Bound to You by Nichi Hodgson Read Free Book Online

lucky.
    ‘So you know your cousin Eleni is getting married, Christos?’
    Christos nodded. Contrary to cultural stereotype, Giagia was actually too polite to urge us to marry. But she could hint at what she hoped for us by mentioning other people’s forthcoming nuptials.
    ‘Eleni and Matthaios won’t be getting married in church. It’s their choice, of course. So I went to St Giorgos’s anyway, prayed that God will bless their marriage, make them as happy as I was with your grandfather.’
    Christos patted Giagia’s hand.
    I had often asked Christos what a Greek Orthodox wedding entailed, and lingered on the details in my mind as he described it. Christos would have taken some persuading, but my inclination towards flamboyant displays of affection meant I loved to fantasise about a church wedding; how the family priest would join our hands in front of the
iconostasis
, how Christos and I would be crowned with
stefana
and walked three times around the altar, how Christos would throw back the heavy veil from my radiant face once we were husband and wife.
    Christos interrupted my reverie. ‘Nichi nearly drowned today, Giagia.’
    Giagia coughed in alarm.
    ‘Christos!’ I scolded. What the hell was he telling Giagia that for?
    ‘So she’s not feeling like eating too much.’
    He gave me a solemn smile. I made a mental note to kiss him extra hard when we got home.
    Giagia nodded sympathetically. ‘Well, Nichi can eat as much or as little as she likes. Do you want some more chicken, Christos? Have some more rice.’
    ‘No, no, Giagia.’ Christos stood up, patted his muscular stomach. ‘I’m creaking I’m so full. We’d better be on our way. We’ll call in again soon.’
    As we stepped out on to the driveway, Giagia shouted after Christos, ‘Look after her,
leventi
mou
, eh?’
    Leventi
. It was impossible to translate. All I knew was that it was what you called an upstanding man.
    As we parked up outside Christos’s family house, the familiar fragrances overwhelmed me: first, the sweet basil and almond scents, then the hypnotic night-flowering jasmine. Spontaneously, I started to cry a little. Christos was alarmed. ‘Don’t worry,’ I laughed to reassure him, ‘I’m just so happy to be back!’
    Christos’s parents were not at home. They were at the family beach house; we would be seeing them later in the week. I was glad. Although I could be nothing but gracious to their faces, I was unsure how I would react emotionally to seeing them again, what with my feelings about the PhD still so raw. I entered the kitchen. Everything was as it always was: the biscuit barrel filled with Giagia’s delicacies, the cupboard covered in family snap shots, the strawberry napkin ring on the table, reserved for the little English girl.
    Also pinned to the cupboard was a card I had made for Christos’s parents last year to thank them for having me. It featured a cut-out cat, meant to be Tolkien, shaded in charcoal pencil. Amazing what you could pull off when you wanted to win the affections of someone’s family. Tolkien himself languished in the shade by the sink in a bid to keep cool, and refused to come and greet me.
    ‘So Mimi made your bed up, Nichi
mou
.’
    Christos and I slept in separate beds in Greece. It wasn’t like his parents didn’t know we shared a bed back in London, nor even that they were particularly conservative; but old-fashioned house rules still applied. Christos’s dad had once told him it that it was fine to sleep with me upstairs, just as long as he came back down to his own room before Mimi, their housekeeper, arrived. He didn’t want her to feel awkward, he said.
    I wandered into Christos’s bedroom, ran my fingers over the national youth sports trophies stacked on the bookcase, across Christos’s face at six, eight, ten years in the school photos stuck above the bed. I went over to his fragrance collection. Among the glass bottles was a rosary box with a cartoon Virgin Mary painted on