Sixty Summers Read online

  Maggie’s mother, Celia, although relieved of any financial responsibility for the celebration, found it all quite overwhelming. ‘I never imagined anything quite like this for you,’ she told Maggie. ‘I thought you’d be married barefoot on the beach with a few close friends. It’s as though you’ve signed up for a new religion.’

  She wasn’t far off the mark. In the first years of marriage, Maggie became a born-again Greek, embracing the culture with the fervour of a convert. She learned to prepare dolmades and moussaka, and her baklava was highly praised. She attempted to learn the language and pushed for them to visit Kythera so that Kristo could get to know his ancestral home. Kristo was bemused by her enthusiasm. Growing up Greek, as the eldest of the four, had been a burden. He thought of himself as Australian – Greek culture was the underpinning of his life and he’d never known anything different. He felt no need to explore or embrace it.

  Kristo did his best with Celia, offering to fix this or that and generally being a good son-in-law. Celia liked him but she became reluctant to be involved in the frequent family events that the Dimitratoses insisted she must attend. She later admitted finding these occasions exhausting and intense. Maggie suspected her mother’s move to Queensland was, in part, to put some distance between herself and the in-laws, and couldn’t blame her.

  By the time Anthea and Elena were born, Kristo’s younger brothers had finished their trade apprenticeships and were all partners in Dimitratos Constructions. The projects grew increasingly ambitious, with a team of contractors: carpenters, renderers, plasterers, painters, bricklayers, plumbers and electricians. Some Greeks, but many Italians and Eastern Europeans. Fiery arguments, sackings and even brawls were commonplace on construction sites in those days.

  Kristo ran the projects while Maggie was in charge of the administration, accounting and payroll. Work was like a religion for the Dimitratoses – children had to fit around it. There was an assumption that Maggie would hand the twins over to Yia-yiá and carry on working. But she resisted. She wanted to be a proper mother, as she saw it. And she and Yia-yiá had conflicting ideas about what was right for babies.

  The company was growing so fast, the strain of managing the accounts with its uncertain cashflow and lines of credit was relentless. Maggie had welcomed the advent of computerisation, but never seemed to have enough time to make it truly efficient. She increasingly felt as though the entire Dimitratos empire rested on her shoulders. Kristo’s parents had slaved for years over a hot fat fryer and the boys had grown up out the back of the fish shop. Every cent they had accumulated from that enterprise had been invested in this family business.

  Her most vivid memory of that period was trying to close off the accounts for the end of financial year; writing the final cheques, figures blurring before her eyes as she battled with the new spreadsheet technology. It must have been 1991, the twins were still babies and waking constantly with colic, day and night. She remembered weeping involuntarily with fatigue. One breast throbbed with mastitis and her hair was coming out in handfuls. She felt utterly alone with her responsibilities. Earlier in the year, they had won their biggest project yet – an industrial estate in Emu Plains. During the week, Kristo and the boys lived in a caravan onsite, and Maggie spent her time calculating the hours until he walked through that door.

  There was one night when she felt an overwhelming urge to simply run from the house, desperate to escape the wailing babies. She called Rose and sobbed on the phone. Half an hour later, Rose turned up wearing a coat over her pyjamas and bearing strawberries and chocolate. Peter was at an overseas conference, so Rose had to bring Elliot and Max with her. She tucked the boys into the spare bed, then she and Maggie worked in tandem to calm the fretful babies, only managing an hour or two of sleep before dawn.

  Maggie would have liked to take some time off when the twins were babies, but the Dimitratoses were adamant that only a family member could handle the finances. The tax accountant they used was not a blood relative but he was Kytherian, which was the next best thing.

  Kristo had wanted his parents to retire and rest but his father, Pappoú, insisted on being involved. He wanted a full report from Maggie at the end of every month but his experience was limited to single-entry bookkeeping. They had never hired contract staff and had always paid workers cash from the till. Having to explain everything to him added to her workload but, as a result, he gained a grudging respect for her business acumen.

