Innocent in the Ivory Tower

She wanted him to love her as she loved him. Had loved him from the moment she tore the lining of his jacket and he had looked at her, really looked at her, and she had seen him and recognised in him something she needed very much.

And right now all the danger signs were flashing red.

The first night they were back in Ravello Alexei dreamt of St Petersburg.

He was eight years old and on the streets. He ran in a pack of kids, all of them living hand-to-mouth. He couldn’t remember his father, but he could still see his mother’s stunning face, cosmetically enhanced, bending in and blowing alcohol into his lungs. Promising she would return for him in a few days but never coming back.

He woke bathed in sweat, shaking. Blackness was all around him and he was alone.

Maisy woke to the sound of a shout. She sat up, no longer disorientated when she woke in the night to find herself in a vast bed. Falling asleep every night pinned by Alexei’s arm had made what was once so novel an integral part of her every day life.

Alexei was awake. It was too dark to see his face, but she could feel the startled reaction running through his big warm body. He’d had another one of those dreams. She reached out in the darkness and laid her hand on his chest. It was hot and hair-roughened and rose fast under her hand.

‘Are you okay?’ she whispered.

He rolled away, dislodging her hand and presenting the bulk of his back and shoulders to her.

Maisy was wide-awake now. She didn’t know what to do. The other time he’d woken in the night like this he had pretended to go back to sleep, but they both knew he had lain awake most of the night.

‘Alexei,’ she whispered, ‘talk to me.’

He made that grunting noise she recognized, which told her she could wrap her arms around him but not expect much communication. So she did, lying down and wrapping her arms around his middle. Alexei sought her hands, knotting them with his and lashing her against him.

He could feel her breath against his back, the soft brush of her wayward hair, the sweet rub of her smooth calf over his. It soothed.

He said, half to himself, ‘Kostya will be all right.’

His voice was hoarse and Maisy was instantly on high alert. Something was very wrong.

‘Of course he will be.’ She spoke feelingly but she felt uncertain. A couple of weeks had passed now since Kostya had been told of his parents’ deaths. Alexei had been amazing with him, giving both her and Kostya the strong bulwark they both needed in those awful fragile days as the tiny child groped for security.

Maisy had broken her rule on those nights, having Kostya in bed with her to soothe his night terrors. Alexei had volunteered to take the other bed but Kostya had wanted his beloved Alessi too, and what Maisy had most feared had come to pass. They were a facsimile of a family, huddled together in this vast bed that had once seemed so alien and threatening but was now where all the happiest times of her life were spent.

‘I’ll protect him,’ Alexei asserted.

‘I know.’ She stroked his back.

He tried to clutch on to the human warmth of her touch, but he was being swamped by his own fears from the past and they were fast dragging him under. It coalesced the longer he lay there, beginning to tense under the feel of her touch. He had allowed her to get too close and he knew the terror he was feeling was a warning. She too would leave. It was inevitable one of them would abandon what they had. He had to reinstate proper distance. He could not allow his own fear or weakness to dislodge the grip he had on his emotions. He had to do it now.

Abruptly he shifted, dislodging Maisy’s hold, and reached up, flicking on the lamp.

‘I can’t protect him from you, can I?’

He watched her blinking blearily in the unexpected light, covering her eyes with her hands. Defenceless. But he needed to be brutal. She needed to hear this.

‘What are you talking about, Alexei?’

‘I’m talking about you leaving, Maisy. Because we both know there’s an end date.’

She stared back at him, appalled. A slow cold trickle of dread made its way down her spine.

‘Why are you attacking me?’ she whispered. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

Then he said the words she had been dreading in the darkest part of her soul. ‘I can’t do this any more, Maisy.’

A tiny, endlessly hopeful, naive part of her had imagined a future with him—one involving a white dress, a picket fence and babies. The things she’d longed for when she was a little girl and the world had been a much more black-and-white place. But she knew now that wasn’t going to happen. Not with this man.

Weeks of living with him, sleeping beside him, welcoming him into her body, and she understood she hadn’t really touched anything beyond his surface. These dreams she sensed were a gateway into whatever darkness was eating away at him, but even lying in bed with him, privy to their ragged effect on him, she was not invited inside.