The Veranchetti Marriage(30)

Athene waved an imperious hand. “But not, I think, willingly, and I have no need to receive details. I knew from the first moment I met you six years ago that you and Alex would have a stormy relationship. Given your personality, it was only a matter of time until the trouble began…”

“My personality?”

Athene frowned irritably. “You are too defensive. Will you let me speak?” she demanded thinly. “If Alex had married a quieter girl, content to fit with his expectations, the marriage probably would have lasted as yours did not. You were outgoing and lively, and Alex was stifling you because he could not bring himself to trust you. The fault was his. Perhaps I could have stopped it then by speaking to him. I chose to conserve my own dignity. I did not interfere, and when I would have done, it was too late.”

Kerry sighed. “I’m afraid I don’t see what you could have done.”

Athene smiled grimly. “Yes, you have noticed that Alex and I are not close. Did you ever wonder why? Alex was my firstborn and my favourite, but I believe his first loyalty always lay with his father. Nevertheless, when he was a child, we were close until a certain episode occurred.” Her voice was becoming taut and hesitant. “I lost my son’s respect. Has he told you of this?”

Puzzled by the increasingly personal tenor of Athene’s words, while marvelling that Athene could ever have done anything to fall foul of Alex’s high principles, Kerry murmured gently, “Alex wouldn’t have told me anything of that nature unless there was a need for me to know.”

Athene sighed. “It was not a need he would have acknowledged, and it is an episode he has done his utmost to forget. That I have always been aware of,” she conceded, almost as if she was talking to herself. “When I married Alex’s father, Lorenzo, I admired him very much. I was only a teenager when I understood that it was my parents’ dearest wish that I should marry the son of their oldest friends. It was not arranged, you understand, but it was expected.”

“Were you unhappy with Alex’s father?” Kerry prompted in surprise.

“When I fell in love, for the first and last time in my life,” Athene stressed looking her almost defiantly in the eye, “then I was unhappy.”

As Kerry’s face tightened in astonished realisation that Athene was admitting to having loved another man, her companion’s lips compressed tightly.

“Why not me? None of us are born saints. I had been content with Lorenzo. He was a good man and a faithful husband, and he still loved me on the day he died. He never knew that for a few short weeks of our marriage I carried on an affair with another man, and it would have caused him great pain to discover that secret. He had always awarded me unquestioning faith and trust,” she admitted heavily.

Mottled colour had suffused her powdered cheeks, making Kerry sharply aware that this confession of frailty had cost Athene dearly.

“We met quite by accident,” she continued expressionlessly. “He was a businessman, but not wealthy. For me, it was a kind of madness. I counted no costs when I became involved with him. Every moment I could steal from my family, I was with Tomaso, and inevitably we were found out.” Her voice had sunk very low. “I wanted desperately to be with him somewhere where we could be alone. We used to have a summer place outside Cannes. Alex was at boarding-school then. He was to spend his half-term there with me. There was illness in the school and they let him leave early. He crept into the house to surprise me, and he discovered me in Tomaso’s arms. He was only thirteen, and I was terrified that he would tell his father. I realised too late what I had done. I sent Tomaso away and I never saw him again. I had my children and my husband to consider. Alex remained silent. He understood that nothing could be gained from any other course but his father’s pain and disillusionment.”

As the implications of the sad, reluctantly advanced confession swept Kerry in a stormy flood, she swallowed hard sooner than betray a sympathy which would be fiercely rejected. Athene might have strayed in the madness she described, but for a strong woman of deep, religious convictions her choice had been completely in character.

In the heavy silence, Athene took a deep breath. “He didn’t betray me, but I lost the son who loved and respected his mother that day. He never alluded to the incident again. How else could he behave?” she appealed tiredly. “His love for his father tied him to silence. He grew up that day all at once. He learnt that appearances could be deceptive. Now perhaps you may understand why Alex would find it very hard to trust a woman.”