  Kristo did try to be understanding but his own job was mind-bendingly stressful. These days the company had multiple jobs going, there was hardly a day when something didn’t go wrong and he would come in the front door with sparks flying off him. He would take Maggie in his arms and edge her towards the bedroom. Afterwards, he would be calm and loving, his sense of order restored. He would nuzzle her neck and squeeze the excess flesh of her belly and whisper that she was eating too many bougatses – which she didn’t appreciate. But it was better than the shouting. At his absolute worst, he was capable of ranting for an hour at full volume about some slip-up on a job that would cost them money and venting his frustration at the increasingly large amount of paperwork and legislation and worksite safety. When he was in those moods, she kept her head down and her mouth shut.

  It was only when Pappoú became ill and Yia-yiá was busy caring for him that Maggie started to gain some power back. She and Kristo built the house in Bayview; she had a cleaner and a gardener, the girls were at school, the business was more stable and she had more freedom to do a few things that she wanted to do.

  When Pappoú finally died, it was clear to Maggie that Yia-yiá had set her sights on living with them at Bayview. She was constantly on the phone or having one of the brothers drive her up for the day, but never seemed to arrange transport home. Maggie was convinced that this problem at the retirement village was Yia-yiá’s latest attempt to make Bayview her permanent home.

  Maggie walked down the hall and knocked on Yia-yiá’s door. There was no response and she opened it slowly. ‘Yia-yiá? Are you all right?’

  The old woman sat on the bed fingering her prayer beads. She looked up and pointed a gnarled finger at Maggie. ‘You faults.’

  ‘I know. I know. Syngnómi – I’m sorry,’ said Maggie, bowing her head in false contrition. Everything the girls did was her fault. The tight short skirts, obsessive use of their phones, unreliability, tardiness, and even the brief foray into veganism. It was all the fault of the mother – everyone knew it and there was no point denying it.

  ‘Okay, Maggie mou. Now you make for fixing. Kristaki – he’s can never know. Never. Never.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘That boy – this vlákas – he fixing it. You say to him.’ She flicked a finger in Maggie’s direction to indicate she should do that now.

  Maggie scrolled through her contacts and pressed Aaron’s number. The call went to voicemail, as she knew it would. She spoke in an even, calm voice. ‘Aaron. This is Maggie. If that video is not taken down by the time Kristo gets home, he will be coming to see you. Do it now, please, immediately and —’

  Yia-yiá, her mouth a knot of contempt, beckoned for the phone. She held it in front of her between finger and thumb, as if pinching its cheeks – something she inflicted on her sons as required. She let rip with a long and detailed string of invective that would be lost on Aaron since he didn’t speak a word of Greek, but he would no doubt get the idea. Maggie wanted to caution her not to threaten him, especially when it was being recorded – they’d had legal problems over the years with the boys behaving in this way. But it was too late for that.

  For the rest of the day, Maggie waited for the girls with growing agitation. She often imagined that her life was like an extreme game show where she had to struggle over slippery obstacles and wobbly bridges, cling to moving props and, when the end was in sight, she would be blindsided and thrown into a muddy pool. There were no prizes or cheering crowds at the end, because there was no end. She wanted nothing more than peace and quiet, some
thing that was always just beyond reach.

  The twins were only an hour away but the entire day was punctuated by update texts. They were getting a coffee to calm themselves down. Now they were having their nails done for the weekend. Now they were having lunch. She wondered why they sent all this detail. She would prefer a definite arrival time. They still hadn’t turned up by the time Kristo and Nico, George and Jerry arrived. Yia-yiá had been cooking all afternoon and the kitchen was in chaos.

  In her role as financial controller, Maggie had heard a lot of excuses from property developers over the years and she was convinced there was trouble ahead with Mr Lau, who was currently one of their biggest clients. Years ago they had mainly dealt with Greek, Italian or Yugoslav developers who were tough and volatile but Kristo and his brothers were also tough and volatile and it worked itself out. The Chinese developers were different – more strategic and controlled, and harder to read. Maggie had information from another developer that Mr Lau had fallen out of favour with his backers in China and her intuition told her that he was avoiding meeting with her until after the concrete pour. He probably figured that Dimitratos Constructions was solid enough financially to carry his project while he refinanced and once the pour took place, they would be in too deep to stop work.

