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‘Have a bath,’ he said, and dumped half a bottle of expensive bath foam into the tub. ‘Then we’ll talk.’
A bath sounded heavenly and Lindsay was grateful for the reprieve from any conversation. Antonios left the room and she stripped out of her ruined dress and sank into the steaming water frothing with bubbles, feeling utterly overwhelmed.
For the three months of their marriage she’d kept it together better than that. She’d hidden it better, at least from his family, and even from Antonios. Now, the very first day, the first occasion she’d had to panic, she had. Utterly. She wondered what Antonios’s family thought of her now. What he thought of her. She wished she was too tired to care, but the truth was she hated—had always hated—the thought of him knowing her weakness. It was what had made it so difficult to tell him in the first place. Now she felt a fist of fear clench in her stomach at the thought that he knew, even though it didn’t matter. They didn’t have a relationship any more.
After half an hour soaking in the tub she felt a little better, although wanting nothing but to sleep, and she got out and swathed herself in one of the huge terrycloth robes hanging from the door. She combed her hair and brushed her teeth and, with nothing left to do, she opened the door, throwing back her shoulders as she went to face Antonios.
He was sprawled on the sofa in the living room, a tumbler of whisky in one hand, the moonlight streaming through the sliding glass doors washing him in silver.
He turned his head to gaze at her fathomlessly as she came into the room; Lindsay braced herself for the questions. The accusations. He spoke only one word.
‘Why?’
His voice was so bleak and desolate that Lindsay had to fight back an ache of regret and sorrow. ‘Why what?’ she asked and he took a long swallow of whisky, shaking his head.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She sank onto the sofa opposite him. ‘I’ve told you, I tried—’
‘I don’t recall ever hearing you mention agoraphobia, Lindsay.’
She plucked at a loose thread on the dressing gown. ‘Maybe I didn’t get that far.’
‘And why didn’t you? If I’d had any idea of how much you were suffering, I might have understood more. Listened more—’
‘Listened more? You didn’t listen at all, Antonios. You left for a business trip two days after we arrived in Greece.’
His mouth tightened. ‘It was necessary.’
‘Of course it was.’
‘You never protested—’
‘Actually, I did. I asked why you had to leave so soon, and you told me it was important. You practically patted my head before you left. Why didn’t you just hand me a lollipop while you were at it?’ The words surprised her, yet they felt right. Antonios’s gaze narrowed.
‘Are you implying that I was patronizing towards you?’
‘Oh, well done, you get a gold star. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m implying.’ The anger she felt now took her by surprise. She was so used to feeling guilty and ashamed about her own deficiency, but this felt cleaner. Stronger. And she needed to be strong.
Antonios was silent for a long moment. ‘I didn’t mean to be patronizing,’ he said at last. ‘But I don’t see how that has anything to do with you not telling me—’
‘Don’t you? Can’t you see how it might be just a little bit difficult to tell your husband of one week that you have a debilitating condition when all he does is tell you over and over everything is going to be fine, just give it time, and insists you have nothing to worry about?’
‘In normal circumstances, that would be true—’
‘You think so? You think most wives get whisked off to a country where they don’t speak the language—’
‘Everyone in my family speaks English.’
‘The staff don’t. The staff I was meant to supervise for a dinner party less than a week after I arrived!’
The skin around Antonios’s mouth went white. ‘I thought I was giving you an honour, as mistress of the household, to plan—’
‘Yet you never asked if I wanted to be mistress of your household. Never asked me what I wanted from life, from marriage.’ She shook her head, weariness replacing her anger. ‘Perhaps I should have spoken up more, Antonios. Perhaps I should have told you the truth more plainly. But I did try, even if you didn’t see it.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I tried as hard as I could, considering how overwhelmed I felt.’
‘Drowning,’ he reminded her quietly, and she nodded.
