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‘We met,’ he said. ‘And after a while he showed me some photos. The first—’ His voice cracked slightly. ‘The first photos I’d ever seen of her.’
She nodded. Swallowed. ‘What were they like?’
He tipped his head and looked up at the ceiling. ‘She was very beautiful—even in the later shots. She had this thick black hair and the most amazing blue eyes.’
‘Like yours, you mean?’
He gave a wry smile as he looked at her again. ‘That’s right. Just like mine.’ It had been beyond strange to see the physical evidence of somebody he’d only ever heard about in the most negative terms. A woman in a cotton dress, glinting at the sun—her face filled with an unmistakable sadness.
‘And what was your brother like?’
Ellie’s words broke into his thoughts and Alek opened his mouth to answer but the most articulate person in the world would’ve had difficulty expressing the conflicting feelings which had torn through him when he’d seen his twin brother for the first time.
‘He looks like me,’ he said, at last.
‘Your twin brother looks like you? You don’t say!’
And unexpectedly, he began to laugh—her quip doing the impossible and taking some of the heat out of the situation. He thought about how he’d felt when he’d walked into the famous hotel and seen a black-haired man with a face so scarily like his own, staring back at him from the other side of the restaurant. He remembered the overpowering sense of recognition which had rocked him and momentarily robbed him of breath.
‘His name is Loukas but his eyes are black,’ he said. ‘Not blue.’
And that had been the only physical difference he’d been able to see, although after the second bottle of wine Loukas had told him about the scars which tracked over his back, and what had caused them. He’d told him a lot of stuff. Some of which was hard to hear. Some he’d wanted instantly to forget. About a mother who had been a congenitally bad picker of men, and the sorry way that had influenced her life. About his poverty-stricken childhood—so different from Alek’s, but not without its own problems. Dark problems which Loukas had told him he would save for another day.
‘Had he been trying to find you for a long time?’ Ellie whispered.
He shook his head. ‘He only discovered that I existed last year, when his...our...mother died.’
‘Oh, Alek.’
He shook his head, unprepared for the rush of emotion, wanting to stem it, in case it made him do what he’d been trying very hard not to do all day. He cleared his throat and concentrated on the facts.
‘She left behind a long letter, explaining why she’d done what she’d done. She said she knew she couldn’t live with my father any more—that his rages and infidelities were becoming intolerable. She had no money and no power—she was essentially trapped on his island. She thought he would blight the lives of all three of us if she stayed, but she also knew that there was no way she could cope with two babies. And so she...she chose Loukas.’
She nodded, not saying anything and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to ask it, but of course she asked it. This was Ellie, after all.
‘How did she choose?’
Another silence. ‘She tossed a coin.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice was very quiet. ‘Oh, I see.’
He gave a bitter laugh. He wasn’t a man given to flights of fancy but he’d vividly imagined that moment just before she’d walked out of the house for good. He’d wanted his brother to lie; to invent a fairy story. To tell him that she’d chosen Loukas because he had been weaker, or because she thought that Alek would fare better because he was two minutes older and a pound heavier. Or because Loukas had cried at the last minute and it had torn at her heartstrings. But no. It was something much more prosaic than that. His fate and the fate of his brother being decided by a coin spinning in the air, until it landed on the back of her hand and she covered it with her palm. What had she thought as she’d lifted her hand to see which boy would be going with her, and which boy would be left behind? Did she find it easy to walk away from him?
‘My mother flipped a coin and I l
ost out,’ he said.
Another silence. A much longer one this time.
‘You know she did it because she loved you?’ she said suddenly. ‘You do realise that?’
He raised his head, barely noticing the salty prickling at the backs of his eyes. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘She did it because she loved you,’ she repeated, more fiercely. ‘She must have done. She must have been out of her head with worry—knowing that she could barely look after one baby, let alone two. And if she’d taken you both, he would have come after you. He definitely would. She must have thought your father would be glad to have been left with one son, and that he’d love you as best he could. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t—for reasons you’ll probably never know. But what you have to do, is to stop thinking that because of what happened you’re unlovable—because you aren’t. You need to accept that you’re very lovable indeed, if only you’d stop shutting people out. Our baby is going to love you, that’s for sure. And I’ve got so much love in my heart that I’m bursting to give you—if only you’ll let me. Oh, darling. Darling. It’s all right. It’s all right. Oh, Alek—come here.’ Her eyes began to blur. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
She put her arms around him and he did what he’d been trying not to do all day, which was to cry. He cried the tears he’d never cried before. Tears of loneliness and pain, which eventually gave way to the realisation that he was free at last. Free of the past and all its dark tentacles. He had let it go and Ellie had helped him do that.
His hand was shaking as he smoothed the pale hair away from her face and looked at her.
