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‘Most stories are.’
He was staring at her, but it was as though he were looking right through her, and suddenly Marnie found herself wishing they were making love again or that she’d let him fix her that drink after all. Something which might have distracted him long enough to change his mind about telling her this. Because wasn’t that the trouble when you found out more about someone—that you might not necessarily like what you heard? That once you had started exchanging confidences it changed the nature of a relationship and meant you might never be able to return to an earlier, easier place? Wasn’t there the fear that he might expect her to tell him stuff about herself?
And she could never risk that happening.
She swallowed down the lump in her throat, knowing it would be better to halt the conversation right now. Make an excuse to leave their sex-rumpled bed to get them a drink or something and hope that he’d forgotten about it by the time she returned.
But it was too late for any U-turn. She could feel the rough brush of his thigh against hers as he changed position on the bed and turned to face her, his handsome features hard as granite, with an expression she’d never seen there before. ‘My mother died when I was sixteen,’ he began.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but she spoke with almost exaggerated care, because life with mothers was not her favourite topic. ‘What happened?’
‘She had cancer for a long time.’ He paused. ‘A fact made worse by the fact she didn’t tell me how bad it was. She pretended there was nothing wrong right up until the end and by the time I found out...’
She saw and heard the pain as his words faded out and wished she could take it away. ‘I think terminal illness was handled very differently when we were growing up,’ she said, with some degree of calm. ‘They tried to protect children from the truth without recognising the damage they were doing in the process. Didn’t your father say anything to you, or did he collude with her?’
He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t a case of collusion. They barely spoke. He was never around and I don’t think he particularly cared what happened to her,’ he said, and now she could hear a different kind of bitterness in his voice. ‘It was his second marriage and not a particularly happy one, but at that stage in his life I don’t think he had the appetite for another divorce. So he just carried on seeing his long-term mistress and once my mother had died, he married her.’
She took a moment to absorb this. ‘So what was that like? For you?’
He turned away from her, lying on his back to stare up at the ceiling—but not before Marnie had seen the flicker of something unbearably bleak in his eyes. It was only afterwards that she realised it was disgust.
‘It was hell,’ he said bitterly. ‘She...’
‘She what?’ she prompted softly.
‘My stepmother was a very beautiful woman and very conscious of that fact, in the way that beautiful women sometimes are,’ he said. ‘My father was in his fifties when I was born, so by the time he remarried, he was relatively old.’
‘While you were just on the brink of manhood,’ she observed. ‘I’m guessing the atmosphere in the house wasn’t great.’
‘It was toxic. There were warped undercurrents everywhere you moved and you wouldn’t need to be a genius to work out what happened.’ He turned back towards her. ‘Or rather, what my stepmother intended to happen.’
She didn’t like what she could see in his eyes now, but she could hardly deny the truth when it was staring her in the face. ‘She...’ Marnie’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. ‘She wanted you?’
He nodded. ‘Oh, she wanted me, all right. It was a silent form of seduction, conducted in total secrecy. Lingering glances which used to make my flesh crawl. She used to slide her tongue over her lips whenever she stared at me and she stared at me a lot. Nobody but me would have known it was happening, but I knew. It’s what made me despise women who use and abuse their sexuality.’ His words were tight and clipped. ‘I kept away from the house as much as I could, but soon my absences started to be noticed. My father wanted to know why I was never there.’
‘And you couldn’
t tell him, I suppose.’
‘Of course I couldn’t tell him. It would have ruined him. Smashed his pride and his ego, and no way did I hate him enough to want to do that.’ He gave a contemptuous laugh. ‘I don’t think he would have believed me anyway—for what man likes to believe he’s being cuckolded? The upshot was that I felt like a stranger in my own house. As if I were trespassing within the hallowed sanctuary of their marital home—and my father reinforced that feeling in his attitude towards me. Maybe I reminded him too much of the wife he had cheated on, or maybe on some subliminal level he did guess what my stepmother’s intentions were.’ A muscle began to work at his temple. ‘All I know is that he was totally in thrall to that woman in a way I’ve never forgotten, nor wanted to replicate.’
His words unsettled her—sent alarm bells ringing—but Marnie told herself this wasn’t about her, or her insipient fears about their relationship. ‘Don’t they call it the young lion syndrome?’ she questioned slowly. ‘Who is driven out of the pack by the older, jealous male.’
‘I guess.’
She took the opportunity to snuggle up to him. ‘So what did you do?’
‘I took the route of disenchanted sons the world over and ran away to America. To Chicago, which has a big Greek community. I found myself a job and a mentor who told me what I needed to do. And with his backing, eventually I got lucky.’
‘That sounds a very modest assessment, Leon,’ she said, drawing a circle over his belly with the tip of her finger.
‘Are you implying that I’m usually immodest?’ he mocked, shifting his weight slightly to give her better access.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it!’ Her face grew serious. ‘But now you’re reconciled with him? You must be, if you’re going to his wedding.’
He shrugged. ‘In theory—though it was never a total severing of relations, for that would have caused gossip and I had no desire to bring shame upon the family name. Whenever I visited my homeland I made sure I saw him, though I never visited the family house because I didn’t want to run into my stepmother. But there was a definite thawing when he finally divorced her on grounds of infidelity.’ He let out a frustrated sigh. ‘And then came the news that he was planning to marry a woman in her twenties. Nearly sixty years his junior this time round.’
‘And he wants you there.’
