Alex took great care not to crowd her. He put the television on in the background and ordered a simple dinner that she could pick at when hungry, and then retired to his room on the pretence of work. Of course, he checked on her often, but he didn’t want to rock the boat. For the moment, she had given up on asking him to leave her alone, and he hoped the truce would last.
The following morning, Sophie was even more like herself, though the reserve had returned. She was barely speaking to him, and was certainly unable to meet his eye.
It was out of desperation that he sought the most desperate measure of all.
9 November, 16.08pm
From: A Petrides
To: Ava, Olivia
I’m in need of the best Christmas pudding recipe ever. Sophie informs me it’s yours. Please send it to me as a matter of urgency.
Yours,
A.P
Ava, who kept all of their sacred family recipes stored in a binder in the kitchen, was able to find it easily and send a copy back to Alex. And far away, on the other side of the world, she imagined her sister happy. She imagined her sister planning an English Christmas with the man she loved, and Ava took comfort from it in the midst of her own anxieties.
Sophie, meanwhile, was none the wiser that her sort-of husband had been emailing with her sisters. She was simply glad that Alex had stayed out for most of the afternoon. It had given her a chance to think, or at least to breathe. The problem was that when he was around, she was totally, utterly baffled. She knew that what he’d done was wrong, but it was almost impossible to hold onto her temper and resentment when he was staring at her with those enormous black eyes.
“Hello, agape mou,” he said from the doorway, and Sophie looked towards him. Her heart began to hammer and she realised that she’d missed him. That, far from being glad he’d stayed out, she’d been counting the minutes until he returned. It infuriated her. He didn’t deserve that. He deserved nothing from her!
“Hello.” A small sounding word, from the depths of her doubts.
“How do you feel?”
Physically, she felt surprisingly well. She had the occasional cramp, and she was tired, but the bulk of how she was feeling was emotional. There, in her heart-space, she was a wreck. A ball of angst-ridden indecision and uncertainty.
“Sophie? You are okay?”
“Oh.” She nodded clumsily. “Yes. I should be out of your hair soon, in fact.”
At his thunderous look of disapproval, she stood. “Truly, Alex, I’m feeling much better. There’s no reason for me to be here …”
He placed the bags on the bench and moved steadily towards her. “There are many reasons for you to be here, and the most obvious one is that you are my wife.”
She looked down at the thickly carpeted floor. “Nothing’s changed since that day in Corfu.”
“No, it hasn’t.” His eyes glittered darkly in his handsome face. “I love you as much now as I did then. I want you as my wife more now than that day, because I know now how empty I feel without you.”
“You married me to break Eric and me up,” she said sharply.
He laughed. “I think I really believed that too. But actually, dear Sophie, I married you because I couldn’t live without you.” He wrapped his arms around her waist. “I hated the idea of you and Eric together; not because I felt concern for my sister, but because I felt more jealousy and despair than I have ever known.”
She shook her head slowly, and Alex took advantage of her silence.
“Now, I have a favour to ask of you.”
“A favour?” She repeated in surprise, her frustration increasing.
“Yes. Do you feel able to sit here, at one of these stools?”
She looked at the kitchen suspiciously. “Why?”
“Well, I thought I would try my hand at your famous pudding. If you tell me what to do, that is.”
Sophie felt a sting of emotion in her chest. He felt guilty. He was over-compensating. “You don’t have to do this.”