Page 41 of The Seven Sisters
I know who you are . . .
My fingers touched the moonstone necklace. All I could guess was that it had come with me as some kind of keepsake, perhaps from my mother, when Pa Salt had adopted me as a baby. He’d told me when he’d given it to me that there was an interesting story behind it. Perhaps he’d been subtly prompting me to ask him one day what it was; maybe at the time he hadn’t wished to unsettle me by speaking of a direct connection to my past. He’d been waiting for me to ask. And I wished now with all my heart that I had.
For the next hour, I ploughed through the letters – of which there must have been over thirty – and set them in a pile in date order.
I was itching to begin reading the immaculate, beautifully scripted writing. My mobile rang, and I heard Floriano’s voice on the other end of the line full of excitement.
‘Maia, I have news. Can I come over and see you in an hour?’
‘Would you mind if we met tomorrow morning? I think I may have picked up a stomach bug,’ I lied guiltily, wanting the rest of the day to read the letters.
‘Tomorrow at ten then?’
‘Yes. I’m sure I’ll be okay by then.’
‘If there’s anything you need, Maia, please call me.’
‘I will, thank you.’
‘No problem. Feel better,’ he said.
Switching off my mobile, I called down to room service to bring me two bottles of water and a club sandwich. Once they had arrived and I had distractedly wolfed down the contents, I picked up the first letter with trembling fingers and began to read . . .
Izabela
Rio de Janeiro
November 1927
13
Izabela Rosa Bonifacio was stirred from sleep by the scratchy pattering of tiny feet across the tiled floor. Sitting bolt upright, she looked down from her bed and saw thesaguistaring up at her. In its hands – miniature, hairy facsimiles of her own – the monkey was holding her hairbrush. Bel couldn’t help but let out a giggle as thesaguicontinued to stare at her, its liquid black eyes pleading with her to allow it to escape with its new plaything.
‘So, you wish to brush your hair?’ she asked it as she slithered forwards on her stomach to the bottom of the bed. ‘Please’ – she held out a hand towards the monkey – ‘give it back to me. It’s mine, and Mãe will be so cross if you steal it from me.’
The monkey inclined its head towards its escape route, and as Bel’s long, slim fingers reached out to swipe the hairbrush back, the creature leapt daintily onto the windowsill and disappeared from view.
With a sigh, Bel fell back onto the bed, knowing she’d receive yet another lecture from her parents about keeping her shutters closed at night for this very reason. The hairbrush had been mother-of-pearl, a christening gift from her paternal grandmother, and as she’d told the monkey, her mother would not be amused. Bel wriggled back upwards and laid her head on the pillows, harbouring the vain hope that thesaguimight drop the brush in the garden in its flight back to its jungle home on the mountainside behind the house.
A faint breeze blew a wisp of her thick, dark hair across her forehead, bringing with it the delicate scents of the guava and lemon trees that grew in the garden below her window. Even though the clock by her bedside told her it was only half past six in the morning, already she could feel the heat of the day to come. She looked up and saw there was not a single wisp of cloud marring the rapidly lightening sky.
Loen, her maid, wouldn’t knock at her door for another hour to help her dress. Bel wondered whether she should finally pluck up the courage to creep out of the house while everyone slept and take a swim in the cool water of the magnificent blue-tiled swimming pool that Antonio, her father, had just had built in the garden.
The pool was Antonio’s latest acquisition and he was very proud of it, as one of the first of its kind in a private house in Rio. A month ago he had invited all his important friends to see it, and everyone had stood dutifully on the surrounding terrace and admired it. The men were attired in expensively tailored suits, the women in copies of the latest Paris designs bought from the exclusive stores of the Avenida Rio Branco.
Bel had thought at the time how ironic it was that not one of them had brought their bathing suit, and she too had stood fully clothed in the burning heat, fervently wishing she could strip off her formal dress and dive into the cool, clear water. In fact, to this day, Bel had never seen anyone actually use the pool. When she had asked if she could take a swim in it herself, her father had shaken his head.
‘No,querida, you cannot be seen in a bathing suit by all the servants. You must swim when they are not around.’
As the servants werealwaysaround, Bel had quickly realised that the pool was simply another ornament, a grand possession her father could show off to impress his friends. Another stop on his never-ending quest to achieve the social status he craved.
When she asked Mãe why Pai never seemed to be content with what he had when they lived in one of the most beautiful houses in Rio, dined often at the Copacabana Palace Hotel and even had a brand-new Ford motor car, her mother would shrug placidly.
‘It is simply because, no matter how many cars or farms he owns, he can never change his surname.’
During Bel’s seventeen years on earth, she had gleaned that Antonio was descended from Italian immigrants, who had arrived in Brazil to work on the many coffee farms on the verdant, fertile land surrounding the city of São Paulo. Antonio’s own father had been not only hard-working but clever, and he had saved hard to buy his own parcel of land and begin his own business.
By the time Antonio was old enough to take over, the coffee farm was thriving and he was able to buy three more. The profits had made their family rich, and when Bel was eight years old, her father had bought a beautiful oldfazendafive hours’ drive outside Rio. It was the place she still thought of as her home. Tucked away high in the mountains, the large plantation house was tranquil and welcoming and contained Bel’s most precious memories. Free in those days to roam and ride across the estate’s two thousand hectares as she pleased, she had experienced an idyllic, carefree childhood.
