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Chapter12
ALMOST AS SOON AS Phoebe and Konstantinos had met, they’d bonded over their grief. Neither was used to sharing, but they each found something in the other that called to them, at just the right moment, and against all odds, they opened up to one another. In a way that defied explanation, they’d been kindred spirits.
Phoebe spoke about Dale, and the loss of his life, but more achingly, the loss of his hope, how her father had beaten it out of him, and Konstantinos spoke of Valentina, the daughter he’d lost when she was only five years old. Without her, their family had never been complete again. He blamed himself, and whenever he saw the pain in his wife’s eyes, he felt rage, because he wasn’t able to make it better. He never could. They had Leonidas, Valentina’s twin, and instead of being able to know gratitude for him, Konstantinos had struggled with feelings of rejection. Why had one twin lived when the other died? How could they keep going, with a Valentina hole in their lives?
Phoebe had thought that coming to England would help her to escape her grief, to outrun it, but it hadn’t. Konstantinos had helped her understand that grief never left you. Eventually, you learned to live alongside it, but never easily, never without pain.
He was right.
And she felt it even more now.
Every morning she woke as though she were drowning, sitting upright, struggling to breathe, her mind casting around for why there was such darkness on the periphery or her vision, and then she remembered, like a cement truck crashing down on her.
She’d fallen in love with a man who’d seen the worst in her, who’d refused to love her back. She’d slept with him, and she’d done the only thing she could—left him—but that didn’t mean she’d stopped loving him.
Life became like a strange two-dimensional image. She stepped through her days as if in grayscale, going from home, to work, and back. She avoided Mrs Langham, didn’t go to the galleries, didn’t speak to anyone.
She was weary. Wearied by life, by loss and love, and by grief.
For weeks, she existed as a shadow person, half hoping she could fade away completely, when all her light had finally dimmed.
* * *
“Tasso?”
His mother, wearing a loose, black dress, seemed to float towards him, an anxious smile on her face. He braced, as he had every time they’d been near one another. He hated that Konstantinos had cheated on her, he hated that he knew, and his mother didn’t. And that he couldn’t tell her. At least, not yet. Not when she looked so weak and desperate.
She took the seat beside him, sighing softly. “I didn’t expect you to stay so long.”
It had been a week. At least, that’s what his iPhone told him. He’d lost count of the days, and the nights. He closed his eyes against the memories that had been tormenting him, and worst of all, the guilt that was chewing through his stomach.
“Nor did I.”
“Something’s bothering you.”
“I’m just busy,” he denied, because how could he put his own worries on his mother?
“You thrive on being busy. That’s your preferred state. This is different; you’re brooding.”
“Am I?” He turned to face her, unaware of the tension that radiated off him.
“Something’s happened?”
“Not particularly.”
“Is it your father?”
He shook his head, turning back to the view, looking out to sea.
“He used to love it here.” She pressed a hand into the seat, her smile misty. “He said it reminded him of when he was a young boy.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a lot about your father you didn’t know,” she said quietly.
Anastasios turned to his mother, an alarm bell sounding. Was it possible she already knew? That all of this had been for nothing?
“There were things in his past he was ashamed of, no matter how many times I told him he didn’t need to be. Things I wish he’d shared with you boys. It might have helped you to understand why he was always so hard on you.”
