Célia looked up at him then, as if willing him to say the right thing. There was compassion in her gaze, too, but that seemed to hurt just as much. He forced the words to his lips. ‘Annabelle, if you would like to live with your mother—’
‘No! Well, maybe? I don’t know.’
‘And that’s okay, sweetheart,’ insisted Célia. ‘Even adults don’t always know what they want. You had fun with Meredith in Texas?’
‘Yes, but I have fun here with Loukis too.’
‘I can see,’ she said, smiling. ‘And your friends...’
‘Are here. At school and Leya—she’s my bestest friend.’
‘Byron seems nice,’ Célia pressed on while Loukis didn’t feel capable of forming words at all.
‘He is. He laughs a lot and has a funny accent.’
‘And your mummy?’
Loukis marvelled that Célia was managing to bring out exactly the information that he wanted from his sister, who shrugged and seemed to burrow into herself.
‘I don’t know.’
* * *
Célia laughed gently, breaking some of the tension gripping both Loukis and his sister in a fierce hold.
‘I haven’t known how to feel about my dad for nearly five years,’ she confided.
‘Really?’ Annabelle returned, wide-eyed.
‘Really. There are times when I remember good things. Happy things. And times when, I know that he made me sad. Sometimes they get mixed up together and sometimes they feel very far apart.’
It was, Célia realised, the first time that she’d admitted to feeling something other than betrayal from her father. Ever. But that didn’t stop it from being true. She had loved, did love him. But that love had been damaged by his betrayal and she could only imagine that being half of what Annabelle might be feeling, and at ten she quite possibly had no idea how to explain that. Especially to Loukis who, until recently, had simply pushed through with determination to ensure that Meredith came nowhere near her.
‘Do you still speak to him?’ Annabelle asked.
‘Not for quite a while.’
‘And your mummy?’
Célia sighed, and smiled, not realising quite how sad she looked in that moment. ‘We’ve spoken more recently.’
‘I spoke to my mum yesterday. She looked pretty and said she was going to your party.’
‘Nanny.’ Loukis waited until he had his sister’s attention and Célia’s. He seemed to be struggling with what he had to say. ‘No matter what happens, I will always be here for you. No matter where you are in the world, or who you are with. You are my family. Nothing will ever change that.’
Célia felt as if a giant bell had been struck within her and as it swung back and forth, shivering tremors in its wake, her heart lurched in time and in tune. They were the words she had never heard, nor felt from her own father, let alone her ex-fiancé. But to hear them from Loukis’s lips made her want, made her ache to hear them spoken for her. By him. She looked away at the horizon where the sea met the sky to avoid Loukis’s penetrating gaze. He would see, he would know.
As she’d watched him with Annabelle, seeing him with his friends Yalena and Iannis, and with her own, Ella and Roman, Loukis had morphed from an irascible client, a renowned playboy, into something more, someone more.
‘I am not capable of giving you what you deserve. Not now. Not ever.’
‘But you don’t like her,’ she heard Annabelle announce, even as Célia focused on a small fishing boat further out in the sea.
‘How I feel about her doesn’t affect how you feel about her, and it won’t affect how...she feels about you.’
The conclusion of Loukis’s sentence felt forced, but her heart soared that he was trying. Trying to present a blank canvas for his sister, so that she might be able to forge a relationship with her mother that was positive, even as she knew he would hate that.
But, as with all things that flew too high, they had to come down, and Célia’s heart swooped when she realised that his words reminded her of her last conversation with her mother.