Elspeth held up her hand. ‘Lili, let me continue, please.’
‘Okay.’ Lili sunk back into her seat.
‘They loved the Ionian Islands and would spend weeks, sometimes months, there at a time with good friends who owned a plantation in the hills above Corfu. This was the 1930s. When Joseph was born in the mid-thirties, that didn’t stop them travelling there too with their young son. The wealthy Corfiot family, one of the wealthiest families on the island, welcomed people of all nationalities into their home. They had three sons and a daughter – Alena.’ She looked at Lili.
Everyone followed their gaze.
‘So, George used to be called Otto?’ Ray clarified.
Everybody sighed.
‘What? I just want to get the facts straight.’
The look on Alex’s face said he wanted to do that too.
‘Wasn’t that the woman my father mistook you for, Alena?’ interrupted Sarah. ‘If you resemble her, and your relatives on your mother’s side are originally from Corfu, you could be related to the Greek family who my father and grandparents stayed with all those years ago.’
Everyone nodded, staring at Lili, making her feel self-conscious.
Lili nodded too. That’s what she thought. ‘I think my mother was in Corfu looking for her family’s roots.’
‘Right, back to the story.’ Elspeth looked at them all, as would a schoolteacher surveying a naughty class.
They fell silent. Even Bella, who had been licking her fur as she lay on the rug in front of the fireplace, stopped what she was doing. She had woken from her doze on the sofa up at the house when they all trooped inside to make tea, coffee and squash. Excited that everyone was home, she had followed them all back to the old summerhouse.
‘From what Joseph recalled about some of his childhood spent abroad—’
‘You mean in Corfu …’
Elspeth fixed her gaze on Ray. ‘Yes, Corfu.’ She raised her eyebrows at Ray. ‘May I continue?’
Lili resisted the urge to smile. Ray’s relationship with his mother-in-law appeared decidedly frosty.
‘Yes, please do,’ Ray replied, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Elspeth gave him a look before continuing. ‘Alena made quite an impression on Joseph. Although he must have been just five or six years old, he was smitten with the beautiful young woman. Shewasstill a teenager. She’d take him for walks in the countryside and paddling in secluded coves. However, I imagine there was an ulterior motive for taking him along. I think he was a decoy. Joseph talked of a young man, one of his parents’ friends, who would join them. I believe she was meeting him covertly.’
‘A secret liaison?’
Elspeth looked across the room at her grandson, ‘Yes, Nate, that’s correct.’
Alex was staring at the doctor, wishing he wasn’t quite so tall, dark, and handsome and wasn’t sitting next to Lili with his arm resting on the back of the sofa, inches from her shoulders.
‘So, why did they have to meet in secret?’ asked Ray. ‘Was it because he wasn’t Greek?’
Elspeth shook her head. ‘No, of course not. Their friends came from different countries, with a shared interest, a passion for all things artistic. Religion – that was the problem. You see, Alena’s family were Greek Orthodox Jew. He was not.’
Lili leaned forward in her seat. ‘What happened to them?’
‘The inevitable. She fell pregnant. It was scandalous in those days. So, her parents sent her away to have the baby. Fortunately, they had good friends in England who had a summerhouse where she could stay.’
Ray and Sarah exchanged glances.
‘That’s right – this is the summerhouse. Joseph’s parents took Alena back to England with them. I believe the idea was that they would adopt the child and bring her up as a sister for Joseph.’
‘But that didn’t happen,’ Sarah said flatly. She knew her father was an only child.
‘With rumours of war, it’s ironic that Joseph’s parents thought it would be safer for them to return to Corfu than remain in England. Joseph, along with his father, his mother, Alena and the baby, went back to Corfu, where Joseph’s mother pretended the infant was hers.’