‘Then why did you encourage me to learn about my roots?’ she’d asked, bewildered.
‘We all need to know where we come from. And I was scared that if I discouraged it you would do it in secret and one day you’d be gone and I would lose you.’
‘You will never lose me.’
The tears had flowed easily that night.
Now they sat in companionable silence in the English sun, the only sound the chirruping of fledgling birds in the garden’s thick hedges. It was a quintessentially British beautiful late-spring day.
‘Are you ready to talk now?’ her mum asked.
A lump forming in her throat, Amy shook her head. For all their late-night talks, she hadn’t been able to bring up the subject of Helios.
To even think of him was too painful.
She’d had only one piece of correspondence from him since she’d left—a text message that said: I do.
He forgave her for running away.
Judging by his silence since, he’d accepted it too. She had no right to feel hurt that he’d made no further attempt to contact her.
‘What’s that you keep fingering around your neck?’
Wordlessly, Amy leaned forward to show her the garnet necklace.
Her mum took it between her fingers and smiled. ‘It’s lovely.’
Amy couldn’t find the words to answer. When her mum let the necklace go Amy clasped it in her own hand and held it close.
‘Broken hearts do mend,’ her mum said softly.
Amy gave a ragged nod and swallowed, terrified of crying again. ‘It hurts,’ she choked out.
Her mum took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Do you know what to do when life gives you lemons?’
‘Make lemonade?’
‘No. You throw them back and get yourself an orange.’
Amy spluttered, laughing. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what that means.’
‘Neither do I! It was something my mother used to say when I was a child.’
Still holding on tightly to each other’s hands, they settled back in their deckchairs, sunglasses on, and basked in the sun.
After a while, her mum spoke again. ‘I think what my mother was trying to say is that, whatever life throws at you, there are always choices and options other than the obvious ones. When your father first brought you home the obvious solution for me would have been to throw him out, and you with him. That would have been me making lemonade. But when I looked at you all I saw was an innocent, helpless newborn baby—a sister to the child I already had and a sister to the child I carried in my belly. So I chose to get myself an orange instead. I kept you—you were my orange. And I have never regretted it. My only regret is that I never carried you in my womb like I did your brothers.’
She took her sunglasses off and smiled the warm, motherly smile Amy loved so much.
‘This man who’s broken your heart...is he a good man?’
‘He’s the best,’ she whispered.
‘Is he worth the pain?’
She jerked a nod.
‘Then you have to decide whether you’re going to make lemonade or find an orange. Are you going to wallow in your pain or turn it into something constructive?’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘You start by accepting the pain for what it is but refusing to let it define you.’
Amy closed her eyes. If anyone knew how to cope with pain it was her mum. She’d handled a mountain of it and had never let it define her.
Compared to her mum she had nothing to complain about. Her mum had been innocent. She, Amy, had brought her misery upon herself.
* * *
Helios stood at the door to his grandfather’s apartments and braced himself for the medicinal odour that would attack his senses when he stepped over the threshold.
Inside, all was quiet.
Stepping through to what had once been the King’s bedroom and now resembled a hospital ward, he found his grandfather sleeping in his adjustable medical bed, with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.
At his side sat Helios’s brothers. A nurse read unobtrusively in the corner.
‘Any change?’ he asked quietly. He’d only left the room for an hour, but the speed of his grandfather’s deterioration over the past couple of days had been frightening. They all knew it wouldn’t be long now.
Talos shook his head.
Taking his place on the other side of the bed from his brothers, Helios rolled his shoulders. Every part of his body felt stiff.
Theseus was holding their grandfather’s right hand. Leaning forward, Helios took the left one, assuming the same position his grandfather had taken when his Queen had lain in an identical bed in the adjoining room, the life leaching out of her.
After a few long, long minutes their grandfather’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Water...’ he croaked.
With Helios and Theseus working together from separate sides of the bed to raise him, Talos brought a glass to his mouth and placed the straw between his lips.
When he’d settled back the King looked at his three grandsons, his stare lingering on each of them in turn, emotion ringing the rapidly dulling eyes.
The pauses between each of his inhalations grew. Then the corners of his lips twitched as if in a smile and his eyes closed for the last time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AMY SAW THE announcement on the morning news.
‘A statement from the palace said, “His Majesty King Astraeus the Fourth of Agon passed away peacefully in his sleep last night. His three grandsons were at his side.”’
There then followed some speculation by the presenters and royal correspondents about what this meant for the island nation.
Without warning a picture of Helios and Catalina flashed onto the screen. It was an unofficial shot taken at the Gala. And then there was an off-screen voice saying, ‘It is believed the heir to the throne will marry the Princess before taking the crown.’
Amy switched off the television, grabbed a pillow and cuddled into it, her head pounding.
Helios’s grandfather, the King, had died.
She’d known it was coming, but still it hit her like a blow. She’d created his exhibition. During those happy months of curating that tribute to his life and the ancestors closest to him she’d felt as if she’d got to know him. Somehow she’d fooled herself into believing he was immortal. He had been a proud, dutiful man and she’d been privileged to meet him.
And then she thought of his eldest grandson, who had revered him.
Her phone lay on the floor beside her and she stared at it, wishing with all her heart that she could call Helios.
Would he even want to hear her condolences? The condolences of the woman who had sneaked out of the palace while he was dining with potential investors, supporting the island he loved?
She’d told him she would stay.
He’d forgiven her lie, but he had Catalina now. Without Amy’s presence there, distracting him, he would turn to the Princess for comfort. Just as he should. Maybe grief would bring them together properly.
And as she prayed for a happy ending for her Prince and his Princess, hot tears spilled out of her eyes. She brought her knees to her chest and cried her broken heart out for the happy ending that would never be hers.
* * *
The funeral, a full state affair, was a sombre occasion.
People lined the streets in tens of thousands, all there to bow their heads in silence and pay their respects to the man who had served them with such dedication for fifty years.
The wake was an entirely different matter.
Out on the streets the atmosphere changed markedly. Television coverage showed military re-enactments from throughout the ages, even children dressed in loincloths and armed with plastic tridents. Barbecues lit up Agon’s famous beaches, music played on every corner and there was food, drink and dancing everywhere in abundance.
Agon was putting on a show in the only way it knew how.
In the blue stateroom of the palace solemnity had given way to merriness too. The King was with his Queen. His suffering was over. His country and his family had laid him to rest and now they could celebrate his life.
For Helios, the occasion brought no joy. He accepted that his grandfather had moved on to a better place, but the hole in his heart felt so great he didn’t know how it would ever heal.
To know he would never talk to him again, dine with him, play chess... All the things he’d taken for granted were all gone. The man he’d worshipped, a man ten times the man his own father had been, was gone.
Helios watched his brothers, stuck like glue to the sides of their respective fiancées, and smiled for them. Their parents’ marriage had been the worst template a child could have asked for. That his brothers were heading into marriages that would be more like their grandparents’ gave him much hope. They would be happy.
He was under no illusions that he would follow suit.
Although he had seen little of her since his grandfather’s death, Catalina had been at his side throughout the funeral service, a calm presence who had known exactly what to say in all the right moments.
But, however perfect she might be, he knew that fifty years of marriage wouldn’t bring them the bond Talos and Theseus shared with their fiancées.
That last smile his grandfather had given them was a white shadow in Helios’s mind. It gave him comfort. His grandfather had welcomed death. He’d left the world knowing his grandsons—all of them—would take care of his beloved island, freeing him to move on to his beloved Rhea.