Bound to You (3 page)

I remember the first time Christos knocked on my bedroom door in the college accommodation block we shared. When I saw who it was, I discreetly dropped the picture of my boyfriend and me into a drawer. A few weeks later, when Christos found his way into my bed, my guilt acted as a kind of chastity device and clamped me shut to Christos’s cock. ‘Only until the next night though, heh heh!’ Christos would always point out.

Now that night I definitely remembered, and the rest. My friend Lizzie renamed Christos ‘the Greek dildo’. We had so much sex in that first term that I actually ripped his frenum, that piece of skin that joins the foreskin to the penis, and he had to go to the campus nurse for a special salve. I think we managed to hold off all of about another week. Then we had a desperate, silent shag in a reading cubicle in the library.

‘Hey, we have to get you home, Christos. You’ve got a bag to pack if you’re going to make that flight tomorrow evening. You won’t have time in the morning.’

Christos hated packing, and tonight was no exception. ‘First, let’s have a hug,’ he said, when we got back to our flat. He said hug like I did, with a pronounced northern vowel.

We clambered on to the bed. Christos was wearing Kenzo Pour Homme. I nuzzled his neck, appreciating how delicious he always smelled. He loved fragrances, to the extent that he had even done a
parfumerie
course in his spare time. At airport duty free shops he knew immediately what scent would suit me and birthdays always brought a new bottle of something unique-smelling. ‘Because you are secretly high maintenance, Nichi,’ he told me now. But don’t worry. Your little secret is safe with your Master.’

‘All Right, Master, don’t you have a bag to pack?’

‘I do, I do.’

I got up to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Christos followed. He kissed the crown of my head with soft deliberation, met my gaze in the mirror and smiled. ‘Such a beautiful woman.’

I scrunched up my nose, and shook my head, toothpaste dribbling down my chin. ‘Even when you are brushing your tushy pegs!’ It was another Yorkshire phrase he’d appropriated, and it sounded even more ridiculous with a Greek twang.

He reached for his own toothbrush and we jostled one another for space until we were both gummy with toothpaste and giggling conspiratorially into the sink.

Back in our bedroom, Christos frowned at the open suitcase.

‘What do you want bringing back from home, Nichi
mou
?’

‘Some fruit off the tree, please!’ I replied. ‘And some of Giagia’s biscuits.’
Giagia
meant grandmother.

‘Mmmm,’ Christos nodded. ‘Home! Food! I’m going to eat so well.’ Christos ate for five back in Greece. How he managed to retain his featherweight boxer’s body was a mystery known only to the Sibyl. ‘It’s going to be great when you come with me in August.’

I nodded. I could already smell the hot red leather of the seats in his beaten up Mercedes, and the fragrant basil bushes by the front door of his parents’ house. I remembered how their incense hit you as the car pulled up the drive. Suddenly, I was the sentimental one.

‘Christos? If we ever did get married, could we get married in Greece?’

He stopped packing for a moment and looked right at me. ‘Of course.’

On Saturday morning, as I wandered through an overcast Hyde Park, there was a text from Christos, delayed from the previous evening. It said that he’d arrived safely, that he had already been fed four pork chops plus rice plus salad plus potatoes plus cake and apricots and coffee by Giagia and was now enjoying a cigarette under the jasmine trees that shaded the porch. I could see and smell it more vividly than the ashen water sloshing about the Serpentine.

I thought again about Laura’s wedding. At least I’d sent her a decent present. I’d stretched to more than I could afford in guilty compensation but it didn’t really make me feel better. I hoped this wasn’t going to damage our friendship in the long-term. Suddenly it started to rain. I decided that I had better head back and get on with my job application. It was for the one position in recent weeks I thought I might actually have a chance of getting, working as a medical PA to a team of surgeons at a London hospital. Despite my journalistic ambitions, I’d temped before for the NHS and always found it far more stimulating than typing up reports for some two-bit ad agency. Besides, it was the best training for life in a harried newsroom. There were few things more stressful than having to arrange a bed transfer for a patient with surgical complications. Whatever an editor might tell you, getting copy to print is never a matter of life or death.

That evening, Christos called me. ‘
Ela
Nichi
mou
, how’s my golden egg?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. I went for a walk but came back to do a job application when it rained and I’d got sodden. Now I’m reading. How’s the garage?’

