Bound to You Page 6

  We’d been driving about twenty minutes when Christos’s phone started to ring. ‘Gia sou, Mama.’ Christos’s parents were back from the coast.

  I was too tired to concentrate on their conversation and started to doze off. I wanted to get home, have a shower, eat out on the terrace, preferably in my nightie, and go to bed. About an hour later I woke abruptly from a fitful nap. Christos had pulled on the brakes hard as we hit the evening traffic. I was in one of those foul, sleep-interrupted moods. And I was getting a migraine.

  ‘Nichi mou, so Mama said Giagia and Papous want us to go round for dinner.’

  These were Christos’s grandparents on his father’s side.

  ‘Go round when?’

  ‘Now. We’re only half an hour away. Giagia was complaining that you’re nearly due back home already and she hasn’t seen you.’

  I was puzzled. ‘But she knows she’ll see me on Sunday. We always have the last lunch before I go home with her and Papous.’

  ‘Come on, Nichi. They’re old, they want to see their family.’

  ‘Christos, do we have to have dinner with them? I’m getting a migraine. I’m so tired. I don’t feel well. Look at what I’m wearing.’ I had thrown a cheap, creased sundress over my bikini as we had left, and hadn’t bothered to wash my hair after swimming. ‘I can’t go round like this. It’s disrespectful!’

  ‘It’s more disrespectful if we don’t go when they are expecting us.’

  ‘But they didn’t ask! They told us. You told me!’

  He was glowering. ‘You’re being unreasonable. It’s no trouble to go round to theirs for dinner, especially not when you’re starving. Think about them for once.’

  Christos just didn’t get it. This wasn’t about dinner, it was about decisions being made for me. Again. Last night I had been torn between total commitment to make our relationship work and terror that it might not. But now I felt defiant. What was the point putting the effort in when there was no compromise here?

  I couldn’t carry on feeling this stifled. Christos had never treated me as a submissive wife-in-waiting and I wasn’t about to start now. When I got back to London, I decided, I would be fully utilising my newfound freedom. I loved Christos like nothing else but maybe it was time to build a more independent life for myself. Maybe this was all going to turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

  I just couldn’t quite feel how yet.

  CHAPTER 7

  In the passport queue at Heathrow, I started to shiver. It was already autumn in London. I reached around for my denim jacket, which was knotted around the strap of my bag. It was still damp. All the way back from Greece, I had sobbed into it, sat with it wrapped about my face like a widow’s veil. After my emotional parting from Christos, I had wanted to be left alone to cry in peace, and I knew the genial Greek flight attendants would be distressed for me, and only try to offer comfort, comfort that nobody, not even Christos, could bring.

  Now, back in Britain, I was feeling fractionally better. Well, perhaps not better, but resolute. I had cried myself into calm and was ready to face the flat again. Originally we had intended to move out at the end of August but there was no way I could move all of our stuff alone, so we had kept it on for a few more weeks. Christos’s friend Markos had, in the meantime, bought an apartment in the Docklands. That would be Christos’s new home. And my new residence? A room in a shared flat south of the river, where I knew neither the neighbourhood, nor the other tenant.

  Back at our flat, I flung my jacket, bag and suitcase on the floor, lay down on the bed and started playing out the last few days’ events in my mind.

  Dinner with the grandparents had been bearable in the end. Christos’s parents and his cousin had also joined us, which saved me from being the sole target of Giagia Georgia’s inquisition.

  The next morning, Christos and I took a trip to the village where his mother was born.

  ‘There’s a small local festival on today,’ he told me, ‘and the main church will have been decorated by the villagers. It’ll be very pretty. I know how you love to get your Orthodox fix, Egg!’

  Mama’s village was a two-and-a-half-hour drive away from the house and not on any map. I hoped Christos knew the way. In the night, the air conditioning had broken down and neither of us got a decent night’s sleep. ‘Are you sure you want to drive when you’re so tired, Christos mou?’

  ‘Yes of course. We need to get out of the house.’

