‘Why not?’ he interrupted. ‘After all, you’ve been living on short rations for a few days—you must be keen for some more sophisticated fare by now!’
‘I’m perfectly OK here,’ she riposted.
‘Well, now you can have a decent dinner anyway, can’t you?’ He glanced at her attire. ‘You’ll need to change, though.’
‘I haven’t anything suitable for going out,’ she answered. In her mind, painfully, sprang the memory of the extensive wardrobe she had once enjoyed. Every item had long gone.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘There’s no dress code at the restaurant.’
It wasn’t the answer she wanted. ‘Nikos, this is…’ she began.
Mad, she wanted to say. Insane. Pointless. But the words didn’t come. Helplessly, she fell silent.
‘Go and change,’ he prompted. ‘Don’t be too long—I only had a sandwich for lunch, remember!’
There was light humour in his voice, and she wondered at it. She was still trying to make sense of what was happening. Why on earth was he here to take her to dinner? It was incomprehensible.
It was unbearable.
Her mouth twisted briefly. But then the last four years had taught her that the unbearable still had to be borne…
This was just one more thing that she had to endure. And that was what she would have to do this evening. Get through it. Endure it. Endure the torment of having dinner with Nikos…
Numbly, she found herself turning round and heading upstairs to the little bedroom over the sitting room.
Below, Nikos felt his breath draw in.
Was he really doing the right thing? He silenced his doubts. He’d been through them all since driving away earlier. This was the right thing to do. Somehow he had to make himself immune to Sophie, so that she was no longer haunting him from the past. So that he could see her again and feel nothing about her. Nothing at all.
He could hear her upstairs, the creaking floorboards revealing her activity. She didn’t keep him long, and he could hear the tread of her footsteps coming downstairs as he was locking the garden door. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had said she had nothing suitable with her—the blouse and skirt she had changed into, though neat and clean, were clearly daywear. Her hair had been simply clipped back into a low ponytail, and she had not bothered with make-up. Well, he told himself bluntly, it was all to the good if she weren’t dressed up. The last thing he wanted was her exacerbating her natural beauty in any way whatsoever.
The gypsy skirt she was wearing the first time I set eyes on her, swirling around her long, long legs…The peach dress she wore to dinner that evening, accentuating every pliant line of her body…The ivory evening gown she wore to that gala, the first night I took her out…
Through his head she walked like a procession, each vision a wound. Roughly, he banished them. They were the past, and the past was over. Now, only the immunisation programme was ahead of him. Nothing else.
He led the way out to the car, and opened the passenger seat. For a moment she seemed to balk, then climbed in, settling the seat belt across her, her face inexpressive.
But behind the blank expression she was fighting down emotion. Crushing down the memories that tried to come crowding into her head. Don’t think…don’t remember. It was all she could do, all she could tell herself. And don’t, above all, look at the man sitting beside you, his powerful frame so close you could almost brush your sleeve against his.
As Nikos gunned the engine she felt the G-force thrust her back in her seat. He drove as he had always driven, with ultra-masculine assurance, and the powerful car creamed down the driveway and out on to the public highway, revving strongly as he roared through the quiet countryside. To distract her flailing emotions she looked about her, at rolling fields and woodland, anywhere but at the man driving her. Where they were she still had no idea, and didn’t care anyway.
After about ten minutes he pulled off the main road and drew up in front of a prosperous-looking inn, with mullioned windows, overhanging eaves, and flower boxes along the sills. It looked pretty and old and immaculately kept. Judging by the kind of up-market cars parked, it was clearly the kind of place that attracted a well-heeled clientele.
They went inside, Nikos ducking his head as they stepped into the old-world interior. As always, as Sophie remembered, he received instant attention, and within a few minutes they were installed at a spacious table set inside a glassed-in extension to the rear of the building, overlooking a close-mown lawn that stretched down to a little river. Cool air wafted in from wide-open French windows.
Sophie sat, feeling mixed emotions trying to jostle their way past the glaze she had forcibly imposed on herself since the moment she had climbed into Nikos’s car. Why Nikos was doing this she had no idea. Her only priority was to get through this ordeal intact.
But it was going to be torture to endure his company, to have to go through the hideous mockery of dining with him as if they were actually a couple…
As once they had been…
No—stop that! Stop it now—right now. She said the words to herself fiercely, inside her head.
Just shake the napkin on to your lap, smile at the waiter, look through the menu, make a choice—any choice; it doesn’t matter—then put the menu aside, pick up your glass of water, look out of the window, look at the river, the lawn, the flowers, the countryside. Look at anything, anything at all, but don’t look at Nikos…don’t look at Nikos—
Her eyes went to him. Hopelessly, helplessly. How could she do anything else except look at him? Look at the perfect sculpture of his face; its every contour known to her, every glance, every expression, an image on her very heart—once, so long, long ago.
But no longer. And never again. That was what she had to remember. All she could permit herself to think.