him.’ She watched as he stopped, as everything he knew dispersed. ‘That is what I need to believe, needed to believe to survive. The man I loved …’ He halted, for it hurt to admit it, hurt to be five years old and hear the roar of his father’s voice, hurt to recall the confusion.
‘You loved him?’
‘Of course—he was my father,’ Zander said, because to a child it was that simple. ‘And then later I felt sorry for him, thought I made things worse for him by being there, and then all I did was hate him, for not being strong enough to move on from what she had done.’ He looked at Charlotte. ‘He told me he was a good man, an honourable man, a hard-working man till she left him. And I believed him, till this very moment I believed him—I had to. All he told me was a lie, and I should have seen it. As if he was ever going to sit down and tell me the truth …’
‘She loved you,’ Charlotte said. ‘She always has.’
‘What does that make him, then?’ Zander asked. She had thought him blind, thought he had simply chosen pain, but she saw him very differently now. She saw how hard he had tried to remain loyal to the memory of the father that had raised him—a father, that despite it all, he had loved.
‘Maybe he was hurting too?’ Charlotte offered, but some things were very hard to forgive. ‘Perhaps you need to find out more about him.’
And one day he would, Zander decided. One day he would, and he would try to do it without hate in his heart.
‘I understand now what you said …’ He saw her frown. ‘That when I hurt him I hurt you.’ Still her frown deepened. ‘That Nico is a part of me and when I hurt him, I hurt myself … which hurts you.’
‘Actually …’ Oh, God, should she tell him she’d just got her words mixed up, that it wasn’t some wise saying, just her mouth moving too fast?
‘What I meant …’ But she stopped talking and smiled instead, saw his exhaustion and wanted to extinguish it. She did not say another word but climbed into bed and closed her eyes.
And he made dreams real, because he undressed and climbed into her single bed, and held her for a moment.
‘I have spent my life hating.’ He said it to her neck. ‘I cannot imagine the outcome had you not come into my life. The day that mattered the most to me, the day I had focused on for so very long, suddenly became less important than the day that came before it, the day I spent with you.’
He kissed her neck and then he said it.
‘I love you, Charlotte.’
But she closed her eyes, because it was still impossible. ‘This is me,’ Charlotte said. ‘I can’t leave Mum.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘You say that now …’ She was scared to look to the future, scared of the shouts when any moment now her mother awoke, scared of him making a promise that reality would not let him keep. ‘When you see how hard it is …’
‘Why would I change you?’ Zander asked. ‘I have never had a proper family. I am told most come with good and bad?’
‘They do.’
‘I will never hurt the good,’ Zander said, ‘and I will do my best to ease the bad.’
She could hear the rain against the window and the bus pulling up at the stop outside. His voice was in her ear, as it had been so many times, but this time there was the breath on her ear that meant he was close by.
He had said she must never make love with him till she trusted him again, and now she handed her heart over willingly, knew it would be safe with him.
He made love for the first time in the morning; that morning they actually made love, and it was, as Charlotte told him afterwards as she lay in her bed with him, perfect.
‘It would be perfect had I brought a ring,’ Zander said. ‘However, I was not exactly thinking straight on my way to you.’
‘You don’t give out rings, remember.’ She did not need a ring to know his love.
‘Not easily,’ Zander said. ‘But it is what I want for you. Mrs Kargas.’ His name did not hurt now when he said it. With Charlotte bearing it, he could say it proudly.
For their future was together.
HE MADE every day a memory.
And not just for Charlotte.
She sat on the beach beside her mother, as she did most late afternoons, stared out at the glorious Mediterranean, and when her mother was starting to get tired, Charlotte would open up the package she had brought, toss out some food and wait for the seagulls. It never failed to make her mother smile, to laugh as she once had, and though Charlotte could not be sure if her mother was going back to earlier times or just smiling at today, every day it was more than worth it.
‘Is she ready to go back to the house?’ Agira asked, walking over and smiling, a genuine smile that was warm and caring, and Charlotte knew she was blessed to have Agira to nurse her mother.
So very blessed.
Zander had made good his word—he had made the good better and eased the bad. All her mother’s furniture had been moved to Xanos, but the night-time wanderings had stopped and the aggression too. Their daily times on the beach, the salty air and the wonderful food seemed to calm and relax Amanda, or was it the change in her daughter that eased Amanda’s mind? For with help and support Charlotte could finally enjoy her mother and help her enjoy the time she had left.
And she wanted more.
As she kissed her mother goodbye and Agira walked her back to the house, Charlotte caught sight of the seaplane coming in to land, and felt the wind whip away selfish tears, for surely when she had so much, when everything she had wished for had come true, it was wrong now to ask for just a little more time.
She watched as the plane landed at the jetty that both brothers now owned. The partnership that had once seemed impossible was a reality now. Old met new in Xanos, the taverna was bustling again with locals, the hotel and restaurants were vibrant, and Ravels was the shining jewel in the island’s crown. Charlotte watched as a suited, dark-haired man stepped out, and though he looked like her husband, walked like her husband, to anyone else might well have been her husband, her heart didn’t leap, and she knew that it was Nico.
Constantine recognised him too. Charlotte turned as she saw the woman come down to the beach, baby Leo on her hip. She waved to her husband and walked over to join Charlotte, whose heart did tighten now as another suited dark man stepped out, and it was just, just … What was the difference? So many times she tried to pin it down, sure their hair fell differently, one left-handed, the other right-, but from this distance it was impossible to make that out. It was just that her heart told her it was him.
It had told Roula too. For as long as she lived, Charlotte would never forget the smile of disbelief on the older woman’s face when she had first seen her grown sons. She had named them immediately—correctly—had
