Songs of Blue and Gold (32 page)

A blur of pink pulled her out of her reverie.

Pink and white stripes.

Melissa chewed faster, then put down her sandwich. That distinctive, ridiculous jacket. Braxton's, she was sure of it. She was on her feet. Then she was running to the corner where she was sure he must have turned.

There was no one there.

Her soles clattered on polished stone as she entered the church. It was dim, and empty. Outside she scanned the steps
leading up to the castle. She saw and heard nothing. ‘Dr Braxton?' she shouted. No response.

If it was him, what was he doing now – and who was he talking to? What had he found out about her mother that she had not?

A queasiness accompanied her back to the table. Why was it that every man she encountered seemed to have an ulterior motive, be a philanderer or be purely selfish? How could you trust any of them?

But then, it was possible that her trust even in her own mother had been misplaced. If Braxton was right, she had been wrong about Elizabeth too. She had never really known her own mother. Light-headedness threatened to overwhelm her. Melissa fought the sensation that she might black out.

She could never feel certain again. So was it possible? Could Elizabeth really have been the kind of person who could cover up a suspicious death – or worse?

‘
I'VE BEEN FINE
on my own,' said Melissa. ‘Felt a bit strange at first, but it's all right. Really.'

‘So long as you are OK.' Leonie did not sound convinced.

Melissa lay down full length on one of the shabby sofas. She felt exhausted – but grateful that Leonie had rung.

‘You sound . . . tired.'

‘I am tired. I lie awake thinking at night. That's what I do most – it seems to take up a lot of the time.'

‘Do you think you might be depressed?'

Melissa grimaced. ‘I've certainly wondered. Perhaps I am. But in fact, what I feel mainly is relief that Richard has gone. That it really is over.'

Now she could deal with the hurt, knowing this time the split was irrevocable. All the compromises, the holding back, the pretending, were resolved.

‘Even when you were giving him one last chance, you knew it wasn't right, didn't you? That you were short-changing yourself.'

‘You're right about distance. I knew when I was in Corfu
that there was no going back – but then that's exactly what I did.'

‘There you are then.'

‘But somehow when I was back in England, I let myself be reeled back again. God, how pathetic does that sound! I'm angry with myself. How could I have put myself in that position, where was my self-respect?'

She could just see Leonie in her office in London, rolling her eyes. ‘Richard is a great manipulator, you know that. He always was. Even at the start of it, we all used to think –'

A wave of annoyance tipped over. ‘What, you used to sit around discussing how awful Richard was? You and who else used to think?'

‘It's not like it sounds. But – look, I can say this now. I should have said it long before. Richard played you. He played on your insecurities, knowing that once he had you, you dreaded the end of the relationship. He didn't so much want you as want to be in control of you. All that business with Sarah – what a massive ego boost for him! Both a mistress and a wife ripping her hair out over him! No wonder he wanted it to carry on a bit longer. He's emotionally stunted, wants constant reassurance of his worth. And what did he ever give you emotionally?'

‘That's a bit simplistic,' said Melissa. She was not going to have her marriage dismembered with quite such savagery. ‘There was more to it than that. Well, in the beginning—'

Leonie butted in. ‘That's just it. It never did develop into the marriage you wanted it to be. Go on, be honest. Did you ever entirely trust him?'

Melissa bit her lip, forcing herself to remember the way it really was.

‘You didn't, did you?' Leonie said softly.

‘No.'

‘And did all the rows and fresh deals ever make any difference?'

‘No.' It came out as a whisper.

‘No one can ever say that you didn't try to make it work, Mel. You are so strong – stronger than you realise. The steel it took to keep it all going – for years! But we are not our mothers. We don't have to stay with a husband for any of their reasons: economics, shame, stigma. Richard, he's—'

‘It's not just him.'

Melissa was going to tell her. She had to tell someone, to release the thought that had been choking her for a week, maybe for longer, floating namelessly, wordlessly in her subconscious. ‘I think that . . . it's possible . . . Julian Adie was my father.'