And why he divorced me and why he wouldn’t come near me, Kerry added in inner anguish. He had been afraid to end up in the weak position he probably believed his father had held throughout his marriage. He had cut her out of his life sooner than risk that danger. “Why have you told me this?” she asked.

“For Alex. The settlement of a debt,” Athene emphasised, looking every year of her age. “Now perhaps you will go to him and tell him there is no other man in your life.”

The edge of her contempt stiffened Kerry. “It’s not as simple as that. Alex doesn’t love me.”

“Does that matter, if he needs you?” Athene turned on her like a lioness defending a cub. “If there was a cure for you I would have given it to him! You are Alex’s one weakness. I don’t know how he kept away from you for four years. And you say, ‘he doesn’t love me’,” she mimicked in a die-away echo, but her lined dark eyes were suspiciously bright. “Do you think I came here easily to ask for your help? He is on the island, and when I saw him last week he was exceedingly drunk. While you are painting your walls, my son is going to pieces!”

As Athene stalked back out to her car in high dudgeon, Kerry was picturing Alex standing in the doorway as he had that last day. Alex without words, simply taking a last look at her. Does it matter what drives him if he needs you? “You can never be here for me when I need you.” The ragged condemnation he had uttered weeks ago thickened her throat. It was three steps to the phone, and she got there in one. If there was something wrong with Alex, she would go to him. Just once more she would put her own pride on the line. Athene would not have approached her lightly.

By the time she lurched out of the helicopter late that evening, and the pilot tucked Nicky’s limp, sleeping body into her arms, her adrenalin-charged rush to Alex’s side seemed a little excessive. Nobody was expecting them. Kerry had purposely not phoned. She had not wanted Alex to have time to prepare himself for her arrival.

Sofia hurried towards her in a dressing-gown, with Spiros in her wake. Kerry settled Nicky into the manservant’s arms with a relieved sigh. She had been prepared for Alex to appear, looking his usual smooth self and embarrassingly curious about her uninvited descent. But he didn’t appear, and Sofia fussed round her, trying to persuade her to go to bed. A thin bar of light was burning below the study door. Seeing it, Kerry turned from Sofia and opened the door.

The shutters were drawn, the air rank with the pervasive fumes of whisky. Alex was slumped in a chair, and she no longer needed to wonder why he had failed to come and greet her. He hadn’t had a shave in days. He was haggard, his cheekbones protruding sharply to emphasise his unhealthy pallor. Her sleek, beautiful Alex had gone skinny, and he was viewing her with unfocused dark eyes much as a drunk uncritically accepts the presence of a parade of pink elephants.

“Oh…Alex, how could you do this to yourself?” she whispered painfully.

She threw open the shutters and the windows to let in fresh air. Something crunched under her shoe. She bent to lift a crumpled black and white photo of herself, a stolen photo taken when she was unawares some time in the past. She was emerging from the showroom, talking animatedly to Steven.

Alex muttered something incoherent. He closed his eyes and opened them again. “Kerry?” he slurred uncertainly. “Don’t go away again.”

He pulled himself up in the chair and she stood over him with folded arms. “Do you love me?” she demanded shakily, surmising that she was most likely to receive the truth in the condition he was in, and if she was taking advantage, too bad.

“You’ll disappear if I say yes,” he mumbled accusingly.

“No, I won’t. You’ve got that the wrong way round,” she protested.

He pushed unsteady fingers through his tousled black hair. “Yes.”

Her eyes watered. “Say it, then.”

His mouth curved into a shadowy smile, the sort of smile a pink elephant might inspire. “I love you,” he managed, and then, “Much too much to hold on to you.”

“No…no!” She could have kicked him. “I didn’t want the qualification. That’s just so typical of you, Alex. You can’t even say three little words the way I want to hear them. I’ve waited six years, and in six years I got it thrown at me in the past tense once, and now I get it with a qualification. If I had any pride at all, I wouldn’t be here ready to tell you that I love you…”

She retreated, shocked by her own loss of control. But Alex had finally been sprung from his lethargy. He stood up, swaying slightly. “Hallucinations don’t shout.”