He had wanted to box; that had been all he had wanted to do. If they had taken in Roman, he would have picked up a racket and shone at tennis, he would have been the perfect Daniel—but that part was too hard to share. And so, leaving his twin aside, as he had been forced to do for close to two-thirds of his life, Daniil told her a little more.
‘I think that within a couple of days of me arriving they understood the mistake they had made. They wanted to love me but they couldn’t and I don’t blame them for that...’
Libby had kept hold of her mounting horror till now, but, as she had freely admitted, she had no self-control where Daniil was concerned. That someone could do that to him had her blood boil, and her voice was harsh when she spoke. ‘They were never going to love you, no matter what you did. Instead of working through their grief and facing it, they did this to you.’
‘I made their lives hell,’ Daniil said. ‘They simply couldn’t understand how I wasn’t grateful for all the opportunities they gave me. Earlier this year we had a major falling out when I told them I wanted to change back to my birth name.’
‘Of course you did,’ Libby said. ‘After all they did—’
But he interrupted her, and when he did so Daniil nearly blindsided her with something she had never considered.
‘I think they think that I changed my name to spite them—it wasn’t about that, though. I changed my name in the hope that my past could find me.’
‘And has it?’
‘No.’
‘I feel even worse now that I tried to persuade you to go.’
‘Libby, you could never have persuaded me to do this. Believe me, I have my own reasons for going tonight.’ He had revealed more than he ever had and certainly more than he had expected to, but her acceptance was soothing and that she was angry with his parents on his behalf helped. So a couple of hours before he would enter the house that should have been home, he told her a little of his real one.
‘There were four of us,’ he explained. ‘We were the bad kids. By the time you get to be six or so you know that you are unlikely to be adopted. We never wanted to be anyway. We were going to make our own way in the world. Sev—Sevastyan—would read all the time, and he was clever with numbers. Then there was Nikolai and he wanted to work on the ships. I’d love to know if he ever did.’
‘Who was the fourth one?’ Libby asked innocently.
‘Roman.’
It hurt even to say his name out loud.
‘And what was he going to do?’ Libby asked, but Daniil just gave the same shake of his head that he did when things were off limits, and finally his phone bleeped a text and they could head to the roof.
But Libby halted him.
‘You can still change your mind about going tonight.’
Not going was no longer an option. ‘I have a question for them,’ he said. ‘I hope that if I do the right thing by them tonight they will give me an honest answer.’
‘Isn’t there a risk that they won’t?’
‘There are always risks,’ he said. ‘I only take them if I am prepared to weather the consequences, and tonight I am.’
He was.
He wanted to know what had happened to the letters he had sent, and if attending tonight gave him a chance to find out, it was a price he was willing to pay.
Even if killed him to do so.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LIBBY KNEW THAT the view from the helicopter would be amazing but as it lifted into the sky she found that she was holding her breath. It was nerve-racking, dizzying and very unsettling. The buildings were getting smaller but, for a moment, she felt as if the ground was slamming upwards towards them. As the helicopter lurched a touch, so, too, did her stomach, and Libby discovered that possibly she wasn’t suited to helicopters at all.
She swallowed the gathering saliva and then dragged in air and closed her eyes, appalled that she might be sick, but then Daniil placed his hand over hers and when next she opened her eyes the ground was back where it should be. The houses and flats were tiny and the landscape was becoming a deep gorgeous green as the helicopter headed towards Oxford. Libby looked over at Daniil and he mouthed that she would fine and she gave him a nod of thanks.
Would he be fine, though?
She was somehow trying to get her head around all that Daniil had told her. She tried to imagine arriving here, not knowing anything about the country and being unable to speak the language. She tried to understand how he must have felt, being sent in as some sort of replacement for a deceased child. For all her family’s faults, for all the problems they might have, their love for each other had never been brought into question.