Page 48 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
And there it was. Her phone.
She turned it on and waited for it to power up.
Moments later and it was beeping and chirping like an aviary at feeding time.
Ninety-seven missed calls. Two hundred and nineteen text messages…
She turned it upside down so she didn’t have to see them and could ignore a little longer her friends’ entreaties for her to get in touch.
She would ignore any entreaties from her family for ever. Except for her dad. None of this was his fault. His only crime was to like order more than he liked his daughter, and she didn’t even think it was that he didn’t like her, it was more that he didn’t understand her. In his own way, he did love her, and she should message and let him know she was safe.
Duty to her father done, she held the envelope in her hand.
Now she really was shaking. The palms of her hands had gone clammy.
She ripped it open and pulled out the letter contained in it.
Dear Lucie,
Forgive me for going against your wishes in communicating with you, but this was recently found in my apartment’s car park. I admit, returning it to you is the excuse I have been seeking to reach out to you.
I know that much of what I’m going to write now is not what you want to hear so I can only hope you can bring yourself to read it, but will understand if it is too much for you.
I have been thinking a lot about our time together on Sephone, and, Lucie, they were the best days of my life. There is something inherently joyful in your nature that sings to something in me that is usually so serious, and I pray my actions haven’t destroyed this essential part of you.
You were right in saying I had a choice over whether to lie to you. I did have a choice and I made the wrong one. It is a choice I will regret until my dying day, and I will regret it not for what it’s done to me but for what it’s done to you. You didn’t deserve any of this.
I don’t know if you realised it when we were dining with them, but Leander was the host of the party I first saw you at all those years ago. Seeing you at that party changed something in me. I don’t believe there is such a thing as love at first sight but I have carried your image with me ever since, and now I carry you fully in my heart. You are beautiful, Lucie, inside and out, and you deserve the world. I just wish I could be the one to give it to you.
I’m sorry for the pain I caused you. I hope one day you find the courage to love again and I hope the man you find that courage with treats you with the respect and devotion you deserve.
I meant every word I said to you on the mountain.
I will love you for ever,
Thanasis
By the time Lucie had read the letter a fifth time, the paper was soaked with her tears, her face burrowed in a pillow as all the pain and anguish she’d tried so hard to contain purged from her.
* * *
Lucie lay like a starfish, unseeing wet eyes fixed on the ceiling, the ruined letter still clutched in her hand. All those precious words dissolved. All his precious words. All dissolved as if they’d never existed…
No, that couldn’t be true because they’d etched into her heart, just as the man who’d written them had, and the world turned itself back to the moment she’d first opened her eyes to find him there, and then it speeded up, reeling her through their time together until that final beautiful night, before he’d confessed the truth…
But what was the truth? That she should listen to her head and forget him? Or that she should listen to her heart, which knew she could live a thousand years and would still carry him inside its broken walls?
The only truth she knew for certain was the truth about how Thanasis made her feel, and the pain of his absence hurt a thousand times more than the pain of the loss of her mother and the entirety of her stepfamily combined.
As memories of their lovemaking danced through her mind Lucie lifted herself off the bed and opened the guest room curtains. The sun would soon be rising in Greece. Thanasis would watch it rise under a different sky from hers. And he would watch it, she knew it. He’d watch the sun rise and he would think of her. Every sunrise and sunset he saw for the rest of his life would come with memories of her because he loved her. That was another truth.
And there was one more truth. Unless she could bring herself to forgive him, she would have to endure a lifetime of sunrises and sunsets without him. She would be destined to live in perpetual winter like Demeter without Persephone, desolate and barren of heart and soul.
* * *
Thanasis showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, and styled his hair without any recollection of doing any of it. He fed muesli into his mouth. There was no point eating anything worth tasting. He couldn’t taste anything. Food had become fuel, nothing more. Most aromas turned his stomach.
In the back of his car, he stretched out his legs and flicked through his notes. He’d been up until the early hours preparing. Antoniadis Shipping’s major investors had demanded a meeting. In just two days, the fleet of ships would be delivered and the four billion would have to be paid. There was no guarantee that money would be available, not when the major investors were talking behind backs and working to their own agendas. He had a feeling today’s meeting was nothing but a courtesy. He’d warned his parents to start looking for a smaller home. A much smaller home. His sister was refusing to take his calls. One more headache he didn’t need.