  Maggie’s challenge this afternoon was to convince the directors to cancel Monday’s pour and insist on a meeting before proceeding. It wouldn’t be easy. The brothers were the builders, managing the projects onsite, and they were driven by unforgiving construction deadlines. When she told them to back off on a project because of a money problem, it was catastrophic. It went against everything they believed in: scheduling and deadlines and the complex interlocking of one trade with another. This afternoon she would present her case. There would be shouting. She felt exhausted thinking about it. She couldn’t decide whether to ring Rose now and cancel or try to soldier through. She had her overnight bag packed and, if there was an opportunity, she would slip away.

  The meeting went exactly as she envisaged. George blamed her for not having pinned Mr Lau down earlier. Nico defended her. Kristo reminded Nico that it was his job to defend his wife.

  Maggie attempted to stick to the business at hand and distributed a spreadsheet detailing the impact of three possible timing solutions; this stop-work might go on for weeks if Mr Lau had to find an entirely new financier. They were deep in discussion when Anthea’s car pulled into the driveway. Maggie excused herself and went out to meet the girls.

  Anthea accepted her mother’s embrace. ‘Did you talk to the lawyers?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s any point in talking to them. I’ve told Aaron to take it down,’ said Maggie. ‘Come inside, we’ll talk about it.’

  ‘What do you mean, there’s no point?’ demanded Elena, dragging a suitcase out of the car.

  ‘Have you seen it, Elena?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘Of course she has. What are you going on about?’ said Anthea.

  Maggie glanced over her shoulder at the house; she could see Yia-yiá’s shadow hovering behind the upstairs louvres.

  ‘Let’s just go inside and discuss it privately,’ said Maggie, picking up one of three large suitcases. Why, she wondered, were there so many suitcases? ‘Elena, you’re not moving home as well, are you? Seriously? Why?’

  Ignoring the question, Elena dumped her suitcase on the ground as if she were dropping anchor. ‘Are you saying there’s nothing we can do?’

  ‘All we can do is get it taken down. I understand that you didn’t want it put online, Thea, but the way you’re playing up to the camera, you clearly knew you were being filmed —’

  ‘You looked at it? You promised! How could you?’ Anthea shouted, while Elena shook her head in furious disbelief.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Elena. ‘Thea didn’t know he was going to put it online —’

  ‘I don’t get why you felt the need to film yourself in the first place … look, let’s discuss —’

  ‘So you didn’t even call the lawyers,’ said Elena.

  Maggie took calming breaths through pursed lips. ‘It’s going to be very difficult to prove … I’m just not sure that we want to spend a lot of money and risk bringing it to the attention of the media.’

  The girls exchanged looks of wide-eyed outrage. ‘It’s always about the money with you, isn’t it, Mum?’ said Elena. She put her arm around Anthea’s shoulders in a show of solidarity that Maggie had witnessed too many times over the years.

  The unfairness of the accusation stung Maggie to the core. It was Anthea’s word against Aaron’s. The girls had no idea of the tens of thousands that would be eaten up by lawyers with no result at the end of it. ‘You should also know that Yia-yiá has seen it too,’ she said.

  All colour drained from Anthea’s face. She collapsed, sobbing, in Elena’s arms.

  ‘You showed her?’ Elena asked.

  ‘Of course not. She saw it on my phone. It wasn’t intentional, I promise.’

  ‘I’ve told you so many times to lock your phone! You’re so hopeless. She picks up anyone’s phone and just presses random things. Oh my God!’ said Elena.

  Anthea, her face puffy from crying, lifted her gaze and stared past Maggie, the corners of her mouth tugged down like a two-year-old’s. ‘Dad!’ she sobbed and ran towards Kristo, who stood on the front step wearing an expression of bewilderment as she flung herself into his arms.

