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I’m lucky—so very lucky.
The words were a challenge, defiance, and a reminder. She was lucky—lucky to have had what she’d had, lucky in the wonderful memories of what, right up until the end, had been the most magical, miraculous time of her life.
I have to see the good things, only the good things.
If she became bitter about it it would only make the pain that tore at her, by day and by night, even worse. The heartbreak was unbearable—it could never be anything else, she knew that with piercing agony—but the raw pain would fade. It would have to fade. That part of her life was over now, completely over. It could never come back.
But though she could say that with her mind, and know it for the truth, her heart was not so accepting. Like the pole of a magnet separated from its opposite, her heart kept drawing back to the cause of its agony, its complete and absolute fracture.
Markos—the man she had loved, adored. But who had not loved her back.
You can’t force love—it wasn’t his fault he didn’t love me. Couldn’t love me.
Yet, even as the exonerating words formed in her mind, another part of her let other thoughts slip through. Harsher words. Without exoneration.
He should have told you he was getting married. He should have had the guts—the decency—to do that, at least…
And back again came yet further thoughts, neither exonerating nor condemning, but resigned. Unflinchingly facing up to truths she didn’t want to face up to, they marched their way into her consciousness, uninvited but unstoppable—just as Constantia Dimistris had marched into the apartment that fateful afternoon, at the most vulnerable moment of her life.
He didn’t tell you for the same reason. He didn’t love you.
Because men like Markos Makarios do not fall in love with the women they keep as mistresses. Nor do they consider it necessary to inform them of their forthcoming marriages.
Because a mistress is not someone to love, someone to respect, someone who deserves consideration. She is there for sex, for admiration, for ornament, for possession, for pleasure.
Nothing else.
She shut her eyes as if to shut out the words, which were not angry or bitter, but simply truthful—however unpalatable the truth.
A mistress is all I was. All I ever was. I kept trying not to face up to it—
But she’d had to in the end. Just as now she had to face up to never seeing Markos again. There could be no other possibility.
It was over. Quite, quite over.
I have to face it, accept it and move on. Move on into the rest of my life.
It was essential. Because from now on, for the rest of her life, she had more than herself to think about. She had someone who was far more important than the man who had kept her as his naively adoring, expensively pampered mistress.
And far, far more important than herself.
She got to her feet, rubbing her back again as she did so. Clearing away her lunch things took only moments. Going back into the other room, she closed the windows she’d opened to expedite the drying of the freshly painted walls, then went into her own bedroom to put on a pair of outdoor shoes. As she put her worn house-slippers away inside the wardrobe she thought with painful wryness how shabby they had always looked amidst the racks of shoes and boots she had worn before. She was glad now she had kept the house-slippers though—they were something she had been able to take away with her, as the shoes and clothes that Markos had bought her had not.
She felt herself smile again, not painfully, but a smile that brought a softening to her eyes. High heels were a thing of the past in any case, and so were the flattering, beautiful clothes she’d worn for Markos. Now her sartorial needs were very different.
Comfortable, serviceable, practical—that was what she required.
Picking up her shoulder bag, she headed for the front door. Time for her daily constitutional—a brisk mile and back along the seafront. In the evening she would go swimming at the local public pool, doing steady lengths to keep her muscles toned and trim. Staying healthy was essential.
For a fleeting moment she remembered the luxuriously appointed private gym and the vast pool in the basement of Markos’s apartment block. Then she put the memory aside.
It was, like the rest of her time with him, irrelevant now.
Walking along the seafront in the warm sunshine, Vanessa gazed out over the sparkling sea. Her spirits could not fail to lift. People were strolling up and down, and on the beach children were playing. Her heart gave a little squeeze. Yes, this had been the right place to come to, a good choice. She could start her new life here, and as the years passed the pain would fade.
She lifted her chin. The pain had to fade. There was no alternative. The future was all she had now.
The past had gone completely. It would not come back, and nor would the person she had once been.
