Chapter Seventeen
Twelve Days Later…
Konstantinos held the final divorce decree in his hand.
For twelve days, he’d been waiting for this.
Expedited it under Greek law. For his marriage to be stamped void.
Over. For the document in his hand to ease the pressure on his lungs—to let him breathe.
But still, he couldn’t draw breath deep enough.
Still, he walked. He’d been walking every day, visited every hermitage on the island. And he couldn’t find it. Air.
He hadn’t left the island.
He hadn’t checked the press.
He hadn’t looked for her.
His lungs squeezed.
He was all alone. The island was his self-imposed prison. He understood this was what he deserved now.
Forever second best.
Forever abandoned.
He was to be forever alone.
His step quickened. He didn’t know where he was going. Where he’d end up. It was the same every day. Through the trees and over the clifftops he walked. He searched for what the island promised. What the monks had called it when they had made it their home so long ago.
Salvation.
The trees rustled.
He stopped. Looked down at what they guarded.
His son.
He wasn’t alone on the island.
Tentacles slithered. He didn’t cut them down at the root. He let them drop him to his knees. Let them squeeze out whatever air remained in his lungs. And on his knees, Konstantinos remained. Looking at the white headstone. At his name.
Isaak Ariti.
The pain in his gut doubled him over.
Pain. It followed him. It was his punishment. For letting his mother die. And so they—the gods, the fates, whatever stood jury and executioner above him in a world he could not see, but knew was there—had taken Isaak to punish him. And in turn he had hurt her.
Konstantinos didn’t fight it. He lay down on the neat grass. Lay down with him. His son. He touched the tiny flowers placed in the vase. Wild flowers. Pink. Purple. Blue.
He’d failed them all, because however hard he’d tried to protect them, he hadn’t been able to.
‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed heavily. He reached out—traced the gold-embossed letters. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.’
It hit him. Grief. Thick and overwhelming, it cloaked him. A visceral darkness that pummelled his every sense. It was everything he remembered, this grief. It choked him, as it had the day he’d held his mother in his arms…
Konstantinos let it take him.
Emotions—so many of them—thumped at his skin—his body.
This grief, it was real.
Isaak…
He was real.
A tear slipped free.
Konstantinos let it fall.
His son deserved his tears.
He deserved his father to recognise him.
Because denying his grief—it was denying his existence.
‘I waited for you to breathe,’ he told his son. ‘I didn’t believe them. I did not believe you could be given to me and taken away before I had time to do it right. Protect you. Raise you. Love you.’
His chest split in half. ‘I pretended I didn’t care. I pretended I had not touched your small toes. Your fingers. I pretended the box I carried here was empty. I am sorry I denied you. You are my son, Isaak. My first born…’
He sat up. Kissed the white stone. ‘I am sorry I did not grieve for you. I love you,’ he whispered. ‘And your mother, she—she loves you.’
He closed his eyes.
God, forgive him.
What had he done?
He’d denied his grief. He had not let her have hers. Because he had told her their baby—his death—was nothing. He had denied her grief. He had denied her love. And why? For control?
His chest caught fire. And he knew what burnt inside him.
It was ferocious, so hot did it burn. It hurt him.
He knew why it hurt now. Why it had hurt when she’d disappeared.
Why he’d stopped everything to find her.
Why he’d demanded she stay. Why he’d played all those games to keep her.
It was not for his image. Or his reputation.
He loved his wife.
Konstantinos understood it now.
He understood everything.
So unafraid was she of her feelings. To let them take her. She was strong. Strong in ways he couldn’t be. Would never let himself be. Because he’d seen what feeling could do. His mother, she’d felt too much. She could not compartmentalise. And it had destroyed her.
He would not let himself be destroyed by…emotion.
He would not let himself…feel.
And yet, he felt.
His skin ached as if he had the flu.
His throat was scraped raw.
Bile rose in his mouth. He’d used mind games. Manipulated her. Turned her honesty—her vulnerability—into a weapon. Turned her love against her.
He didn’t know how to fix what he’d done…
Poppy, she deserved more.
She deserved to know the truth.
He owed her that.
He owed Isaak too.
Forty-Eight Hours Later…
‘To new beginnings.’
