a pavement café and waiting for her friend to arrive.
‘Why don’t you want to come to the ballet?’ Celeste had asked.
‘I just...’ He had shrugged.
‘We’re breaking up, aren’t we?’ Celeste had reached over and kissed him. ‘It’s okay, Roman, we agreed to two years.’
And those two years would have soon been over. But Celeste had just found out that she was seriously ill and had had only six months to live.
He had taken a drink of his coffee and his decision had been made.
‘I’m not leaving you to face this alone.’
He had taken her hand.
‘I’ll be with you all the way through this,’ he had promised, and it had been sealed with a tender kiss.
A kiss that, it turned out, Anya had witnessed.
‘Why?’ Anya demanded. ‘Why did you not come and see me perform? Didn’t you care?’
‘No,’ Roman said. ‘I promised that I would be faithful to my wife. To watch you dance would have felt like an affair.’
It was the only glimpse he gave her that, through the years, feelings had remained.
She didn’t understand him and he gave her nothing that might bring her closer to doing so. ‘Why haven’t you told Daniil that you are in London?’ Anya challenged.
‘You don’t know that I haven’t.’
‘Yes, I do because I was at Daniil’s this afternoon,’ Anya said.
Roman said nothing but she saw his jaw grit as she made it clear that she and his brother were in touch.
‘He is married...’ she told him.
‘I read in the news.’
‘They have a new baby.’
‘I read about that too.’
‘He still searches for you,’ Anya said. ‘He doesn’t know if you are alive or dead.’
‘Did you not tell him that you saw me in Paris?’
‘No,’ Anya said. She hadn’t told Daniil because she wished that she had never seen Roman sitting in the sun and kissing a woman that had not been her. ‘Perhaps I shall tell him next time I see him,’ she taunted. ‘Did you know that your niece gets christened next Sunday?’
She watched as his eyes shuttered.
‘You might have erased your past when you joined the legion but we all live on. Your niece’s name is Nadia...’
‘Anya...’ He put up his hand to halt her but she refused to be silenced.
‘Oh, and Sev will be there, with his new wife Naomi...’ She could hear his heavy breathing as she bombarded him with names from his past.
People he had loved yet had chosen to never contact again.
‘Nikolai is coming. You remember he loved ships, well, he has a superyacht now...’
‘You lie,’ Roman said. ‘Don’t you remember?’ He looked at her. ‘Of course not, you were off at dance school, but Nikolai ran away and committed suicide.’
They had been such dark, painful times. Roman could still remember the night that they had been informed that Nikolai’s body had been pulled from the river.
He had asked if he might speak with Sev, because he’d known that he would be devastated. After all, Nikolai and Sev had been best friends.
That request had been denied and Roman had been locked in his room instead. He hadn’t cried, he hadn’t even known how to, but that night, thinking of the torture that must have been in Nikolai’s head, he had been the closest he had ever come to breaking down.
Now Anya was here, telling him that Nikolai was alive.
‘Nikolai ran away, but the body they pulled from the river wasn’t his,’ Anya said.
Roman kept his feelings hidden—he always had—and his time in the legion had honed that skill, but hearing Nikolai was alive, that all his friends would be together next Sunday, meant it took everything he possessed to keep his voice level.
‘And shall you be there?’
Anya nodded. ‘I am coming back from Paris just for the day.’
‘Coming back?’
‘We go there tomorrow.’
‘We?’
‘The dance company.’
He wanted to ask about Mika, yet he did not.
Tonight was a one-night stand, for old times’ sake, Roman told himself.
There was another knock on the door, and they were told that the car was there to take her to her leaving party.
‘It can wait!’ Anya called back.
‘You ought to go,’ he said. ‘Or you’ll have your mother calling me a saboteur again.’
‘She died, Roman,’ Anya said. ‘And please don’t offer a false apology.’
‘I shan’t.’
He hated Katya, more than even Anya could know.
‘I will leave you to get ready for your party.’
‘So we just have sex and you leave?’ she challenged, and then she gave a derisive laugh. ‘Nothing changes, does it?’
She watched as he checked his reflection in the mirror. She knew it was for her sake, walking out wearing her make-up would not be a good look, but his unruffled demeanour incensed her.
He smoothed his hair back and straightened his tie, and with a tissue he removed a little of her make-up that had smeared onto his face.
As he went to give her cheek a kiss Anya pulled her head back, but just as he reached the door she called him back.
There was something she just had to know.
‘How did you meet your wife?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Roman said.
‘It does to me. I want to know,’ she said. ‘Was it love at first sight, or was it her money you wanted? Tell me, Roman, how did you meet?’
‘I answered an advert. She was looking for a husband.’
And with that sordid revelation he might as well have ripped out her heart and stamped on it. Rather than search for her, he had simply answered an ad.
