They had a long, leisurely breakfast on the verandah overlooking the beach—a long strip of almost-white sand washed by the murmuring surf below a crystalline-blue clear sky. The amazing view was worthy of the equally amazing house, which he had shown her over before they ate. It was big but still stuck in the time band in which it had been built as if nobody had ever stayed there long enough to bother updating or personalising it, and she had looked in vain for family photos.
‘We weren’t that kind of family,’ Alexius had commented wryly.
‘But it must have been terrific fun living here when you were a kid with the beach right on the doorstep.’
Alexius had said nothing and the silence had been uncomfortable.
Curiosity had thrummed through Rosie. ‘You didn’t have much fun as a kid, did you?’
‘No,’ he had finally conceded. ‘But I was ver
y well educated and looked after,’ he had asserted, lest she receive some image of neglect from his words. ‘Let’s go for a walk …’
The walk on the beach killed that topic of conversation, which she rather thought had been his objective. Rosie was strolling dreamily through the cooling surf when Alexius got a phone call on his mobile. He spoke in Greek and smiled before leaning back against a rock to continue the call while extending a hand to Rosie to draw her back to him and pull her under his arm. It was that sort of gesture that gave her hope that he did care, maybe more than he knew, for he definitely liked to stay in physical contact even outside the bedroom door. She buried her nose in his shirtfront, loving the sun-warmed already-familiar smell of his clothing and his body, the reassuring thump of his heartbeat below her cheek and the very fact that he was simply holding her. It wasn’t sex, after all, she reasoned—he didn’t have to hold her. After what seemed like a fairly lengthy chat, Alexius came off the phone again.
‘Your grandfather is flying in to see you this afternoon,’ he told her.
Rosie was torn between pleasure and concern. ‘Why?’
‘Obviously to mend fences with you!’ Alexius groaned. ‘You’re his granddaughter. That means a lot to a man with his family history.’
‘I don’t want him leaning on me to marry you again,’ Rosie confided uneasily. ‘So, I hope that’s not why he’s coming here.’
‘I’ve withdrawn the offer,’ Alexius told her without skipping a beat. ‘You’re right. Why should we get married? We’re having amazing sex. I’m content with that.’
Rosie discovered that she was far from predictable because, instead of relaxing now that the source of that pressure had gone, she was torn between wanting to scream and wanting to slap him. He’d withdrawn his marriage proposal? He was content? Well, she blasted well wasn’t! Had he changed his mind because she had fallen into bed with him again? It was a mortifying suspicion. Just then she felt as if she was lost in an emotional no-man’s-land, wanting and needing him and yet reluctant to admit to either sentiment and fearful of the likely outcome to such vulnerability.
* * *
Socrates Seferis was seated in a wicker chair on the verandah enjoying coffee and tiny pastries when Rosie came downstairs to join him, freshly garbed in linen trousers and a bright blue tee. Her smile was hesitant. ‘I’m so pleased you wanted to see me again,’ she admitted frankly.
‘You and Alexius are adults. I shouldn’t have interfered and sitting on the sidelines like this …’ the older man smiled widely ‘… is proving very interesting.’
Rosie poured a cold drink from the tray on the table. ‘How … interesting?’
‘My godson has never brought a woman here before. This island is his bolthole. He is very protective of his privacy.’
‘I’m not surprised. I saw how the press behaved around him at the airport. Not a fun experience.’ Rosie winced at the recollection but she wanted to smile at the information her grandfather had just given her. It was good to know that she was not one more in a long line of female lovers brought to Alexius’s childhood home. ‘Have you been here before?’
‘Only once. His parents’ funeral,’ Socrates volunteered wryly. ‘They are interred in the private cemetery here.’
Her interest caught, Rosie leant forward. ‘You knew them? What were they like?’
‘I never moved in their elite social circle, consequently I can really only speak as an observer,’ the older man confessed. ‘I went to school with Alexius’s grandfather and that was my connection to his family and why I was asked to be Alexius’s godfather. His parents were both very rich and very young. They were also only children whose families pushed them together and their marriage was more or less a business merger. Once their families were satisfied by the production of a son and heir—Alexius—his parents lived separate lives. There was no divorce but there was no true marriage either.’
Rosie nodded. ‘That’s sad.’
‘But rather more sad for their son,’ Socrates countered ruefully. ‘I think his mother lacked the maternal instinct. Alexius was raised by the domestic staff and at the age of eight his parents placed him in an English boarding school.’
‘Eight years old? That’s very young to be sent so far from home, but no wonder he speaks such good English,’ Rosie mused, riveted by what she was learning. ‘He never mentions his childhood.’
‘Let me tell you a story,’ Socrates urged, sprawling comfortably back in his padded wicker chair. ‘Once I was in London on a business trip when I suddenly remembered that it was my godson’s tenth birthday. I’m an impulsive man and since I hadn’t seen the boy in quite a while I decided to buy him a gift and pay him a surprise visit at the school. When I arrived I was taken aside by his housemaster, who confided that the school was very concerned by the boy’s lack of contact with family and home. He never heard from his parents at all and they didn’t bother to visit even if they were in the UK. Summers he spent here on the island but as a rule neither parent was present, only the staff, who catered to his every whim. Alexius never learned what a normal family household was like because he never had that experience.’
Rosie was pale, imagining how lonely he must have been as a child, given everything necessary for his comfort and amusement but deprived entirely of parental love, interest and attention. ‘That must have been very wounding for him.’
Socrates elevated a bushy greying brow. ‘He’ll never admit that, but once I knew that he had no visitors at school I made it my business to see him whenever I was in London. He had plenty of friends, of course, and often visited their homes.’
Rosie sank into a reflective mood, grasping that she finally had the key to her lover’s essential detachment. Just like her he had been betrayed and excluded by the people who should have loved him and wanted to keep him close as a child. Great wealth might have shielded him from the early deprivations she had experienced, but, regardless, his mistreatment had been no less real than her own.