‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, again, the tears choking in her throat.
He moved her slightly in front of him, just inside the door to the backstage area, as the stringed instruments burst into life, as the music swept around them.
‘I’ll never let you go again, Alexandra Konstantinidis,’ he whispered into her ear, still holding her hand, taking her back to the last time they’d stood backstage, when he’d murmured words of encouragement to a scared young woman.
She turned and searched his eyes in the almost dark of the space. ‘Even after all this time?’ she whispered back.
‘Even after all this time.’
Suddenly Alexandra was eighteen again with her life stretching ahead of her. Full of dreams and hope, and without the broken heart that she’d spent almost all her adult life nursing.
33
PRESENT DAY
‘What happened after that night?’ Ella asked, sitting beside Alexandra on a little stone wall not halfway between the beach and her grandmother’s house. They’d decided to take a walk as Alexandra shared the story of the past with her and Madeline, but they’d slowed and eventually come to a complete stop. ‘How did you stay in touch?’
Alexandra smiled, her gaze fixed in the distance. ‘We never spent a night apart ever again.’
‘So after all those years, you just picked up as if nothing had happened?’
‘No,’ Alexandra said, turning to face her. ‘Not as if nothing had happened. I felt guilty for not fighting against my father, for so blindly believing him and letting him control my life, and Bernard felt guilty for not searching for me, for not trying harder to find me when he returned from his tour. But we were together, and we were both determined to make up for lost time.’
‘You were back in Athens by the time he returned? After you’d given birth to me?’ Madeline asked.
‘No, I was still in London when he returned. I was at Hope’s House having you, our daughter.’
‘You were in the same city all along?’
‘We were,’ Alexandra said with a sigh. ‘But that’s all in the past now. I sometimes look back and think how naïve I was, how easily I could have made a different decision and found my way back to Bernard. But it wasn’t to be.’
Ella stared out at the tourists walking by, and looked up at the sun shining down on the water in the distance, wondering how Alexandra could be so calm about such a sad turn of events. Yet there she was, living in a time when women could supposedly do anything, worried about pleasing her own parents and not letting anyone down.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ella said, her voice low. ‘No one deserves the kind of heartache you endured.’
Alexandra turned to look at her—to truly look at her—and Ella angled her body to face her. Her mother was beside her, and she could hear her shallow breathing, knew how hard it must be for her hearing the story from the past.
‘I was more fortunate than most, Ella. I had a kind husband who never questioned why I couldn’t give him my heart and eventually, I had Bernard again.’ She sighed. ‘We had ten beautiful years together, and I wouldn’t swap that decade for anything in the world.’
‘Even though you missed out on so many years together?’
Alexandra looked away again. ‘Who knows what would have happened if I’d run back to Bernard, pregnant and penniless? Perhaps I was right all along, and he would have eventually resented the wife and child he was tied to. Maybe our love wouldn’t have been enough.’
But maybe it would have been. Ella couldn’t help but think those words, even though she would never say them to Alexandra.
‘Alexandra, did you ever play the violin again?’
‘I did,’ she said, laughing softly as if at a private joke. ‘Bernard was so cross with me when I told him I’d never played again after I left London, so I did start again. But only for him. My music was only ever for an audience of one.’
Ella wished she could have heard her play—maybe one day she’d be brave enough to ask her. But for now, it was enough being able to spend time with her, to get to know the woman she’d been so fortunate to meet.
‘Shall we go for lunch?’ Alexandra asked. ‘I have a hankering for clams in a white wine sauce.’
Ella stood and offered Alexandra her arm as they began to walk again, something she’d once done with her other grandmother. ‘That sounds delicious.’ She only had a short time left in Greece, and she planned on soaking up every second in her grandmother’s company and eating the best food she could find.
And then she was going to go home and decide what she truly wanted from life. Because if there was one thing Alexandra’s story had taught her, it was that she had to make her own decisions about her life, and to be sure to follow her heart when she needed to. And hadn’t her own mother told her only the night before that she would believe in her no matter what decisions she made?
‘Now tell me, what makes your heart race, Ella? What is your great love?’
