‘What’s he up to?’ she asked as he embraced Homer and Estelle.

‘Trying to win forgiveness for turning up late,’ Lysandros remarked. ‘Pretend he doesn’t exist, as I’m doing.’

His words reminded her of how hard it must be for him to appear at ease in Nikator’s presence, and she smiled at him in reassurance.

‘Better still,’ Lysandros said, ‘let’s show him exactly where he stands.’

Before she knew what he meant to do, he’d pulled her closer and laid his mouth on hers in a long kiss, whose meaning left nothing to the imagination.

Now he’d made his declaration to the world. This man, who’d spent so long hiding his true self behind protective bolts and bars, had finally managed to throw them aside and break out to freedom because the one special woman had given him the key. He no longer cared who could look into his soul because her love had made him invincible.

As the kiss ended and he raised his head, his manner was that of a victor. A hero, driving his chariot across the battlefield where his enemies lay defeated, might have worn that air of triumph.

‘Let him do what he likes,’ he murmured to her. ‘Nothing can touch us now.’

She was to remember those words long after.

‘Ah!’ cried Nikator. ‘Isn’t love charming?’

His caustic voice shattered her dream and made her shudder. Nikator had marched across the floor and stood regarding them sardonically, while Homer hurried behind and laid an urgent hand on his son’s arm. Nikator threw it off.

‘Leave me, Father; there are things that have to be said and I’m going to enjoy saying them.’ He grinned straight at Lysandros. ‘I never thought the day would come when I’d have a good laugh at you. You, of all men, to be taken in by a designing woman!’

‘Give up,’ Lysandros advised him gently. ‘It’s no use, Nikator.’

‘But that’s what’s so funny,’ Nikator yelped. ‘How easily you were fooled when you fancied yourself so armoured. But the armour doesn’t cover the heel, does it?’

Even this jibe didn’t seem to affect Lysandros, who continued to regard Nikator with pity and contempt.

‘And your “heel” was that you believed in her,’ Nikator said, jabbing a finger at Petra. ‘You’re too stupid to realise that she’s been playing you for a sucker because there’s something she wanted.’

‘Hey, you!’ Estelle thumped him hard on the shoulder. ‘If you’re suggesting my daughter has to marry for money, let me tell you-’

‘Not money!’ Nikator spat. ‘Glory. Anything for a good story, eh?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Lysandros demanded. ‘There’s no story.’

‘Of course there is. It’s what she lives by, her reputation, getting a new angle on things that nobody else can get. And, oh, boy, did she get it this time!’

Even then they didn’t see the danger. Lysandros sighed, shaking his head as if being patient with a tiresome infant.

‘You won’t laugh when you know what she’s been doing,’ Nikator jeered. ‘Getting onto the press, telling them your secrets, repeating what you said to her-’

‘That’s a lie!’ Petra cried.

‘Of course it’s a lie,’ Lysandros said.

The smiling confidence had vanished from his face and his voice had the deadly quiet of a man who was fighting shock, but he was still uttering the right words.

‘Be careful what you say,’ he told Nikator coldly. ‘I won’t have her slandered.’

‘Oh, you think it’s a slander, do you? Then how does the press know what you said to her at the Achilleion? How do they know you showed her Brigitta’s grave and told her how often you’d stood there and begged Brigitta’s forgiveness? Have you ever repeated that? No, I thought not. But someone has.’

‘Not me,’ Petra said, aghast. ‘I would never-you can’t believe that!’

She flung the last words at Lysandros, who turned and said quickly, ‘Of course not.’

But his manner was strained. Gone was the relaxed joy of only a few minutes ago. Only two of them knew what he had said to her at that grave.

‘It’s about time you saw this,’ Nikator said.

Nobody had noticed the bag he’d brought with him and dropped at his feet. Now he leaned down and began to pull out the contents, distributing them to the fascinated crowd.

They were newspapers, carrying the banner headline, The Truth About Achilles: How She Made Him Talk, and telling the story of the well-known historian Petra Radnor, who’d first come to prominence when, little more than a girl, she’d published Greek Heroes of the Past.

The book had been such a success that it had been revised for a school edition and was now being considered for a further revision. This time the angle would be more glamorous and romantic, as Ms Radnor considered Greek men today and whether they really lived up to their classical reputation. For the moment she was working on Achilles.

There followed a detailed description of the last few weeks-their first meeting at the wedding, at which Ms Radnor exerted all her charms to entice her prey, the evening they had spent together dancing in the streets, and finally their time on Corfu in the villa where ‘Achilles’ had once lived with his other lover, who was buried there.

Together they visited the Archilleion, where they stood before the great picture of the first Achilles dragging the lifeless body of his enemy behind his chariot, and the modern Achilles explained that he was raised to do it to them before they did it to him.

Which was exactly what he’d said, Petra thought in numb horror.

It went on and on. Somehow the people behind this had learned every private detail of their time together at the villa, and were parading it for amusement. ‘Achilles’ had been trapped, deluded, made a fool of by a woman who was always one step ahead of him. That was the message, and those who secretly feared and hated him would love every moment of it.

All around she could see people trying to smother their amusement. Homer was scowling and the older guests feared him too much to laugh aloud, but they were covering their mouths, turning their heads away. The younger ones were less cautious.

‘Even you,’ Nikator jeered at Lysandros. ‘Even you weren’t as clever as you reckoned. You thought you had it all sussed, didn’t you? But she saw through you, and oh, what a story she’s going to get out of it, Achilles!’

Lysandros didn’t move. He seemed to have been turned to stone.

