by Mandy Baggot
‘You make it sound like it is something bad, something I should not be doing.’ Kira swigged at her wine. ‘You have your own business, Juno, and you, Agatha. Why not me?’
‘Yes!’ Tess exclaimed. ‘Why not you!’ She was willing to jump on this extremely worthy bandwagon. Why couldn’t Kira have her own business?
‘I started my own business when my husband died,’ Juno said.
‘And,’ chipped in the woman called Agatha, ‘I started my business when my husband left me.’
‘Ah,’ Tess said, pointing a finger across the table. ‘And that’s where the problem lies, for all of you ladies.’
She gazed around at the bemused looks on the Greek women’s faces. ‘You, all of you, are waiting to see what your husband does before you decide your own future.’
‘My husband did not have much choice. When God decided to come calling he had to go,’ Juno stated.
‘But, looking back,’ Tess said. ‘Could you not have started your business when your husband was still alive? What was stopping you from doing it earlier.’
‘Thanasis was a farmer,’ Kira informed her. ‘He would leave early in the morning and he would return late at night.’
‘Leaving the whole day free for your business,’ Tess said, directing her gaze at Juno.
‘But he always needed food prepared and—’
Agatha interrupted. ‘My husband left me for someone who had their own business.’ She sighed. ‘Maybe, if I had been a little more like her then he would not have felt the need to look for something else.’
‘Well, I didn’t mean …’ Tess started.
‘But you didn’t really supercharge your career until after Adam,’ Sonya blurted out.
Tess held her breath for so many reasons. She hadn’t yet told her best friend that Adam was about to pledge his future to someone else. Because she didn’t want to think about what that meant. How this woman could possibly be ‘the one’ when, after so long of being certain, she had ended up being ‘the won’t’.
‘Adam?’ Kira queried. ‘Who is Adam?’
‘No one,’ Tess said quickly. She would kill for a Dr Pepper right now.
‘He is a love rival for Andras?’ Juno asked.
‘No,’ Tess said. ‘He is nobody.’
‘Andras is nobody?’ Kira said, turning her head and raising an eyebrow.
‘No, Adam.’ She didn’t really want to even say his name. ‘He is nobody.’
‘Did he want children? And you did not?’ Kira continued the questioning.
‘No, nothing like that.’ She was feeling hot now, her cheeks like they had been pressed against a roasting gyros grill.
‘Excuse me.’
Tess looked up. A man was stood in front of her, smiling and seeming to have directed what he’d just said at her. She had seen him in the church today. He was another one of Andras’s cousins or something. He had that archetypal dark hair and olive skin but that’s where the similarity ended. Andras had nicer eyes and his lips were fuller, more genuine, and sexy. She swallowed and gave the man a polite smile.
‘Nikos, what are you doing?’ Kira asked him, standing up and reaching for another bottle of wine. ‘You are supposed to be with the men.’
‘For the dinner,’ Nikos said, leaning a little closer to Tess. ‘The dinner is now over and we are to dance.’ He held his hand out. ‘Patricia, may I have this dance?’
‘Nikos!’ Juno said in warning tones.
‘What?’ He held his hands up with apologetic undertones that Tess wasn’t at all sure were sincere. ‘It is just a dance.’ He ducked his head a bit closer to hers. ‘What do you say? Shall we?’
If she was honest with herself, right now she would have done pretty much anything to get away from the table and the conversation about weddings and babies and … Adam. She took hold of Nikos’s hand and let him pull her from her seat. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Yes, let’s dance.’
Fifty-four
Andras was just serving a table of ten their main courses when he heard the music start down on the beach. He had been backwards and forwards from restaurant to family table all evening before sharing a rather stilted conversation over a meal at the private table with Marietta. But now he was not thinking about his cousin, his attention was with Nikos, leading Tess over the stones towards the wooden jetty.
His throat dried as he watched. Nikos had always been the ladies’ man. He swallowed. Perhaps that was unkind of him to think that; since Elissa, he too had been playing that game until recently. But this just felt … wrong. Seeing Tess with Nikos, him helping her up on to the lantern-lit jetty where a couple of Kira’s relatives had already started to dance together … He hated it.
