‘I haven’t actually seen them. I was waiting for you both.’
As if quickly weighing up the importance of things, Skye seemed to come to a decision. ‘The diamonds aren’t going to disappear overnight,’ she insisted gently. ‘They can wait.Youare more important right now. And we’re not going anywhere until you tell us what’s going on,’ she said firmly.
The kettle reached boiling point and clicked off, all the sisters’ gazes called to it, and a sudden silence blanketed the room until Star laughed. ‘Okay, let’s have some tea, take stock and, you know, breathe.’
Skye and Summer shared a look.
‘Okay, who are you and what have you done with Star?’ Skye demanded.
Star smiled. ‘We have alotto catch up on.’
And for just a moment they enjoyed the silence, enjoyed being back together again, reunited after the longest time away from each other. Then, as Star made the tea, Skye told them about her fiancé Benoit and the cottage in the Dordogne they had been staying in for the last few weeks. Star asked a few questions before telling her own tale about the oasis the Prince of Duratra had whisked her away to before his ostentatious proposal and how much she wished she had someqatayefto share with them as they had their tea. It was as if they sensed that Summer needed time just to let the heavy emotions settle. Warmth finally seeped into her skin and wrapped around her heart and finally both Star and Skye looked at her expectantly.
‘I don’t know where to begin.’ Summer shrugged helplessly.
‘At the beginning, of course,’ Star replied, as if she were talking to her primary school class.
Summer took a deep breath, the words rushing out on a single exhale. ‘I found my dad.’
‘Wait...what?’ Skye asked, clearly not expecting that to be where Summer’s story began.
‘In Greece. I found my father.’
‘But I thought Mum didn’t know his name?’ said Star, frowning. ‘Which was why she could never find...’ She trailed off, as if suddenly understanding.
‘Oh, no,’ Skye said. ‘Really? She knew the whole time?’
Summer nodded, the ache of all those missed years, of all the questions unanswered for so long, that missing part of her... She understoodnowwhy her mother had done what she’d done but, with a child growing within her, she knew that she couldn’t have made the same choice.
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Skye asked gently.
‘I didn’t want you to think badly of her.Ididn’t want to think badly of her.’ Summer shook her head, trying to find the words to explain why she’d hoarded that information, hoarded that hurt from her half-sisters. Skye’s father had started another family after he and Mariam broke up, Star’s father had died tragically when she was just months old. But Kyros? He washerfather and a part of her feared they wouldn’t understand the need she’d felt to meet him. The need in her to connect with a man she’d never met. And perhaps beneath that, deep down, the thing she hadn’t been able to admit...that if he rejected her then she wouldn’t have to tell them. No one would have to know.
‘I... I wanted to meet him first,’ Summer said.
‘And did you?’
CHAPTER ONE
Five months ago...
YOUCANDOTHIS, Summer told herself as she stepped out of the air-conditioned arrivals hall in Athens and was hit by a bank of heat that nearly knocked her back. Looking out at the wide road and the bus stop, she squinted as the sun bounced off the pale concrete floor.
She stared at the instructions from her hotel—a hotel that was within walking distance of Kyros Agyros’s office building—and after gazing longingly at the line of taxis she steeled herself and found the ticket machine that thankfully had an English language button.
Less than five euros and ten minutes later she was on the bus, with half her mind on the stop announcements and half a mind on her father. An ache bloomed in her heart, one that had been there ever since she’d found the photo of her parents tucked away in the attic amongst all the old albums and family documents. Mariam had always told her that she’d never known her father’s last name.
Oh, she’d told Summer many other things—that his name was Kyros, that, just like her, he had a little mole on his collarbone. That he’d made her laugh, made her believe in love again, even through her grief, and, despite how brief it had been, they’d had a wonderful, magical relationship. And Summer had never doubted it. Until, when looking for her passport, she’d instead found a picture of her mother staring deep into the eyes of a handsome man—and on the back, written in her mother’s handwriting, the name Kyros Agyros.
Her already shaky foundations had been rocked by the secret Mariam had kept from her and, no matter how much she wanted to ask her mum about it, she couldn’t. Because Mariam Soames was ill. Very ill. Words like stage three and cancer sent tremors through her and Summer dashed away a tear that threatened to fall. So no. She couldn’t ask her mum about why she’d lied about knowing her father’s identity. So that only left her one other option.
‘Syntagma Square,’ a robotic voice announced, and Summer grabbed her large rucksack and made it off the bus just in time.
She had planned to find her hotel first. It was, according to the guide, less than a ten-minute walk south of the square. But when she turned and saw the Parliament building behind her, she lost her breath on a gasp. On the opposite side of a wide road, white columns gleamed against the burnt yellow brickwork and towered magnificently over the square. Behind her, steps led down to a fountain where kids were playing and screaming and splashing water at each other. Off to the side were rows and rows of canopied tables and chairs, the scent of coffee hitting her all the way to where she stood.
In an instant she was filled with something she could hardly explain. Her geophysics professors and fellow students certainly would have laughed if she’d tried to explain it to them, but her heart swelled and she was brimming with something warm and thick and sweet. This was part of her culture, her heritage, her identity.
She walked across the length of the square, taking it all in. The heat, the people, the colour, the noise—it was so different to what she was used to. She was about to try and find the road that her hotel was on when she followed the sleek lines of a gleaming office building into the sky, shocked to see a bright red illuminated sign bearing her father’s name.