  ‘But we could just check into a hotel if we wanted to do that! Remember? Like that time in Yorkshire at Christmas when we desperately needed some time alone together?’

  I was being flippant but Christos failed to catch it.

  ‘Arketa, Nichi,’ he snapped. ‘You’re always trying to avoid my parents!’

  ‘Well, you’re the one who said we needed to get out of the house!’ I snapped back.

  Christos’s face was thunderous. Then he sighed, and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right; I’m tired. Let me have a coffee and a cigarette and I’ll be on it. Jesus, this heat!’

  On the way to the village we got lost. Four times. ‘Nichi mou, I’m sorry, but if these malakas would only update their fucking stupid maps.’

  ‘Christos, why are we in the car on such a hot day, look, why don’t we just call it quits and turn back?’

  ‘No! We’ve come this far! I refuse to be beaten by these idiots!’

  When we finally made it to the village there was little to see. In the church a service was taking place, and as we didn’t want to join it, we couldn’t exactly go in. Everybody in the village seemed to be at the service. There wasn’t even a periptero open for us to buy a drink or snack.

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you the square where my parents had their wedding reception.’

  Christos set off round the back of the church. I trundled off after him then ran up alongside him so that we could hold hands. But it was too hot to hold hands. When we got to the square there was nothing to see. It was just an empty square, bereft of decoration. I don’t know what I’d been expecting. ‘Imagine – there were two thousand people here at Mama and Papa’s wedding reception!’

  ‘Two thousand?’ I was incredulous. ‘Did they know everybody?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Christos replied. ‘But it’s a source of pride to them, especially to Mama. To have your wedding day marked by so many people like that.’

  I felt a wave of envy, and then one of resignation. Realistically, we were never going to get married here in Greece. I wasn’t part of this culture. I couldn’t have had a load of strangers at my reception, pinning money on to my dress and showering me with blessings that I didn’t know the meaning of. Not when I couldn’t even get the family I would be marrying into to understand me.

  For four nights we had eaten dinner with Christos’s parents. For four nights I had sat in appetite-snatching trepidation, waiting for the topic of the PhD to come up. But it didn’t. I feared, and also slightly longed for, an altercation so I could at least show them how hurt I was by what had happened. But instead, on the afternoon that I left for the airport, they simply kissed me goodbye as pleasantly and as warmly as they ever had. Clearly they felt nothing needed to be said.

  Christos, meanwhile, had too much to say. Only he couldn’t say it. Before he let me pass through passport control, he clung to me like never before, constantly rearranging my hair, stroking my cheek, fondling the back of my neck like a mother cat about to give up her kitten to new owners.

  ‘Kali mou, we had a good holiday, didn’t we?’

  ‘We did. I love these holidays. Let’s never stop coming to Greece.’

  ‘Ha! Well, I don’t think there’s much chance of that!’

  ‘I hate leaving. It never gets easier. Always harder. Christos, maybe we should move to Athens?’

  ‘Arketa, Nichi mou, what rubbish are you talking? I certainly don’t want to live in Greece. Why do you think I came to study in Britain? I don’t know how you’d manage. I wouldn’t!’

 
; ‘I’d write! You can write from anywhere. Don’t you think we could do it?’

  ‘I’d never ask you to do it.’

  ‘But I would do it. I’d do it for you.’

  ‘Nichi mou . . .’ Tears brimmed in Christos’s eyes. Why, I wondered. Because he was touched by my show of dedication? Or because he was feeling guilty about his own lack of sacrifice?

  ‘We’re still going to be together at least half the week, kali mou, you know that, don’t you.’

  ‘I know. I guess that just means half the week sleepless.’

  He grinned and pulled the sleazy Greek face. ‘Oh, I hope so. I’ll be making up for the nights we are alone.’

  ‘You’ll have to. I can’t sleep without you any more, Christos. The bed’s emptiness, it . . .’

