‘No, my value to him lay in my genes, that is all,' was Ilios's harsh response.
Lizzie ached with sadness for him. Was his own childhood the cause of Ilios's determination not to marry and not to allow any woman to knowingly have his children? Had having to be so self-reliant, unable to trust the one adult he should have been able to turn to, left him so badly scarred that he was unable to trust other human beings himself? It would have taken great emotional strength and endurance and great maturity to have survived the childhood Ilios had had and emerge unscathed from it, far more than any young child could have been expected to have.
Lizzie felt desperately sorry for the little boy Ilios must have been-so sorry, in fact, that she wanted to gather that child up in her arms and hold him safe, give him the same loving childhood she herself had known. But of course that child no longer existed, and the man he had become would scorn her emotions as mere sentiment, she suspected.
‘The past is over. Looking back toward it serves no purpose,' Ilios told her curtly. ‘We live in the present, after all.'
‘That's true, but sometimes we need to look back to what we were to understand what we are now.'
‘That is self-indulgence and it also serves no purpose,' Ilios insisted grimly, looking at his watch and adding, ‘If you are ready to leave … ?'
Lizzie nodded her head. The subject of his childhood and the effect it must have had on him was obviously closed, and she suspected it would remain that way.
It would soon be spring, and the temperature was beginning to rise a little. Wild flowers bloomed by the roadside, the way they had their faces turned up to the sun making Lizzie smile as Ilios drove them towards the east and the peninsula where Villas Manos stood.
Since Ilios was a good driver there was no logical reason for her to feel on edge. No logical reason, perhaps, but since when have the emotions of a woman in love been logical? Lizzie asked herself wryly.
They passed the turn-off for Halkidiki and the famous Mount Athos peninsula, with its monasteries and its rule that no female was allowed to set foot there, including female animals, and then had stopped briefly at a small tavern for a simple lunch of Greek salad and fruit. It was eaten mainly in the same silence which had pervaded since they had set out.
If Ilios was regretting inviting her to join him, then she was certainly regretting accepting his invitation. She felt rejected and unwanted, deliberately distanced from Ilios by his silence-a silence that her own pride would not allow her to break.
Ilios drove straight to the villa on the western side of the promontory, ignoring the fork in the road to the east where the apartment block had been.
It seemed a lifetime since she had first met Ilios there. Then she had been a single woman, her only concern for her financial situation and the future of her family. Her own emotions as a woman simply had not come into the equation. Now she was married and a wife-at least in the eyes of the world. Her family were financially secure, and her anxiety was all for her own emotions.
Ruby had sent her a photograph of the twins via her mobile, so that Lizzie could see the new school uniforms she had bought for them at Lizzie's insistence that she must do so and that they could afford it. A tender, amused smile curled Lizzie's mouth. The two five-year-olds had looked so proud in their grey flannel trousers and maroon blazers, their dark hair cut short and brushed neatly.
Lizzie loved her nephews. She had been present at their birth, anxious for her young sister, and grieving for the fact that Ruby was having to go through her pain without their parents and without the man who had fathered her children. But when the twins had been born and she had held them all the sad aspects of their birth had been forgotten in the rush of love and joy she had felt.
They had reached the villa now, and even though she had seen it before, and knew what to expect, Lizzie was still filled with admiration and awe as she gazed at its perfect proportions, outlined against the bright blue sky.
The warm cream colour of the villa toned perfectly with the aged darker colour of the marble columns supporting the front portico and with the soft grey-white of the shutters at the windows. The gravel on which the car was resting exactly matched the colour of the marble columns, and the green of the lawns highlighted the darker green of the Cyprus trees lining the straight driveway. The whole scene in front of them was one of visual harmony.
There was no other car parked outside-which Lizzie presumed meant that the man Ilios had come here to see had not as yet arrived.
‘We're earlier than I expected, so I'll show you the inside before Andreas arrives,' Ilios announced as he opened the car door for Lizzie and waited for her to get out.
They walked to the entrance side by side. Side by side but feet apart, Lizzie thought sadly as she waited for Ilios to unlock the magnificent double doors.
Above them, where in Italy there would have been the family arms and motto, was an image of a small sailing ship.
‘Alexandros Manos earned his fortune as a maritime trader,' Ilios informed her, following her gaze. ‘It was his fleet that paid for this land and for the villa.'
Ilios had opened the door, and was stepping back so that Lizzie could precede him inside the villa.
The first thing she noticed was the smell of fresh paint, unmistakable and instantly recognizable. Her educated nose told her that the smell came from a traditional lime-based paint rather than a modern one.
With the shutters closed the interior was in darkness-until Ilios switched on the lights, causing Lizzie to gasp in astonished delight as she spun round, studying the frescoes that ran the whole way round the double-height central room.
She had seen frescoes before, of course, many of them. But none quite like these.
‘Are they scenes from the Odyssey?' she asked Ilios uncertainly after she had studied them.
‘Yes,' Ilios confirmed. ‘Only Odysseus bears a striking resemblance to Alexandros Manos. To have oneself depicted as the hero of the Odyssey was, of course, a conceit not uncommon at the time. I've had the frescoes repainted because of the damage they've suffered over the centuries. Luckily we had some sketches of the original scenes to work with. The work still isn't finished yet,' Ilios added, indicating the final panel of the fresco, where a woman was bending over a loom, unpicking a thread, with the outline of a large dog at her feet.
The fresco was badly damaged, with paint peeling from it and marks across it that looked as though someone had scored the panel angrily with something sharp. Even so it was still possible to see what the panel was meant to represent.
‘Penelope? The faithful wife?' Lizzie guessed, remembering the legend of how Odysseus's wife Penelope had held off the suitors who wanted to marry her and take possession of Odysseus's kingdom by saying she would only accept one of them when she had finished her tapestry, and then unpicking it every night in secret so that it would never be finished, so sure had she been that her husband would eventually return.
Ilios's terse, ‘Yes', told Lizzie that he didn't want to discuss the subject of the panel, so she turned instead to follow him into one of the smaller rooms.
Here scaffolding showed where craftsmen were obviously working to repair the ornate plasterwork ceiling, which Lizzie could see held a central fresco of a family group.
‘I had to go to Florence to find the craftspeople to do this work,' Ilios told Lizzie.
‘It's a highly skilled job,' Lizzie agreed.
Two hours later Ilios had given her a full tour of the house. The man he was supposed to be meeting had telephoned to say that he would have to cancel and make another appointment. He was unavoidably delayed because his wife had gone into premature labour.
‘I hope she and the baby will be all right,' had been Lizzie's immediate and instinctive comment as they'd walked down the return staircase.
The villa would be stunningly beautiful when the restoration work had been completed-a true work of art, in fact. But Lizzie simply could not visualise it as a home.