Seriously taken aback by that chirpy admission, Nik briefly froze. A split second later he concealed his reaction by forcing a transient smile to his lips while he scanned Betsy’s happy and relaxed expression. No, she had not the slightest suspicion that she had dropped a brick. And Vesos was, after all, where he had grown up. Her expectation that, having brought her here, he would want to share childhood experiences was simply normal. Acknowledging that truth, Nik cursed his decision to come to the island in the first place. Why hadn’t he just hired a villa somewhere? Vesos and this house had seemed the most sensible choice when they were already in Greece. But it had also been the very last place he had wanted to revisit, he reflected grudgingly.
Rising with something less than his usual grace from his seat, Nik stood gazing out through the trees towards the sea, mastering the powerful emotions threatening to roar through him like a hurricane, his broad back and wide shoulders rigid with tension. My mistake, he conceded heavily, and what could he do but play along to satisfy her natural curiosity? And why not when he was an adult now and no longer a weak and frightened child? Betsy wanted pretty, cosy pictures and he would give her pretty, cosy pictures, not the awful, pity-inducing truth.
‘You started school here?’ Betsy prompted over an hour later as she studied the small brick-built building beside the harbour and the young children playing outside with fascination.
Nik nodded and barely repressed a shudder. He thought of the bruising a teacher had once questioned and the lies he had been forced to tell to hide the reality of what went on within his own home. School had been difficult, not, of course, in academic terms but in the pain of the gradual dawning realisation that other children did not appear to suffer the treatment that he did. It had been a challenge for him to make friends, set apart as he was by his family’s wealth, even more of a challenge to play when he didn’t know how to play.
‘I really wish we could go and see your grandfather’s house—’ Betsy admitted.
No, no, no, no, Nik reflected sickly, nausea stirring at such a disturbing prospect.
‘But I know it’s your mother’s house now,’ Betsy allowed ruefully. ‘Couldn’t we drive past it?’
Nik was willing to settle for that less menacing suggestion. He drove along the coast road towards the cliffs.
‘Did you play on this beach?’
‘I was never allowed to leave the grounds of my grandfather’s home unless I had an adult with me,’ Nik fielded wryly, struggling to think of some single sunny recollection of his earliest years that would satisfy her desire to know more, but coming up with nothing.
Betsy peered at the house through the tall wrought-iron electric gates while Nik stared out through the windscreen without turning his dark head, lean brown hands flexing round the steering wheel of the sports car. ‘It’s an enormous place,’ she commented, glancing at him, wondering why he was so quiet and so... She struggled and failed to come up with an adequate label for his attitude. ‘Which bit of it did you live in?’
‘The wing furthest away from the gate,’ Nik related flatly. ‘It was entirely self-contained—my mother insisted on having her privacy.’
‘Were you happy here?’ Betsy prompted gently.
‘Of course I was,’ Nik lied.
* * *
‘So, when are we leaving?’ Betsy asked casually over dinner almost a week later.
Nik frowned and studied her with questioning green eyes clear as emeralds ringed by spiky black lashes. ‘Why would we be leaving?’