CHAPTER ONE
‘YOU’RE not seriously telling me you’re actually considering going to Greece, Jill? You can’t, you just can’t.’ Sophy tried very hard not to glare as she looked at the small, slim girl sitting opposite her but it was hard. ‘You don’t owe Theodore’s family a thing and you know it. Michael is seven years old now and they have never so much as acknowledged his existence.’
‘Well, they didn’t know about it for the first couple of years,’ Jill said reasonably.
‘And when they found out? You’d have expected some sort of contact—a letter, a phone call, something.’
‘According to Christos, the family did try to write but they never received an answer to any of their letters.’
‘And you believe that?’ Sophy’s voice was scornful, her violet-blue eyes expressing her opinion of Jill’s in-laws as forcefully as her voice.
‘It is possible, Sophy.’ Jill gazed miserably at her twin, her own violet-blue eyes dark and tragic and her face very white. ‘Theodore was a very proud man, excessively so—you know that. He said he would never forgive them and he meant it. He…he could be implacable when he made up his mind about anything.’
‘But he would have talked to you about it,’ Sophy pressed urgently. ‘At least to tell you he’d received some correspondence?’
‘No.’ Jill turned away, busying herself folding some washing she had just brought indoors. ‘Not necessarily, not if he’d already made up his mind. When we got married he told me I was his family from that point on and that he had no other, and he meant it. I wasn’t allowed to even discuss them, if you want to know the truth.’
Sophy stared at her sister’s bent head and not for the first time wondered how happy Jill’s marriage had really been. But that was irrelevant now anyway. Six weeks ago Theodore had been killed in a freak accident when the car he had been driving had been crushed by a falling tree at the height of a bad storm.
With that in mind, Sophy now said gently, ‘But the funeral, Jill? They never even came to Theodore’s funeral.’
‘Christos told them it had been Theodore’s wishes.’ And at Sophy’s loud snort of disbelief, Jill raised her blonde head and looked straight at her sister. ‘It was true, Sophy. There were letters which Theodore had placed in Christos’s safe-keeping some years ago. I didn’t even know anything about them until Theodore died and then Christos felt he ought to tell me before he sent them to Greece. I think he suspected what they contained.’
‘Letters?’ Sophy took a quick gulp of coffee as she watched Jill continue to fold the washing in the big wicker laundry basket on the kitchen table. ‘Letters to whom, exactly?’
‘To his family. In…in the event of his illness or death. Of course he didn’t expect it would happen so soon or suddenly—’ Jill stopped abruptly, taking a deep breath before she continued, ‘Anyway, Christos and I made the decision to open the letters and read them before we sent them, the day after the accident, and then…then we destroyed them. But Christos felt he had to phone the family and just say Theodore had left instructions he didn’t want them there.’
Jill now stopped speaking, laying her head on the edge of the laundry basket in front of her and bursting into tears. Sophy jumped to her feet, rushing to her twin’s side and putting her arm round Jill’s shaking shoulders as she said urgently, ‘Oh, love, what is it? Come on, everything will be all right.’
‘They were awful, Sophy.’ As Jill raised streaming eyes, she was choking on the sobs she was trying to stifle. ‘Really awful. So bitter and hard and cold. I…I couldn’t send them. Not to his mother and everyone. Think how they’d feel after what has happened to Theodore. So—’ she reached into the laundry basket and extracted a newly dried handkerchief from the pile of sweet-smelling washing ‘—so I burnt them. I burnt them all. Do you think that was wrong of me?’
She raised haunted eyes to her sister’s face and Sophy stared at her, her blue eyes reflecting her concern for her beloved twin. ‘Of course not,’ she said softly, smoothing back a lock of fine, ash-blonde hair from Jill’s brow. ‘What good would it do to just perpetuate all the misery? Heartache breeds heartache.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Jill dabbed at her eyes as she said, ‘Christos said the decision had to be mine and mine alone, and once I’d made it he said he agreed with me, but it’s been like a lead weight round my heart ever since. Theodore gave those letters to Christos, believing Christos would do what he wanted, and I…I burnt them. He would never forgive me if he knew.’
It seemed to her that Jill’s husband had majored in unforgiveness, Sophy thought grimly. She had always had reservations about Theodore and the two of them had never hit it off, something Sophy knew Jill had sensed from the first time she had introduced them. Consequently Jill had been guarded in anything she said about Theodore and for the first time the two girls had had an area in their lives in which they were less than totally frank with each other, although neither of them had acknowledged it.