Nikator swung his attention around to Petra.

‘Not that you’ve been so clever yourself, my dear deluded sister.’

Estelle gave a little shriek and Homer grabbed his son.

‘That’s enough,’ he snapped. ‘Leave here at once.’

But Nikator threw him off again. Possessed by bitter fury, he could defy even his father. He went closer to Petra, almost hissing in her face.

‘He’s a fool if he believed you, but you’re a fool if you believed him. There are a hundred women in this room right now who trusted him and discovered their mistake too late. You’re just another.’

Somehow she forced herself to speak.

‘No, Nikator, that’s not true. I know you want to believe it, but it’s not true.’

‘You’re deluded,’ he said contemptuously.

‘No, it’s you who are deluded,’ she retorted at once.

‘Have you no eyes?’

‘Yes, I have eyes, but eyes can deceive you. What matters isn’t what your eyes tell you, but what your heart tells you. And my heart says that this is the man I trust with all of me.’ She lifted her head and spoke loudly. ‘Whatever Lysandros tells me, that is the truth.’

She stepped close to him and took his hand. It was cold as ice.

‘Let’s go, my dearest,’ she said. ‘We don’t belong here.’

The crowd parted for them as they walked away together into the starry night. Now the onlookers were almost silent, but it was a terrible silence, full of horror and derision.

On and on they walked, into the dark part of the grounds. Here there were only a few stragglers and they fell away when they saw them coming, awed, or perhaps made fearful, by the sight of two faces that seemed to be looking into a different world.

At last they came to a small wooden bridge over a river and went to stand in the centre, gazing out over the water. Still he didn’t look at her, but at last he spoke in a low, almost despairing voice.

‘Thank you for what you said about always believing me.’

‘It was only what you said to me first,’ she said fervently. ‘I was glad to return it. I meant it every bit as much as you did. Nikator is lying. Yes, there was a book, years ago, but I told you about that myself, and about the reissue.’

‘And the new version?’

‘I knew they were thinking of bringing it out again, but not in detail. And it certainly isn’t going to be anything like Nikator said. Lysandros, you can’t believe all that stuff about my “working on Achilles” and pursuing you to make use of you. It isn’t true. I swear it isn’t.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ he said quietly. ‘But-’

The silence was almost tangible, full of jagged pain.

‘But what?’ she asked, not daring to believe the suspicions rioting in her brain.

‘How did they discover what we said?’ he asked in a rasping, tortured voice. ‘That’s all I want to know.’

‘And I can’t tell you because I don’t know. It wasn’t me. Maybe someone was standing behind us at the Achilleion-’

‘Someone who knew who we were? And the grave? How do they know about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know. I never repeated anything to anybody. Lysandros, you have got to believe me.’

She looked up into his face and spoke with all the passion at her command.

‘Can’t you see that we’ve come to the crossroads? This is it. This is where we find out if it all meant anything. I am telling you the truth. Nobody in the world matters more to me than you, and I would never, ever lie to you. For pity’s sake, say that you believe me, please.’

The terrible silence was a thousand fathoms deep. Then he stammered, ‘Of course…I do believe you…’ But there was agony in his voice and she could hear the effort he put into forcing himself.

‘You don’t,’ she said explosively as the shattering truth hit her. ‘All that about trusting me-it was just words.’

‘No, I-no!’

‘Yes!’

‘I tried to mean them, I wanted to, but-’

Her heart almost failed her, for there on his face was the look she’d seen before, on the statue at the Achilleion, when Achilles tried to draw the arrow from his foot, his expression full of despair as he realised there was no way to escape his fate.

‘Yes-but,’ she said bitterly. ‘I should have known there’d be a “but”.’

‘Nobody else knows about that grave,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t get past that.’

‘Perhaps Nikator does know. Perhaps he had someone following us-’

‘That wouldn’t help them find the grave. It’s deep in the grounds; you can’t see it from outside. I’ve never told anyone else. You’re the one person I’ve ever trusted enough to…to…’

As the words died he groaned and reached for her. It would have been simple to go into his arms and try to rediscover each other that way, but a spurt of anger made her step back, staring at him with hard eyes.

‘And that’s the worst thing you can do to anyone,’ she said emphatically. ‘The more you trust someone, the worse it is when they betray you.’

He stared at her like a man lost in a mist, vainly trying to understand distant echoes. ‘What did you say?’ he whispered.

‘Don’t you recognise your own words, Lysandros? Words you said to me in Las Vegas. I’ll remind you of some more. “Nobody is ever as good as you think they are, and sooner or later the truth is always there. Better to have no illusions, and be strong.” You really meant that, didn’t you? I didn’t realise until now just how much you meant it.’

‘Don’t remind me of that time,’ he shouted. ‘It’s over.’

‘It’ll never be over because you carry it with you, and all the hatred and suspicion that was in you then is there still. You just hide it better, but then something happens and it speaks, telling you to play safe and think the worst of everyone. Even me. Look into your heart and be honest. Suddenly I look just like all the others, don’t I? Lying, scheming-’

‘Shut up!’ he roared. ‘Don’t talk like that. I forbid it.’

‘Why, because it comes too close to the truth? And who are you to forbid me?’

If his mind had been clearer he could have told her that he was the man whose fate she held in her hands, but the clear-headedness for which he was famed seemed to have deserted him now and everything was in a whirl of confusion.

‘I want to believe you; can’t you understand that?’ He gripped her shoulders tightly, almost shaking her. ‘But tell me how. Show me a way. Tell me!’