by Taylor, Lulu
Then she saw a sign on the side of a white-painted wall where stone steps led up towards a square building on two storeys with terraces at each level. Above the house, part of the monastery rose up into the cloudless sky, not like the heavy fortress that faced over the bay but a worn wall of sandy stone that turned to the topaz sea to the west. The sign was roughly painted with the words ‘Villa Artemis’.
She stopped and stared at it, putting out a finger to trace the letters. The wood was warm under her fingertip. So here she was. Gazing up at the house, she could see no signs of life. All was still. What a very quiet place this was. Perhaps, after all, it was suitable for an exile, this holy island visited by monks and nuns and people wanting to experience its spiritual atmosphere. It was a place of prayer, contemplation, and a quest for salvation.
A cat emerged from nowhere and rubbed its bony body against her bare legs, purring and wanting her attention. She looked down at it, wondering if it had fleas. Then she heard a noise above and a door opened. A woman came out of the house and onto the terrace where she moved about slowly. Delilah froze, hoping she was out of sight beneath the villa’s wall. What was the woman doing? There was the sound of pouring water. Plants were being given a drink as the cool of the evening descended.
Her heart was racing. She leaned against the warm stone of the wall, trying to gather her strength and courage. Did she dare? Did she?
If I go up there, she told herself, what will make her think I’ve come from home? I could be anybody. Anybody at all.
Quickly she thought of a story. I’m lost. No – that was stupid; she was just below the walls of the most famous landmark on the island. Besides, how lost could anyone be in this place in the daylight? Or else she was looking for a good taverna – could this woman recommend one? No. She had it. I need a glass of water. She could fake dizziness, sickness. That’s what she would do.
Before she could change her mind, Delilah started up the stone steps, already breathless and outraged at her own nerve, towards the house. The person above heard the slapping of her sandals on the stone and looked over. Delilah saw a flash of blue headscarf and then it disappeared. When she reached the front door, she could see whoever it was had left the terrace and the door that led inside was firmly shut.
She rapped firmly on the door. There was no reply and after a few minutes she knocked again more loudly. Still nothing.
You’re not getting away that easily, she thought. Her fear began to harden into determination. She had come all this way. She was not going to leave without seeing Alexandra. She rapped loudly again and called out, ‘Hello? Hello!’
She was about to see if there was a back way when the door opened, and the woman from the monastery stood there. Her face was old and lined and the hair tucked under the headscarf was grey, but her blue eyes and the shape of her nose were unmistakeable from the photographs at home. She was looking into the face of Alexandra Stirling.
The older woman stared back at her, examining her face, and then she said calmly, ‘So they’ve sent someone at last. Who are you?’
Chapter Thirty
Delilah opened her mouth to reply and then thought better of it. She had hoped that surprise would be her weapon in making the woman identify herself and already she was about to hand it away.
Alexandra stood watching her, a half-amused look on her face. ‘It must be strange,’ she said in an almost confiding tone, ‘to meet someone you no doubt thought might be some crazy old hermit living in a cave, like poor old St John himself.’
Delilah stared back at her, looking for signs of John in her face. She realised that if she had children, this woman would be their grandmother. Those blue eyes might emerge in a daughter of hers. Did Elaine have blue eyes too?
The woman stood back. ‘You’re not saying much. Come in. I think you’ve got some questions for me, haven’t you?’ She turned and walked inside, and Delilah followed her into a large sitting room with a kitchen at one end. The walls were whitewashed and bare, the only shelf holding painted plates and jugs. Rugs covered the stone floor and a pair of pale sofas faced each other, a rough wooden table between them loaded with books and a vase of pink roses. Between the sitting area and the kitchen was a small dining table with a blue cloth on it. A huge chimney breast sloped down from the ceiling to the floor, as though part of a pyramid had emerged from the wall. An open door led out into a walled courtyard overhung with fig trees and decorated with pots of sweet-smelling flowers.
‘Would you like a drink?’ the woman asked, turning to Delilah.