It had been less of a problem than it might have been, owing to the fact that within three months of Jill meeting Theodore—just after the two girls had finished university— Sophy had been offered a wonderful opportunity on the strength of her degree in Maths and Business Studies to work in London as a trainee buyer for one of the top fashion companies.
She had left Cambridge—her home town—within the month, just days before Jill had discovered she was pregnant with Michael, necessitating a hasty register office wedding which Sophy had attended before shooting off back to the capital. From that point the twins’ lives had gone in very different directions—Jill looking after her family and helping her husband in his very successful restaurant business, of which Christos was a partner, and Sophy following her own star in her dream career and rising to her present position of fashion buyer.
Sophy had always held the private opinion that Theodore had got her sister pregnant purposely, knowing Jill was unable to take the Pill due to being the one woman in several hundred thousand it made ill—but she had been wise enough to keep her suspicions to herself. However, over the years she had seen her sister change from the bright, sparkling, ha
ppy creature of former days to a mere shadow of the old Jill: quiet, withdrawn and totally under her dominant husband’s control. But Jill had never complained and had always changed the subject when Sophy had tried to ascertain if all was well, and so she had had to leave the matter of Jill’s marriage alone and respect her twin’s privacy.
‘So…’ Sophy brought their attention back to the letter lying at the side of the laundry basket which had started their discussion in the first place. ‘You feel you ought to go and meet Theodore’s family, then.’ She could understand her sister’s decision a little better in view of what had transpired, although it still felt like allowing a lamb to walk into the wolf’s den.
‘Just for a short holiday, like they’ve suggested. They can meet Michael and, more importantly, Michael can meet them and get to know the only grandparents he has.’ The twins’ father had walked out just after they were born and their mother had died some years ago.
‘And then?’ Sophy asked gently.
‘Then we’ll come back and carry on like before,’ Jill said quietly. ‘I can help Christos in the business; we’ve already talked about that, and Michael can carry on at his present school with all his friends. I wouldn’t even think about staying out there, Sophy, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
She didn’t know what she was worried about exactly, except that if the family were anything at all like Theodore they would persuade her easy-going sister that black was white. Jill had always been the malleable, docile one, acquiescent to a fault and utterly unable to stand up for herself.
‘Look, if you’re uneasy about me going alone with Michael, why don’t you come too?’ Jill said matter-of-factly. ‘Theodore’s father has already offered to pay for me and Michael and a friend—his suggestion, Sophy. He wrote I might feel more comfortable if I brought a friend along too. I’d much prefer you to come with me but I thought you’d probably be too busy. I know you’ve been backwards and forwards to Paris like a boomerang the last few weeks and I didn’t want to add to your stress levels!’
‘That’s all finished now the collections are reviewed,’ Sophy said thoughtfully. ‘The next few weeks will be more low-key, besides which I’ve still got some holiday left from last year, let alone this! When are you thinking of going?’
‘Any time. I’ll fit in with you,’ Jill said quickly. ‘Do you think you could come, then? Oh, Sophy, it’d make all the difference!’ And she burst into tears again which immediately settled the issue as far as Sophy was concerned, without another word being said.
Jill needed her. The job, work commitments and anything else came a very poor second to that.
The Greek airport was typical of all airports, crowded and noisy and confusing, but the journey had been relatively comfortable and Michael’s excited chatter had kept both women occupied and taken their minds off the forthcoming meeting with Theodore’s estranged family. Sophy had been busy with making sure their luggage was intact and that Michael didn’t disappear for the last few minutes—Jill being in something of a daze—and so she only became aware of the tall dark man waiting for them when Jill gripped her arm and breathed, ‘Sophy, that’s Andreas, Theodore’s brother—it has to be. Look how he’s watching us.’
She turned to look in the direction in which her sister was staring, keeping one hand on Michael who was jumping about like a small jack-in-the-box, and then became transfixed herself as her eyes met the hard, black, narrowed gaze riveted on the women.
There was no time to make any comment because in the next instant the man was making his way towards them, his tall, lean powerful body cutting through the crowd as though it didn’t exist.
‘Mrs Karydis? Jill Karydis?’ His voice was deep and gravelly and strongly accented, and dark eyes flashed from one twin to the other, eyes that were set in a face that was cold and handsome.
Jill seemed to have gone into some sort of frozen limbo, and after waiting a second Sophy was forced to say, ‘This is Jill,’ as she indicated the pale silent figure at her side, ‘and Michael too of course,’ as she brought her small nephew in front of her. ‘How do you do, Mr…?’
‘Please call me Andreas.’