us the truth, and because when Eros strikes we are done for!’
‘Does Nicos feel the same?’ her mother asked.
‘I don’t know . . . I only really know what I feel . . . but I believe so.’
12
Once Calli had spoken the words out loud, and acknowledged the true emotions that had led her in this startling new direction, she decided she had to find out if Nicos felt the same. As she told her mother, she was of the generation of women that didn’t have to wait for a man to declare their intentions, it was as much her right and responsibility as his.
However, the next few times when they met it was, as always, in the company of Michalis too. What she longed for was time alone with Nicos, to be given the opportunity to assess and find out how he felt towards her. She found that being with both brothers at the same time was making her feel awkward, tongue-tied, confused, even disloyal towards Michalis. A niggling feeling was quietly nagging at her, telling her she had to talk to Michalis, that she owed him an explanation.
The longer she spent in Nicos’s company the more her emotions towards him intensified, making her all the more anxious to know how he felt. She tried to judge what the main component of her attraction towards him was and why he was having such a strong impact on her in comparison to his brother. Michalis was just as attractive, she mused, just as charming and intelligent, yet it was Nicos who had got under her skin, or on her skin, she thought with amusement, remembering the way his touch was making her feel each time he reached for her. Her sexual attraction towards him, she acknowledged, was indisputable, but it wasn’t just desire that propelled her towards Nicos – she had fallen in love.
‘I’ve always thought I’d have a family,’ he told her one afternoon, finding themselves alone at last after Michalis had left to attend to some urgent business. ‘My brother and I, we were so happy growing up in the village, so much freedom to roam around the hills and countryside; I’m sure that’s when our love for cultivating olives began – we learned from our grandfather when we were quite small. I always imagined I would return home some day and have a family of my own here.’ He paused to look at her. ‘What about you, Calli, how was it growing up in London?’
‘It was happy,’ she replied. ‘My mother is a true Cretan, she brought us up with a strong sense of her culture. London is a multicultural city, at school we had friends from all over the world, and we still do,’ she replied. ‘My best friend is Caribbean, her family, especially her grandmother, always reminded me of my yiayia Calliope.’
‘Is London where you want to live and raise your family?’ he asked hesitantly, pausing before continuing. ‘Do you want to have children, Calli?’
His question made her catch her breath. ‘Oh yes, Nicos, I do,’ she replied. ‘More than anything.’ She barely finished completing her sentence than her thoughts turned to Michalis; hadn’t she asked him that very same question not long ago?
The time, she decided, had come to speak to him, she couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to explain to Michalis how she felt. But what to say? It wasn’t as if either had at any point made a declaration of love or a pledge of commitment to one another, yet she felt that an unspoken bond had grown between them and breaking it seemed like a betrayal. Her feelings towards him were tender and warm; since she suspected they were reciprocal and she had no intention of hurting him, she was duty bound to talk to him. Yet what would she tell him? Announcing that she had fallen in love at first sight with his brother would sound ridiculously fickle and immature. But she couldn’t help how she felt, she was following the laws of her heart, the laws of nature and of love, and it was important that she try to explain to Michalis, out of respect, that whatever her earlier fantasies, the affection she felt for him was a sisterly, platonic love, while it was his brother who had stirred earth-shaking emotions in her.
All the while she was pondering about what to do, a sentence hovered in her mind: When my body thinks . . . all