‘She was sitting up on a bed in the corner, clutching something in her arms as though she had to protect it. She screamed at the sight of me and backed away as though I was an enemy. Maybe that’s how I looked to her then. Or maybe she just didn’t know me.’
Another silence, in which she felt his fingers tighten on her arm, release her and tighten again.
‘At last all the fight seemed to go out of her. She sagged against the wall and I managed to get close and look at what she was holding.’
His grip was agonisingly tight. Petra closed her eyes, guessing what the bundle had been, and praying to be wrong.
‘It was a dead baby,’ Lysandros said at last.
‘Oh, no,’ Petra whispered, dropping her head so that her lips lay against his hair.
‘It was premature. She’d hidden her pregnancy and had no proper medical attention, so she gave birth alone. Then she just sat clutching the child and not letting anyone near her. She’d been like that for days, shivering, starving, weeping.
‘I begged her to calm down, told her it was me, that I loved her, I’d never harm her, but she told me to go away because she had to feed the baby. By that time he must have been dead for days. He was cold in her arms.
‘The people who owned the house were decent and kindly, but they couldn’t cope. I had her moved to hospital, ordered the best attention for her, said I’d pay for everything-whatever money could buy, I’d give her.’ He said the last words with bitter self-condemnation.
‘I went to see her every day in the hospital, always thinking that the care she was receiving would soon take effect, she would become herself again, and we could talk. But it didn’t happen. As she became physically stronger her mind seemed to retreat further into a place where I couldn’t follow, and I understood that she wanted it that way. But still I waited, hoping she’d recover and we could find each other again.
‘Then she had a heart attack, apparently an adverse reaction to a drug she’d been given, but the doctors told me that she wasn’t fighting for life. Her will had gone, and it was only a matter of time. I sat beside her, holding her hand, praying for her to awaken. When she did I told her that I loved her and begged her forgiveness.’
‘Did she forgive you?’ Petra asked quietly.
‘I don’t know. She only said one thing. By that time she’d accepted that the child was dead and she begged me to make sure he was buried with her. I gave her my word and, when the time came, I kept it. She’s buried with our baby in her arms.’
‘She must have recognised you to ask such a thing,’ Petra said.
‘I’ve told myself that a thousand times, but the truth is that she might have said it to anyone she thought had the power to ensure that it happened. I’ve tried to believe that she forgave me, but why should I? What right do I have after what I did? I terrified her into running away and hiding from the world when she desperately needed help.
‘What kind of life did she have? The doctors told me she was severely undernourished, which had damaged the child, hence the premature birth-and death-of my son.’
‘You have no doubt that-?’
‘That he was mine? None. She must have been about a month pregnant when we parted. They were very tactful. They offered me a test, to be sure, but I refused. Such a test implied a doubt that dishonoured her. She was carrying my son when I abandoned her.’
‘But you didn’t throw her out,’ Petra protested.
‘No, I wanted her to stay here until I could arrange our breakup to look civilised in the eyes of the world,’ he said savagely. ‘And then, fool that I was, I was surprised when I came back and found her gone. Of course she fled. She looked into the future I’d mapped out and shuddered. I didn’t throw her out, but I drove her out with coldness and cruelty.
‘If I’d known-everything would have been different, but I made her feel that she had no choice but to run away from me. So there was nobody to help her when she knew about her condition. She faced everything alone, and they both died.
‘I was with her to the last. She died in my arms, while I prayed for a word or a look to suggest that she knew me. But there was nothing. She’d gone beyond my reach and all I could do was hold her while she slipped away, never knowing that I was begging her forgiveness. I destroyed her life, I destroyed her last moment, I destroyed our child-’
‘But it wasn’t-’
‘It’s my fault-don’t you understand?
‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘You mustn’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘But I must,’ he said bleakly. ‘If I’m not hard on myself, who will be? How many times since then have I gone to her tomb and stood there, watching and waiting for something that’s never going to happen?’
‘Where is her tomb?’
‘Here, in the garden. I had the ground consecrated and got the priest to come and bury them both at the dead of night. Then I covered the place so that nobody can find it by accident.
‘Then I had to decide what to do with myself. I looked at what this kind of life had made of me, and I hated it. I told my father I was finished with it all, and took the next plane out of Greece, trying to escape what I’d done, what I’d turned into.
‘When you and I met, I’d been on the run for two years.’ He gave a brief bark of laughter. ‘On the run. Like a criminal. That’s how I felt. I went to Monte Carlo, to New York, Los Angeles, London, Las Vegas-anywhere I could live what they call “the high life”, which is another way of saying I indulged myself in every despicable way. I drank too much, gambled too much, slept around too much, all because I was trying to escape myself. But at the end, there was always a menacing figure waiting for me at the end of the road. And it was me.
‘Then, one night in Las Vegas-well, you know the rest. You showed me to myself in a light I couldn’t bear, and I returned to Greece the next day.’
‘It wasn’t just me,’ Petra said. ‘You were ready to see things differently or I couldn’t have had any effect.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He gave her a faint smile. ‘Part of me prefers to give you the credit-my good angel, who stopped me going even further astray the first time and now-’
‘Now?’ she asked cautiously.
‘I’m not blind, Petra. I know about myself. I’m not a man anyone in their right mind could want to meet. I scare people, and that’s been fine up to now. It suited me. But you showed me the truth then, and somehow you’ve done it again. For years I’ve sheltered deep inside myself because that way I felt safer. I keep people at a distance because if you don’t let yourself need anyone, nobody can hurt you.
‘But I can’t keep you at a distance because you’ve been in there-’ he touched his heart ‘-for a long time. I’ve never told anyone else what I’ve told you tonight, and I never will. Now you know all my secrets and I’m glad of it, for a burden is gone from me.’
He rested his face against her and she dropped her head, while her tears fell on him.
They slept for a while and awoke in each others’ arms, to find daylight flooding into the room. Anxiously, Petra looked at his face but was reassured. He was smiling, relaxed.
‘No regrets?’ she asked softly.
He shook his head. ‘None with you. Never. Come with me.’
They dressed and he took her hand, leading her downstairs and out of the house.
She’d briefly glimpsed the garden from an upstairs window and seen that it was mainly a wilderness. Everything was overgrown, and now she thought she knew why.
He led her to a distant place under the trees and removed some branches and leaves. Beneath them was a stone in which were carved a few simple words and dates. He had hidden Brigitta and her child away from the world, protecting them as best he could. Without asking, Petra knew that nobody else had ever seen this place.
‘So many times I’ve stood here and begged her forgiveness,’ he said. ‘What should I tell her about you?’
Her grandfather had once told her that no true Greek was ever completely free of the past. Now Lysandros, this modern man, at home in the harsh world of multibillion dollar business, spoke like an ancient Greek who felt the River Styx swirl around his feet and, beyond it, Hades, the other world, where souls still suffered and communicated
