The Butterfly Storm (34 page)

‘I’m starving,’ Mum says when I rejoin her. We’ve had nothing since breakfast and we’ve clocked up
a lot of miles and time since then. She flicks through the menu. ‘Do you know, I’ve never wanted to
leave anywhere and go home as badly as I did today? I feel so stupid for getting upset over him after all
this time. He’s not the man I remember.’

‘Or who I imagined.’

‘I’m so glad you came over from Greece.’ She looks back at the menu. ‘I think I’m going to have
sausage and mash. What about you?’

‘I might need to stay with you a bit longer.’

‘You can stay for as long as you want. The steak pie sounds good too.’

‘I should have told you this as soon as I found out… but things were different then.’ I wait until
Mum looks up from the menu. ‘I’m pregnant.’

She stares at me, showing no emotion for a moment until her face relaxes into a smile. She leans
towards me and takes my hands in hers. ‘I don’t know what to say. Congratulations.’ She pulls away
and looks hard at me. ‘Are you happy about this?’

‘I wasn’t to begin with but I am now.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘Just over a week.’

‘Alekos kept it quiet.’

‘He doesn’t know.’

She leans back against the high-backed bench. ‘Bloody hell, we’re a right pair.’

‘You must have been so scared being pregnant and on your own.’

‘Is that what you’re worried about?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ I look through the choice of main dishes.

‘With me everything clicked into place one day. It was after you were born. I was renting a tatty
flat, didn’t have much money but had got to know a few people and didn’t feel so much
of a loner any longer. I suddenly felt happy. For some reason I knew I’d done the right
thing.’

‘Even though you weren’t able to let Elliot go?’

She shrugs. ‘You’ll figure out what you want in good time. Now let’s order and talk
after.’

I haven’t spoken to Alekos since he went back to Greece eight weeks ago. Despina’s phoned a couple of
times to organise shipping my belongings back, and when I’ve asked after Alekos she’s curtly replied,
‘He’s away.’ She doesn’t elaborate and I don’t question her further. It hasn’t felt as long as two months.
My time’s been continually filled helping Mum with her business and organising the food
for winter weddings – a bittersweet experience. Robert has me cooking at
The Globe
two
nights a week. And my bump’s beginning to show. Mum wasn’t best pleased when she
found out Robert knew before her that I was pregnant. I failed to mention that I’d told Ben
too.

The biggest change besides my bump is seeing the tail end of summer merge into autumn and now,
before I’ve even got used to darker evenings, we’ve been plunged into winter. The crunch of fallen leaves
underfoot has turned into frosted ground. Icy pools have formed in the dips in the lane and
they make a satisfying crack when I step on them. Frosted breath greets me when I go
outside in the morning and the air is clear and cold and the wind stings my ears. There’s
been no snow but on very cold mornings the garden, fields and trees have been dusted with
frost.

It’s the third week in November and Mum’s already dug out the Christmas decorations from the
attic. We’ve reverted back to my childhood with both of us getting ridiculously excited about buying a
Christmas tree – which is now in the window of the living room and permanently twinkles
with silver lights. Christmas Day is planned. Mum’s invited Robert over for Christmas
dinner in the evening once he closes
The Globe
and he’s staying with us for Boxing Day
too.

‘It’ll be a proper family Christmas,’ Mum keeps saying.

Robert, family and Christmas says more than just friendship to me but I’ll wait and pass judgement
on that at the time. Ben will be playing happy families too with Fraser and Bella in London for a few
hours on Christmas Day.

I’m now fourteen weeks pregnant. Twenty-six weeks from now I’ll have a son or daughter. My life is
suddenly scarily meaningful, even more so because I’m sitting in the waiting room at Norwich hospital
waiting for my first ultrasound. Mum’s next to me, flicking through an old
Hello
magazine. She no
longer needs the crutches and her bruises have disappeared. Even the scar on her arm has faded from
an angry red to a healthy pink.

‘I guess I’m old enough to be a grandma,’ Mum says with a sigh. She’s looking at a page of barely
twenty-something models in bikinis and sarongs.

‘Forty-eight is the perfect age to have a grandchild.’

‘You think?’

‘Some women your age have toddlers. At least you’re young enough to enjoy having a kid
around.’

She frowns, unconvinced.

‘And you can hand them back to me when you’ve had enough.’

‘I like that idea.’ She closes the magazine and puts it on the empty chair next to her. ‘I hate being
in this place.’

‘Well I appreciate it.’

There are pictures of pregnant women all over the waiting room walls – details of NHS help lines
and clinics, and posters about giving up smoking. The woman opposite us is so pregnant she needed
help from her husband just to sit down. Being here isn’t helping to calm my nerves about what the
next five months will bring. Whenever I think about the baby, I automatically think about Alekos not
knowing. I’ve got company in Mum, but not a man with me like the majority of women in this
room have. I keep waking in the night in cold sweats worrying about having not told Alekos
and then worrying more about how and when I’m going to break the news to him. Mum’s
suggestion was to wait until the first trimester had passed and then tell him – it wouldn’t be too
late that way, he’d understand. That time has been and gone. I get guilt trips about this
unborn child not knowing their father. I think about how proud Alekos would be all the
time.

‘Sophie Keech?’

I turn to Mum. ‘Come in with me.’

