Chapter Eight
‘KALIMéRA.’
Lifting his gaze from his book, Antaeus stared up at Cassie, suddenly and intensely aware of his heart beating in his chest and the warmth of his blood.
‘Good morning.’
‘Don’t get up.’ Her voice was cool and clear. She sat down on the sun lounger next to his, and he tried to ignore the current of electricity lighting up the space between them. Tried not to stare.
That swan-like composure was back in place, but as she inched into the shade, her eyes snapped to his for a quarter of a heartbeat. He saw that she was not smooth and cool all the way through.
But then, he wasn’t either. In fact, he felt like some clueless schoolboy with a crush on the most beautiful girl in the year above him.
‘Did you sleep okay?’ He meant after what had happened out here by the pool.
Remembering her tearful confession, he felt ashamed. He had judged her not as his father had been judged. There was no trial, no jury. He had been judge, jury and executioner.
But it was a kangaroo court. A mockery of justice, her guilt predetermined.
He had seen Cassie as a privileged princess, the daughter of his enemy and an extension of Henry and his crimes.
Blinded by his pain and the righteousness of his obsessive quest to avenge his father, he hadn’t seen the prison she was in.
Or that in carrying out the quiet, constant work of protecting someone she loved, she was the opposite of her father, not his mirror image.
He felt like a fool. Worse, he felt like a monster.
Cassie nodded, hair tumbling forward to hide her face. ‘I don’t remember getting upstairs. Efcharistó, Giota.’ As she smiled at the housekeeper, he felt a stab of pure envy, and then another of nostalgia as she added in slow, carefully enunciated Greek, ‘ítan pentanóstimo.’
His father had never bothered to teach him Greek. It was disarming to see her share the same struggle he had once faced.
Now she met his gaze. ‘Yesterday I mimed what I wanted to say, and Giota taught me the words.’
He stared at her in silence. Surprised, and yet not, because it was exactly the kind of thing Cassie would do. She wanted to communicate in the local language. A lot of people wouldn’t bother, but then, Cassie wasn’t like other people. She was curious, proactive, respectful, empathetic, humble.
As the list of her good qualities grew, Antaeus felt his body grow tenser.
‘So what happened?’ she asked.
‘When?’ He stared at her blankly.
‘Last night. I fell asleep outside, but I woke up my bed.’
‘It was getting light. I thought it would wake you up, so I carried you to your bedroom.’
‘The door was open.’
‘I was worried you might wake up and be upset. I wanted to make sure I could hear you.’
She blinked. ‘Thank you,’ she said after a moment. There was a flush to her cheeks that reminded him of how she had looked in his arms last night. Now his body was tense for a different reason.
‘And thank you for—just, thank you,’ she said after a moment. ‘You were kind. I know you must have been tempted to gloat.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. He could still hear her voice, that composure he’d taken as complacency trembling as she revealed the years of unspoken truths. ‘I wasn’t tempted to do that.’
In the silence that followed his remark, he was sure that she could read his mind. He desperately wanted to read hers.
‘Kyrie Tsiárta, aftó éftase gia esás.’ It was Giota. She was holding two glossy black shopping bags with an instantly recognizable gold geometric logo.
‘Thank you, Giota.’ He took both and then held them out to Cassie. ‘These are for you.’
‘For me?’ He watched her reach inside. ‘You got me a swimsuit. No, two swimsuits and a bikini.’
‘I didn’t know what you preferred.’’
‘You didn’t have to—’
‘I wanted to. I wanted you to be able to swim.’
‘Thank you… What’s this?’ Reaching into the second bag, her lips parted into a moue of surprise as she pulled out a pale green silk dress. ‘Oh my goodness, it’s lovely.’
Her stunned expression made something inside him crack open. Or maybe it was that soft smile of pleasure curving her mouth. ‘There should be some sandals in there too. Flats, not heels. I thought it would be difficult to walk on sand in heels.’
‘Sand?’
‘Tonight is Dionysia. It’s not something you see anywhere but Pelion.
It’s a tradition, passed down through the families that live here.
Once a year, local people come together to perform a Greek tragedy.
They aren’t actors. They’re farmers, fishermen, shopkeepers.
They take over one of the beaches, light it up with torches.
Hardly anyone knows about it, but for those who do—it’s a pilgrimage.
I always try to be here when it happens. ’
He saw her shoulders brace. ‘In other words, you want to watch a Greek tragedy, ergo I do too.’