‘Andras.’
He turned at the sound of Marietta’s voice. She was just behind him and reaching out, she touched his bare forearm. Immediately he took a step back.
‘Marietta, I am sorry. I know we have a lot to discuss but—’
She smiled. ‘We do not always have to talk.’ Her cheeks began to take on a little colour. ‘Sometimes it is easier to just let things happen.’ She paused. ‘Let actions speak for us.’
‘Marietta …’
She bobbed a curtsey, dropping her head a little, then catching his gaze again. ‘Dance with me, Andras.’
Now he was torn. Dancing with her would surely give her the wrong impression, false hope of their relationship progressing into something other than kinship if she tried hard enough. But if he danced, got up on the pontoon too, then he would be able to keep an eye on Nikos and Tess.
‘It is a wonderful night, no?’
He stopped thinking completely at the sound of his mother’s voice. A strong hand came down on to his shoulder and the scent of her heavy, floral perfume filled his senses.
‘It is a wonderful night,’ Marietta quickly agreed. ‘The perfect start to the wedding festivities.’
‘I remember this night for my wedding,’ Isadora said, her eyes going to the clear night sky. ‘So many friends and family, all uniting in being united.’ She turned to him then. ‘And it seems, Andras, that your girlfriend is enjoying being united with Nikos.’
He couldn’t help his gaze travelling across the beach to the wooden jetty. Nikos was holding Tess’s body close to his, their hands interlocked in a dance hold, swaying over the uneven planks of wood, the sparkling water beneath them.
‘I was just asking Andras—’ Marietta began.
‘Come,’ Andras interrupted. He reached for his cousin’s hand. ‘We will dance.’
He didn’t care what message this gave to Marietta or his mother. The only reason he was thinking of dancing at all was to ensure that Nikos kept his hands to himself in respect to Tess. He rushed over the stones, Marietta struggling to keep up his pace, then leapt up onto the boardwalk.
‘Andras,’ Marietta called, a little breathless.
He turned his head, saw she was needing help to clamber up, given the length of her dress. He offered her a hand and deftly pulled her up alongside him, causing their bodies to touch as she tried to regain her balance. She smiled, pressing a little closer. This had been a mistake. Now what was he going to do?
‘You are very beautiful,’ Nikos whispered into Tess’s ear.
This guy was more forward than England’s Harry Kane, or any of the men she’d dated in the past six months. And he had a sleight of hand that BGT winning magician, Richard Jones, would have been proud of. Already Tess had felt the need to add several impromptu shimmies into her dancing when Nikos’s hands had wandered across the bottom of her backbone.
‘That’s jolly kind of you to say.’ Jolly? Why had she said that? She sounded like she was in Call the Midwife.
‘It is the truth,’ Nikos continued, breath hot in her ear.
Was that his tongue she’d just felt? She swayed her head in a move she was sure she had seen Ariana Grande perform on MTV, removing the target. ‘And I am spoken for.’
‘Andras … he is not the right man for you,
’ Nikos whispered.
‘No?’ Tess asked. ‘And why would you think that?’
Nikos drew his head away from the crook of her shoulder and looked at her intently. ‘He has been married before, you know.’
‘I know that,’ Tess agreed.
‘And things did not work out.’
‘I know that too,’ she answered.
‘I would not treat you that way,’ Nikos continued.
‘And how do you know the way he treats me?’ Tess wanted to know.
‘He will treat you the way he has treated every woman since Elissa left him,’ he said. ‘Like you are disposable.’
Tess looked over Nikos shoulder, saw Andras and Marietta coming up the dock. Were they going to dance? Together? Her stomach did a swan dive at the thought of that. She had already spent the entire evening watching them share an intimate dinner on the shoreline, the table Isadora had turned into Romance 101. She shook her head, forced her eyes away. This was all ridiculous. This was all fake.
