of us – no one to help – but we managed,’ Eleni would lament privately to Keith lest she upset Calli by raising the subject again.
‘Yes, but we had love in our hearts, Eleni,’ Keith said, shaking his head. ‘Unfortunately it seems that our daughter chose the wrong man for a life partner. End of story! We should all try to forget about him!’
Nonetheless it wasn’t easy for Calli to forget ten years of her life without regrets. But the baby she was carrying made up for all the heartache she was feeling and gave her strength to continue and look towards a new future. Her work kept her busy too; support from her family and friends did much to help her heal emotionally, and to her surprise she appeared to have more energy than ever.
‘It’s your hormones,’ her mother told her, ‘if they don’t make you feel nauseous, they sometimes give you a boost and you can feel even better than before.’
‘I couldn’t get out of bed from throwing up,’ her friend Sarah told her when she came to visit, ‘and look at you, all glowing skin and shiny hair . . . I hate you!’ she laughed. Calli’s due date was early November; a baby girl, she had learned after her last scan. She had had doubts about finding out the sex but eventually decided that the knowledge confirmed the baby’s presence and made the event all the more real and exciting.
‘Ah! Look, Mum!’ she said, pointing at the screen. ‘A little Eleni!’
Following the Greek custom, Calli had announced that if the baby was a girl she would be named after her beloved mother. ‘Just as you named me after Yiayia,’ she said. Mother and daughter had gone to the hospital together for the scan and when the doctor told them she was carrying a baby girl they both burst into tears.
‘She’s going to be another little Cretan thunderbolt,’ Calli said, squeezing Eleni’s hand.
4
Eleni was pushing the overflowing supermarket trolley down the tea and coffee aisle when she heard her mobile phone ring in her handbag.
‘I must remember to stop dumping my bag in there,’ she muttered under her breath, diving among the groceries to retrieve it buried under a heap of shopping. Now that she had the whole family to feed again, her trolley was always more loaded than when she shopped for herself and Keith.
When eventually she found the phone it had switched to voicemail. It was Keith. He must want me to buy something, she thought, waiting to hear the message.
‘Don’t worry, love, everything’s fine,’ she heard her husband’s anxious voice reverberate in her ear. ‘Don’t panic, keep calm,’ his voice continued, ‘but Calli’s been in an accident. Can you come home please . . . straight away!’ Without a second thought and of course in a panic, Eleni abandoned the trolley in the middle of the aisle and ran out of the supermarket to her car.
‘She wasn’t the one driving,’ Keith began, anxiously trying to explain what had happened as they set off for the hospital. ‘John, you know, her assistant . . . he called me from the hospital just before I phoned you . . . He told me that he had been driving . . .’ Keith’s speech faltered in his attempt to keep calm. ‘He apparently had to swerve to avoid hitting a cyclist who came out of nowhere, and ended up having a head-on collision with a car coming the other way. But . . .’ he paused to take a deep breath before continuing, ‘but luckily they were both driving slowly, so it really wasn’t as bad as it might have been.’
‘Never mind all that!’ Eleni interrupted, cutting him short, her impatience getting the better of her. ‘Do we know how badly she’s hurt?’ she said, her heart thumping in her ears as she turned to look at him through tear-blurred eyes. Keith’s face was as pale as her own. ‘And the baby?’ she asked, again holding her breath and dreading the answer.
‘I don’t know, love. I feel so stupid for not asking, but when I got the call from the hospital, I was so shocked I just couldn’t think straight . . . all I heard . . . all that mattered at that moment was that Calli was all right.’
When they at last located Calli’s bed, they found her fast asleep, sporting a nasty bruise on her right shoulder and arm, and one on her forehead;