I lean back in my chair, pressing my aching spine into the hard wooden struts. It’s like my mother saying goodbye to me all over again. The familiar rush of grief cascades over me, but it’s new. I’m grieving for a hidden corner of her, and I’m shocked, angry. Always the wild romantic, but why she couldn’t find the words to share this special part of her life with me, such an important relationship over so many years, I will never be able to know. Perhaps that’s what hurts the most, is the biggest let-down. Did I fail her as a daughter that she couldn’t confide in me, yet I thought we were so close?
When I went away with Tasha’s granny each summer to France, I thought Mum was travelling for work. She was, but was also continuing her relationship with Grigor in secret, away from us all. My shaking hands delicately place the letter on the table beside the other piles of missives. I stand abruptly, the furniture noisily scraping the tiled floor.
‘Sorry. I need to be on my own.’
I’m blinded by tears, rushing outside, down towards the sea. I feel wretched this was hidden from me; guilty she chose me over love. It confuses my sorrow and mixes with resentment; so many feelings I haven’t the strength to process. I don’t want my recollection of her to be tarnished. More of her taken away from me when memories are all I have left.
As I reach the water’s edge, I see a feather caught in a pocket of gentle breeze. Dancing, flitting up and down over the ripples of the sea’s surface. It settles on the sand beside a rock. I sit on the low stone. The sun beats down on my shoulders, but I’m unaware of the heat. I’m cold, empty, yet brimming with so many emotions, all vying for prime position.
This end of the beach is covered in tiny stones, multicoloured specks, dots of reds, yellows, green and brown sea glass. A rainbow on the sand. If she had told me, I’d have wanted to come here to meet Grigor with her, encourage her to follow her heart as she so often did me.
I see Grigor walking along the tideline. Grief is carved into his features; he has confirmation she’s dead. Although he suspected when her letters stopped, my being here made it real. I don’t know if I want to speak to him, I want it all to go away, it’s too much.
I stand slowly and look out to sea, searching for courage. I turn to him, unable to find any words. I’m not used to sharing Mum with anybody other than Tasha. Now, there’s another living being who loved her as deeply as I. A man who represents her secret life – and I don’t know how to feel about him or about her.
He stands in front of me, his eyes creased at the edges, so similar in shape and sharing the startling colour of Theo’s.
‘Sophie, this is tangled web, yes? But you must remember, at the centre of all this is love. For you, me, Theo, your mother. She want to tell you, but there was nothing to say. We could not be together, as I explain. All we had was our summers. Yes, we met here in Greece, but it was impossible for us to be as we would wish; our lives were so different. This small place was much stricter and is still like this even today. I must make you understand the shame it would have brought on us, my family, onto her because I was married. It would have torn us away from each other … so is the best for Lyndsey and me to be apart. But I regret this very much. Now is too late and it will give me this pain always. She did this for you – she love you more than anyone – to keep you from hurt, although this is what you are feeling now. This is what she did not want.’
As I listen to his voice, I see how much it costs him to speak of her. Yet, their love lived on in all those poignant letters. In between their secret meetings each year, they kept it alive. I smile sadly at him.
‘Secrets and hiding things just causes everyone pain. I’ve learned that the hard way. And now, I wish I didn’t know about this,’ I say, my heart aching for their loss and mine.
‘Can we sit?’
He indicates to the rock and awkwardly lowers himself down. His thick black hair that belies his age drops kiss-curls over his forehead as he bends, again reminiscent of Theo’s.
‘Sophie, this must change nothing for you. Your mother loved you above all else. But there is something I must also tell you, and this I cannot say to Theo or even my mother. But you, you of all people, deserve to know. You may of course speak with Theo of it. But I cannot.’
My pulse quickens, pre-empting further disturbance. I hesitantly nod my consent and wait for him to speak. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He flips open the lid of the square white packet, lighting one with difficulty against the increasing wind. He’s torturing me with his delay. Imitating the mannerisms of his son I have come to know so well and love.
‘When your mother arrives in England after one summer when we were much younger, she discover she is pregnant.’ He holds his hand up to calm me as I go to react. ‘Please, wait. I must finish. I am sorry to say she lost this child. It was early, only of weeks.
‘We share this loss quietly; nobody could ever know, of course. I was ashamed to have committed such sin, was careless, so wrapped up for each other. I cause this, am feeling responsible. Like is God’s way for punishing me that baby did not live.
‘You were young when this was, and she is always wanting to protect you. She say these make her reasons stronger for not being together. Even as you become older, she want to keep you safe from being hurt, for the memory of your father also. I am sorry. This today must be very shocking and it upset you.’
His eyes mist and I can’t help but reach for his hand. My mind desperately tries to place when this could have been. Finally alighting on a vague memory when I was perhaps seven. I’d been abroad with Tasha’s family, as usual, and Mum was away for her work. She was admitted to hospital on her return with a stomach problem, so she told me. But she was losing my half-brother or -sister – Theo’s half-sibling, too.
The sadness that followed her around after that summer never quite shifted. Now I know why. She kept quiet for my benefit. But I wish I still had her memory perfectly intact; I’d only just begun to grapple with my grief. Now, it’s like beginning again, but mourning a part of someone I feel I didn’t know.
I begin to cry, unable to stem the tears for all that’s been lost. Love, children, a future that wasn’t allowed to be. I wander in my mind between guilt and anger, love and loss. Theo and I would have grown up as step-siblings. That faintly disturbing thought is quickly replaced with the fact that our parents’ loss has maybe become our gain. No wonder she was so understanding when I miscarried. Outside the realm of instinctive mothering, she knew exactly what to say and how to comfort me. All the while reliving her silent heartache and their private shame.
Grigor reaches for my shoulder and holds it firmly. The warmth of his touch unites us in our tears; both of us grieving for what is gone. I gather myself through the silence, the significance of what I’ve learned sinking in. And all this on a day when Theo and I admitted our love for one another. Completely oblivious we were walking in our parents’ shoes.
In a way, this reaffirms my reasons for coming here. It wasn’t just about finding a painting, although that’s how it began – it was about finding myself. Mum was leading me here not only to discover that, but also to discover the real her. This is a continuation of our family in a new chapter. By accepting what’s gone, only then can I truly move forwards. But I am overwhelmed.
Grigor and I both wipe our eyes and look at each other. A knowledge, an unsaid understanding in the air. Sharing a deep but different love for the same person, the ghost of whom still stands between us. I still have so much I want to ask, but I expect some of those questions will be answered in her letters and in his when I get home and open the package from her solicitor I couldn’t face at the time. She said in her letter to Grigor I should have them, to put the puzzle together. Although I’m doing it the wrong way around to how she hoped it would play out. This is her story, but I’m reading it out of chronological order. She wanted me to know but couldn’t find the spoken words.
‘The painting I’ve been searching for this whole time is hanging in your study,’ I laugh. ‘I’ve been running around looking for it. You said she was painting it the day you met, on the beach.’
‘Yes, is correct,’ he replies.
‘I’d love to know where that was.’
I look left and right along the shoreline before noticing that Grigor is looking down at the sand. He inhales slowly, as if simply taking a breath costs him dearly. I see the muscle in his cheek twitch, tensing to stem his tears. Raising his face to look at me, the sun shines on his dark skin, making him glow as if in an otherworldly light.
His hand pats the stony surface.
‘On this rock, where we sit now. It was here. We are in her painting.’