She shook her head, thinking of her earlier ruse to pretend to be ill. She was glad now that she hadn’t attempted anything so transparent and childish. ‘No, thank you.’
‘Very well. Let’s go out to the terrace.’ The woman led the way outside where two comfortably cushioned cane chairs were placed to face out over the wall towards the sea that spread mistily into the distant horizon. Alexandra sat down and waited until Delilah had joined her, lifting one veined hand to shield her eyes from the descending sun. ‘It’s quite possible to be dazzled by the sunset here,’ she remarked. ‘It faces west, you see.’
Delilah settled and then waited but when nothing was forthcoming from the other woman she said, ‘So – who do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know. You don’t look like a solicitor but as they are the only English people I have contact with, perhaps you are.’
Delilah shook her head. ‘No. I’m not a lawyer.’
‘All right. Then you must have a connection with . . .
with the place I’ve left behind. Let me see. Perhaps you are Nicky’s child from another marriage.’ The old woman went very still as she said this, her hand still shielding her face but showing her mouth tight with fearful apprehension. She said in a strained voice, ‘But you are very young for that.’
‘I’m not Nicky’s daughter,’ Delilah said. She leaned forward, suddenly desperate to reach out and tell this woman everything, and make her understand. ‘Nicky doesn’t have any other children. He never married again after you left.’
‘Oh.’ She breathed out and seemed to relax. ‘I suspected as much. I am not completely cut off. I read newspapers when they come my way and always thought I would discover something like that. But I never wished loneliness on him. Quite the reverse.’ The woman fixed a strong blue gaze on Delilah. ‘I don’t intend to tell you anything more without knowing who you are. You’re not Nicky’s child. Perhaps another relation? One who has for some reason decided to do a little detective work.’
‘In a way. But I wasn’t looking for you, not at first.’ She sat back in her chair, breathing in the fragrant air of the terrace. The closing day was making the flowers send out a heady perfume and the ripe figs smelled sweet and honeyish. Fixing Alexandra with a direct look, she said, ‘I’m John’s wife.’
The other woman couldn’t help her start of surprise, though she tried to conceal it. She blinked anxiously and looked more closely at Delilah, a frown creasing her forehead with even deeper wrinkles. ‘But . . . that can’t be right. John is divorced. Isn’t he? Unless you are the American girl I read about.’
Delilah laughed. ‘Vanna? No. My name is Delilah. John and I have been married almost a year.’
‘I see. That news has not reached me.’ Alexandra’s frown cleared and her expression grew curious once more. ‘So you live at Fort Stirling, do you? I suppose you stumbled on things that puzzle you, and you’ve become a busy bee who has decided to buzz all the way over here to find me out.’ She seemed to be attempting an insouciance that she couldn’t maintain. Her eyes filled with sadness. ‘John. How is he?’
‘He’s fine – if you can call a man tortured by what happened to him in his childhood fine.’ She paused and added, ‘He doesn’t know I’m here. I discovered your whereabouts by accident and I didn’t want to upset him – not until I had more to tell him.’
Alexandra stood up, smoothed out her white skirt, went to the flowerpots and began stripping an
y withered leaves. ‘I thought someone would come one day,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I thought he might come. John. That’s what I’ve prepared myself for. I’ve been prepared for anger and accusations. But I also hoped that if Nicky had done his job well, John would never want to see me.’
‘Why would he come? They told him you were dead,’ Delilah said, stressing the final word and turning to face Alexandra as she bent over the pots.
She stripped a small brown leaf from a stem and crushed it under her fingers. ‘Did they? Good. I thought as much. It was for the best.’
Delilah stared at her in astonishment. ‘You think that was for the best? You think it’s a good idea that he’s suffered thinking you killed yourself rather than be with him – and all this time you’re alive?’
‘You know nothing about it,’ Alexandra said in an unexpectedly stern voice.
