By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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      ‘Just gone down for a nap,’ Eve said, pegging up another sheet. ‘Should be good for a couple of hours work.’

      ‘Oh,’ the older woman said. ‘Speaking of work, there’s someone out the front to see you. Some posh looking bloke in a suit. Fancy car. Says he tried your door, but no answer. I told him I thought you were home though. I told him—’

      Something like a lightning bolt surged down her spine. ‘What did you say?’ But she was already on her way, the sheets snapping in the breeze behind her. She touched a hand to the hair she’d tied back in a rough ponytail, then told herself off for even thinking it. Why did she immediately think it could be him? For all she knew it could be a courier delivery from one of her clients, although since when did courier drivers dress in posh suits and drive flash cars? Her heart tripping at a million miles an hour, nerves flapping and snapping like the sheets on the line, she allowed herself one deep breath, and then she opened the door.

      There he stood. Gloriously, absolutely Leo, right there on her doorstep. He looked just as breathtakingly beautiful, his shoulders as broad, his hair so rich and dark and his eyes, his dark eyes looked different, there was sorrow there and pain, and something else swirling in the mix—hope?

      And her heart felt it must be ten times its normal size the way it was clamouring around in there. But she’d had hopes before, had thought she’d seen cracks develop in his stone heart, and those hopes had been dashed.

      ‘Leo,’ she said breathlessly.

      ‘Eve. You look good.’

      She didn’t look good. She had circles under her eyes, her hair was a mess and Mrs Willis had been on at her about losing too much weight. ‘You look better.’ And she winced, because it sounded so lame.

      He looked around her legs. ‘Where’s Sam?’

      ‘Nap time,’ she said, and he nodded.

      ‘Can I come in?’

      ‘Oh.’ She stood back, let him in. ‘Of course.’

      He looked just as awkward in her living room. ‘I’ll make coffee,’ she suggested when he grabbed her hand, sending an electrical charge up her arm.

      ‘No. I have to explain something first, Eve, if you will listen. I need you to listen, to understand.’

      She nodded, afraid to speak.

      He took a deep breath once they were sitting on the sofa, his elbows using his knees for props as he held out his hands. ‘I was not happy when I left you. I went to London, threw myself into the contract negotiations there; then to Rome and New York, and nowhere, nowhere could I forget you, nothing I could do, nothing I could achieve could blot out the thoughts of you.

      ‘But I could not come back. I knew it could not work. But there was something I could do.’

      She held her breath, her body tingling. Hoping.

      ‘I hadn’t seen my parents since I was twelve. I had to find them. It took—It took a little while to track them down, and then it was to discover my father was dead.’

      She put a hand to his and he shook his head. ‘Don’t feel sorry. He was a sailor and a brutal, violent man. Everytime he was on leave he used my mother as a punching bag, calling her all sorts of vicious names, beating her senseless. I used to cower in fear behind my door, praying for it to stop. I was glad he was dead.’

      He dragged in air. ‘And the worst part of it—the worst of it was that he was always so full of remorse afterwards. Always telling her he was sorry, and that he loved her, even as she lay bruised and bleeding on the floor.’

      Eve felt something crawl down her spine. A man who couldn’t let himself love. A man who equated love with a beating. No wonder he felt broken inside. No wonder he was so afraid. ‘Your poor mother,’ she said, thinking, poor you.

      He made a sound like a laugh, but utterly tragic. ‘Poor mother. I thought so too. Until I was big enough to grow fists and hurt him like he hurt my mother. And my mother went to him. After everything he had done to her, she screamed at me and she went to him to nurse his wounds.’ He dropped his head down, wrapped his arms over his head and breathed deep, shaking his head as he rose. ‘She would not leave him, even when I begged and pleaded with her. She would not go. So I did. I slept at school. Friends gave me food. I got a job emptying rubbish bins. I begged on the streets. And it was the happiest I’d ever been.’

      ‘Oh, Leo,’ she said, thinking of the homeless child, no home to go to, no family…

      ‘I left school a year later, went to work on the boats around the harbour. But I would not be a sailor like him, at that stage I didn’t want to be Greek like him. So I learned from the people around me, speaking their languages, and started handling deals for people.

      ‘I was good at it. I could finally make something of myself. But even though I could escape my world, I could not escape my past. I could not escape who I was. The shadow of my father was too big. The knowledge of what I would become…’ His voice trailed off. ‘I swore I would never let that happen to me. I would never love.’

      She slipped a hand into one of his, felt his pain and his sorrow and his grieving. ‘I’m so sorry it had to be that way for you. You should have had better.’

      ‘Sam is blessed,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Sam has a mother who fights for him like a tigress. His mother is warm and strong and filled with sunshine.’ He lifted her hand, pressed it to his lips. ‘Not like…’

      And his words warmed her heart, even when she knew there was more he had to tell her. ‘Did you find her then? Did you find your mother?’

      His eyes were empty black, his focus nowhere, but someplace deep inside himself. ‘She’s in a home for battered women, broken and ill. She sits in a wheelchair all day looking out over a garden. She has nothing now, no-one. And as I looked at her, I remembered the words you said, about an old man sitting on a parkbench, staring at nothing, wishing he’d taking a chance…’

      ‘Leo, I should never have said that. I had no right. I was hurting.’

      ‘But you were right. When I looked at her, I saw my future, and for the first time, I was afraid. I didn’t want it. Instead I wanted to take that chance that you offered me, like she should have taken that chance with me and escaped. But my father’s shadow still loomed over me. My greatest fear was turning into him. Hurting you or Sam. I could not bear that.’

      ‘You’re not like that,’ she said, tears squeezing from her eyes. ‘You would never do that.’

      ‘I couldn’t trust myself to believe it. Until I was about to leave my mother’s side and she told me the truth in her cracked and bitter voice, the truth that would have set me free so many years ago, but I never questioned what I had grown up believing. The truth that my father had come home after six months at sea and found her four months pregnant.’

      ‘Leo!’

      His eyes were bright and that tiny kernel of hope she’d seen there while he’d stood on her doorstep had flickered and flared into something much more powerful. ‘He was impotent and she wanted a child and I was never his, Eve. I don’t have to be that way. I don’t have to turn into him.’

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