‘Perhaps being disposable is the best way,’ Tess answered with a sigh.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ she answered, slipping an arm around Nikos’ neck. ‘If everyone knows where they stand in the disposable stakes, then no one can really get hurt, can they?’
‘Excuse me.’
It was Andras, standing next to them, with Marietta at his side.
‘You are coming to dance too?’ Nikos asked, pulling Tess into his body.
‘I am,’ Andras answered. ‘With Tess.’
Tess looked at Nikos with a shrug of the shoulders and a helpless smile but, in truth, she was relieved.
‘But you are with Marietta,’ Nikos said, holding his ground and Tess’s hand.
‘But in fact I am with Tess,’ Andras answered firmly.
Tess deftly removed herself from Nikos’s arms and smiled at him. ‘Thank you for the dance.’
‘Anytime,’ Nikos answered gruffly.
‘Shall we?’ Andras asked, holding his hand out to Tess.
‘Andras!’ It was Marietta.
Tess watched Andras turn his head to look at his cousin.
‘Your mother … she … she will not be pleased,’ Marietta stated.
He nodded and Tess felt his hand tighten in hers. ‘I know,’ he replied. He bowed a little to his cousin before turning away.
Then he began to lead them further up the jetty, past the other couples, until they were standing right at the end of the platform, only lanterns and the stars above lighting the way and nothing but ocean in front of them.
Fifty-five
So naturally, Andras slipped his arm around Tess’s waist, drawing her into his body, his other hand finding hers and holding it tightly.
‘I am sorry about Nikos,’ he spoke, beginning to sway them gently to the slow tempo of the Greek musicians on the beach.
‘Oh, you don’t have to apologise. I was grateful for someone to get me away from the girls’ table.’
‘I am sorry for that too.’
‘I had to sign shoes,’ Tess admitted. ‘What is that all about?’
‘Did they also make you spit on the floor?’
‘What?’ Tess laughed. ‘Is that a Greek thing too?’
He nodded, smiling. ‘For luck.’ He shook his head. ‘You must have realised that everything is about luck around here.’ He sighed. ‘Luck and duty.’
Tess swallowed. It was so nice here, in Andras’s arms, living this pretence, being a couple, under a Corfiot sky. Despite the way Andras felt about his family, to her, there was no real pressure as to how anything was going to go. Because there were no rules. No promises. No expectation. But she still itched to know the truth after everything the women in his family had said.
‘Did you split up with Elissa because she had a career?’
He stopped dancing then and, still holding her hand, he looked deep into her eyes. ‘What?’
‘Sorry, I know that it’s none of my business but Kira and Juno and … Agatha, I think her name was … they all said that the reason you split up with Elissa was because she wanted a career and you just wanted her to have babies.’ She swallowed. ‘And I … just wanted to hear that from you.’
A low sigh left him and he loosened his grip on her hand, letting it go and dropping his to his side. ‘Is that what they all think?’
‘It was my fault,’ Tess jumped in. ‘I was trying to steer the conversation away from something Sonya had said that was going to make her cry an ocean’s worth of tears so, to change things up, like you do, I told the whole table that I didn’t want to have children.’
Andras sucked in air through his teeth and shook his head at her, a hint of a smile on his lips. ‘I can guess what reaction you might have had to that.’
‘Yes, well, it was too late to backtrack, and then the women were on a roll.’
Andras smiled, nodding at her. ‘Sit down with me?’ he asked, indicating the wooden floor.
Only a few days ago, if someone had asked her to sit on bare boards in a dress that would usually have cost over three hundred pounds if it hadn’t been from the British Heart Foundation, she would have pulled a face and refused. Now she found herself bending down almost eagerly, steadying herself as she lowered her body on to the slats, feet hanging over the side, only inches from the sea, a slight breeze buffeting her hair. Andras sat close, his legs swinging over the water, shoes almost touching the ocean.
‘Elissa and I didn’t split up because she wanted a career or because I thought she should stay at home having babies,’ Andras spoke.
‘If I really was your girlfriend I would be very relieved right now.’ She swallowed. She was relieved. Genuinely relieved. But not at all relieved that she felt that relief.
