The Last Witness (70 page)

  Elena had visited Nicola Ryall twice since with Lorena to assure her that she was free to visit Lorena whenever she liked, and Nicola had freely admitted that even without the obstacles she wouldn’t have made the bid to keep Lorena; she lacked the mental strength and ability to even cope with herself, let alone anyone else. It would take some time for those scars to heel.

  Georges seemed to have shown a special interest in Lorena’s progress. Maybe because like him what she’d been through had been so tumultuous; or perhaps because he shared with her being a new-found family member.

  Elena had seen her mother practically every other weekend since returning to
England
– catching up on lost time – and the first couple of meetings had been tearful. She’d gleaned the full story of how painful her father’s final years had been, how deep his regrets had run. She’d reached over and consoled her mother at that point.

  ‘Well, at least I finally found him. Hopefully for both of us.’ Then they’d hit the Metaxas harder that Uncle Christos had brought with him, and started to laugh out loud as they dredged through fonder family memories and anecdotes. They moved on: the subject of her father’s last years wasn’t raised again between them.

  Georges and Simone were honeymooning in
France
, and Elena’s promise to her mother that one day she’d bring Georges to her door for a reunion would be made good when they visited Elena in only three weeks time on their way back. Maybe then the circle broken thirty years ago would once again be complete, though there was nothing Elena could do to make good on all those lost years. Not just with Georges, but with her father too. That still left an empty gap inside Elena, and probably always would.

  A warm summer breeze wafted against Elena’s skin. Stark contrast to the cold when she’d last been here. And the mayhem she’d been through then also seemed a million miles away from this occasion now. Difficult to correlate the two.

  But as the last of the fireworks died, she found her eyes drawn into the darkness, a momentary chill running through her as she recalled that night trapped within the darkened visor, going to see Georges. She pushed the thought abruptly away, tried to think of it like the warm and welcoming darkness of the chine.

  On her last visit to the chine only a week ago, Lorena had asked to join her. Elena had been anxious at first that Lorena would be nervous, would run in panic from the smothering darkness like before. But after an initial trembling that Elena had felt in Lorena’s hand, she’d been fine; maybe the ghosts that Lorena always feared would come for her as darkness settled – the sewers and Patrika and then later Ryall – had finally gone from her mind.

  For Elena though, while the chine still felt warm and welcoming, a place where she could escape from the madness and pressures of the world outside, the main magic had somehow gone. And only now did she realize why: she had no more secrets to share with the darkness.