Page 12 of The Seven Sisters
For the next half an hour, I insisted on helping Claudia clear up from the evening meal, simply grateful for something to do while I waited for Electra. Used to Claudia’s lack of small talk, tonight I found her steady and silent presence particularly comforting.
‘Shall I lock up, Miss Maia?’ she asked me.
‘No, you’ve had a long day too. Go to bed and I’ll see to it.’
‘As you wish.Gute Nacht,’ she said as she left the kitchen.
Wandering through the house, knowing it would be at least a couple of hours before Electra arrived and feeling wide awake due to my unusually long lie-in that morning, I arrived at the door to Pa Salt’s study. I had an urge to feel him around me, so I turned the door handle, only to find that it was locked.
This surprised and disturbed me; during the many hours he’d spent in the room working from home, the door had always been freely open to us girls. He’d never been too busy to offer a welcoming smile at my timid knock, and I’d always enjoyed sitting in his study, which contained the physical and material essence of him. Even though banks of computers sat on his desk and a large video screen hung on the wall in readiness for satellite conference calls, my eyes always strayed to the personal treasures placed randomly on the shelves behind the desk.
These were simple objects that he’d told me he’d collected during his constant travels around the world – amongst other things, a delicate gilt-framed miniature of the Madonna, which could fit in the palm of my hand, an old fiddle, a battered leather pouch and a tattered book by an English poet I’d never heard of.
Nothing rare, nothing particularly valuable that I knew of, just objects that all meant something to him.
Even though I was certain that a man such as Pa could have filled our home with priceless works of art and exquisite antiques if he’d so desired, in reality it did not contain many hugely costly artefacts. If anything, I’d always felt he’d had an aversion to inanimate material possessions of any great worth. He’d derided his wealthy contemporaries vociferously when they’d paid exorbitant sums for famous works of art, telling me that most of them ended up locked away in their strong rooms for fear of their being stolen.
‘Art should be on display to all,’ he’d said to me. ‘It is a gift to the soul from the painter. A painting that has to be hidden from sight is worthless.’
When I’d dared to mention the fact that he himself owned a private jet and a large luxury yacht, he’d raised an eyebrow at me.
‘But Maia, can’t you see that both those things are simply a mode of transportation? They provide a practical service, a means to an end. And if they went up in flames tomorrow, I could easily replace them. It’s enough for me to have my six human works of art: my daughters. The only things on earth worth treasuring, because you are all irreplaceable. People who you loveareirreplaceable, Maia. Remember that, won’t you?’
These were words he’d spoken to me many years before and that had never left me. I only wished with every fibre in my body that I’d remembered them when I should have done.
I walked away emotionally empty-handed from the door of Pa Salt’s study, and went into the drawing room, still wondering why on earth the room had been locked. I’d ask Marina tomorrow, I thought, as I walked across to an occasional table and picked up a photograph. It had been taken aboard theTitana few years ago, and showed Pa, surrounded by all of us sisters, leaning against the railing on the deck of the yacht. He was smiling broadly, his handsome features relaxed, his full head of greying hair swept back by the sea wind, and his still toned and muscular body bronzed by the sun.
‘Whowereyou?’ I asked the photograph with a frown.
For want of anything better to do, I switched on the television and flicked through the channels until I found the news. As usual, the bulletin was full of war, pain and destruction and I was just about to switch channels when the newsreader announced that the body of Kreeg Eszu, a famous captain of industry who ran a vast international communications company, had been found washed up in a cove on a Greek island.
I listened intently, the remote control frozen in my hand, as the newsreader explained how his family had announced that Kreeg had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The inference was that, given the diagnosis, he had decided to take his own life.
My heart began to beat faster. Not only because my father, too, had recently chosen to spend eternity at the bottom of the ocean, but because this story had a direct connection tome. . .
The newsreader stated that his son, Zed, who’d been working alongside his father for a number of years, would be taking over with immediate effect as Chief Executive of Athenian Holdings. An image of Zed flashed up on the screen and I instinctively closed my eyes.
‘Oh God,’ I groaned, wondering why fate had decided to choose this moment to remind me of a man I’d spent the past fourteen years desperately trying to forget.
So it seemed that, ironically, within the space of a few hours, both of us had lost our fathers to a watery grave.
I stood up, pacing the room, trying to remove the image of his face – which seemed if anything even more handsome than I’d remembered it – from my mind.
Think about the pain he caused you, Maia, I told myself.It’s over, it was over years ago. Don’t go back there, whatever you do.
But of course, as I sighed and sank down onto the sofa, drained of energy, I knew it could never truly be over.
5
A couple of hours later, I heard the soft humming of the motor launch heralding the arrival of Electra. I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together. Walking out of the house and into the moonlit gardens, the dew warm under my bare feet, I saw Electra was already crossing the lawns towards me. Her beautiful ebony skin seemed to glow with a lustre in the moonlight as her endless legs made short work of the distance between us.
At over six feet tall, Electra always made me feel insignificant next to her statuesque, effortless elegance. As she reached me, it was she who clasped me tightly to her, my head fitting snugly into her chest.
‘Oh Maia!’ she moaned. ‘Please tell me it isn’t true? He can’t have gone, he simply can’t have. I . . .’
Electra began to sob loudly and I decided that, rather than disturb the other sisters currently sleeping in the house, I’d take her into the Pavilion. I steered her gently in its direction, and she continued to cry pitifully as I closed the door behind us, led her into the sitting room and sat her down on the sofa.
‘Maia, what will we all do without him?’ she asked me, her glowing amber eyes entreating me to give her the answer.
