He was looking at her curiously now, and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
‘Was he ill?’ Nikos asked. Again, his voice was sympathetic.
‘Yes,’ she said tightly. ‘His mind went.’
‘Ah... Dementia can be very hard,’ acknowledged Nikos.
A kind of choke sounded in Mel’s voice as she answered. ‘I was raised by my grandfather after my parents died when I was very little—they were killed in a car crash. My grandfather took me in to stop me going into care. That’s why, when he needed care himself, it was my...my turn to look after him, really.’
Her voice was tight, suppressed. She didn’t want to talk about this—didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to remember.
Nikos was frowning. ‘Surely you didn’t have to cope single-handed? There must have been help available? Professional carers on call?’
Mel swallowed. Yes, there had been help—up to a point. That hadn’t been the problem. It was hard to explain—and she didn’t want to. Yet somehow, for some reason—maybe it was her release, finally, from the long years of caged confinement at her grandfather’s side as he made the slow, dreadful descent into dementia and eventual death—she heard the words burst from her.
‘He didn’t want anyone else.’
Her voice was low, the stress in it audible to Nikos.
‘He only ever wanted me—all the time. He couldn’t even bear to let me out of his sight, and he used to follow me around or get distressed and agitated if I just went into another room, let alone tried to go out of the house. He’d wander around at night—and of course that meant that I couldn’t sleep either...not with him awake and wandering like that...’
Her voice was shaking now, but still words poured out of her, after all the months and years of watching her grandfather sink lower and lower still.
‘It’s what the dementia did to him. He was lost in his dark, confused mind, and I was the only thing in it he recognised—the only thing he wanted, the only thing he clung to. If I tried to get a carer from an agency to sit with him he’d yell at her, and he’d only calm down when I was back in the room again. It was pitiful to see. So no matter how exhausting it was, I just couldn’t abandon him—not to outside carers—nor put him into a nursing home. How could I? He was the only person in the world I loved—the only person in the world who loved me—and I was absolutely adamant I would take care of him to the end.’
Her expression was tormented.
Nikos’s voice was quiet, sombre. ‘But the end did come?’ he said.
She swallowed the hard, painful lump in her throat. ‘It went on for three years,’ she said, her voice hollow. ‘And by the time the end came he didn’t know me—didn’t know anyone. I could only be relieved—dreadful though it is to say it—that he was finally able to leave his stricken body and mind.’
She shut her eyes, guilt heavy in her heart.
‘I’d started to long for the end to come—for his sake, and for mine, too. Because death would finally release him—’ She swallowed again, her voice stretched like wire. ‘And it would finally release me, too...let me claim my own life back again.’
She fell silent—horrified by what had poured out of her, shutting her eyes against the memory of it, haunted by the guilt that assailed her. And yet she remembered that terrible, silent cry of anguish at the captivity his illness had held her in.
She’d never said anything of her anguish before—never said anything of those heartbreakingly difficult, impossible years she’d spent as her grandfather’s carer. And yet here she was, spilling her heart to a man who was little more than a stranger still...
Beside her, Nikos had stilled as he heard her out. Now, slowly, instinctively, he reached across for the hand that she was clenching and unclenching on her chest as she relived those tormented years she’d spent at her ailing grandfather’s side. She felt his palm close over her fist, stilling her.
‘You did your very best for him,’ he said quietly. ‘You stayed with him to the end.’
He took a breath, the tenor of his voice changing.
‘And now you deserve this time of freedom from care and responsibility.’ His voice warmed and he squeezed her hand lightly, then let it go. ‘You deserve the most fantastic holiday I can give you.’
She felt her anguish ease, and took a long, deep breath before opening her eyes to look at him.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and her eyes were saying more than mere words could.
For a moment their gazes held, and then Nikos deliberately lightened the mood. He wanted to see her happy again.