LITMIR.BIZ

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I could not be seen to be wearing a wedding ring.’

      ‘I understood that. Of course I did. But then you started to leave it off all the time.’

      ‘You know why,’ he said, tight-lipped. He shifted in his seat. This wedding-ring thing had become an issue in their short marriage. One that had festered with her in their time apart.

      ‘Because it was seen as a disadvantage to your career to be married. A wife was a hindrance. “It would be better for your fans—both female and male—if you were seen to be single.” Don’t you remember your agent saying that?’ She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. She’d been determined not to speak of their mutual past. No recriminations. No blame. Just a clean cut.

      He frowned. ‘Of course I remember. We discussed it at the time—over and over. Then we agreed to take my agent’s advice. We needed the money too much to argue with him.’

      She looked down at the table. Smoothed a barely visible crease in the white tablecloth. When she’d got engaged to Cristos her parents had cut off her allowance, stopped the rent on her accommodation. They’d both been students. To get extra money, he’d tutored kids studying Greek, she’d taught dancing. Neither pursuit had been lucrative. They’d struggled.

      ‘The idea was that we would still be together but not acknowledged as husband and wife,’ she said. That still stung—though it had made sense at the time and she’d gone into it with eyes well and truly open. ‘A girlfriend was acceptable. She was dispensable. That gave your fans hope that one day in their fantasies they might win you. The presence of a real-life wife ruined the fantasy.’

      ‘That’s how it was supposed to work,’ he said. ‘We both agreed I would take my wedding band off when I was in public. Then put it back on in private when I came home to you.’

      Hayley couldn’t keep the sadness from her voice as she looked back up at him. ‘Until there were more and more times when you didn’t come home. When you were on shoots all over Europe. Then exotic, far-flung places like Morocco and Africa.’

      ‘Those jobs were the most lucrative,’ he said, his jaw set. ‘And the conditions weren’t as glamorous as they looked. You didn’t complain about the income they generated. I only did it for the money.’

      Perhaps. But she would see the results of those shoots plastered all over billboards and in glossy magazines. More often than not they would feature Cristos, his body toned and buffed to perfection, wearing nothing more than swim-briefs or even underpants, with a gorgeous female model with next to nothing on draped all over him. She doubted even the most secure of wives wouldn’t help but feel threatened. And a wife who had to keep her presence hidden, who didn’t live up to the glamorous standards set by his new world, had found it difficult to deal with.

      ‘You know I asked could you come with me,’ he said. ‘Repeatedly. It just wasn’t done.’

      The conversation was heading into territory Hayley had no wish to revisit. She picked up the little marble dish containing organic salt crystals from her place setting then put it down again. ‘I know you tried to include me. And I appreciated it.’

      On one stomach-churning occasion she had overheard his agent’s reply when Cristos had asked could his beautiful wife perhaps join his agency as a model too. The agent had replied very quickly that it wasn’t a good idea. ‘She’s pretty enough. But she’s too short and too wide in the hips.’

      His words had been so brutally dismissive. Even the word pretty had sounded like an insult. Was it then that she’d begun to believe that her husband’s new world would not have room for her?

      * * *

      Cristos realised there were several ways Hayley looked different from when they’d been husband and wife. The short hair for one. But it was in her eyes he saw a shadow of sadness that wrenched at him.

      ‘You’re thinking about that comment my agent made, aren’t you?’

      Back then he had been furious at the insult to his wife and had wanted to walk out. He had cursed. He had fisted his hands by his sides to stop himself from punching the agent out.

      But Hayley had swallowed the insult, had placated him and talked him into staying—for the sake of the money modelling had brought them. ‘It’s such an opportunity for us. How many people our age get that chance?’ she’d said. Her strategy had been to put everything they saved into the bank to give them a better start than many young couples starting off life together. He’d preferred a riskier, higher-yielding investment option—but he hadn’t told her that. Not then. Not ever.

      Now she waved his comment away with a flick of her wrist. ‘I can laugh at that awful guy now,’ she said. Cristos doubted that was true. ‘I got used to people like him treating others like commodities, where the length of a woman’s legs or the shape of a man’s nose made them marketable or not.’

      ‘Yeah. It could be brutal,’ he said. In Cristos’s eyes, Hayley had been the most beautiful woman in the world. His agent had seen her differently. If a woman wasn’t fit for purpose then she had no use. Or a man. That was an inescapable reality of the business. And one he’d ultimately walked away from. He’d only endured it for her sake. When they’d discovered she was pregnant he had worked even longer hours for financial security for his wife and child.

      It wasn’t a business Cristos had signed up for intentionally. Six months after they’d married, when he had finished his master’s degree in business and Hayley still had a term to go to finish her degree in engineering, they’d taken the train down to London for a mini-break. Cristos’s patience for shopping was limited. While Hayley had looked through every dress on the rack in a boutique in Covent Garden, Cristos had leaned against a wall outside and waited for her. Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black jacket, he’d been happy to watch the world go by. London and the people from all around the world who flocked to it had fascinated him.

      When the very fashionably dressed middle-aged man had approached him and asked him had he ever considered being a model, he’d brushed him off. Less politely the second time. Cristos had never lacked female attention, and often male attention too. He hadn’t wanted to insult the guy but he’d made it clear in no uncertain terms that whatever pick-up line the older man chose to use it would not work on him. He was a happily married man.

      Cristos had taken the man’s card just to get him off his back. It had indeed been from a talent agency but anyone could print off a business card and make it say whatever they wanted. He’d put it in his pocket and forgotten about it.

      Later at lunch in an Italian restaurant off Leicester Square he’d remembered and pulled the card out of his pocket to show Hayley. Her eyes had widened. ‘If that guy was genuine, this is one of the biggest model agencies in the world. I think you should follow it up.’

      ‘Me? A model?’ he’d scoffed. He’d thought himself way too macho to even consider it. In his world, modelling wasn’t a serious man’s profession. ‘No way. Never.’

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