‘Your...home?’ Max’s eyes were huge. ‘You mean I’d live there?’
‘If you’d like to.’
Max returned his attention the screen. The house was everything Annie would have imagined, if ever she’d put her mind to it—enormous, modern, huge cement-and-glass boxes piled on top of each other surrounded by tropical trees. It was clearly both impressive and expensive. Beyond it, the ocean glistened, and in the far distance, she could make out the distinctive skyline of Singapore.
‘Mummy? Look.’
She nodded. She’d seen enough.
‘Why haven’t I met you before?’
Annie stiffened, looking at Dimitrios, her heart sinking to her toes. She searched for a way to break it to their son, to confess the decision she
’d made and the consequences he’d been forced to live with. Having to confess this to Max was something she’d dreaded—and she felt the full force of what she’d been keeping from him, of the decision she’d made seven years earlier.
Dimitrios spoke before she could work out how to put her thoughts into words.
‘Sometimes families become separated, Max, but, now that I’m here, I don’t ever want to miss being a part of your life. I wasn’t close to my dad, but I’m hoping you and I can become good friends.’ His voice was deep. As an adult, she could hear the pain that underscored his words, but Max seemed to take them at face value.
Tears at Dimitrios’s kindness filled Annie’s eyes. How easy it would have been for him to lay the blame at her feet! To begin to drive a wedge between them, to undermine her with Max. But he didn’t. If anything, he did the opposite, glossing over the details, smoothing the way for this transition without laying blame anywhere. She stood abruptly, moving into the kitchen and turning her back on them, the very act of breathing almost beyond her.
He was making everything so easy; he had all the answers. It was Annie who was left floundering, trying to decide how she could make this work, what she wanted and whether her wishes even mattered. Surely Dimitrios and Max deserved to have her put them first now, to make the whole idea of being a family work?
‘You have a swimming pool?’ She homed in on their conversation again, bracing her palms on the bench.
‘Two swimming pools.’ She heard the smile in Dimitrios’s voice and her heart twisted with memories and regret.
It was the same voice he’d used the first weekend they’d met. She hadn’t been much older than fifteen. He and his twin brother Zach had come to the small village on the outskirts of Sydney where she and Lewis had grown up, and Annie had felt as though her whole world had got bigger and smaller at once. She’d never known anyone like him in real life. He’d been twenty-one, but as big as a much older man, and he’d dressed like one too—expensive, classy, easy. He’d smiled at her and something inside her had changed for ever.
‘Why does anyone need two swimming pools?’ Max was saying with a little laugh.
‘One is indoors, part of my home gym. It’s for swimming laps. The other sits on the edge of my property, overlooking the bay and the city. That’s more for relaxing.’
‘And diving?’
Dimitrios’s laugh was like warm honey running down Annie’s spine. She turned quickly, needing to trap the sight of him laughing, to hold it close inside. ‘Yes, for diving.’ He winked at Max then his eyes moved quickly, finding Annie, and the smile on his face shifted and morphed. It stayed in place but the warmth in his eyes dropped.
Her heart turned cold.
She pulled a pint of milk from the fridge and poured Max a glass, then put a small biscuit on a plate, carrying them both back to the table.
‘Do you have a suitcase?’ Dimitrios was asking him.
‘Mummy? Do I?’
Annie’s heart squeezed with vulnerability. ‘No. But we have bags,’ she added, missing the look that crossed Dimitrios’s eyes.
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll have boxes brought.’
‘What for?’ Max’s curiosity was, as ever, insatiable.
‘Packing.’
Annie startled. Packing made it all sound so real, so imminent.
‘I don’t have too much to pack. Mummy has hardly anything, do you, Mummy? How do we pack the sofa in a box?’
Dimitrios looked towards the small piece of furniture.