‘Tess, I have never told anyone, not one soul, why Elissa and I really broke up.’
Now she didn’t know what to say. She turned her head to look at him more closely. She could see so many different feelings etched on his face. She had seen some of them reflected in her own expression in the days and weeks after Adam. Pain, hurt, misunderstanding, sorrow.
‘Elissa was pregnant when she left,’ Andras stated. He blew out a heavy breath that seemed to take some of his life force with it. She watched his knuckles tighten as he scrunched his fingers up into fists against the wooden platform.
‘So …’ She knew her voice was shaking and she had no idea why or how to control it. ‘So, you have a child?’
Immediately he shook his head and gasped. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘The baby …’ He stopped, the word seeming to catch in his throat. ‘The baby wasn’t mine.’
‘Oh my God.’ It was an instant reaction. Complete shock brought her hands to her mouth. ‘Sorry … I shouldn’t have said that.’ She breathed. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
He shrugged then. ‘It has taken me a long time to come to terms with it, but I have had to come to terms with it.’ He looked at her. ‘But still, I don’t seem to be able to tell my family that my wife, the woman I loved, the woman I knew my mother didn’t approve of, had cheated on me … and that she was carrying another man’s baby.’
‘I am so sorry,’ Tess said softly.
‘Ochi.’ He shook his head. ‘No, you do not need to be sorry.’ He looked out over the water. ‘When she told me, every piece of me began to die inside, but I still wanted her, wanted them both. I still believed that our marriage could recover. I said I would stand by her. That we could leave Corfu and make a new start wherever she wanted to.’ He breathed. ‘Do whatever she wanted to.’
‘But she didn’t want to?’ Tess guessed.
‘She hadn’t just betrayed our vows, she had fallen in love.’ He sighed. ‘What do you say to that?’
Tess mused on the sentence for a moment until she made her reply. ‘At least you got to say something.’ The sea breeze suddenly made her shiver. She wanted to say something now, to him. She wanted to tell Andras. And as that emotion toyed wit
h her, inside she felt herself slowly begin to unravel.
She took perhaps the biggest breath she had ever taken before letting the words tumble from her lips. ‘My fiancé didn’t come to our wedding.’
‘What?’ Andras whispered.
She nodded. ‘He left me spinning around in the wedding car outside and then … when I couldn’t bear seeing any more of the village or the desperate look on my mother’s face, I got out of the car and I walked up the aisle expecting him to spontaneously materialise like the genie in Aladdin.’ Her breaths were coming thick and fast, heart pumping. ‘I stood at the front of the church, waiting, looking at my family, his family, just standing my ground, thinking that somehow this was going to turn out all right, if I just didn’t move. If I stayed right there, right there where I was supposed to be, where he was supposed to be.’
‘He didn’t come.’
Tess shook her head. ‘No. I stood there, with the vicar making small talk about spiritual growth and nurturing, and then my dad started to come down the aisle towards me and … my mum stood up and then, I knew, then it finally sunk in that Adam wasn’t coming.’ Her shoulders shook as she drew up her head like she was somehow fighting for air. ‘And I still didn’t want to hear it. I had my mum and my dad just a few feet away, heading towards me, Rachel looking at me with tears in her eyes, all of them wanting to comfort me, wanting to make things better and I couldn’t stand it.’ She started to quake, suddenly feeling so cold, lips trembling, shoulders wobbling. ‘I put one bare foot in front of the other and every single flagstone felt like it was a bed of nails, so I ran.’ She let out a breath. ‘I sprinted up the aisle and out of the church, nothing on my feet, and I didn’t stop until I got home.’ She swallowed. ‘Two point four miles of not feeling my feet getting cut to ribbons.’
Now it was all becoming clear. The not walking barefoot on Kalami beach, still wearing her designer shoes when she jumped off the boat into the sea on that very first trip, and at Agios Spyridon with the dog. This was the reason why she didn’t want to ever be barefoot. Why having her feet strapped into something at all times was necessary for her. Right at that moment, Andras wanted to find this Adam himself and hurt him like he had hurt Tess.