Bound to You by Nichi Hodgson Read Free Book Online Page A

the lid. Oh God, I knew what this was! I screwed off the top, and smiled effusively.
    Christos came into the room. He took the box from me. ‘Our wedding rings – ha ha!’
    Inside the box were two cheap silver rings that we had bought for a trip to Morocco we had made just before my finals. Somebody had told us that finding places to stay as an unmarried couple could prove tricky, so Christos had the idea of buying the rings. When we’d got there, it was clear nobody could have cared less. But we’d kept the rings on for the duration of the trip all the same.
    ‘So, Nichi
mou
, I’ve got a surprise for you, an early birthday present.’ I was still looking at the rings as Christos leant his chin on my shoulder, repeatedly kissing my cheek.
    ‘Oh?’ I turned around.
    ‘I won a competition last week on the radio – yes, that radio programme with the nostalgic old people. It’s a room at the Fengari resort. It’s only for a night but there’s a spa, an infinity pool, jacuzzi, a luxurious bed . . .’
    His hands came around my waist, strayed up over my ribs to cup my breasts. I turned my head back to kiss him. ‘That sounds glorious!’
    Out of the corner of my eye I noticed his guitar. ‘Oh! Christos, since there’s no one else in the house, let’s sing!’
    Christos frowned for a moment. Then he kissed me again. ‘Excellent idea.’
    All the way through my childhood and teens, I had sung – in choirs, musical productions, solo to raise money for charity, at karaoke. I loved singing like nothing else, and, right up until becoming anorexic, took it as a matter of course that I would apply to drama school and see if I could make a living out of performing. But once I was ill, I lost my nerve. Along with a lot of other things.
    Anorexia felt like the solution, at the time, to the terrifying chaos of my life. When I became ill I was preparing for four A levels, had the lead part in the school production of
Kiss Me Kate
and was absolutely obsessed with the idea that I had to get to Oxford where I could study and act, and make a success of myself. The pressure was inordinate. At first, starving myself gave me an intoxicating sense of being super-human, as if I didn’t need food to survive. Soon, I was ill beyond sense.
    Halfway though my final school year, I weighed just five and a half stone and was wearing clothes for ten-year-olds. I knew I needed help. And so began the Sisyphean task of learning to eat again. My desire to be a professional performer had gone. That particular brazen courage had left me. But I made it to university, to study literature, and within weeks I had acquired wonderful new friends. It took longer to regain a sense of my own physical strength and attractiveness, but I managed it. That paralysing fear of food, and the obsessive need for control of my body were, I was certain, gone for good.
    So it felt almost like a healing when in my last year at university, after years of being mute, musical Christos coaxed the voice out of me, persuading me to sing along to deeply unfashionable Greek love songs with him, as he played guitar. Tonight I wanted to sing with him again.
    ‘
Ela
, Nichi
mou
, you choose.’ He handed me his sheet music file. We ran through a few of my favourites. ‘
Matia Palatia
’. Palace eyes. ‘Louloudakia Mou’. My little jasmine flower.
    ‘I’m feeling sentimental. I’m going to sing this one to you, Nichi
mou
,’ Christos said suddenly.
    ‘
Kokkinaxelli Mou
’. The title translated as ‘my red lips’. It was one of Christos’s favourites because my lips, he always said, had given him the excuse he needed to attempt the come-on that got us together.
    One night, barely a week after we had first met, he knocked on my door. ‘Come in!’ I called.
    I was in bed reading a Renaissance seduction manual for men. I was wearing a tiny mint nightie. When he put his head round my door, Christos was embarrassed.
    ‘No, it’s fine, enter!’ Inappropriate, I