‘You see, you could have been describing my father. My mother—’ his voice hardened unconsciously on the word ‘—my mother had been my father’s mistress. She’d worked in a bar, at one of the Greek holiday resorts. My father picked her up, wanting nothing more than to amuse himself, the way he always did. She was ambitious; she wanted him to marry her. But to my father she was just a good-time girl, the kind who slept around with any Latin lover who took her promiscuous fancy. Not the kind of woman you married. The kind of woman you married was a respectable Greek girl, a virgin, protected and well-dowered, well-connected.
‘When my mother told him she was pregnant he was furious. But he married her all the same. Because he felt that would be less dangerous to him than having an illegitimate child touted around by a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to use the gutter press to bring him into disrepute. But the moment he’d married her, under duress, he mounted another woman as his mistress. He did it deliberately, to show my mother how much he resented having to marry her. It was my mother’s turn to be furious. She stormed off to England to have me, and the moment I was born she started divorce proceedings. She wanted a fortune in alimony. My father contested it, demanding custody. It raged for years. Sometimes my father came to England, to see me, but always with my mother and her lawyer present. Because she was convinced that otherwise he’d whisk me back to Greece.
‘They rowed all the time. I remember them rowing. My father hurling insults at her over my head, and my mother yelling back at him, telling him he’d never get me, not unless she got the settlement she wanted. My father demanded blood tests, asking how he could be sure I was his when she was such a slut. She called him a libertine, who’d been unfaithful from their wedding day. It went on all the time, one accusation after another, vicious and angry. I hated it. When I was young I didn’t know what they were arguing about, but I knew I hated it. Hated it. When I was older I understood more of the words, more of the accusations. My mother tried to convince me it was all my father’s fault, my father that it was all my mother’s fault. It went on and on. Finally, when I was nine, my father’s wealth won out. My mother had to make do with less money than she wanted, and I got taken away from her.’
For a moment he was silent again. Vanessa held very still. Then he continued.
‘Even though my father had battled for me all my life, when he got me he sent me off to boarding school in Switzerland. He didn’t actually want me—he just didn’t want my mother to have me. He didn’t want her to win. And when she’d lost the battle she didn’t want me either. I wasn’t any use to her after that. I don’t think I was much use to my father, either. He still wondered whether I was actually his son or not. I think he felt that if I weren’t, then keeping me away would make it less obvious to other people, because I wouldn’t be around for comparison. I found it odd, because I knew I looked a lot like my cousin Leo. Then, as I grew older, I realised that that was another thing my father had been suspicious about—that maybe my mother had slept with Leo’s father as well.
‘When I was even older, and DNA testing had become viable, he had me tested. It showed that I was his genetic son, but it didn’t make him any fonder of me. All it did was make him start going on at me to get married. He was feeling his age, feeling his mortality. He wanted to be sure of the Makarios dynasty continuing. Leo never showed any signs of marrying, not even after his father died, and that made my father even more obsessed about me getting married and having children—lots of little Makarios children—so he could be a dynast over them all. He wanted me to marry a good Greek girl, as he had never had the chance to do, thanks to my mother’s machinations. He kept picking women out for me, trying to get me interested in them—like poor, wretched Apollonia Dimistris. It didn’t matter that I told him I had no intention of marrying, let alone Apollonia, whom I scarcely knew except in passing. I kept mistresses, and I kept them in their place—the way he’d failed to do with his mistress, my mother. He didn’t care what I said. He just went on and on at me every time he summoned me back to Greece—the way he did when we were at Leo’s schloss. And that last choice of his was disastrous—Apollonia’s mother is as bad as he is—totally ruthless about getting her daughter married off successfully. But of course—’ his voice sounded hollow ‘—you know exactly how ruthless she is. Just as you know how ruthless I was prepared to be to make sure I never repeated my father’s mistake when he was my age, with the mistress he ended up marrying.’
He fell silent again. Vanessa lay still, cradled against him. But his arms were very tight around her now. Too tight. Too tense.
And inside her was a heaviness that was far worse than the one she had known till now.
‘Is your mother still alive?’ she asked, lifting her head slightly.
She felt Markos tense again.
‘No. She died when I was nineteen. It was an accident. She was at some party on a yacht in the South of France—the divorce settlement might not have been up to her expectations, but it was still a massive enough pay-off to allow her to be Tracey Makarios, socialite. She never remarried, you know; she liked the cachet of the Makarios name, and of course she could irritate the hell out of my father by dragging it through one scandal after another. She was found floating in the water, dead, in the early hours of the morning. She was drunk, and high, and naked. No one was very surprised. My father phoned me at university to tell me the news. He was elated. She was finally out of his hair.’
He fell silent again, and then Vanessa spoke.
‘I’m glad she’s dead. She’s had the justice she deserved.’ Her voice was quiet, but with something in it that had never been there before in all her life. ‘And your father will have his own punishment now, and I’m glad for that too. Knowing that his son’s mistress has repeated his own history.’ She lifted her head to look at Markos. ‘I never thought I’d be glad to have been your mistress, but I’m glad now. So very, very glad!’ The fierceness in her face blazed from her eyes.
Reaching up with her hand, she slid it behind his neck and drew his mouth to hers, kissing it powerfully, possessively.
‘They won’t hurt you again, Markos. Neither of them. Alive or dead. I won’t allow it! They did so much damage to you, and I can’t bear it!’ Her expression changed. ‘You said you would look after me, but I’m going to look after you. I’m going to take care of you and look after you and love you—but not blindly, adoringly, like some kind of infatuated teenage crush. This time I’m going to love you properly. Keep you safe from everything that has hurt you. And you’re going to be the best father in the world. The very best. You’ll never be like your ghastly father—never! You’re strong and loving and brave and kind—’
‘Kind? After the way I treated you?’
She brushed that aside.
‘You were scared. Scared of history repeating itself. It was a knee-jerk reaction—not the real you.’ She gazed up at him, lovelight in her eyes. ‘This is the real you, Markos. Brave enough to come down a third time, after everything. Brave enough to regret what you’d done and make amends. Brave enough to walk away from what your shameful parents did to you and not let it poison you any more. Brave enough to take on a baby you didn’t plan—and brave enough,’ she added lovingly, ‘to think you could manage without Taki and Stelios to wait on you hand and foot.’
He smiled ruefully. ‘It was the prospect of doing my own laundry that really put the frighteners on me!’
She gave a soft laugh, and then, abruptly, her expression arrested.
‘Vanessa, what is it?’ Alarm was naked in his voice.
She half sat up.
‘It’s all right. It’s just Bump moving. I was at an awkward angle.’
She levered herself up properly, resting back against the cushions of the sofa. Markos was staring at her in fascination and amazement.
‘The baby moves?’ he said, in a drawn voice.
‘From side to side,’ said Vanessa. ‘Basically the head is downwards, and the feet are under my stomach. Look—there’s one.’
She smoothed the material of her top taut. There was a discernible small extra bulge, protruding slightly.
‘Thee mou,’ said Markos faintly. Tentatively his hand reached out, hovering over the bulge, a look of stupefied wonder on his face. ‘Can I—? May I? Would—will I hurt you—the baby?’
She smiled fondly. ‘Of course you can, and of course you won’t,’ she said, and took his hand and lowered it to her, till it was pressed between her hand and his child.
‘Hello, Bump,’ said Markos softly, his voice strange.