Page 120 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
Friday morning arrived and with it a sickness in Lydia’s stomach far worse than any other.
In a few short hours the shareholders’ meeting would commence. Unless a miracle occurred then in a few short hours Antoniadis Shipping would cease to exist.
She waited until Alexis left for another day of fighting fires in his office before getting out of bed.
She’d been cooped up for long enough. She needed to get out into the fresh air, proper fresh air, now, before the sun rose higher and the temperatures soared.
All too aware of the press and members of the public with nothing better to do than stalk Alexis’s apartment block with the cameras of their phones primed, she threw her running clothes and trainers on, shoved her hair under the brown wig, filled her bottle with fresh water, donned her running shades, and sneaked out through the apartment block’s car park.
Minutes later she was entering the metro, only one stop away from the one she took from her family home, with early-bird tourists and the day’s workers, emerging back into the morning light a short while later at the Acropolis stop. She didn’t receive a second glance from anyone. Instead of turning right with the tourists, she turned left and joined the Dionysiou Areopagitou walkway. Just past the church of St Demetrius she disappeared through the trees onto a wonderfully shaded and cool running route, pounding the familiar path to the old quarry, paying no attention as she passed it nor any attention to the solo rock climber already scaling the crag further along, no attention to anything at all, not even when she took the landscaped walk up to the top of the hill.
Only when she reached the marble Philopappos Monument did she stop to drink some water and take a breath. A couple of tourists of around her parents’ age had already reached the hill’s summit and, though she couldn’t understand the language they were speaking, she knew they were raving at the spectacular view of the Acropolis. Just as she was wondering if they’d yet found the wooden observatory from where it felt like you could reach out and touch the Parthenon, the woman held her phone out to Lydia and made the universal sign of taking a photo.
Sticking her thumb up to show she understood, she took the phone and as she lifted it to get them and the Acropolis into frame, the couple put their arms around each other and pressed their cheeks together, beaming grins alive on their faces. A pang of melancholy tightened her chest at their obvious happiness, a pang that grew when they headed off on the path she’d just run with their hands clasped together. Her parents were still like that with each other.
Theirs was a future she would never have. Not with Alexis.
Wiping away a tear that had fallen from nowhere, she drank some more water and set back off to finish the trail.
For all the good the run had done her physically, emotionally Lydia felt worse. The tenterhooks she was hanging on were bleeding her heart. She couldn’t stop checking her phone for updates of the meeting, and by the time lunch had passed, the only news to have come out was that the investors had left soon after they’d arrived. No press release was, as yet, expected.
As for her brother, there had been no word. Neither of her parents had heard from him.
Selfishly—and Lydia hated herself for the selfishness of her thoughts and emotions—it was the evening’s party making her feel so sick. This was a society event that would be packed with the rich and beautiful. There would be women there who’d shared Alexis’s bed. What if one of those women was the one he’d thought about marrying, the one woman he’d contemplated a real relationship with? As hard as she tried, Lydia just could not stop herself thinking about her, couldn’t stop herself trawling the Internet for all the women he’d been linked with since their night together. Which one was she? And then she’d wondered if maybe the woman had come before her and that Alexis had cheated on her with Lydia. And then she’d wondered why she was doing this, why she couldn’t just do as she’d promised herself and make the most of what she had with Alexis while she had it because, while she had him, Alexis was everything a woman could dream of in a man and in a husband.
She thought back to the night they’d agreed their terms of marriage and his mocking smile as he’d said,‘No demands that I be faithful?’
‘I wouldn’t waste my breath.’
What if shehadwasted it? Would she still be facing a future that sat in her chest like the weight of doom? And what if…?
What if she were to ask it of him now? What if she were to lay her heart on the line and admit the thought of him with another woman made her feel physically sick? He wouldn’t laugh at her, that much she knew. He would take her seriously, but that didn’t mean he would give her the answer she craved. For heaven’s sake, she shouldn’t even be craving it! She’d known what she was agreeing to when she’d agreed to this marriage, and torturing herself like this was only going to make her ill and she couldn’t allow that to happen, especially not with her precious baby to think of.
Her next call to her mother went to voicemail.
Needing to be alone, she went up to the bedroom and curled into one of the sofas, hugging the phone to her chest. For the first time since she’d gone to her first childhood sleepover, she felt a keening ache for her fierce, determined, loving mother, but the one thing she felt so in desperate need of comfort for was the one thing she couldn’t yet tell her about and would be the thing that drove them apart.
Maybe she should go to the house and sit with them while they waited for news…but how to explain that she was magically back in Athens? She’d been so grateful that with everything going on her parents had been too distracted to question her about what she’d been getting up to. She hadn’t had to lie to them since the initial lie that she was going to England.
How was she going to cope without her family? She didn’t know how she could, but she had no choice. Would have no choice. Could only pray their anger with her didn’t last for ever because certainty was growing that she was going to need them.
By the time Alexis came home it felt like she was close to breaking. How could there be no news? How was she going to endure Alexis spending the evening in the presence of ex-lovers and probable future lovers? Who was to say he’d even come home to her after the party?
The bedroom door opened.
She jumped to her feet. ‘Have you heard anything?’
‘Only rumours,’ he said heavily as he threw his suit jacket and tie onto the nearest surface, one of his habits she was already becoming accustomed to. Crossing the room to her, he wrapped her in his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head.
Neither of them spoke for the longest time, and as the seconds passed and Lydia’s lungs filled with his divine scent and the beat of his heart thrummed steadily against her, a little of her angst loosened. Alexis would never know how comforting his embrace was to her and how safe it made her feel, even if that comfort and safety were dangerous wishful thinking delusions of her own mind.
‘I don’t know what happened in the meeting,’ he eventually said, ‘but the one solid piece of news I received from a reliable source is that Lucie was seen entering the Antoniadis building shortly after the meeting started.’
Lydia reared her head back so she could look up at him. ‘She’s back?’
‘Yes, but whether it’s for good or ill, I don’t know. Nothing has been seen of her or your brother since.’
Closing her eyes, she rested her face back into the crook of his neck.
