark panicked and when he was arrested denied
he’d been there and asked you to give him an alibi.’

‘Yes, that’s all true,’ Melanie whispered.
She had been unfair to Mark. It seemed he had been honest. 'But you
must understand I couldn’t let him down?’

‘Even though it cost you your liberty and us
our relationship.’ Melanie recoiled at the bleakness in his tone
but determination drove her on.

‘The man he attacked came out of his coma,
identified Mark as his assailant and that’s when my life started to
unravel.’ Her voice shook at the memory.

‘Mark was sent to jail and I was charged
with perjury. But you and I hadn’t even met when all of this
happened.’

‘But when we did meet you kept the whole
thing a secret from me. You deceived me.’

‘Yes, I can’t deny I did,’ said Melanie. She
couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I was so caught up in the happiness of
being with you that I didn’t want anything to spoil it. ‘

‘If only you had told me about it I would
have helped you. You just didn’t trust me enough.’

Melanie shrank from the truth of his words.
She hadn’t trusted him. Why?

‘I wish I had told you right at the
beginning. But the longer it went on the harder it became. Once I
tried to tell you, but you stopped me or we were interrupted, I
can’t remember which. I know now I should have tried harder to make
you listen. But in my innermost heart I wasn’t sure you would
understand.

‘I lied for Mark in court, but I didn’t
realise the seriousness of what I was doing. I’ve always had to
help him out of one scrape or another. He promised me that he
didn’t intend to cause the man serious injury. It was just a silly
drunken tussle. I believed him. Mark’s not bad, he’s just
irresponsible.’

Nicos looked thoughtful. ‘I would have
advised you very differently,’ he said. ‘But I’m not sure even my
best lawyers could have changed the outcome for you.’

‘I know that now,’ she said. ‘But I was
foolish enough, to think I could keep it from you. You were away so
frequently. The case against me took ages to come to court. I
always made sure I telephoned my lawyers or they contacted me when
you were not there. By the time my case came up I was nine months
pregnant. The barrister told me I could expect a prison sentence
but I thought he was just trying to frighten me.’ Her voice was
shaking so much now she could hardly continue. ‘I thought I could
pay a fine and you would never find out.’

Nicos looked defeated. ‘But I did, didn’t
I?’ he said. His own thoughts whirled back to the day when he
returned home early from a business trip abroad eager to see the
woman who was carrying his child that he had fallen so deeply in
love with. She was not at the door to greet him as she nearly
always was.

‘Ms Melanie has business in London today,’
the manservant explained. ‘She stayed overnight as I understand her
meeting was early.’ He had been puzzled and alarmed. Was there
something wrong with the baby? He had rushed to pick up a ringing
telephone. A secretary at a firm of solicitor’s announced herself
asking to speak to Melanie. He had identified himself and the woman
had given him the message to remind Miss Stafford that she was to
meet her barrister at the court at 10 am.

As his memories clouded his mind Nicos had
fallen silent. Melanie looked fearfully at his set face. ‘How did
you find out?’ she asked haltingly.

‘I was there,’ he said. ‘In the public
gallery. I saw you sentenced. I heard his name – Mark Fulford. How
could I know he was your brother?’

‘Mark will have already old you he’s my
stepbrother. My father married again after my mother died. My
stepmother already had Mark. He was only two. My father brought him
up and treated him as his own son and to me he has always been my
baby brother, All my life I looked after him and when my father was
dying I promised him I would always be there for Mark. ‘

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a
brother?’

‘I didn’t want to tell you he was in jail,’
she said quietly. ‘I didn’t want to shame him; or myself to be
honest. Mark isn’t bad; he just gets himself into trouble. I didn’t
want you to think badly of him.’

‘When I saw you in the dock I nearly lost my
reason. I thought you were the woman for me and suddenly you were
someone I didn’t know.’