‘I might know nothing but any reasonable person would think that was an unbelievably cruel thing to do to a child. And the fact you and Nicky collaborated in it . . .’ Delilah shook her head, at a loss to explain her astonishment.
‘Don’t you think we must have had a damn good reason?’ Alexandra snapped harshly, her eyes suddenly furious. ‘It was the best thing I could do. The only thing that would have been better was if I’d actually died. But I couldn’t do it. I meant to . . . but I couldn’t.’ She turned back to the pots and stared at a flower that held its pink trumpet up towards the last of the sunshine. She reached out one finger and stroked it gently. ‘Nicky stopped me. He begged . . . for the children . . . for John’s sake . . . that I did not kill myself. So I agreed on one condition – that I would go away and never be a part of his or John’s lives ever again.’
‘But why?’ asked Delilah, unable to hide her confusion. ‘I know you suffered a terrible loss. I saw Elaine’s grave, and it was heartbreaking. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to lose a child. But I don’t understand how it could help your husband or your son if you went away. Don’t you realise what you left behind? How much you traumatised that little boy? And even if you weren’t in your right mind at the time, how could you stay away all this time? Surely after a while you thought about your duty to John.’
Alexandra spun round to face her, her blue eyes blazing. ‘How dare you? I live with enough guilt, a kind you cannot begin to understand! My only consolation has been living here, knowing I was keeping my family safe by staying away from them. You have no right to come here and attempt to heap more on me!’
Delilah shrank back in her chair under the force of Alexandra’s voice. She felt presumptuous suddenly. ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry. I just don’t understand . . .’
‘How could you?’ Alexandra said quietly, the fury passing. She turned back to the flowers. ‘No one could. No one. I am the only one.’
‘But I understand something!’ Delilah protested. Now that she was with the real Alex and realised what strangers they were, it seemed impossible to explain that she had felt such a bond with her. It seemed foolish to think that in some way she had wanted to bring her own problems to Alex and ask what to do. She struggled on. ‘I know what it’s like to live at Fort Stirling – sometimes I think that house will drive me mad. I’ve seen that grim old folly. The whole place can begin to invade you, crush you . . .’
Alexandra glanced back at her, her expression startled. ‘Yes. Yes . . . that’s true. The house . . .’ She seemed lost in memory for a moment as though she was once more walking along the corridors and opening the doors of Fort Stirling. Then her face closed off again and she said, ‘But there was more to it than simply that. I had Nicky’s love. I had the children. I could have survived if it were just the house.’ She thought again and a strange look came over her face. She frowned as though half in pain and half in contemplation.
‘Was it . . . was it . . .’ Delilah hesitated. Planning what to say had been so easy. The reality of approaching the magnitude of the other woman’s loss was something else entirely. ‘Was it because Elaine died?’
Alexandra returned to the cane seat, sat down and looked over at Delilah. ‘Do you know how Elaine died?’
Delilah shook her head.
‘I killed her.’
She gasped, her mouth dropping open.
‘That’s right. I killed her. It was an accident, of course, but one that still tortures me every day of my life.’ Her tone was simple and neutral but that somehow made the words more stark and true. ‘She was riding her new bike, the one that was still a little too big for her, and she’d been allowed to ride it on the drive. I drove over the hill too fast and I didn’t see her in time.’ The old woman shut her eyes and then said in a voice drenched with bitter irony, ‘I’ve seen her a million times since, in dreams and visions and flashbacks. That little person on her pink bike, pedalling like mad, her eyes fixed on me. She had utter faith that I would stop or avoid her. She must have been astonished when I didn’t. I hope she didn’t suffer. I hope she died quickly and didn’t have time to wonder why I had done that to her. They tell me she did. They said I got out of the car and held her broken body, crying hysterically because she was already dead, but I can’t remember that. I’m glad. At least my memory can’t keep torturing me with that vision.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Delilah whispered, sitting absolutely still. ‘I didn’t realise . . .’
‘Why should you? I’m sure it wasn’t spoken of.’
