The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay (55 page)

“I won’t be in Greece but I might be in Norway.”

“We can be friends, at the least. Don’t you think? I don’t want my life to be without you, cut off from you. I can’t think of anything I want less. Anything beyond that … It might not work. It’s going to be obvious if it doesn’t.”

“Is it? Is it going to be obvious?”

“You’ve got to get past this, Nina. This thing between your parents.”

“I know. I know. The truth is that I do see it differently. But it’s going to take a little time.”

“It’s going to be obvious. I promise you. I need you to make the same promise.”

“Just some paperwork to sign.” They turned to see Dr. Christos holding up a sheet of paper, and followed him back into Nina’s room. “Oh,” he said. “I’ve brought the wrong form; I’ll send Doris in with it.”

A few minutes later Nurse Yannis came in. “For signing, here and here, and also the address, please.”

She turned to Paolo. “Can you be in the office? There is the letter for the next doctor. I forget.” Paolo followed her out, and when they’d gone a little way she said to him, “Christos, he comes to the airport.”

Paolo thanked her and went further down the corridor and walked straight into Dr. Christos’s room without knocking. The doctor stood up so quickly when he saw who’d come in that his chair tipped over.

“If you have anything to say to Nina, you say it right now,” Paolo told him. “Go to her now and say it and I will wait here.”

“I will write to her,” the doctor said.

“You will not write to her. You write to her and there is going to be a fight. I will be back and I will find you.”

“It isn’t up to you.” Dr. Christos raised his voice. “She is only returning to you because she’s afraid of life. You know this and I know this.”

“You don’t really know anything at all about us,” Paolo told him.

“I know more than you think.”

“You think you do, but really you know nothing.”

“You’re wrong; I know absolutely everything.”

“No doubt she’s told you the whole story. It may be the whole story, but it isn’t the real story.”

“In what way not real?”

“You have no idea how unbreakable we are. We are unbreakable.”

“You are separated,” Christos reminded him. “Until a week ago you were all set to divorce. So don’t give me that
unbreakable
shit.”

“If she divorced me and married you I’d be closer to her than ever; far closer to her than you could ever be,” Paolo said. “I’d be her Luca, you see. It’d be my turn to be Luca.”

He saw that Christos had recognized the truth of this. It registered in a changed expression in his eyes.

They could hear that the taxi had arrived, its engine idling and then coming to a halt. Paolo said, “I wish you well,” and stretched his hand out to shake, and Christos, ignoring the offer, turned his attention once more to his e-mail inbox. He said, “I imagine you can see yourself out.”

Paolo returned to Nina’s room and was followed in by Andros, his face pink with heat. “You are ready, I hope,” he said.

“I am, I’m ready,” Nina told him, beginning to gather her things. Paolo picked up the bags, leading the way out into the foyer and through the sliding door, the sun blazing. Nina followed, glancing behind and expecting Christos to appear.

The car was black, with
TAXI
painted on both of its front doors in white. Andros stowed the luggage, and Doris came out and kissed Nina on the cheek and said a solemn goodbye, and then she returned to stand in the shade of the porch, waiting to wave them off. As Nina got into the car she saw that Christos had come to the entrance and was looking at them through the glass. Doris turned and said something to him, and he pressed the button for the door to open and came out to stand beside her. He raised his arm in farewell and didn’t seem to want to come closer. Nina looked at him through the car window, frowning at him and enacting little waves, but still he didn’t come closer. He raised his arm again as they drove off, remaining blank-faced, before turning and going back into the building with his wife. Nina tried to turn in her seat, constrained by the seat belt.

“What’s the matter?” Paolo asked her. “Have you forgotten something?”

“Christos didn’t say goodbye.”

“I’m sure he did,” Paolo soothed.

“What bad thing have I done? To be treated like that?”

“I’m sure you didn’t do anything.” He half turned from the front seat to look at her. “But you are going home with me. And he was standing next to Doris. So perhaps he couldn’t say what he wanted to. He asked for your e-mail address.” He returned to facing forward.

“There isn’t going to be e-mail.”

“You know, you can have friendships with whomsoever you like,” Paolo said, turning again. “I hope you liked my use of
whomsoever
. You don’t need my permission to have friends.”

“I know. But not this one.”

Andros drove them along the coast road, slowly through the village — last looks, last looks — and into a queue of three cars already waiting for the morning ferry. Once they’d parked, Paolo said, speaking to the windscreen, “So what are you going to do over the winter?”

“You asked me that. I already told you.”

“Tell me again.”

Andros looked at Nina in the driving mirror.

“I’m going to find a rental near the Botanics,” she said. “I’ll live there until the spring, and then see. I’ve been thinking a lot about Norway. I’d like to spend next summer in Norway, at the lake house.”

“Those are good ideas.” Paolo reached his hand around and found hers. He said, “Dinner on Saturday, maybe. That is, if you’re free.”

Nina said she thought she was.

ANDREA GILLIES
won the 2009 Wellcome Prize and the 2010 Orwell Prize for her first book,
Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey into Alzheimer’s
. Her first novel,
The White Lie
, about a landed Scottish family determined to keep a dark secret, was published to critical acclaim in 2012.
The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay
is her second novel. Find out more about her work at
www.andreagillies.com
, and follow her on Twitter,
@andreagillies
.