Chapter Seventeen #2
Poppy’s blood roared. It drowned out the applause booming as the doors opened. He didn’t smile. He didn’t wave back at the audience. He walked towards his host, and sat down in the chair designated for him.
He wasn’t dressed in a suit. He was…casual. Dark blue jeans, a round-necked black jumper. His hair, it curled around his ears. His usually clean-shaven cheeks hidden behind a beard.
Anna stretched her hand out. ‘Welcome.’
Konstantinos did the same. ‘Thank you for having me, Anna.’
Their hands fell.
Poppy’s heart raced as she watched Anna do what she did with every guest. She paused for a little too long.
She looked at her guest as if she saw them.
Saw beneath whatever script they usually gave to their host, and she was waiting for them to forget it.
Their rehearsed words. To forget their lies and give her only the truth.
‘How are you, Konstantinos?’ she asked.
He didn’t move. Konstantinos sat there as still as stone, absorbing her question. ‘I want,’ he said, and he paused.
The tiny pause, the tiny hesitation, it made Poppy’s heart pump.
‘I want,’ he said again, ‘to tell you I’m okay, Anna.’
‘But you’re not?’
‘No.’
Anna didn’t push. Didn’t ask him why not. She waited.
And so did Poppy.
‘I am sad, Anna.’
‘And it’s important for you to tell us this? Why?’
‘The truth,’ he said, ‘it is power, and for so long I have not been truthful. I’ve said the right words. Won awards for teaching others it is okay not to be okay.’
‘And why was that important for you to do?’
‘My mother.’ He swallowed. ‘She wasn’t well.
She was…mentally ill. She took her own life because no one reached out to help her.
Not my father. He thought her sickness was a weakness.
He locked her away from the public when her health deteriorated.
He left her with me. Trusted me to take care of her. ’
‘Do you blame yourself for your mother’s death, Konstantinos?’
‘I couldn’t protect her.’
‘How do you think you failed her?’
‘I… I wasn’t a strong swimmer. I panicked,’ he admitted. ‘She drowned.’
‘Her death,’ she said. ‘It made you believe you had to save everyone? Protect them?’
‘Yes.’ His teeth gritted. ‘I grew up, Anna, believing it was my job to protect everyone. I created an environment where my people knew I would look after them. They were not scared to ask for help.’
‘Are you asking for help now?’
Konstantinos’s jaw turned to granite. ‘All my life, I never asked for help.’ His fingers curled around the ends of the armrests.
Anna stayed silent. Let the weight of Konstantinos’s words hang in the air. Until everyone felt it. The unbearable weight on his shoulders.
A broken sound fell from Poppy’s lips.
‘My father was a man who did not allow for weakness,’ he explained.
‘Image was everything. His reputation… He was in control of all things. He kept control of everything in any way he could. He taught me to do the same. To be strong. I was taught emotion was weakness. I had to bury my—my feelings. Or…’
‘Or?’ The single-worded question was soft, not demanding. It encouraged Konstantinos—the audience—to believe it was just him and her. The talk show a safe place to confess. Everything.
‘If I let myself feel…if I let myself cry—grieve—for my mother…it would make me weak. And weakness was death. When my son died, I did the same. I did not cry. I did not grieve. I was everything I was taught to be. Strong—’ His voice broke and so did something inside Poppy.
‘I’m sorry you lost your mother, Konstantinos.’
‘I am, too,’ he said thickly.
‘And your son,’ she added. ‘I can’t imagine. I’m so sorry.’
Poppy held her breath.
‘I pretended his death meant nothing,’ he admitted roughly. ‘But it was…everything. It took the separation from my wife for me to realise how much pain I was in.’
Tension corded his throat.
It curled around her heart and held it. His slip. He’d called her his wife, not his ex.
It wasn’t over for him, either.
Anna caught it too.
‘Your wife?’ she asked, so gently did she guide him.
‘Poppy,’ he said.
‘Tell us about her?’
‘I hurt her,’ he confessed. ‘My inability to grieve. To feel… I wanted to be strong for her. Strong in all the ways I hadn’t been able to be for my mother.
I needed to protect my wife. But I couldn’t stop Isaak from dying.
I could not take away her grief. And, however illogical, I blamed myself for the death of our son.
I blamed myself for my wife’s grief. Her pain. ’
‘Do you still blame yourself?’
‘I will work through this, Anna, with a therapist.’ Lips compressed, Konstantinos shook his head.
‘But I understand now, to confront the irrationality of my thoughts I need to be honest. I am not okay, Anna. I am grieving. Deeply. For my mother. For my son. For the end of my marriage. I am grieving for the marriage I could have had.’
Anna didn’t hit him with a follow-up. She waited for him to carry on, to tell his truth and for the world to hear him. To see this powerful man own his feelings. His mistakes. His regret. His grief.
And it was powerful. Poppy could feel it inside that studio. Inside the room with her.
‘Poppy, she is stronger than I could ever be. She isn’t afraid to feel.
She is not afraid to let the world know how deeply she does.
She does not care about image or reputations.
She loves. And to love is sometimes pain, but it’s the root of everything…
good. I want to do good in the world,’ he told Anna.
‘I want my son’s—Isaak’s—death to change me for the better.
I want to feel all the things I have never let myself feel.
I want to grieve. I want the world to know I—I love him. ’
He closed his eyes.
The camera zoomed in.
Poppy wanted to reach through the screen—drag him into her arms. Hold him.
He opened his eyes. So dark, so black. So vulnerable.
He looked into the camera. And she felt he looked at her. Only her.
‘I love my wife.’
The camera zoomed out.
‘I know you have something to share with us,’ Anna said. ‘Would you like to share that now?’
‘I would.’ Konstantinos swallowed. ‘Going live tomorrow is a new foundation. The Ariti Group will be funding it. I will fund it,’ he corrected.
‘It is called Isaak’s Foundation. It is for those who have lost—for those who still love.
It will help families stay together in their grief.
It will give them the tools to…to grieve. It will be Isaak’s legacy.’
The crowd burst into applause.
Poppy stood. Her mind buzzed with too many incoherent thoughts. Too many threads she couldn’t connect. He’d gone on telly and shattered his reputation. The image he wanted everyone to believe. That he was unbreakable.
He was breaking right there on the television. He was grieving. Allowing himself to admit their baby was someone. His death meant something. It meant something to him. And she wasn’t with him. She was not there. Holding his hand. Holding him.
She should never have left the island.
She should have stayed and just been there. For him.
He loved her.
‘The car is waiting for you outside.’
‘What?’ she breathed. She’d forgotten about Léon.
‘The car will take you to him.’
Her heart raced.
‘It’s a live recording near to here. Save your marriage, Poppy. Family, it is all we have. All that matters. Love him. Let him love you.’
Love. It was all she ever wanted.
She leant down and kissed Léon’s cheek.
He reached for her hand. Squeezed it. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Now.’
Poppy ran.