‘And the trouble of course began because you actually grew up,’ Josie said, ‘while James remained, and probably will always remain, in a state of arrested development.’
‘I don’t know, Josie . . .’ Calli hesitated. ‘I do now see that James is selfish, but not necessarily because he didn’t want children . . . There are many people who don’t want to be parents, for whatever reason.’ She stopped for a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘The fact is,’ she began again, ‘the more I think about it, the more I accept that it was as much his right not to want the baby as it was mine to want to keep it. But what I can’t accept is his behaviour towards me after all these years, his refusal to even enter into a discussion, his utter disregard of me. For that I can’t forgive him.’
‘Well, you don’t have to forgive him,’ Josie replied, reaching for her friend’s hand. ‘Do you think he’ll want to have anything to do with the baby when it’s born? Will you allow him access?’
‘Yes, if he wants it,’ Calli replied. ‘It’s still his child.’
‘Have you asked him?’
‘Not yet. I can’t bear to speak to him at the moment, but I will at some point.’
Living with her parents again felt strangely pleasurable for Calli. Her brother lived nearby and when he came to visit, which was now often, they would regularly eat their evening meal together as they had before they left home. Eleni and Keith were delighted to have their two children to themselves again after all this time.
‘She will be fine,’ Eleni told her husband. ‘She’s strong, our girl, a regular Cretan woman just like my mother. I always said that Calli is more like her grandmother than me.’
‘She’s got a lot of you in her too, my love,’ Keith said, slipping an arm around her slender waist. ‘You are one strong woman, my darling. It’s that Cretan spirit of yours that bewitched me, don’t you know?’ he said again and kissed her full on the lips, the chemistry and love still evident between them even after all their years of marriage. Every time Keith thought about James and his ‘treacherous’ behaviour, as he saw it, his anger flared. He was a passionate husband, loyal to his wife and children: they were his world, he would defend and protect them to the end. ‘How could that man abandon our girl?’ he would protest to Eleni. ‘And the baby too, what more could anyone ask from life?’
Keith had met and fallen in love with Eleni while on holiday in Crete, having taken a year’s sabbatical to travel around Europe in the summer of 1980. He had completed his PhD at Oxford and wanted a break before starting his first full-time position as a university lecturer in London. He and two of his friends had spent a couple of months travelling all over Greece and ended up in late August on the island of Crete. They had hired a car, determined to explore the entire island, especially its archaeological sites. Moving from place to place, they finally arrived at a remote village surrounded by mountains, with an equally remote beach by a sea more crystal-clear than any of them had ever set eyes on. Enchanted, they set up camp there and stayed far longer than they intended, not only because of the physical beauty of the location but also because Keith had fallen under the spell of a pretty girl who worked in the local grocery shop. Eleni was a teacher at the village primary school and was helping out at her family’s shop for the duration of the summer holidays.
‘He’s really got it bad,’ the other two boys, John and Tony, joked to each other when Keith would walk back from the shop laden with groceries that they didn’t need.
‘Can you at least wait till we eat the last watermelon you bought yesterday before bringing another one?’ they would tease. But Keith couldn’t let a day go by without seeing Eleni. The girl too was eager each day to see the English boy with the green eyes, golden suntan and long hair, until eventually, Keith, urged by his friends, summoned up enough courage to ask her for a date.
‘You can’t keep up this love-sick act for too long,’ John told him, ‘it’s a real downer on everyone! For heaven’s sake ask the girl out.’