LITMIR.BIZ

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FOUR

      CHRISTINE CLIMBED OUT of the car. Her legs were shaking. How she’d get indoors she did not know. Mrs Hughes, the housekeeper, was there already, having left the church before the committal, and she welcomed her in with a low, sad voice.

      ‘A beautiful service, Mrs K,’ she said kindly.

      Christine swallowed. ‘Yes, it was. The vicar was very good about allowing him a C of E interment considering he was Greek Orthodox.’ She tried to make her voice sound normal and failed.

      Mrs Hughes nodded sympathetically. ‘Well, I’m sure the Good Lord will be welcoming Mr K, whichever door he’s come into heaven through—such a lovely gentleman as he was, your poor husband.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      Christine felt her throat tighten, tears threaten. She went into her sitting room, throat aching.

      The pale yellow and green trellis-pattern wallpaper was in a style she now knew was chinoiserie, just as she now knew the dates of all the antique furniture in the house, who the artists were of the Old Masters that hung on the walls, and the age and subject of the artefacts that Vasilis had so carefully had transferred from Athens to adorn the place he had come to call home, with his new young wife.

      This gracious Queen Anne house in the heart of the Sussex countryside. Far away from his old life and far away from the shocked and outraged members of his family. A serene, beautiful house in which to live, quietly and remotely. In which, finally, to die.

      Her tears spilled over yet again, and she crossed to the French window, looking out over the lawn. The gardens were not extensive, but they were very private, edged with greenery. Memory shot through her head of how she’d been so enchanted by the green oasis of Anatole’s London roof terrace when he’d switched the lights on, turning it into a fairyland.

      She sheared her mind away. What use to think...to remember? Fairyland had turned to fairy dust, and had been blown away in the chill, icy wind of reality. The reality that Anatole had spelt out to her.

      ‘I have no intention of marrying you, Tia. Did you do this to try and get me to marry you?’

      A shuddering breath shook her and she forced her shoulders back, forced herself to return to the present. She had not invited anyone back after the funeral—she couldn’t face it. All she wanted was solitude.

      Yet into her head was forced the image of the grim-faced, dark-suited man standing there, watching her at her husband’s grave. Fear bit at her.

      Surely he won’t come here? Why would he? He’s come to see his uncle buried, that’s all. He won’t sully his shoes by crossing this threshold—not while I’m still here.

      But even as she turned from the window there came a knock on the door, and it opened to the housekeeper.

      ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, Mrs K, but you have a visitor. He says he’s Mr K’s nephew. I’ve shown him into the drawing room.’

      Ice snaked down Christine’s back. For a moment she could not move. Then, with an effort, she nodded.

      ‘Thank you, Mrs Hughes,’ she said.

      Summoning all her strength, and all her courage, she went to confront the man who had destroyed all her naive and foolish hopes and dreams.

      * * *

      Anatole stood in front of the fireplace, looking around him with a closed, tight expression on his face, taking in the objets d’art and his uncle’s beloved classical statuary, the Old Masters hanging on the panelled walls.

      His mouth twisted. She’s done very well for herself, this woman I picked up from the street—

      Anger stabbed in him. Anger and so much more.

      But anger was quite enough. She would be inheriting all Vasilis’s share of the Kyrgiakis fortune—a handsome sum indeed. Not bad for a woman who’d once had to take any job she could, however menial and poorly paid, provided it came with accommodation.

      Well, this job had certainly come with accommodation!

      The twist of his mouth grew harsher. He had found a naïve waif and created a gold-digger...

      I gave her a taste for all this. I turned her into this.

      Sourness filled his mouth.

      There were footsteps beyond the double doors and then they opened. His eyes snapped towards them as she stood there. He felt the blade of a knife stab into him as he looked at her. She was still in the black, tailored couture suit. Her hair was pulled back off her face into a tight chignon—no sign of the soft waves that had once played around her shoulders.

      Her face was white. Stark. Still marked by tears shed at the graveside.

      Memory flashed into his head of how she’d stood trembling beside the bonnet of his car as she broke down into incoherent sobs when he yelled at her for her stupidity in walking right in front of his car. How appalled he’d been at her reaction...how he’d wanted to stop those tears.

      The blade twisted in him...

      ‘What are you doing here?’

      Her question was terse, tight-lipped, and she did not advance into the room, only closed the double doors behind her. There was something different about her voice, and it took Anatole a moment to realise that it was not just her blank, hostile tone, but her accent. Her voice was as crisp, as crystalline, as if she had been born to all this.

      Her appearance echoed that impression. The severity of the suit, her hairstyle, and the poise with which she held herself, all contributed.

      ‘My uncle is dead. Why else do you think I’m here?’ His voice was as terse as hers. It was necessary to be so—it was vital.

      Something seemed to pass across her eyes. ‘Do you want to see his will? Is that it?’

      There was defiance in her voice now—he could hear it.

      A cynical cast lit his dark eyes. ‘What for? He’ll have left you everything, after all.’ He paused—a deadly pause. ‘Isn’t that why you married him?’

      It was a rhetorical question, one he already knew the answer to.

      She whitened, but did not flinch. ‘He left some specific items for you. I’m going to have them couriered to you as soon as I’ve been granted probate.’

      She paused, he could see it, as if gathering strength. Then she spoke again, her chin lifting, defiance in her voice—in her very stance.

      ‘Anatole, why have you come here? What for? I’m sorry if you wanted the funeral to be in Athens. Vasilis specifically did not want that. He wanted to be buried here. He was friends with the vicar—they shared a common love of Aeschylus. The vicar read Greats at Oxford, and he and Vasilis would cap quotations with each other. They liked Pindar too—’

      She broke off. Was she mad, rabbiting on about Ancient Greek playwrights and poets? What did Anatole care?

      He was looking at her strangely, as if what she had said surprised him. She wasn’t sure why. Surely he would not be surprised to find that his erudite uncle had enjoyed discussing classical Greek literature with a fellow scholar, even one so far away from Greece?

      ‘The vicar is quite a Philhellene...’ she said, her voice trailing off.

      She took another breath. Got back to the subject in hand. Tension was hauling at her muscles, as if wires were suspending her.

      ‘Please don’t think of...of... I don’t know...disinterring his coffin to take it back to Greece. He would not wish for that.’

      Anatole gave a quick shake of his head, as if the thought had not occurred to him as he’d stood there, watching the farce playing out in the churchyard—Tia grieving beside the grave of the man she’d inveigled into committing the most outrageous act of folly—marrying her, a woman thirty years his junior.

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