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‘Shoos,’ Callie sounded importantly as Ella removed her sandals. ‘Socks.’
‘Very good,’ Ella applauded, turning up Callie’s earnest little face to drop a kiss on it.
‘My goodness, she’s talking now…’
Ella almost jumped out of her skin, and twisted her head round to focus on the older woman in the doorway. ‘Mum?’
‘Theo’s gone into the meeting, and I asked a maid to bring me up,’ Jane Sardelos explained in a harried undertone. ‘He would be furious if he knew I was here with you.’
‘He gets furious far too easily. Why won’t you leave him?’ Ella asked in a pained, heartfelt undertone that betrayed her incomprehension on that score.
‘He’s my husband and he loves me. He’s been a good father and provider. You don’t understand,’ the older woman proclaimed, just as she had throughout Ella’s teenaged years. ‘Let me see my grandchild…She’s the very image of you, Ella.’
Ella noticed that the little girl showed no sign of recognising her grandmother. ‘You haven’t seen much of her, have you?’
‘Susie was very difficult after the birth,’ Jane murmured sadly as she stared down with softening eyes at the sleepy little girl and sat down beside the cot. ‘She didn’t want my advice, or anyone else’s, and it was obvious that her marriage was breaking down and she didn’t care. I saw Calliope a few times when she was very young, but Susie really didn’t want to be bothered with visitors, and she was quite unpleasant on several occasions.’
‘I think that Susie very probably had post-natal depression,’ Ella contended gently.
‘She wouldn’t see a doctor, though.’ Jane Sardelos shook her head heavily. ‘I did what I could, but your sister was always very wilful and I’m afraid she paid the price for it. But I don’t want you to pay a price as well.’
‘Let’s not talk about me,’ Ella cut in hurriedly.
‘Half the world is talking about you since you moved in with Ari Xenakis. He might want you today, Ella, but there are no guarantees for the next day, or the one after that. I shouldn’t have called you what I did, but I was very upset when I found out that you were living with him.’
‘I can’t discuss Aristandros with you. I’m an adult and I’ve made my choice. I don’t expect you to agree with it, but there’s no point arguing about it, because it won’t change anything. Mum, it’s seven years since I even saw you,’ Ella reminded the older woman painfully. ‘Let’s not waste this moment.’
‘A moment is really all we have,’ the older woman acknowledged tautly, scrambling up to wrap her arms round her taller daughter in a sudden jerky movement that betrayed the precarious state of her nerves. ‘I’ve missed you so much, particularly after Susie passed away. But Theo is outraged by this situation. He says that because of your very public affair he’s lost face.’
Ella hugged her mother back with warm affection. ‘For goodness’ sake, he always exaggerates—he is only my stepfather.’
‘You’ve embarrassed the whole family,’ another voice delivered in condemnation from the doorway.
Ella focused on her half-brother, Dmitri, as her mother backed away from her. ‘Stop making excuses for your father,’ Ella urged. ‘He found fault with everything I ever did because I stood up to him. He doesn’t like me and he never will.’
‘Mum…in a few minutes Dad will be looking for you. You need to come back downstairs.’ Having issued that warning, Dmitri turned away from Ella, who was livid with him for behaving like a pompous prat.
‘Do you still live at home?’ she asked her brother. Watching her mother turn pale with fear as she’d registered the risk of her husband discovering that she had defied his dictates took Ella back to all the years that she did not want to recall. Years blighted by sudden violence and discord, and Jane’s increasingly pathetic attempts to make their warped family life seem normal.
‘Not for years. Stavros and I have an apartment.’
‘So, I can’t ask you to look after Mum tonight,’ Ella remarked stiffly.
Immediately grasping her meaning, Dmitri reddened, said nothing and concentrated on hurrying the older woman out of the room. He was as desperate to avoid conflict with his father as Ella had once been. She would never forget the tension of living in the Sardelos household, where everyone had worked hard in speech and action to avoid doing anything that might annoy Theo. While the initial conflict in the marriage had arisen over her stepfather’s infidelity, he had soon found plenty of other issues to set his temper off.
