Carol Marinelli - One Kiss in... London

It always did.

How easily Nico saw that. Could not understand how others could not, for they sweated and panicked and sometimes jumped, where Nico sat calm, watching and waiting for new growth in the fertile ashes.

Each visit back home he returned richer and, despite the fights in private, his father was proud that always his son was better.

It would, though, Nico decided, be hard to match the rare beauty of Stavros’s bride.

Poor thing.

The thought jumped uninvited to the forefront of his mind as he watched her dance, not with her husband but to the tune of tradition. He watched her vie for her husband’s attention, but he was too busy talking with his koumbaros, irritated when she tapped him on the shoulder and told him they must now dance. He watched as Stavros ran his hand down her bottom and then said something into her ear.

And then he saw her pull away.

A flash of hurt, anger perhaps, in her eyes and Nico knew it had not been a compliment that had come from Stavros’s lips.

He was sure, because that was the way on Lathira, as Constantine would soon find out, that even on her wedding night she had been criticised.

It was death by a thousand cuts, the world she had entered, and he had just witnessed the first.

She would be part of Lathira’s social set—have lunch with the other trophy wives and then back to the gym the following morning to pay for it. They would seep the life from her till she was as polished and as hard as the rest, and Nico did not want to sit and witness even a moment of it. It had been a mistake to come. Nico did not do sentiment, did not enjoy weddings. All they did was cause a vague bewilderment—to share your life, your future, to entrust yourself to another?

He looked at the bride, who was not blushing but pale and visibly stressed, at his parents, who sat tense, at the couples that forced smiles and conversation, and he searched for something that might discount his theory that love did not exist. He looked around the room and there were two boys, raiding the table, laughing as they ordered cola from the waiters. Two brothers causing mischief, and he felt a twist in his soul that came from nowhere he could place.

‘I’m going to retire.’ He waited for the protest from his parents but the only protest he got was from the blonde whose name he couldn’t for the life of him remember.

‘Will we see you in the morning?’

‘Perhaps.’ Nico shrugged. ‘Or I may leave early.’

‘Come and see us on Lathira soon,’ his mother said. ‘It has been ages.’

‘I’m here now,’ Nico pointed out, because this visit had to count as one, for he would not be back for months now.

He wished he loved them.

As he walked out of the ballroom, Nico wished he was blind to their faults, but all he saw were greedy, ego-driven people.

He collected his room keys, was advised that his things were in his room, but instead of heading up there on a whim he turned and headed out to the streets.

Past the church and the taverna, along the road to the fishing boats and the fishermen who sat smoking and drinking on the beach. He followed a path that should not be familiar except he seemed to know where it led, and he walked, somehow at ease with the seamier side of town, past the late-night bars to the street that forked into cobbled alleys. He could hear breathing behind him and heavy footsteps but Nico felt no fear.

He saw the tired face of a hooker and the voice of a man behind him.

‘How much?’

He saw her face shutter as she named her price and Nico felt his heart still.

He looked down the alley to where she would take the man and he heard the words repeat in his head.

How much?

He felt dread, for the first time he felt dread and broke the conversation.

‘She’s already booked.’ He turned to the bloated, greedy face and told him she was taken. All he did was shrug and move on.

‘Since when?’ The hooker sneered.

He did not want her, but he didn’t want that man for her, either.

‘Go home,’ Nico said, and she swore at him in Greek, told him she was sick of do-gooders. Then her tirade stopped as he paid her plenty.

‘What are you paying me for?’

‘For peace,’ Nico said, even if he did not understand his own response. He just wanted to stop the trade, to wipe out one injustice.

He walked the streets; he ran through the streets like a madman; the town clock chimed and he realised it was two a.m. He wanted away from this place and how it made him feel. He would be gone first thing in the morning, would go now to his room and order their best bottle of brandy, not the sickly ouzo that churned in his stomach still.

He walked briskly through the hotel foyer, bypassed the lift and took the stairs, two, three at a time, and when nothing could have halted him, something did.

A bride still in her dress, a half-drunk bottle in one hand, a crumpled heap on the stairs, crying.

‘Leave me,’ she sobbed, and he wanted to, did not want to sit on the stairs and ask her what was wrong, for he already knew.

Did not want to sit and tell her to hush, to dry her tears and to tell her to go back there, as his father would expect him to.

He did neither.

He took her by the hand and made her stand.

Felt her hot hand in his and he wanted all of her, wanted to hold her, to stop the tears, to comfort her.

‘Leave me,’ she begged. ‘I’ll be okay in a moment.’

She wouldn’t be, Nico knew that. The champagne might dim her pain enough to send her back, but no doubt she’d need it again tomorrow, and another night and another … to get through the hell that would be her marriage, because Nico knew the truth.

‘Come with me.’ He took her by the hand and he led her.

‘Come with me to my room.’

‘HE’S GAY.’

He hadn’t even got her through the door before she blurted it out, and Nico was surprised and rather proud that she did.

HAT she admitted what, after this night, she must never again say to another.

‘Why,’ was Nico’s only response to the revelation as he turned the lights on in his room and saw it for the first time, ‘have I been given the bridal suite?’

Tear-filled eyes looked around and she let out a slightly hysterical laugh—this, the room she had chosen when her father had booked the hotel, this, the room she had later envisaged being part of a magical night.

#X2018;Stavros changed the booking. He said that he wanted the two-bedroom suite. I thought it was so I could get ready away from him, instead he and his koumbaros … ’ She was wretched in her grief, the sobs getting louder, and he went to the bathroom and came out with a wad of tissues.

Nico could not help but give a wry smile as he looked around. The maids must have assumed it was being used as the bridal suite and prepared the wrong room for the happy couple, for there were candles that had long since gone out, and petals on the bed, a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. The ice had melted and was now water.

‘When did you find out?’ Nico asked, wincing on her behalf when she answered.

‘Just before. When we got back to the room, when still he would not kiss me, when I begged … he told me …’ Constantine sobbed. ‘He even laughed that I hadn’t worked it out, that I hadn’t questioned why he never seemed to want me. I thought it was out of respect for this night.’

‘You had no idea?’ He had assumed she knew, that that was the reason for her hesitancy at the church. That she was going along with things, as so many others on the islands did.

‘I thought things would be different after the wedding.’ She still sobbed. ‘That he was nervous of my father … men always are. I knew I didn’t yet love him, but I thought it might grow, that we’d make it work.’ She was so, so humiliated, so embarrassed. The kisses she had pressed on her new husband seemed to have repulsed him. She switched from shamed to furious. ‘I’ll take a lover,’ she said defiantly, and Nico just stood there. ‘I’ll take ten!’ And Nico suppressed a smile, but when the tears came again he saw the real depth of her grief, heard firsthand what was really distressing this beautiful bride.