She went over how it would make so much sense. How it would explain why Elizabeth had given her the book – and the trail – while she still could, why it was the one important thing she had left to tell her, why Dr Braxton had tracked her down. And back so much further, how her father Edward had always been such a distant entity, how Elizabeth's marriage to him had fallen apart so quickly, its ties to conventionality so threadbare. Leonie was shocked, she could tell. Incredulous, too.

‘But your mother . . . she never even hinted at this before?'

‘No, but –'

‘You and she were close, Mel. I just can't believe she would have kept something like this from you. She was such a lovely person, with a real sense of fairness. I can remember you telling me how she would try to make sure your father saw you and took you for outings even when he wasn't living with you. I just can't . . .'

‘She would never show weakness. Look how long it took for me to find out how ill she was. She wouldn't say!'

Leonie was not convinced.

‘It's like . . . not knowing my own history, having to revise my own story halfway through.'

‘You can't think that way.'

‘What if I could prove it?'

‘You won't be able to prove it. Mel, all this Julian Adie stuff . . .'

Leonie was clearly uncomfortable.

‘It might seem odd, but it's making me feel better not worse. Depression, obsession – I know what you're thinking. But the way I see it I'm not running away from the demons, I'm facing them head on. Trying to find answers. What else would you suggest? That I run back to Kent, picking over the remains and wailing on about how he can't have loved me properly or he wouldn't have done this? Where does that get me?'

It wouldn't quite go into spoken words, but she knew deep down that if she could understand her mother, she would have more insight into everything; and that if she could understand how a man moved on from wife to wife, she might take comfort from knowing that Richard had genuinely loved her, at least for a while.

Biography was important. In the story of another person's life was all the evidence you needed of the courage required to clear the world's hurdles, or even to dare take the new step. You could find out how other people handled bad situations. Whether in retrospect they made the right decisions. The key was in the human love of narrative, of wanting to know what happened next.

For Julian Adie it was documented; for Elizabeth it was not. There was no smooth transition between phases of life and events neatly arranged in chapters, only a jumble of unreliable memory.

She barely left St Cyrice the following week.

One evening, as she was physically exhausted from trying to reinstate her mother's control of the garden, pruning suckers from plum trees and cutting down the ash-grey branches of a dead cherry tree, her mobile shrilled. Caller unknown.

‘Hello.' Her tone was flat, she could hear it herself.

‘Is that Melissa?'

That voice – surely it couldn't be, not after all this time?

‘Yes.'

‘It's Alexandros.'

She had never been so happy to hear from anyone. She struggled to keep control of her voice. ‘How are you? How's Kalami?'

‘Fine, and yes, fine, I'm sure. I – er, I'm not in Kalami. I'm in Lyon.'

‘What are you doing there – I mean, are you working there?'

‘No. I'm waiting for a train. I flew in this morning. When I got your postcard I had this crazy idea that I should come and see you – but now I'm here, I'm feeling I might have been a little . . . reckless. I should have called you before. Should have given you er . . . more notice . . .'

‘Alexandros,' she said firmly. ‘I would so love to see you. Please come.'

There was no one she wanted to see more.

When she saw him, the tension she'd been carrying seemed to melt away. A rush of elation at the sight of him on the doorstep of the
bergerie
, made her taller and lighter than she had been for weeks. More hopeful, too.

‘This is a lovely surprise!' She was grinning uncontrollably.

His face had filled out a bit since she was in Corfu. He looked healthier and happier, if a touch travel-worn. The wild hair had been cut too, no longer trailing past his ears, though the curls still fell over his forehead.

Too much staring. ‘Come in, come in . . .' she said. She was self-conscious that she must be looking a lot worse than when he had last seen her.

