‘You know, through all the time we’ve been together, you’ve never spoken about your childhood,’ she said. ‘Apart from a throwaway comment about never having used public transport because your father owned an island.’
‘And why do you think that is?’ he questioned. ‘If somebody doesn’t want to talk about something, there’s usually a reason why.’
‘You’ve never told me anything about your family,’ she continued stubbornly. ‘Not a single thing. I don’t even know if you’ve got any brothers or sisters—’
‘I don’t.’
‘And you’ve never mentioned your parents.’
Unsmilingly, he looked into her eyes. ‘Maybe that’s because I don’t want to.’
‘Alek.’ She leant forward. ‘You need to tell me.’
‘Why?’ he snapped.
‘Because this baby is going to share your parents’ genes. Your father—’
‘Is dead,’ he said flatly. ‘And believe me, you’d better hope that our baby doesn’t share many of his genes.’
A shiver ran down her spine. ‘And what about your mother?’
For a moment there was silence. ‘What about her?’
Ellie was unprepared for the savage note in his voice or the bunching of his powerful shoulders. Everything about his reaction told her she was entering dangerous territory—but she knew she couldn’t let up. Not this time. If she backtracked now she might win his temporary approval, but then what? She would simply be signing up to a life of half-truths. Bringing up a baby in a world of ignorance, where nothing was what it really seemed. Because knowledge was power. And wasn’t the balance of power in this relationship already hopelessly unequal?
‘Is she still alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ he snapped, his voice as cold as ice. ‘I don’t know a damned thing about her. Do you want me to spell it out for you in words of one syllable, Ellie? She walked out on me when I was a baby. And while I’m known for my amazing sense of recall—not even I can remember that. Are you satisfied now?’
Ellie’s head was spinning. His mother had walked out on him. Wasn’t that the worst thing that could happen to someone? Hadn’t she read somewhere that it was better to be abused than abandoned, and wondered at the time if that was true? She supposed you could always challenge your abuser—but if you were deserted, wouldn’t that leave you with no choice except to feel empty and bewildered? She imagined a tiny baby waking up one morning crying for his mother—only that mother never came. How would that feel, to miss the comfort of a maternal embrace and never know it again? Even if the bond wasn’t strong, a cuddle would still feel like safety to a helpless infant. On some primitive and subliminal level—would that make it impossible for you to put your trust in a woman afterwards? Would that explain his coldness and his lack of real intimacy, no matter how many times they had sex?
‘What...what happened?’
‘I just told you.’
‘But you didn’t.’ She met his gaze, determined not to be cowed by the fury sparking from those cold blue depths. ‘You only gave me the bare facts.’
‘And didn’t it occur to you that maybe that’s all I wanted to give you?’ Pushing back his chair, he got up from the table and began to pace around the veranda like a man in a cell. ‘Why don’t you learn when enough is enough?’
She’d never seen him so angry and a few weeks ago Ellie might have backed down, but not any more. She wasn’t someone who was trying to win his affection or keep the peace, no matter what. She was a mother-to-be and she wanted to be the best mother she possibly could be—and that meant decoding her baby’s father, even if he didn’t want her to. Even if it pushed them further apart, it was a risk she had to take.
‘Because it’s not enough,’ she said stubbornly.
‘What difference does it make that a woman walked out of a house on a Greek island over thirty years ago?’
‘It makes all kinds of difference. I want to know about her. I want to know whether she was artistic, or good at math. I’m trying to join up all the dots, Alek—to imagine what kind of characteristics our baby might inherit. Maybe it’s extra important to me because I don’t know much about my own father. If things were different, I’d have learnt the answers to some of these questions already.’
Alek stared at her as her passionate words broke into the quiet Italian morning. Her own upbringing hadn’t been much of a picnic but, despite all that, her mother had stuck by her, hadn’t she? Ellie hadn’t been rejected by the one person you were supposed to be able to rely on. Behind her the jasmine and miniature lemon trees made her look like a character in a painting. In her silky robe she looked fresh and young, and nothing could disguise the flicker of hope in her eyes. Did she think there was going to be some fairy-tale ending, that he could soothe everything over and make everything okay with a few carefully chosen words?