Her mother was in the kitchen with Amalia, and Anna had stepped outside for fresh air. She needed a moment to take it all in. They were selling the place. Her mother, understandably, wanted a fresh start. She needed, they all needed, to leave the village that had been so cruel and full of so many painful memories. Her mother had rented a small house by the sea, and some of the money from the sale would provide a strong future there for her.
The day she had met her mother from the institution Mary had asked Anna for her forgiveness. She had said how sorry she was for the weight she had placed on Anna, for the hardness and difficulty she had put upon them. She had spoken of her love for Anna and Amalia, and Anna forgave her completely. They knew that it wouldn’t be easy, that her mother was an alcoholic and that there would always be an addiction there, but her
mother had promised to do her best to fight for her sobriety every single day. Anna had never seen her mother as strong, but this time she truly felt there was a difference. In the last month, she had seen her mother fight with an energy she had felt missing in herself.
They had spoken about her father and it was difficult for Anna to hear that her mother had felt betrayed when she reached out to her father. That Mary had felt terrified that Anna wouldn’t come back, would have chosen the man who had rejected them both, over her. Anna had warred with herself, feeling guilty that she had sought him out, but angry that her mother hadn’t been able to understand. At the time. There were hurts on both sides, and they wouldn’t just disappear, but they both had to work through them. Her mother’s rehabilitation didn’t just overwrite all the pains of the past, but they were both willing to try and resolve them now.
But Anna hadn’t forgotten the way the ground beneath her had shaken when Dimitri had thrown his hurtful accusations her way. From the moment the words had fallen from his lips, Anna had wondered, chest aching, whether he’d been right.
And deep down, with a very long, very hard look within herself, she realised that he was right.
Yes, her father had left, and there was no denying that. But when she’d gone to London three years before...she had left before she’d given him a chance. And she hated that. Hated both herself and Dimitri for showing her that about herself.
But in the last three weeks she had decided to do something about it.
A week ago she had called the number for the restaurant owned by her father. Although she had warred with the idea of going to London in person, she felt that her first tentative steps towards a relationship with him should be made gently. She had braced herself for all possibilities—rejection, anger, hurt...but she had hoped for love. And this time she had been right. Soon she would arrange a time to go to London and meet her father. But first...
Looking out over the fields, Anna clutched her mobile in a tight fist. For seven days she had tried to reach out to the Sheikh of Ter’harn. She almost laughed at herself. She, speaking to the ruler of a country she hadn’t even heard of more than two months ago. Naturally her calls had gone unanswered. Initially. But every day she had called five times, because she needed his help. She honestly didn’t think she could put her plan into motion without it, and she refused to drum up some fake injury to Amalia to get Dimitri’s attention. So every day she had spoken to the same assistant, but unlike last time she refused to be ignored, dismissed or lied to. Every day the same assistant explained that she couldn’t speak to Danyl.
Until today.
* * *
Dimitri ran a hand over his face, his palm passing over what had long stopped being stubble and was now nearly a full beard. He sat heavily down at the wooden table on the patio and looked out to a sea that was about to swallow the sun whole.
He was thankful. The night suited him better ever since Anna and Amalia had left the island.
You loved neither of us enough to sacrifice yourself. His own words had run over and over again in Dimitri’s head in the past few weeks. If he’d known how much it would hurt to sacrifice himself, his own feelings, he might have forgiven his father. Might have.
But he needed to remain strong. The media circus that had descended on the Kyriakou Bank had been nothing short of a plague. Ironically it was the fact that he’d been instrumental in bringing down his own father that had allowed the board of governors to stay true and faithful. And if nothing else, the Greeks loved a family tragedy.
Perhaps he had been most surprised by Eleni Kyriakou. She had come to see him and asked for his forgiveness. She hadn’t known the actions that her husband had taken, and surprisingly became a bridge between him and the fragmented people that considered themselves his family.
But every time the word ‘family’ entered his mind, images of Amalia flashed over the pain—Amalia at breakfast throwing food at him, in the pool throwing water at him. But the place he couldn’t allow his mind to wander was to Anna. Every time it did, he tried to cling to the old wound of hurt that she had kept her daughter from him, but it wouldn’t stick. Because this time it was him, keeping himself from Amalia, from Anna.
He wondered what they were doing now. David had told him about the sale of the B & B. But, aside from the news that her mother was renting a small house by the sea, he knew nothing. And, having experienced life with his daughter, with Anna, he was even more tortured by their absence. By the loss of them.
Two days after they had left, he had finally faced the studio he had created for Anna. He’d been unable to stop himself from entering a place he’d begun to think of as hers. Unable to prevent himself from desperately seeking out any remnants of her, a trace of her that showed she hadn’t just been a figment of his imagination.
There on the bench had been a completed sculpture. It had stopped him in his tracks, his fingers itching to reach out and caress the smooth lines of the three orbs, linked within a band, a bond, joining the three figures he’d come to imagine were Anna, Amalia and himself.
Over the last three weeks his hands had learned the shape, the feel of the solid fired clay, the silky green-blue glaze that covered it. He had clung to it, almost the same way that Amalia had clung to Anna’s first sculpture. The one that had shown him a hint of her hopes and dreams. The ones he’d so very much wanted her to fulfil.
Dimitri heard the door to his house open and close and couldn’t even bring himself to find out who had arrived. A bottle of whisky was placed on the table beneath the pergola on the patio and Danyl poured his tall frame into the seat opposite him.
Dimitri scoffed. ‘When it was Antonio’s turn I brought coffee.’
‘Then perhaps it’s best that we know what the other needs. Because you’re going to need more than coffee.’
‘Why are you here?’ Dimitri demanded. ‘Don’t you have a country to run?’
‘I do. But friends are more important. You are more important.’
‘I’m touched. Deeply. Truly. You can go now,’ Dimitri said, reaching out for the bottle of whisky. As if anyone could dismiss a sheikh so easily—as if he could dismiss Danyl so easily.
‘Not yet.’
‘I’m better off alone,’ Dimitri growled.