‘Orestes,’ I whisper.
He is nodding, his eyes aglow. ‘We’ve come back to Mycenae, Pylades and I.’ He gestures to the other man, who dips his head respectfully towards me.
I feel a panicky kind of excitement. It’s all I’ve dreamed of, the only thing that has sustained me since my father died – and at last it’s happening.
‘Come, sit before you fall,’ he says, taking my elbow and guiding me to the low wall at the side of the pathway. I sit gratefully on the stone. ‘I must make my offerings at my father’s grave; it’s why we came here first.’
‘I come here every morning,’ I answer dazedly.
I wait for them as the warm light of day spills across the ground, the song of other birds joining the lonely nightingale. A laugh bubbles absurdly from my throat, and I clamp my hand over my mouth. I raise my face to the sun’s spreading rays and try to compose it into an expression of serious reflection.
‘Elektra? Are you well?’
I press my lips together, not trusting myself to speak at all.
‘She must be overcome,’ I hear Pylades murmur. ‘This is all unexpected to her.’
Orestes hovers for a moment before sitting beside me. I feel the tug between solicitousness and uncertainty within him; so long has passed since we were together.
‘Why now?’ I choke out at last. ‘I had given up hope, I had thought . . . why are you here?’
‘I’m ready,’ he says. He glances towards his friend. ‘Is there somewhere we can go, somewhere safe that you know? Somewhere we can talk?’
‘You can come to my home,’ I tell him. ‘But—’
He looks questioningly at me. ‘Yes?’
I straighten my shoulders, willing my body not to betray my embarrassment. ‘It’s not the kind of place you’re used to. It’s no palace.’
‘It’s where my sister lives.’ His voice is soft. ‘There’s nowhere I would rather visit.’
Still, I feel as though my body will cave in on itself when I bring them back to our miserable little dwelling. There is nothing in here to make it a home. It’s dark and shadowed, an unloved and unlovely thing. I’d thought myself past such worldly considerations, but when I look at it, I see it through their eyes. Georgios appears, and I want to shrivel even further into myself.
‘Elektra?’
‘It’s my brother,’ I announce. ‘Orestes has returned – at last.’
A shock of joy fills his face, his smile so genuine. It’s a long time since I’ve seen him look this way.
Orestes steps forward, almost shyly. I wonder if he’s trying to conceal his disgust for our home. But, just as Georgios seems truly happy to see him, Orestes looks sincerely pleased as well. ‘Do you remember me?’ he asks.
Georgios laughs, opening his arms wide. ‘Of course I do!’
And they’re clapping each other on the back, both of them beaming.
I hug my arms around myself. ‘Let’s go outside.’ I don’t want any of them to see how rattled I feel.
‘Of course,’ says Georgios. ‘Go and sit outside; it’s so dark in here. I’ll bring you food and drink, you must be tired from your journey.’ He ushers us all through the door, back into the sunshine, and he disappears. It’s my role, of course, to do this, to welcome the guests and feed them, but it’s just another thing I’ve got wrong, another courtesy I’ve forgotten.
‘I’m sorry I can’t welcome you in a better way,’ I say, as we find a shaded patch beneath the spreading branches of a great tree.
Orestes shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry that this is what’s happened to you.’
The blood rises in my cheeks and he catches himself, realising how it sounds.
‘I mean I’m sorry that you were driven out of your home,’ he says. ‘I’m sure you’re far happier here, with Georgios, than there with – with them. But it shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t be them, living in our father’s palace and us both exiled from it.’
I swallow. I’m not so much an exile as a runaway. She didn’t make me leave. But then, she made it impossible for me to stay – and for Orestes, too. I watch him, casting his gaze all around, taking it in. I feel almost shy of him, the man he’s become and all the experiences he’s had without me. For the first ten years of his life, I shaped his world. Now I don’t know him at all.
Georgios comes out, and I wince at the sight of the black, bitter bread he’s brought for them. Orestes, though, takes it as though he’s truly grateful. I wave it away, squirming a little. Everything is wrong. I’m sitting with them, my husband is serving us, I’m horribly aware of how unevenly I have hacked away at my hair. I wish I had been prepared. I wish I’d known the day he was coming. I wish I’d made myself hold on to my faith that he would.