We follow the nurse into a large, bright room and she motions me towards a bed while she sets up
the ultrasound machine.

‘Is it your first?’ she asks as I lie down and prop my head upright on a pillow.

I nod.

‘And my first grandchild,’ Mum says.

‘Nervous?’ the nurse asks.

‘Who? Me or Mum?’

She laughs. ‘Sophie, I want you to roll your top up and then lie back and relax.’

I wriggle my jumper up over my stomach and leave it crumpled beneath my bra line. Mum’s
standing next to the bed and from this angle I’m face to face with the green and red butterfly
embroidered on her black skirt. It looks like it’s smiling and when I glance up Mum’s echoing that
smile.

The gel the nurse spreads on my bump is cold. She turns the monitor towards me so I can see the
screen. She smoothes the scanner up and down my stomach. Bu boom, bu boom, bu boom. My breath
stills at the sound. I stare at the image on the monitor and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust and
register the arms and legs of a tiny baby floating in the grainy triangular image. I don’t know who
starts to cry first, me or Mum.

‘Pass me my mobile.’ I say. ‘I need to talk to Alekos.’

Thea is asleep in my arms. Only her pink chubby face is visible through her Babygro. We’re cruising at
altitude somewhere over France. Trying not to wake her, I carefully shuffle closer to the window and
rest my head against the cool glass. Below, through the glare of the sun and the occasional white cloud,
a jagged mountain range stretches to the horizon.

‘They’ll be on their way round with food and drink soon,’ Mum says.

‘I thought you hated plane food?’

‘I do. But it’s always interesting to see just how bad it is.’ She leans towards me and strokes Thea’s
soft cheek. ‘She’s better behaved than you ever were.’

She’s an angel. I know I’m biased. But looking at her now with her eyes closed, blowing bubbles
from her rosebud lips, I can’t help but want to kiss and cuddle her and show her off to
everyone on the plane. I don’t though. More than anything I want her to stay asleep until we
land.

It’s been a huge undertaking shipping my few belongings from England ahead of us and then
planning a trip that includes a coach ride, a three-and-a-half-hour flight followed by an hour’s drive
when we land. All of this with a six-week-old to think about.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I say.

‘Are you kidding?’ Mum says. ‘I get to spend two weeks with Thea on a beach while you and Alekos
bust a gut. I still think you’re mad taking on all this.’

‘I’d say exactly the same thing to a pregnant nineteen-year-old going it alone in a strange
city.’

‘You got me there.’

‘And it turned out all right for you, didn’t it.’

She looks between Thea and me. ‘More than all right.’

I hold Thea close and lean down and kiss her smooth cheek. What I thought would be the hardest
conversation of my life ended up being the easiest. After weeks of keeping my pregnancy secret from
Alekos my decision to speak to him was effortless. I knew it was the right one as soon as he answered
his mobile.

‘Sophie.’ There was openness to his voice, not the bitterness I expected or felt sure I
deserved.

‘I’m so sorry, Aleko. I’ve been thoughtless. I’ve had so much to deal with and I’ve reacted in such a
selfish way. I’m going to come home. I want us to be together. Nothing else matters.’

There was a pause and I thought I’d blown it. He didn’t want me to come back. I couldn’t blame
him. My silence over the past three months must have been killing him. Mum looked at me intently;
she reached towards me and clasped my hand and mouthed ‘what’s he saying’. I shook my head at
her.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he finally said.

‘It’s okay, Aleko, I’ve left it far too late to be changing my mind, I understand if…’

‘Sophie,’ he said with a hint of laughter in his voice. ‘I’ve bought us a home.’

It was my turn to go silent.

‘On Cephalonia. It needs a lot doing to it. It used to be a taverna and we can easily turn it into one
again. I didn’t want us to live in an apartment in Thessaloniki or a house across the road from
O Kipos
.
I want to be by the sea again. When you said about being happy like we first were, I knew we had to
come back here.’

Tears streamed down my face. I squeezed Mum’s hand and said to Alekos, ‘I’ve got something to
tell you too.’

Thea’s still asleep when we land with a gentle bump. We left a fresh day behind at Heathrow, the sky
smudged with high white clouds. I peer through the window and can see only blue sky beyond the
tarmac. I’m impatient to get off the plane and out into the day, to start a new life where everything
began five years ago. Mum takes her time getting up from her seat, waiting until the crush in the
gangway has dispersed before allowing me out with Thea. The summer heat is welcome as we walk
down the steps from the plane and are ushered towards arrivals. Thea wakes with my movement and
the slight breeze wrapping around us. She gurgles and I feel a small patch dampen on my shoulder.
There’s a crowd around the luggage belt but no sign of any suitcases. I glance towards the arrivals
doors.

‘Go, go,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll wait for our luggage. Go find him.’

I kiss Mum on the cheek, hoist Thea higher on to my shoulder and walk towards the arrivals gate.
Thea is about to meet her father for the first time. Delays with connecting the water and
electricity at the taverna kept Alekos in Cephalonia. Thea’s blown kisses down the phone to him
and he’s seen the hundreds of photos Mum and I have taken of her, but this is something
else. It’s the longest walk of my life. I’m introducing my daughter to her father. I’m crying
before I even walk through the gate. And then I see him. Alekos. Exactly as I remember
him.