page44 (1/1)

His jaw tightened Maybe he should tell her the truth Let her understand the kind of man he really was—and why Let her know that his e he’d just invented to pass the tiround into him from the start—e that would nip any rosy drea Show her why the barriers he’d erected around himself were impenetrable And why he wouldn’t want them any other way

‘There were no custody visits or vacations,’ he said ‘For a long ti about roithout so it Her name was never mentioned in front of me, and the only women I kneere my father’s whores’

She flinched at his use of the word and he saw her co ‘It’s perfectly reasonable not to like the women who supplanted your mother—’

‘Oh, please Quit the aers iement because it makes me feel better They hores They looked like whores and acted like whores He paid them for sex They were the only wo that all feh for you to see their knickers’ And one in particular who had invited a boy of twelve to take her knickers down so that she could show hiood time

Did she believe hi her lip? He could al overti to find a positive spin to put on what he’d just told her He could have saved her the trouble and told her there was none

‘Butyou must have had friends,’ she said, a touch of desperation in her voice now ‘You must have looked at their mothers, and wondered what had happened to yours’

‘I had no friends,’ he said flatly ‘My life was carefully controlled I ht as well have had a prison as a house I saw no one except for the servants—my father liked childless, unmarried servants who could devote all their ti hich to compare, then no comparisons can be made His island was re I lived in a vast complex which was more like a palace and I was tutored at ho about my mother until I was seven years old and when I did—the boy who told me was beaten’

He stared into space Should he tell her that the boy’s injuries had been so bad that he’d been airlifted to the hospital on the mainland and had never returned? And that the boy’s parents—even though they had been extreo to the police? Alek had only been young but he remembered the panic which had swirled around the complex as a result He remembered the fearful faces of his father’s aides, as if the old led out of it, just as he always did Money had been offered, and accepted Money got you whatever it was you wanted It bought silence as well as sex—and another catastrophe had been averted And hadn’t he done that, too? Hadn’t he paid off Ellie’s contract with the Irishwoman with the same ruthlessness which his father would have employed?

He saw the distress on her face and tried to ih her ears Incredible, probably Like one of those porn filht He wondered if he stopped the story nohether it would be enough to make her understand why he was not like other men But she had demanded the truth and perhaps she would continue to dele away at it, as women invariably did He realised that for the first time in his life he couldn’t just block her out, or refuse to take her calls To fade her into the background as if she had never existed, which hat he’d always done before Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck with Ellie Brooks, or Ellie Sarantos as she was now And ht to learn that it was better not to ask questions in case you didn’t like the answers

‘Anything else you want to know?’ he demanded ‘Any other stone you’ve left unturned?’

‘What did the boy tell you about your mother?’

‘He told ht with one of the island’s fishers of the balustrade Somewhere in the distance he could hear a woman call out in Italian and a child answered ‘It was convenient that she chose a lover with his own boat, for there would have been no other way of her leaving the island without uess her ht under his nose, without the oldout And the fact that she was prepared to risk his rage’ His mouth twisted ‘She must have been quite some woman’