In the dark flagged hall, he dropped his leather bag and looked around, taking in the thick walls of exposed stone and the wooden staircase. It was odd seeing him in this new context, and so unexpectedly. He might well have been thinking the same of her.

The moment when they might have exchanged a friendly kiss in greeting had passed. ‘Tea . . . coffee . . . wine . . .?' she bustled nervously.

He followed her into the kitchen.

Melissa filled the slight awkwardness with talk. ‘It's great to see you,' she said. ‘How have you been? Did you find all you were looking for, when you were in Egypt?'

Alexandros took his time answering, deliberately slowing down her rattling tempo. ‘In a way I did find what I was looking for. But maybe I knew it all along, and I was only proving it to myself.'

What did he mean by that? Did he intend her to read
something into it? She picked up the packet of coffee grounds, and when he nodded, fired up the filter machine.

‘Tell me.'

He leaned, apparently comfortably, against the old pine table, filling that corner of the room with his height and presence. She thought he was going to talk about his wife, but all he said was, ‘The guide book stuff was relatively easy when I'd worked out how I was going to go about it.'

‘What about the Alexandrian women? Are they as beautiful as all the books describe?' she asked, teasingly, hoping to lighten the tone.

‘I'm sure they were.'

He was so earnest that she laughed.

‘Let's take our coffee through to the sitting room.'

She was unsure what their relationship was – friendship, shared interest, or was it stronger than that? Had that one night in Corfu been a stupid mistake, or the only honest part of a tentative game they were both playing?

All she knew for certain was that she had the same butterflies in her stomach as that night in Corfu she had relived so many times in her head.

‘I am so pleased you're here,' said Melissa. ‘There's something I really need to ask you. To be honest, it's why I sent you the postcard.'

Was she imagining it, or did his expression suddenly darken?

Calmly and objectively, she described her meeting with Martin Braxton.

‘That was him!' There was no hesitation. Alexandros made
an irritated gesture with his powerful brown hands. ‘Braxton. He was the one who came to Kalami just before you arrived last year.'

‘Greeting the locals with a shout of “Squid!” every morning!' she grimaced, remembering. ‘Now I've met him I can just picture it.'

Perhaps a man that cloth-eared might not be a threat after all. She had worried unnecessarily.

‘I have to admit, I have been worried about what he intends to write.'

‘What are you going to do?' he asked.

‘I don't think there's anything I can do.'

His long face was a mask. ‘Perhaps not.'

‘You know, there is something that has been bothering me. Braxton said he was investigating the drowning of an American woman.' She kept her voice soft and non-confrontational. ‘You never did answer my question about the drowning at the St Arsenius shrine, not properly. Why wouldn't you tell me?'

It was impossible to gauge his reaction. The last time she asked she had received a short answer. She still recalled his words. ‘We don't talk about it.'

Now, he sighed. He looked past her to the window and out at the sky. ‘It seems . . . that other people are claiming they know more about it now that any of us ever did,' he said eventually. ‘We were never sure exactly what did happen.'

‘So . . . you never discussed it because—'

‘—because we did not want to add to the stories about it! No one knew what had really happened – but everyone had a wild theory. The woman was a foreigner, don't forget.'

‘Was it out of loyalty to Julian Adie, then – because you knew he had a connection to her?'

Alexandros shrugged. ‘Perhaps that was part of it – especially on old Manos's part. He was so proud to have been Adie's landlord. Adie had paid for the enlargement of his house. But I imagine there was also an element of communal self-interest. The tourist industry was really beginning to be developed at that time. It was bringing astonishing prosperity to places that had never dreamed such things would be possible. It was not in anyone's interest to make more of it than it was.'

‘Was there ever an official – a police – investigation?'

‘I don't know. I was too young to know what happened.'

‘Maybe there wasn't.'

‘Maybe so. If everyone was satisfied it was an accident . . .'

‘So there was no counterbalance,' said Melissa. ‘Anyone could come along and interpret it how they wished, in a way that suited their purposes . . .'