“Don’t you think I know that?” She sighed again, but this time, it was loaded with angst. “I almost told him this morning, Eric.”
“You did what? Sophie, don’t be crazy! He’ll shoot the messenger. If anyone’s going to have this conversation with him, it’s me.”
“But I hate lying to him. I hate keeping it from him. Don’t you think he deserves to know?”
“I think it will make an enormous, dramatic mess if you get him involved.”
“He is i
nvolved! He’s my husband. And Helena’s brother.”
“Yes, and he is my friend.”
Sophie sobbed. “This is such a mess. We have to do what’s right, Eric.”
“Then just … don’t do or say anything yet. Not until I work out what to do about Helena.” Eric made a frustrated sound. “This would be so much easier if we could meet in the kitchen for one of our late night sessions, wouldn’t it?”
She smiled as she remembered their shared love of coffee and the midnight hours. “I’ll try to get over to see you all soon.” She thought of how lonely she’d been that day. “Perhaps next time Alex is travelling.” She would do anything to avoid being alone in the house without him, rattling around like a lovesick teenager.
Alex disconnected the call silently and stood, staring at the white wall opposite.
Everything he had thought to be true had just been confirmed, and in the most treacherous manner! To hear his wife and Eric casually discussing the hushing up of their affair – or worse, the continuation of it – was sickening.
He spun on his heel and walked back out the front door of his home. He needed to cool off before he saw her, or he wasn’t sure what he’d say. In that moment, he felt the angriest he’d ever been in his life.
“I’m sorry to bother you with this when you’re a loved up newlywed.”
She grimaced. “It’s fine. I know how worried you are. I just wish there was more I could do to help. The thing is, I know Alex would want to know. I know he would be able to help …”
“God, Soph. You’re his wife, but I’ve known him for years. When it comes to Helena, he is just totally controlling. If he thought her to be unhappy, he’d make it worse.”
“I just think you’re being unfair. He’s a great man. And he loves you both, not just Helena …”
Eric sighed. “I know. Just … let me try to get Helena on-board. Sometimes I think she realises how dire things are. Other times, she’s in complete denial.”
Sophie nodded. “Okay. I hear what you’re saying. But there has to be a time limit on it. I can’t keep this secret from the man I love for much longer.”
“It’s such a bloody mess. Helena just clams up whenever I mention it.”
“I know.” She nodded into her lonely bedroom. “We’ll work it out.”
She disconnected the call to Eric with no idea that her own life was the one in tatters; that Alex had overheard only part of the conversation and leaped to all the wrong conclusions.
CHAPTER FIVE
Three full days had passed with no word from Alex. Only a brief text message on his first night away to let her know he’d been held up. When she’d asked him when he expected to return to their home, he hadn’t responded. Nor had he responded to her call the next day. Nor her call the day after that.
Sophie’s loneliness and ache for him was now eating her alive. She sat at the kitchen table, staring unseeing at the ocean. How had she come to depend on him so completely in such a short period of time? Where was the strong, independent, world-travelling woman she’d prided herself on being? She was well aware that her moping was setting any kind of feminist movement back fifty years, and yet she was incapable of breaking the fog.
“I miss you.” The simple three words sat blinking on her phone. She hovered her finger over the send button. It was far too insipid for how she felt. Her body, having never known the kind of pleasure Alessandros was capable of invoking, was now in agony for the deprivation of it.
She tapped back over the keys and tried again. “I am in agony without you.”
Ugh! Far too needy. She dropped the phone to the table and focussed back on the ocean. It rolled in and out with a reassuring regularity. Sophie wondered distractedly what it felt like at that time of year? The days were still warm, though Autumn had officially begun and before long, a Christmas chill would settle over the continent. Even here in Greece, the seasons would shift.
Her phone buzzed and she scrambled for it with such haste that she sent her tea flying to the ground. She ignored the mess; it would wait. Her phone began to bleep, and she prayed, as she swished it open, that she would hear from her husband.
I will be home late tonight.