  I couldn’t get any more words out after that. I think we must have held each other as though our love depended on it, but I don’t remember. Amnesia felt preferable to a memory of abject pain. Like the first time we’d tried to make love and failed. Why didn’t I remember the first time? Was that some ominous portent for everything we built together afterwards?

  An officious attendant waved at me, demanding I clear security.

  ‘Three weeks, Nichi mou. Then we’ll be back together again.’

  I nodded dumbly. ‘Together again’ had a hollow ring. Together again didn’t mean the same thing any more.

  The next morning, which was Saturday, I woke up early and cheerfully determined. I was fed up with feeling sorry for myself, of thinking myself abandoned, and decided to reframe the separate-living situation as an opportunity for newfound liberty. I could write and read uninterrupted. I could go to extra yoga classes. I could have dinner whenever I wanted, including in bed if I so chose, with my plate on my lap and my laptop resting on my lower legs, a practice that Christos absolutely forbade.

  So I began to pack. After all, my new room was ready for me whenever I wanted it. The sooner I moved in, the sooner we moved on to the next phase of our relationship. I would have to wait for Christos to bring a couple of large things over to the flat in the car when he returned, but I could take a suitcase, at least, and maybe a rucksack.

  I packed what I could and, an hour later, heaved myself up on to the tube with my belongings, like a determined snail. When I changed at Victoria, a beautifully mannered young man with exquisite tattoos covering his arms asked if I’d like a hand with my suitcase. I said no. I made it a rule to never carry a bag I couldn’t lift myself. I didn’t need any help.

  At my flat, my new housemate Helen was watching TV in the living room, laughing raucously at some animal outtakes programme. I said a polite hi then dragged my bags into my new room. There was a bookcase, desk and dressing table with an elegant oval mirror mounted on it. Identikit furniture from Ikea, I guessed. And a double bed. But that was it. God, it was like being a student again.

  I put a framed photo of me and Christos on the desk so that I could see it from the bed. Suddenly I didn’t want to stay here tonight after all. I’d move in properly tomorrow.

  On Monday morning I made a different commute to work, via Waterloo Bridge, often voted ‘best view of the capital’ by its residents. I thought of the Dr Johnson quote: ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life’, and marvelled at the thought that I had barely awakened to the city at all.

  This was to be my last week at the hospital. When I got back from Greece there was a letter waiting for me to say that I had been successful in my application for an internship at an arts magazine, and could I start a week on Tuesday. I had applied for the post months ago. It was the perfect distraction from the impasse that was currently my relationship with Christos.

  When I arrived at work I rang the job agency that contracted me out to the hospital to tell them that I’d no longer be needing my secretarial position, then informed my line manager, Susan. She was a gracious lady in her early forties, richly attractive, with one of those immaculate blonde bobs that always hung just so.

  ‘Come back any time you like, my lovely, if the writing doesn’t work out. Hope they’re paying you well at this new place?’

  ‘Well, actually, they’re not paying me at all.’ I don’t know why I felt ashamed, but I did. It wasn’t my fault the creative industries thought it OK to exploit flaming graduate ambition and translate it into flailing free labour.

  ‘Oh!’

  I could tell Susan didn’t understand.

  ‘It’s just what you have to do, Susan. Eventually you get enough experience to apply for a paying job.’ At least I hoped that’s how it would pan out. ‘I’ve been trying to save up money so that I can afford to work the next month unpaid. But thank you for saying I’m welcome back.’

  She smiled at me like a deputy headmistress dismissing a prefect. ‘Well, you always will be. Take care of yourself – and who knows, maybe next time you’re back it’ll be with a ring on that finger!’

  I feigned a smile in reply and muddled my way out of her office.

  That evening I called Gina. She had texted me to say she wanted an update on how the holiday had panned out.

  Gina was one of those supremely life-enhancing people who combine dry humour with a relentless optimism, and have a rare ability to see the wood for the trees. I had known her almost exactly the same length of time as I’d known Christos. We also met in our final year at university and I knew I wanted to be her friend from the moment I saw her. There was something about Gina’s strut that exuded a sense of shrewd mischief and before long we were curled up in each other’s rooms discussing Sylvia Plath, the merits of men in eyeliner and watching episodes of the awful yet addictive US sitcom, Gilmore Girls.