Poppy looked at Léon’s raised glass. The deep red wine within it. Her feet curled beneath her on the sofa, she shifted her bottom forward so she could reach his outstretched glass from where he sat in his wheelchair beside her. She raised her glass. Silently, she clinked it to his.
‘It will ease,’ he said, taking a sip. ‘Time—it’s a strange thing, Poppy. It lets us…heal. Never fully, but it changes us,’ he said, and she wanted to oppose his statement.
Time, it did nothing but turn pain into a numbness. But she was never without it. It just changed form. Grief. There was no medicine for it. No surgery to cut it out.
‘It opens us to the possibility of change,’ he continued. ‘Soon you’ll see, this, your divorce, is a new beginning.’
She smiled. She understood he knew grief.
She knew he’d opened his home to her again as his friend.
She knew tonight he’d told them to set the fire alight to warm her as he had every night since she’d been here.
She knew he understood she didn’t want to be alone, so he sat with her when the night closed in.
When her loneliness was most acute. When still she missed him.
Konstantinos had been generous in the settlement. The Paris apartment was hers. It had been hers from the moment she’d left the island. The lawyer had contacted the lawyer appointed for her by Konstantinos.
She was sure there were implications there of her ex-husband providing her with legal counsel.
But she understood he hadn’t wanted to talk to her.
And she hadn’t been ready to talk to him.
She hadn’t wanted anything from him. She hadn’t needed legal representation, yet he’d ensured she had enough money to be financially secure forever.
The island they would share, because of Isaak.
He required forty-eight hours’ notice if she wanted to go and he’d accommodate her, and it was expected she’d do the same for him.
It was all fair.
All wrapped up with neat little bows.
It was over. Their separation was official. Unofficially, in the secret place inside her heart…it would never be over. She didn’t know what to do with that. There was no closure incoming. There was only the regret of what-ifs.
Tomorrow, maybe the next day, or the next, she’d figure it out.
But right now, she just wanted to sit with it.
Feel it. The loss of what could have been.
She wasn’t scared these feelings would take her under.
She’d been under, and she’d made it out.
She was a survivor, and she’d keep on surviving.
One day, maybe she’d learn how to thrive.
But today, tomorrow…she was okay to just… be.
She took a sip of her wine.
The lounge was a beautiful room. Not one where visitors were allowed.
This was the place where Léon had spent time with his family, doing all the things normal families did.
It hurt her to be in here with him. It filled her full of yearning, but it also stroked something inside her.
Made her hunker down into the plush cushions of the sofa.
It made her…warm.
‘A little TV, I think…’ Léon reached for the remote.
Poppy half turned and placed her glass on the tall table of oak. ‘Sounds good.’
The TV was cleverly disguised as an ornate gold mirror, so the pretty moving pictures were not the focal point. So in this room conversations could happen. Books could be taken from the shelves. Stories could be shared.
Poppy had no more stories. Books—she couldn’t concentrate long enough. And so it had become a kind of ritual. To fill the silence with a hum, while they just sat together. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn’t.
The reflective glass changed to an image.
Two chairs sat opposite each other on the screen. It resembled a lounge, with cream rugs and armchairs. Poppy knew this show. Anna Talks.
Anna walked onto the stage. Her suit as neutral as the set.
Beige. Hands waving at a crowd the camera zoomed out to capture as they all applauded her.
Poppy liked this show. She liked how at first it seemed frivolous.
Just moving pictures, celebrities, politicians, on some kind of promotional tour.
But Anna, her questions were always so simple, but they got responses no one expected.
A live show, it wasn’t rehearsed or scripted. She went deeper. Beyond the interviewee’s public status. She brought her guests to life. Showed the human beneath their too bright smiles.
It was escapist TV. She got to focus on someone else’s life—their problems—rather than her own.
Anna took her seat. ‘Today we welcome a tycoon who has been in the press for numerous reasons.’ Her eyes sparkled at the camera, as if she knew a secret and so did the audience. They chuckled.
‘He’s won many prestigious awards for his due diligence in the workplace for mental health.
And most recently, his personal life. Never before has he given an interview…
Please, let us welcome—’ she raised her hands, turned her attention to the obscured glass doors that would welcome her guest ‘—Mr Konstantinos Ariti!’