He stared down, the twisted, pitted surface of her legs scarring into his retinas as deeply as the scars that gouged and knotted her limbs from hip to ankle, runnelling through her wasted muscles, winding around her legs like some hideous net.
Horror drowned through him. She saw it in his face, bis eyes. The brightness in her own eyes burned like acid. The tightness in her throat was like a drawn wire. Then deliberately, jerkily, she covered her legs again and stood up.
He stood aside to let her get to her feet. She yanked the negligee back into place over her shoulders, tugging at the belt to make it tighter—hugging her carapace into place. She must not lose it now. She must not.
"The comedy is ended,' she announced. Her voice was flat. I’ll sleep in another room tonight. If you could be so good as to ensure we dock back at Piraeus tomorrow, I'll make my own way to the airport.'
She turned to go.
He caught her arm.
She looked down to where his fingers closed around her flesh.
"Let me go, Nikos. There's no need to say anything. Not a thing. I'm—sorry—it came to this. I thought it wouldn't be necessary. That you would accept the dissolution of our ridiculous marriage without any need to get this far. But in the end—' her voice tightened yet another unbearable notch '—it Seemed the quickest way to convince you. Now, please let me go. I'll get my things and find another room...cabin... whatever they're called on a boat like this.*
He let her go, but only to slide his hand past her wrist and take her hand.
It was strange, thought Andrea, with the part of her mind where her act did not seem to work. The feel of his fingers trapping hers was making her feel very strange. Very strange indeed.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, drawing her down beside him. His hand did not let go of hers.
'What happened, Andrea?' he asked.
There was something in his voice that made her eyes blink. The acid was burning them and she couldn't see properly. Something was misting her vision.
'What happened?' he asked again. His voice was very quiet.
She stared down at the carpet. There was a gold swirling in the pattern. It shifted in and out of focus. It seemed very important that it stay in focus. She stared at it again.
After a while, she spoke.
'It was a car crash, when I was fifteen. The older brother of one of my classmates was driving. He was driving us home— we'd been to the movies. I—I don't remember much. We swerved suddenly—a tyre burst, apparently—glass on the road, a broken bottle or something—and hit a wall. I was in the passenger seat. I was knocked out. I got trapped. The firemen had to cut me out. My legs were all smashed up. In hospital... in hospital... the doctors wanted... wanted...' Her voice was dry. 'They wanted to amputate—they said they were so smashed up they couldn't save them.'
She didn't hear the indrawn breath from the man sitting beside her. Nor did she feel the sudden tightening of his grip on her hand.
She went on staring at the carpet.
'My mother wouldn't let them. She said they had to save them. Had to. So—so they did. It...it took a long time. I was in hospital for months. Everything got pinned together somehow, and then, eventually, I was allowed into a wheelchair. They said I'd never walk. So much had gone. But Mum said I was going to walk. She said I had to. Had to. So... so I learned to walk again. I got sent to a special place where they help you learn to use your body again. It took a long time. Then they sent me for more operations, and that set me back, but Mum said it didn't matter, because I was going to walk again. I had to. And I did.'
The pattern in the carpet was going out of focus again. She swallowed.
'The only thing is, I can't do things like...like dance, and so on. It... it hurts. And I get frightened I'll damage them somehow. And though I can swim—it was part of my physio and still is, because the water helps to take the weight off my legs as I exercise them—I do it very early in the morning, when no one can...no one can see me.'
She blinked. 'I'm very lucky. Incredibly lucky. I learnt that in hospital, and in the physio place. There were others much worse off than me. Now the only thing wrong with me is that I have to be careful and not overdo things. And never marrying—' Her voice shook, but she steeled it to be still, and carried on. 'Never marrying won't be so bad. I've accepted that. I know no man can want me, not when they know, not when they've seen—'
Her voice broke.
Quietly, Nikos slid his hand out of hers. Then, just as quietly, he slipped to his knees on the floor at her feet. The dark of his head gleamed like black satin. He put his hands on her thighs. Beneath the flawless silk of the negligee he could feel the surface of her legs, uneven and knotted. Slowly he pushed the material aside.
She tried to stop him, tried to jerk her legs away from him, but his hands pressed on the sides of her thighs. His head bowed.
Slowly, infinitely slowly, Nikos let his hands move with absolute gentleness over the scarred, runnelled tissue of her legs, across the twisted muscles of her thighs, down over the knife-cut k
nees, along the warped, lumpen line of her calves, to circle her ankles. Then slowly, infinitely slowly, with the same absolute gentleness, he moved his hands back up, to rest once more on the sides of her thighs.
Then he lowered his mouth to her legs and kissed them— each thigh, each knee.
She sat still, so utterly still. All that moved within her body was her heart. She could not breathe; she could not think. Could not understand.