Greece, the Eighties
It had been Clive’s idea. He had said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, so obvious that Artemis had been stunned into submissive silence. A baby? They were sitting on the boat, bobbing on the surface of the water seemingly miles from shore, the stretch of beach behind them coming in and out of focus like an optical illusion.
At first she had stared at him in disbelief. How would that even work? They were still living in different countries, with Clive visiting every few months, and when they were together they would conduct their relationship in the privacy of the old village, Artemis still refusing to risk being exposed.
It was a charade, of course. However careful they might have been to stay away as much as possible from prying eyes, the island was like a fishbowl. There was no way her parents hadn’t heard the rumours that would no doubt be crackling across the parched scrubland, but so far Rena and Markos had chosen to ignore them – or at least they had chosen not to confront them head on. Athena, who had done little to conceal her jealousy over her friend’s ensnaring of exactly the kind of man she had wanted to snag for herself, had simply refused to acknowledge their relationship. As far as she was concerned, Artemis and Clive as a couple didn’t exist, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
‘OK, where would we live?’ Artemis said after a while, taking a swig from a bottle of beer, playing along.
‘London.’
‘I can’t just move to London.’
‘Why not?’
Her jaw went slack as she tried to think up reasons, beyond the obvious fact that she had no more connection to the place than she had to the moon.
Clive pushed again. ‘You’ll love it.’
Would she? She tried to picture it: the heaving crowds at Camden Market overlaid with the stench of incense and cheap meat; the gigs at the Dublin Castle, the pub Clive had described one night as they lay between the trees, staring up at the stars.
He had sent her a letter not long after he’d last returned to London – a single sentence, ‘I miss you’, on a sheet of white A5 paper. Inside, was a photo of a house with tiled steps leading to the front door, wisteria hanging over the arch. On the back of the photo, Clive had written, ‘In case you wanted to picture where I am now.’
There was something so intimate about the gesture, something so tender … the house itself was beautiful, and yet something about it had unnerved her.
She dismissed the memory now, focusing on his question: why not?
It was a fair enough question, in a sense. There were certainly alluring details in the world Clive described – the homes of John Keats and Sigmund Freud, all within spitting distance of Clive’s family house. Irresistible snippets of history embedded in his beloved corner of North London, and yet when she tried to picture the scene beyond the framework of the house itself it was all too vague, too fanciful ever to try to place herself within it.
Maybe she just wasn’t trying hard enough. Was she really intent on spending her whole life here, on the island? When she thought of staying, her blood ran as cold as when she imagined what it would mean to leave.
Though the prospect of seeing Jorgos again had plagued her for a while after Clive mentioned their meeting, Artemis had pushed it to the back of her mind. As far as she knew, he was still living on Skiathos, and the likelihood of him coming back to the island to visit and her bumping into him was no greater than it had been before. Besides, there was no reason for her to be afraid of him, was there? He couldn’t hurt her. Not any more.
Clive’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘What’s here for you? I mean what’s really here – beyond your parents and the job at the bakery? You want more than that, I know you do, even if you deny it. You could open a gallery in London, a proper gallery …’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, turning away from him. Could he not understand what a betrayal it would be to leave? She was the only child her parents had left. And yet, was Helena’s absence really the reason she felt compelled to stay?
‘I brought you something,’ Clive said, reaching into his bag and pulling out a small black leather box. He opened it to show a necklace resting on a bed of cream-coloured silk. For a moment, Artemis was reminded of the image of Snow White laid out in her coffin.
‘It was my mother’s,’ Clive said, without looking up at her.
She closed her eyes as he clasped the amethyst necklace around her throat.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said, letting the hair fall against her back. ‘It’s as if it was made for you.’
The necklace felt a little tight as she breathed in but it would be wrong to mention it. Instead she turned and leaned into him.
‘Thank you, it’s perfect.’