  Chapter Two

  Fran often woke before dawn these days. If there was the faintest glimmer of light in the sky, she felt triumphant, as though she had slept heroically. Today, she was relieved to hear the soft rumble of London traffic, reassuring her that daylight wasn’t far away.

  She hadn’t heard Louis leave. In earlier times, he would make her tea and blow a lingering kiss from the door, as though he could hardly bear to be parted from her. Lately, she had begun to suspect that he slipped away as soon as she fell asleep. He had recently taken to tucking the covers in neatly on his side of the bed, as if to imply that he was never there at all. That was most unlike him. He was a man who left a trail of disorder in his wake. Perhaps he wanted her to get used to the idea that, at some point, the other side of the bed would remain flat and neat indefinitely. That the smell of cigarettes and sweat, the red-wine taste of his mouth, and the comfort of his presence would no longer be part of the fabric of her life. She didn’t mind going to sleep alone. It was waking up alone she hated – the dawning realisation of her aloneness …

  ‘I don’t like upsetting people,’ he always told her as an oblique explanation for his lack of commitment. She took this comment to mean that, at some future point in their relationship, there would likely be an upset if she asked too much of him. It seemed to her like a cowardly excuse for not being honest, although she had a particular dislike of people who, under the guise of being honest, were insensitive and disagreeable. Ironically, that description fitted Rose perfectly, and she was one of the people whom Fran loved most in the world.

  She wondered where on earth Louis was disappearing to in the night. It made no sense for him to go back to his bleak flat with its empty fridge and unmade bed. It used to be that he would turn up, hook his jacket on the chair and flop onto her sofa, as though he had looked forward to this moment all day. She would pour him a glass of wine (Australian reds were his favourite) and he would tilt his glass in her direction and breathe a great sigh of contentment. ‘Home is where the heart is,’ he would say. ‘And my heart is here, darlin’.’ Every time, the same creaky old cliché, like a line from a cheesy country and western song. In five years he’d never actually said he loved her, but she was convinced that this was his way of expressing it and she warmed herself on that tiny flame.

  He would unlace his shoes and, tossing his damp socks to one side, rest his soft white feet on the coffee table and tell her about his day while she stirred the pasta or grilled some chops and tossed a salad together. He worked in an insurance office assessing claims and sometimes had
amusing stories about outlandish claims and devious claimants. Other times, when he was frustrated, he would describe, in painful detail, his interactions with his knuckled-headed colleagues, and she would wonder how he kept his job at all. Even in his version, he sounded uncompromising and aggressive – particularly for someone who supposedly didn’t like upsetting people. According to him, he was one of the company’s most valuable assets, having saved them millions of pounds by ferreting out spurious claims. His experience counted for something and he would be there until his retirement.

  At some indefinable point, he stopped saying his heart was at home with her and she couldn’t help but wonder if it had found a new one. It seemed an extraordinary effort for a man in his mid-sixties, his prime a distant memory – long before she had met him – to go out looking for a new relationship when there was nothing wrong with this one. He wasn’t a great catch. He was the exact opposite of a single man in possession of a good fortune. He had never got around to divorcing his wife, Barbara, didn’t own his home and would be dependent on his State Pension when he retired. But London was full of older single women who couldn’t afford to be fussy if they wanted some company and a warm body in the bed; hair was an optional extra and he did have plenty of that going for him.

  These days, when she woke, she seemed to take longer to come into her body. It was as though she was suffering an accumulative fatigue that had gathered momentum. Leaning against the bench, she watched the teabag seep wearily into the boiling water and the milk reluctantly stain the mix. She squeezed the teabag and tossed it in the sink among the unwashed dishes from the evening before. She put the empty wine bottle in the container under the sink to eliminate all reminders of Louis. He always left a shadow of sadness in his wake, the flip side of the brightness she felt when he was coming over. On those days, she smiled at customers in the shop, answering their questions about obscure books and dead authors as brightly as if she had never been asked before. On those days, she would catch sight of her reflection and be struck by her youthful radiance. She could pass for fifty in that frame of mind. If only she could stay in that frame of mind. If only it wasn’t dependent on Louis.