‘Busy. They really did need me. I got wet, too.’

‘Got wet? What kind of wet?’

‘I jumped into a swimming pool with my clothes on.’

‘
Thee mou
!’ I cursed in Greek. ‘Why?’

‘Because while I was at lunch a little girl fell in so I jumped in after her.’

Classic Christos. He wasn’t named after the Saviour for nothing.

‘Was she OK?’

‘Yes. She just cried a bit. Wanted her mum. Luckily my phone still works.’

‘You jumped in with that, too?’

‘Well, yes, with everything. Even my shoes. There was no time to think about it. And then I ate lunch with Maria, in my wet T-shirt, heh heh. And Nichi – there were women watching!’

‘I bet they wanted to jump you after seeing that,’ I laughed.

‘They did. The way they clapped their hands afterwards gave them away.’

I’d seen this reaction many times. When women saw charming, delectable Christos cooing at a baby, their eyes would widen in desperate lust. Then they would look accusingly at me as if to say, ‘Why aren’t you fully utilising those fine Greek genes?’

Sometimes I wished I felt the same, but ever since I was a tiny child I had been adamant that I would never be a mother. In recent years I had told my friends that I’d rather go to prison than have a child. They would laugh nervously and tell me it was only a matter of time before my biological clock rang its alarm, but I didn’t think so. I had terrible nightmares about giving birth in a Greek hospital in 40-degree heat, the sweat of my labour pains dripping off the walls. But even I had to admit that the thought of Christos saving a little girl from drowning was pretty enticing.

‘Oh, Christos. Forced to play hero when all you wanted was a nice lunch with an old friend!’

‘I practically ate half a pig after that. I had earned it. Anyway, Nichi
mou
, I need to go, Mama is calling me. I’ll see you on Monday afternoon, can’t wait!
S’agapo
! I love you!’

On Monday, the agency called me about the hospital job. I could start that week if I liked. Finally, income! Christos’s family had lent us some money to help us set up in London. Without it, there was no way I could have afforded to move down with him and no way I could be trying to pursue my chosen career now. But I felt ashamed at having to borrow from them in the first place, what with the thousands of pounds of debt I had already accrued, including a loan, two creaking overdrafts and an unpaid credit card bill. Not that I had been frivolous with money as a student, but I had elected not to work while I studied to give myself the utmost chance of earning the best possible degree. It had paid off.

I thought back to the day I found out I’d got my First. I ran to the English department office but when I arrived there was still a whole twenty-seven minutes before it opened and I could get my result. I tried to practise my newly acquired yogic breathing techniques as I contemplated my future. I wanted to carry on using my mind, but I was drawn to journalism rather than more study. I had created a literary radio show in my second year at university and felt sure that was the kind of work that would really excite me. I loved learning, but now I wanted to work in a colourful, creative office and live in the capital.

I was so absorbed in my plans that when Christos arrived, panting, having run from the other side of campus, he had to say my name three times before I noticed him.

‘Shall we get your result, Nichi
mou
?’

‘I’m scared!’ I wailed. But I was so relieved he was with me.

‘No! Nothing to be scared of, Golden Egg.’ He pulled me to him, kissing first one cheek and then the other.

I sidled into the pokey department office, which was not too dissimilar to the desk at a police station.

‘Name?’ enquired the departmental secretary.

‘Nichi Hodgson. Nicola,’ I managed, in a whisper. I fully expected my heart to beat up and out of my mouth until it lay there quivering on the cheaply carpeted floor.

‘Very well done, Nicola. You’ve got a First.’

I yelped. Christos squeezed my arms, squeezed my cheeks, squeezed me to him, and we laughed in each other’s faces over and over again. I owed so much of this to Christos and his absolute faith in me, his unbending support.

I grinned at the memory. Christos had loved me not because of my achievements but in spite of my failures. And I wanted so much to offer that to him now as he undertook this PhD.

The door rattled downstairs. ‘
Ela
, Nichi
mou
!’

He was back. Thank God. I jumped up from the table and checked my lip gloss in the mirror, grabbed frantically at a perfume on the mantelpiece. I had changed into a skirt that Christos had bought for me, a black flippy thing with multi-coloured 3-D polka dots stitched around the hem, and a low-cut vest.

