was more than a little bewildered.
Roman chatted easily with them and whatever he had just said had made Josie laugh.
They did not seem like staff and yet they were here in the dead of the night, sorting out his home, dealing with his sudden guest, and now they were leaving in the internal elevator.
‘Who are they?’ Anya said.
‘Josie and Claude,’ Roman explained, and now even he laughed and it was a rare sound. In fact, she hadn’t heard that sound since they had met again. It was low, deep and familiar from times gone by and she wanted to hear it again.
‘They came with the apartment,’ Roman explained as he showed her through to perhaps the most beautiful lounge ever. Heavy jade silk drapes were closed and the large living room was gently lit by damask-shaded lamps. Anya looked up at the high ceiling and the large chandelier, which, though opulent, was somehow soothing.
‘I didn’t know about them,’ Roman explained further. ‘The first morning I woke up here, I came through to the kitchen and there Josie was, making breakfast. “Bonjour, monsieur,” she said, and then told me that she would bring my food out to me on the balcony. I went out there and there was Claude, setting up. I was as confused as you are now,’ he said, and it made her smile. ‘All I could think was that I was glad that I hadn’t been armed at the time!’
Now it was Anya who laughed.
‘It turns out that they have a small apartment downstairs, and take care of this one. They’ve been here for decades. You’ll get used to them.’
‘Did you?’
‘It took a while,’ Roman admitted.
Could they last a while? Anya wondered. Could they somehow be together while avoiding the hurtful things that needed to be discussed?
‘Do you want me to show you around?’ he offered, but she shook her head.
‘Not now, I’m really tired.’
‘Then I’ll show you where you are sleeping.’
True to his word, he did not try to persuade her to share his bed and Anya found that she was pouting as he showed her the door and then wished her good night. He walked off without so much as a kiss.
She stepped in and again the décor was amazing. The room was as big as her entire apartment. The wallpaper was a riot of pinks and reds and the drapes were the same design but in silk. A canopied bed was dressed beautifully and on the intricate bedside table Josie had placed a glass and a jug covered with a weighted circle of linen.
It really was stunning. There was even a reading area, with a dark chaise longue and bookshelves that were overflowing. The books were all in French, though.
Anya couldn’t resist so she pulled open the drapes and the shutters and there was the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the night.
It was the most romantic, feminine room Anya had ever been in and she would never have expected it to be in a home that Roman owned.
She undressed in a pretty bathroom and pulled on a slip nightdress.
It was a home that felt like a palace, Anya thought as she climbed into the very high bed.
She had been living in hotels for weeks and now she lay staring out at the view, trying to take in the fact that she was there.
There were too many questions that buzzed in her mind.
Though exhausted, she could not relax. Though aching with tiredness, she could not sleep.
She could not lie down a hallway away from Roman.
She could hear him turning off lights and she knew that he had gone to bed.
She ate one of her chocolate cups.
And then another.
But that was not where her hunger had originated. She climbed out of bed and her feet dropped silently to the floor. Like a homing pigeon she walked down the long hall and turned to the left.
There was a high door and a shaft of light was coming from beneath it. She knew he was in there and she opened it.
He sat on the bed, his head in his hands almost in grief, and though he spoke he did not turn towards her.
‘Go to bed, Anya.’
She did not.
She stayed.
He had taken off his shirt and was wearing only black trousers. Every inch of his body Anya had thought she had known, yet the livid scars on his back proved her knowledge of Roman to be flawed. She let out a small cry and it seared through him.
He did not want her to see them, for he knew they would cause her pain and yet there was this odd relief that she knew now.
She climbed onto the bed and touched his back. ‘What happened?’
‘Just leave it for now.’
‘You could have died and I would never have known!’ she sobbed, and he just sat with his head in his hands as he remembered how close he had come to just that as Anya spoke on, her anger and desperation evident in every word. ‘I waited for you, and I feared for you,’ she wept, and everything she was trying to hold back from admitting started to pour out. ‘I was scared for you in war zones and I grieved in case you lay dead. And yet I hoped and prayed that you were safe and that one day you would come for me, and while I did all that, you took her as your wife.’
He stood and for the second time that night he picked her up and put her over his shoulder. She kissed the scars on his back as he carried her back to her room. ‘I don’t want to play coy,’ Anya pleaded. ‘I want your bed.’
‘When we are capable of an adult discussion about Celeste and...’ Roman too was not ready, he could not even say Mika’s name. He pulled back the covers that were littered with the foil of her chocolate cups and popped her in. ‘We can reward ourselves later.’
‘I’ll never be able to speak of it nicely.’
‘Then you’ll never get your reward.’
‘Oh, so you’re on a sex strike?’ she scoffed. ‘We’ll soon see who gives in first.’
‘You don’t know the life I have lived,’ Roman said. ‘Believe me, I know how to go without.’
He did not walk out but closed the shutters and drapes and then came and sat on the bed.
‘It is too beautiful not to look at,’ he said of the Eiffel Tower. ‘You need to sleep.’
‘I have class at eight.’
‘That’s not long from now.’
She looked at his shoulder and it too was scarred, and she put her hand up to it.
‘Tell me.’
‘Shrapnel.’
‘How bad was it?’ she asked.
‘It was fairly bad,’ he said. ‘I had a punctured lung.’
‘Could you have died?’
He nodded.
And she wanted to ask if he’d thought of her then, but Roman was so honest that she was scared to ask, in case she did not like the answer.
‘My comrade was worse, though,’ Roman said, and her hand remained on his shoulder, feeling the muscle and the ridges of the scars. ‘I tried to keep him conscious.’
And he told her how Dario had spoken of the stock market and the rules to which he had been unable to adhere.
‘I could, though,’ he said. And he told her about his rehabilitation in Provence. ‘I was going to come out of the legion after five years, but they were good to me there and when my contract came around again I felt it right to serve for another