The distance in her eyes was back, the soft light of moments earlier replaced with something guarded. And he hated himself then.
‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. I thought you might enjoy it. That’s why I want you to go with me. But it’s an invitation, not an order.’
Her face stilled. ‘You’re inviting me to go with you.’ She was still wary. But interested. He felt a flicker of hope.
‘I’m not going to force you, Cassie. That’s not what’s happening now.’
He could feel his heart running like crazy, lungs half empty.
There must have been something that mattered more to him, but he couldn’t imagine wanting anything as much as for Cassie to say yes.
And when finally she nodded, he felt his throat open with relief as he took her hand and pressed it to his mouth.
They spent the day lying by the pool, swimming, reading, talking and soaking up the sun until it started to sink towards the horizon and it was time to get ready for the play.
As they joined the people milling around on the torchlit beach, Antaeus felt his breath catch.
That whole encounter in the helicopter had a dreamlike quality, but it was also a sensory overload.
In contrast, watching Cassie earlier in her swimsuit was an exquisitely calibrated slow burn of pleasure and pain.
Now, though, in that dress, with the gentlest of breezes lifting her blond hair, he was simply humbled by her beauty.
And he was not alone.
In ancient Greece, people believed that their gods moved between earth and heaven. A tap on your front door might be Artemis or Aphrodite in human form. Tonight he understood why. Cassie had something of a goddess about her as she smiled and greeted people.
As usual, the performance had an intimacy that made the tragedy even more poignant. Watching Oedipus realise that he had failed to outrun his destiny, Antaeus felt his stomach clench.
It was a familiar story that echoed Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece. A hero, driven to pursue a prize that ultimately turned to ash. As the chorus sang, he pictured Jason in his final days, a king without a kingdom, alone. And his grandfather, hunched and bitter in his chair.
His gaze shifted to Cassie. She had suffered, too, yet she had not used that suffering as a motive to punish others. She had tried to get on with her life. And when finally she was in control of her destiny, he had come along and stamped her dreams to dust.
He felt shame and regret. It didn’t matter that he had dressed up his actions as a hero’s quest. He was the villain in her story. But unlike Oedipus and Jason, his story wasn’t finished yet.
They were both quiet on the journey back to the house. He knew Cassie had been deeply moved by the performance, and he wondered what she was thinking. But it wasn’t until they stopped outside her bedroom door that she turned and said quietly, ‘Thank you for taking me. It was extraordinary.’
To his astonishment, he saw that there were tears in her eyes. ‘It felt so real,’ she said. ‘I can see why you try to be here when it happens. Why living here means so much to you.’
‘I think I let it mean too much.’
The softness in her green eyes unhooked him from his body. He was amazed that she should care about him at all when he had done everything in his power to diminish her.
‘Antaeus?’ Her voice was soft, too, and its softness slipped between the barriers he’d kept between himself and the world for so long.
‘I didn’t think it would feel like this,’ he said slowly. ‘You being here.’
‘I thought it was all part of the plan.’
He shook his head. ‘I brought you to Greece to make your life hard.’ His gaze pulled away to the darkness as it had done in the helicopter.
‘Bringing you here was an impulse. The plan was to take your business, but then it didn’t feel like enough.
All my life, I’d been told that the rage I felt would go if I punished Henry.
There would be this cathartic sense of justice, a feeling of triumph.
Only it didn’t happen. So I kept chasing it, kept pushing you, trying to get that feeling. ’
‘But you didn’t.’
He shook his head. ‘Because the rage wasn’t mine. It was my dad’s, then my grandfather’s. When I moved to Greece, my grandfather’s pain and fury were so raw, so unfiltered. I saw it, but I didn’t feel it. Honestly, it scared me.’
Catching sight of Cassie’s face, he broke off. Why was he making this her problem? ‘But none of that matters now. It’s all in the past.’
Except it wasn’t. His eyes moved to her face, hearing her unspoken words.
‘When did it change?’ she said quietly.
He cleared his throat. ‘I can’t remember. I don’t remember when his bitterness became mine. There was no big decision. It just seeped into my bones until it was all I knew.’
Incrementally over time, it had become inescapable. Papou was too old to punish Henry Appleton, so it fell to Antaeus. Like the flow of water in a river, his path had been chosen by the currents in play, driven by the irresistible force of his grandfather’s need for vengeance.
‘When my father went to prison, I didn’t want to avenge him. I hated him for leaving me and for what it did to my mum. But my grandfather got in my head. And there wasn’t anyone else.’