  These days, Gina was a restaurant manager. She still had the same long, loose black curls; she still loved to dance in cute boots and coloured jeans, and was still impervious to most male attention, despite being jaw-lockingly attractive. Gina prioritised her friends and her family above anything else, often to her own detriment.

  Now I tried to put into words how things stood with me and Christos and found myself struggling.

  There was a sceptical silence on the other end of the line before she launched into a barrage of questions. ‘So, when is Christos coming back? Is he back now? Will he be back for your birthday?’

  ‘Soon. Not yet. Yes. Everything’s fine, really.’

  But Gina wasn’t going to be palmed off that easily.

  ‘So what happened about the living arrangements? Did you manage to convince his parents that you’re an excellent study companion?’

  ‘No. But we talked it through,’ I lied.

  ‘So does that mean he’s going to be staying at yours most of the time? Did he agree to evening study breaks?’

  ‘We didn’t get on to discussing the fine details.’

  ‘You know, Nichi, you deserve his time. If he treasures you . . .’

  ‘He gives me his time, Gina,’ I snapped. Then I backtracked. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.’ I sighed. ‘I’m just a bit on edge, what with the new flat and the up-and-coming internship. Anyway, tell me how you are . . .’

  Thursday was my birthday. Ordinarily I’d have taken the day off but with only three working days left at the hospital before I went wageless, it made no sense to lose a day’s pay.

  I was late to the office. My mum had called me from Australia and then Christos rang on his way to the university library. He’d arrived back in London yesterday morning and had spent the day moving all of his things out of our old flat, which we had now officially vacated, and into his new one.

  ‘Kronia polla, Nichi mou! Happy Birthday! Do you have your present?’

  ‘I do! Shall I open it while I’m on the phone to you?’

  ‘No, that makes me nervous! S’agapo! Open it when I’m off the line.’

  We were meeting for dinner later, but Christos had wanted to make sure I had something to unwrap when I woke up. Before I left Greece, Christos had pressed a tiny blue box on me. ‘Not a diamond,’ he lau
ghed. I opened it now. Two tiny star-shaped silver earrings twinkled back at me. They were from an exclusive Athenian jewellers. They were beautiful. The man could have written a textbook on how to woo.

  As I hurried through A&E to my office, I thought about that phrase, ‘kronia polla’. It basically translated as ‘many years’ and made me think of the conversation we’d had about times past that night in the resort. I hated waking up on my birthday without Christos beside me. Why hadn’t I gone over to stay at his last night? He’d said he was too tired but it wouldn’t have been any trouble to him to let me crawl into his bed.

  When I got to my desk there was a decorated chocolate caterpillar cake perched on a filing cabinet at the top end of the office. My colleague Emma grinned at me. ‘What did the divine Christos get you?’

  ‘These earrings.’

  ‘Let me see?’

  I touched the studs protectively. Emma came over.

  ‘Oh my, they’re not diamond, are they?’

  ‘No, not diamond.’

  ‘The man’s got good taste. Just wait for the big one.’

  That night Christos and I met my younger brother, Alistair, for a quiet dinner in Soho. My brother was busy studying for an MA and though we were close, we rarely managed to meet up any more. He was ferociously intelligent, quiet and thoughtful, with a dry sardonic wit. He got on with Christos as if they were already family.

  We started reminiscing about the fun we had had together over the years. Alistair began to laugh. ‘Do you remember when we made you that Giorgos card, Christos, for your birthday? It had a picture of George Michael on the front during his Wham! days and you thought it was from the guy in the gym you knew who was also called George . . .’

  ‘. . . and that he was cracking on to you, Christos mou!’ I added. ‘Oh God!’

  ‘Yeah, and then I nearly went and confronted him about because of you two!’