‘It wasn’t. I didn’t even know she existed until I found her grave. No one ever spoke of her.’
Alexandra lifted her head to look at her. ‘Didn’t they?’ she said sadly. ‘Did no one remember Elaine?’
Delilah shook her head. ‘There are no pictures. No photographs. No memories. Even John’s memory is virtually wiped clean. All I found of her was a doll lost at the back of a cupboard in the nursery. She vanished when you did.’
Alexandra seemed to slump down under the weight of this news. ‘My little girl,’ she said quietly.
Delilah was quiet, sensing she’d delivered a blow of unexpected force.
Alexandra looked down at her hands and said, almost under her breath, ‘But Nicky remembers.’
‘In a way,’ Delilah replied. ‘When he saw me in the garden, he thought I was Elaine grown up, so he must be dwelling on her in some way.’
Alexandra looked up slowly, her expression apprehensive. ‘What do you mean?’
Delilah felt cruel. What right did she have to deliver news like this? But then . . . if Alexandra could hand out pain, she had to expect to receive it in return. ‘He’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. He barely even knows who John is any more.’
Alexandra’s eyes filled suddenly with tears and she bowed her head to hide them. Turning in her chair to face the wall, she sat still for a while until she shook her slender shoulders and looked back to Delilah again. ‘I suppose I always knew a day like this would come. His death, perhaps. The final closing of the door. Poor Nicky. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve what I brought on him.’
‘Then . . . why?’ Delilah asked pleadingly.
Alexandra stood up suddenly. ‘I think you can go now.’
‘Go now?’
‘Yes. You’ve done what you wanted, I suppose. No doubt you wanted to make me suffer in revenge for what John’s endured at my hands. You’ve done that. I didn’t think anyone could add to my burden but you have. And now you can leave.’
‘I didn’t come here to do that!’ cried Delilah, feeling that any connection she’d had with the other woman had been suddenly sliced through. ‘I had no idea what happened to Elaine, and I feel terrible that I’ve made it worse for you.’
‘Well, you have.’ Alexandra began to walk towards the door. ‘There are steps that lead back down from this terrace to the road. You can take those. Goodnight.’
Delilah leapt to her feet. ‘Wait! Please, I don’t want to go yet. There’s more to say. Please!’
Alexandra turned slowly at the door. ‘What more do you want from me?’
�
��The truth. I want to know why you went. If you had lost your daughter, why did you decide to lose your son and your husband too? Why inflict that on yourself?’
‘My dear girl,’ Alexandra said, ‘no doubt you want to take something back to John, an answer to all of this that makes sense. Perhaps you want him to forgive me and take me back, and for me to fall into his arms, the sobbing and repentant mother. But life is not so simple. Besides, there is no reason why I should tell you simply because you demand it. I don’t owe you any explanation, or indeed anything at all. I simply ask that you believe I have a good reason why I left, why I can never go back and why it’s better if people think I’m dead. I made my decision many years ago, and I knew it was irreversible. It is, of course, up to you what you tell John about seeing me but my advice would be to let him go on thinking I left him. It’s the kindest way, I promise you. Have children together and pray that they have enough of your blood and Nicky’s to dilute mine altogether. I shall be hoping for that.’ She turned to leave again and then looked back. ‘You ask why I inflicted it on myself. You need to see it another way. I chose not to inflict something on my husband and my son, and that caused me indescribable pain. But it was the only thing I could do.’
She stepped inside the house and closed the door, leaving Delilah alone on the terrace as the sun began to melt behind the brow of the hill, turning the golden evening light to grey.
Chapter Thirty-One
Delilah ordered breakfast in her room. She didn’t think that she could face Teddie and Paul, or any of the other guests in the dining room. A tray of fruit, yoghurt and crispbreads was brought to her room, along with a cup of strong black coffee. She poured sugar in and drank it very sweet, wrapping her hands around the cup for comfort as though it was a freezing winter’s day back home, and not another blazing day in the Aegean.