‘Yes, it felt like I was drowning. Like I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t function—’
‘And I didn’t see this.’ He didn’t sound disbelieving, more just wondering. ‘Did you have panic attacks like the one you had tonight when we were together?’ She nodded, and he shook his head. ‘How? How could I have missed that?’
‘I tried to hide it, from your family. From you.’
‘So you were trying to tell me and hide from me at the same time.’
Which made his aggravation understandable. ‘I suppose I was.’
He let out a long, weary sigh and then leaned forward, his head bowed as he raked his hands through his hair. ‘Tell me,’ he said after a moment, his voice low. ‘Tell me about your...condition.’
‘You saw for yourself.’
‘Tell me everything. Tell me how it started, how you’ve coped...’ He looked up, his expression determined even as Lindsay saw an agony in his eyes. She ached for him, for herself, for them. If only things had been different. If she’d been stronger, braver. If only Antonios had listened more...
Or was it absurd to think things could have been different, that a mere action or word could have changed things for the better? The failure of their marriage hadn’t happened, she knew, because of a simple lack of communication. It went deeper than that, to who they both were fundamentally and what they’d expected from life, from love.
But, even if their marriage was over, she could still give Antonios the answers he asked for. Maybe it would provide a certain sense of closure for both of them.
‘I was always a shy child,’ she began slowly. ‘Definitely an introvert. I had a bit of a stammer, and I used to get stomach aches over going to school.’ Antonios nodded, his gaze alert and attentive, more so than ever before, and she continued. ‘My mother came from a family of famous academics. Her father was a physicist who travelled the world, giving lectures, and her mother was an English professor who wrote literary novels, very well received. I think she thought when she married my father, a mathematics professor, that her life would be like that.’
‘And it wasn’t?’
Lindsay shook her head. ‘My father liked his work, but he didn’t want to be some famous academic. My mother dropped out of graduate school when she fell pregnant with me, and I think maybe...maybe she resented me for that.’
Antonios frowned. ‘Surely she could have gone back to school, if she’d wanted.’
‘Maybe she did go back, eventually,’ Lindsay answered. ‘I wouldn’t know. She walked out on me—on us—when I was nine.’
Antonios’s gaze widened as it swept over her. ‘You never told me that.’
‘I suppose there are a lot of things I didn’t tell you, Antonios.’ Lindsay felt her throat thicken and she blinked rapidly. ‘I don’t...I don’t like to talk about my mother.’
‘So you became more anxious after she left?’
‘Yes—but I was already suffering from panic attacks before then. She used to hold these sort of literary salons—she’d invite a bunch of academics over to our house and they’d talk about lofty things, books and philosophy and the like. It all went over my head. But she’d always call me into the room before bed and try to show me off, make me recite a poem or something in front of everyone. I think she wanted to prove to them she wasn’t wasting her life, being a stay-at-home mother.’
‘And you didn’t like that.’
‘I hated it, but I was also desperate to please her. I’d spend hours memorizing poems, but then when I got in front of everyone my mind would go blank. Sometimes I’d start to hyperventilate. My mother would be so disappointed in me she wouldn’t talk to me, sometimes for days.’ She still remembered sitting at the kitchen table, swamped in misery, while her mother maintained an icy silence, sipping her coffee.
Shock blazed in Antonios’s eyes. ‘Lindsay, that’s awful. Didn’t your father notice?’
‘A bit, I think, but he was immersed in his research and teaching. And I didn’t tell him how bad it was because I felt so ashamed.’
‘And is that why you didn’t tell me?’ Antonios asked quietly. ‘Because you felt ashamed?’
‘Maybe,’ Lindsay allowed. Her feelings about her anxiety and Antonios and their time in Greece were all tangled up—frustration and fear, anger and guilt. And, yes, shame. ‘I’ve worked hard as an adult to control my anxiety, and even to accept it as part of me, but I know back then my mother was ashamed of me.’ A lump formed in her throat, making the next words hard to form, to say. ‘It’s why she left.’
