the one they always chose for celebrations, around the corner from his law firm in Soho. She was early – excited and a little nervous, she ordered a Virgin Mary and some bread and olives while she waited. She watched him walk down the stairs into the restaurant looking handsome in his dark work suit, his eyes searching the tables for her.
‘There you are!’ he said, crossing the room to her table and beckoning the waiter as he bent down to give her a kiss. ‘I’m famished and I need a stiff drink. What a day I’ve had,’ he complained in typical James fashion, loosening his tie as he dropped down beside her. ‘What’s the occasion?’ he asked, popping an olive into his mouth. ‘Have you been nominated for another award or something?’
‘Let’s have a drink and order first,’ she replied, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
The return of the ice-blue glare sent shivers down Calli’s spine. Again that stubborn silence, the grim expression, the tightly set mouth. Oh no, no! her brain screamed inside her head, not again, no!
‘Oh, Calli, Calli . . .’ he finally said, shaking his head, his voice almost inaudible. ‘How could you do this?’ he hissed now. ‘What part of I have never wanted this, not now not ever, did you not understand from our last conversation, and from living with me all these years? Did you really think that hanging out with your friends with children was going to change my mind?’
She tried to speak but had no voice. She kept her eyes as wide as she could to stop them from flooding as she looked silently at him.
‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ he went on, staring coldly at her.
His words, like a slap across her face, made her snap out of her state of speechlessness and she hit back with force.
‘I do not have to say anything for myself, James!’ she hissed back at him. ‘I did not do this behind your back or on my own!’ Her fury was quickly getting the better of her and her tears finally found their way down her cheeks. ‘You were fully present when it happened, or have you forgotten?’ She turned her head away from him; she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer.
‘It’s no good, Calli. I never signed up for this.’ His voice was harder than she had ever heard it before. ‘If you wanted a baby, you should have chosen a different man. You knew that from the start. If you want us to stay together, you choose. It’s either me or it.’ And with that, James stood up, drained his glass of wine, put a handful of money on the table and stalked out of the restaurant, leaving Calli with a pain like a sharp blade in her heart. Eventually she picked up her handbag, pulled out her mobile and called her mother.
‘Get in a taxi and come over immediately!’ Eleni’s worried voice instructed. ‘Or, better still, your father will come and collect you.’
‘No, Mama, don’t send poor Dad into town,’ she replied in a small voice. ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll make my own way,’ she added, even if at that moment all she wanted was to fall into her parents’ arms and have them take care of her. But no, she thought, she could manage; she was a grown-up.
Sitting in the back of the black cab, tears streaking her face, she remembered the last time she and James had shared a taxi and how the passion flowed between them. She was partly to blame for this, she told herself. James had shown his true stubborn colours to her on so many occasions, yet she had always chosen to ignore them. Now she could have no doubts, he had revealed them in glorious Technicolor and with such clarity that no more excuses could be made for him. As her best friend Josie always used to say, ‘When a person shows you their true colours you’d better believe them.’ Josie often told her this, especially when someone or other had let her down, but given her nature, most often Calli turned a blind eye.
‘The trouble with you, my friend,’ Josie would scold her, ‘is that you choose to see what you want to see in people, and it so often leads to disappointment.’
Now at long last it was time to open her eyes and see James for who he really was.
‘Selfish, that’s what he is!’ said Keith, Calli’s father,