after Charlotte.’
‘Her personal situation is not for me to discuss.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘Perhaps you should ask her.’
‘I would, had I her number. I assume it was a work phone?’
‘I’ll ring her,’ Nico offered, ‘ask if she is okay with me giving her number to you.’
‘Please, don’t.’ Zander stood. ‘I just want to know that everything is okay. I don’t want to make contact …’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Zander said, and again did not qualify, for how could he confide, how could he say what he was feeling, and who on God’s earth would understand?
‘Why would you not want to speak with her?’
‘Because it was just …’ He couldn’t even say it, could not relegate it to a one-night stand, so instead he sat in silence and the discomfort became unbearable. There was no relief to be had when Nico changed the subject.
‘I spoke with our mother …’
‘Good for you,’ Zander said, and now he wanted out, he wanted to be gone.
‘She had her reasons …’
‘She’s had many years to get her story straight.’ Zander’s heart was black and he knew it, far, far too black for the light that was Charlotte. A lifetime of hate must have burnt a hole in his soul and he would not taint her. ‘I wish you well.’ He went to shake his brother’s hand and changed his mind. He could hardly stand to look at him, could hardly stand the sight of him, for it felt as if he were looking at himself—a better self, Zander realised, for again it was his brother who had everything, everything he wanted.
He could hear Constantine in the kitchen, could feel the love that filled the home, everything that must be denied him.
‘Do you not want to see your nephew?’ Nico asked.
He did not want to see him, did not want to fuss and admire a baby, did not want to see more of what he could never have, but Nico would have none of it. Nico walked along a hallway, clearly expecting Zander to follow him.
He would glance in and then leave, Zander decided.
Perhaps admire the babe and then ask once more after Charlotte, for he so badly needed to know that she was okay.
It was for her that he walked the corridor, for her he walked to the crib but for himself he stood there.
And he must have a soul, for right there beneath his heart it wanted to howl. Right there beneath his heart it seemed to shatter and destabilize the knees beneath it. He stared at the babe, his little nose pushed up by fingers, his eyes opening to find out what the noise was. And the baby did not know the man he was gazing at was not his father. All he saw were familiar black eyes and he smiled as if it was a face that comforted, smiled as if it was he, Zander, who soothed him. Then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Nico knew how his brother felt, for his first real look at his son had been by this very crib. The first time he had looked into his son’s eyes he had felt as if he was looking into his own, and he now knew he had been looking into his brother’s. He knew Zander was remembering a time that could not logically be remembered, when life had been simple, a time when the sight of the other, a look at yourself, had been all it had taken to feel safe.
When you hurt Nico, you hurt me.
Zander could hear her voice in the room with him again, and more than anything he wished it was true, that at this difficult, agonising moment she was here, for he wanted to turn around and see her.
‘This is the age we were parted,’ Nico said, and to Zander his voice came from a distance. ‘This was the age he made her leave and kept only you—the firstborn.’
‘She left and chose you,’ Zander corrected. ‘The good one, the nice one …’
‘No.’
He could not face the truth, could not hear it from his brother, could not believe it, for it changed every piece of the past. He raced from the house with questions unanswered, walked the beach and the streets like a drunk in a rage, for he could not stand to hear it, could not face the music, could not be alone as his pompous, lucky, chosen brother sat in a house that was a home.
So he took the plane to Rhodes, blasted the casino and hated himself more for winning. He drank hundred-year-old brandy and it barely touched sides. He wanted it to be easy, wanted to want, as he had before, the women who flocked to him, but knew tonight, for their sakes, that he was safer to be alone. So he paced the floors of the Imperial Suite, and nothing, not money, not brandy, could sate him; nothing in these luxurious confines could tame or sedate him. He waited for sunrise, for the clarity of a morning that was still a couple of hours away—but the sun did not rise, he remembered, it was we who moved towards it. He thought of that first morning phone call, the difference in time that had brought her to him, thought of her in London deeper in the darkness now than he.
She messed with his head, Zander decided. Charlotte messed with his head and changed things and he paced harder. He wanted to get on the plane and chase endless darkness, not run to the morning and the painful light it would bring. But he was weary from running, exhausted from it, knew he had to face the fact that there was nothing now that he would not do to be with her.
And he paced, for he did not know how to find her, did not know how to move forward without going back, yet he could not stand to go back without her.
Nico paced with him not beside him, but in Xanos, for he had worn the same path recently, knew the pit of despair that his brother was now in. He paced his house and garden through the night. He felt his brother’s rage, the hurt and anger, but Nico believed in the pendulum, knew that Zander would calm down. He believed in it so fiercely, was so connected with his brother that night, that he knew the moment Zander made his decision.
‘Nico.’ He looked up at his wife, saw the concern in her face as she came out to the dark garden—the sound of the fountains audible now, the world coming back into focus as he stepped back from his brother’s pain and looked into her eyes. How lucky he had been to have her there when the truth had surfaced, how much cooler she had made the hell he’d plunged into.
‘I want to help him,’ Nico said, as if it was that simple, as if the man who hated him would want his help. But even if she did not approve of his brother, Constantine was always there for him, with a word, with a smile that soothed.
‘Then do.’
SHE missed him far more than she should.
Far more than one should miss a man who had caused so much pain, Charlotte reminded herself as she woke to the morning and another day without Zander.
The heating came on, the pipes filling, spreading warmth through the house, and she wished it would do the same for her heart, for Zander’s heart too. She lay for a moment with her head
