Читать книгу The Cozakis Bride онлайн

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Once Olympia had been old enough to get a job of her own, matters had improved. For a few years, Olympia recalled with painful regret, they had been happy in a tiny flat which had seemed like a palace to them both. Then, eighteen months ago, the firm where Olympia had worked as a receptionist had gone bankrupt. Since then she had only managed to get temporary employment, and even that had been thin on the ground in recent months. They had had to give up the flat, and the savings which Olympia had painstakingly built up were long since gone.

The council had rehoused them in a tough inner city estate. Her mother was so terrified of the aggressive youths there that she no longer dared to venture out. Olympia had been forced to watch the mother she adored decline before her eyes, growing ever more thin and weak, her brave smiles of cheer pathetic to witness. It was as if Irini Manoulis had given up on life itself.

She was dying, Olympia reflected sickly, dying inch by inch, always talking about the distant past now, because the unlovely present was too much for her weakened spirit to handle. A rundown apartment they couldn’t afford to heat, no telephone, no television, noisy, threatening neighbours and surroundings bereft of all beauty. Nothing, nothing whatsoever to look forward to with the smallest anticipation.