I went to open the bedroom door in greeting. There he was: white T-shirt, sunglasses, and his tan two shades deeper after one weekend. He looked as if he’d just stepped off the main
dromos
in Athens.

‘Eeeeeeeee!’ he exclaimed, beaming. It was a noise I made in excitement and now he made it too. ‘Egg, Egg, Egg, Egg, how’s my beautiful
kali
mou
?’ He smothered me in his embrace. He smelled of Kenzo, but also rosewater mint, and the uniquely Greek scent of mastic chewing gum.

‘Happy to have you back,’ I murmured.

He dragged his suitcase into the room and dropped to his knees. ‘Wait a minute, wait . . . Now, let’s see what we have here for Nichi.’

Out of the suitcase he produced an unusual beaded necklace, a new perfume and, finally, a pair of pretty cork-soled wedges. ‘To replace those awful white ones you refuse to get rid of.’ His thoughtfulness never failed to make me swoon. But he’d never bought me shoes before and I was a little sceptical.

‘Do you even know what size I am, Christos?’

‘Well of course! I showed the assistant the shape and the length of your foot with my hand, like this.’ He closed his eyes and mimed how he had groped through the air, trying to envision my feet, then blinked his eyes open once he had settled on the size. ‘Like Lazarus in a shoe mart. And then she helped me pick them out.’

I shook my head incredulously, and then again when I realised that they did indeed fit.

‘
Efharisto para poli,
Christos; I love them! Oh, I got a job by the way,’ I told him, as I slipped the shoes off. ‘Only medical temping again but the money is good. Well, it’ll cover our bills at least. Thank God our rent is so cheap. I don’t know how anyone affords to rent a double room on their own down here.’

‘Excellent news! See! It’s all panning out just fine, Nichi
mou
. Let’s go and have a little dinner out to celebrate tonight, eh? What would you like? A nice Turkish? Some fatoush?’

I nodded happily. ‘Let’s.’

‘OK, great. Let me wash my hands and then we can go. I’m hungry again already!’

I started to laugh. ‘But you’ve been fed so much at home!’

‘Exactly! I’ve got my Greek appetite back! Anyway, I’ve got some news for you, too.’

‘What’s your news then?’

Christos finished chewing, swallowed, then took a drink of water, cleared his throat, and let his hand rest against the table, still holding his knife.

‘So I was talking to my parents about the PhD. They’re very happy about it but they have one or two concerns about . . .’

He broke off.

‘About how we are living here in London.’

‘Oh? How so?’

‘Well . . .’ He paused again. It was not like Christos to struggle to find the right words. As well as speaking French and Italian, he was more fluent and expressive in English than half the native speakers I knew.

‘Because they think you and me living together is not such a good idea. They think it would be better if I lived with other students.’

The tears welled instantaneously as my throat tightened. Was I hearing this right? Was Christos telling me he was moving out?

‘What are you talking about, Christos? We’ve only just moved in together. We moved down here together! We’re setting up together.’ Then, ‘We’re going to get married!’

I had never stated it like that before and now it sounded like a declaration, not of love, but of desperation.

‘“You can be a husband or a student, Christos. But not both.” That’s what my dad said to me.’ Christos repeated the cold words almost as impassively.

‘What, are you just going to go along with it?’ Now I was angry. How dare Christos’s family interfere in our future. I was twenty-three, for Christ’s sake, not thirteen. How dare they undermine our relationship by not taking it seriously?

‘But Nichi
mou
, they’re paying for me! I have to consider their wishes. It’s no comment on you.’

I didn’t see how it could be anything else. ‘But Christos, I really don’t understand. How can they think I’ll be a distraction? I worked so hard for my degree, I know how important it is to have a stable, tranquil environment to study in. And it’s not as though I’ll be around all day, I’ll be at work. You’ll have loads of time to get things done. And when I come home from work we can have dinner and spend some time together.’

‘You know it doesn’t work like that for me, Nichi.’ Christos was rigid, ritualistic even about how he got things done. ‘I can only work at night. Otherwise I feel like I’m wasting my life, sitting in the library all day and reading some poor man’s thesis, who probably lost his penis to underuse, he spent so many hours studying.’