The Angel Tree (64 page)

The officious woman who eventually answered wasn’t helpful and I knew, as she spoke of full flights, financial penalties and credit card details, that my emotional dam was ready to burst.
Finally, once I’d grudgingly been granted a seat on the four o’clock flight to Geneva, which would mean throwing everything into my holdall immediately and taking a taxi to Heathrow, I
sat down on the bed and stared for so long at the sprigged wallpaper that the pattern began to dance in front of my eyes.

‘He’s gone,’ I whispered, ‘gone forever. I’ll never see him again.’

Expecting the spoken words to provoke a raging torrent of tears, I was surprised that nothing actually happened. Instead, I sat there numbly, my head still full of practicalities. The thought of
telling my sisters – all five of them – was horrendous, and I searched through my emotional filing system for the one I would call first. Inevitably, it was Tiggy, the second youngest
of the six of us girls and the sibling to whom I’d always felt closest.

With trembling fingers, I scrolled down to find her number and dialled it. When her voicemail answered, I didn’t know what to say, other than a few garbled words asking her to call me back
urgently. She was currently somewhere in the Scottish Highlands working at a centre for orphaned and sick wild deer.

As for the other sisters . . . I knew their reactions would vary, outwardly at least, from indifference to a dramatic outpouring of emotion.

Given that I wasn’t currently sure quite which way
I
would go on the scale of grief when I did speak to any of them, I decided to take the coward’s way out and texted them
all, asking them to call me as soon as they could. Then I hurriedly packed my holdall and walked down the narrow stairs to the kitchen to write a note for Jenny explaining why I’d had to
leave in such a hurry.

Deciding to take my chances hailing a black cab on the London streets, I left the house, walking briskly around the leafy Chelsea crescent just as any normal person would do on any normal day. I
believe I actually said hello to someone walking a dog when I passed him in the street and managed a smile.

No one would know what had just happened to me, I thought, as I managed to find a taxi on the busy King’s Road and climbed inside, directing the driver to Heathrow.

No one would know.

Five hours later, just as the sun was making its leisurely descent over Lake Geneva, I arrived at our private pontoon on the shore, from where I would make the last leg of my
journey home.

Christian was already waiting for me in our sleek Riva motor launch. And from the look on his face, I could see he’d heard the news.

‘How are you, Mademoiselle Maia?’ he asked, sympathy in his blue eyes as he helped me aboard.

‘I’m . . . glad I’m here,’ I answered neutrally as I walked to the back of the boat and sat down on the cushioned cream leather bench that curved around the stern.
Usually, I would sit with Christian in the passenger seat at the front as we sped across the calm waters on the twenty-minute journey home. But today, I felt a need for privacy. As Christian
started the powerful engine, the sun glinted off the windows of the fabulous houses that lined Lake Geneva’s shores. I’d often felt when I made this journey that it was the entrance to
an ethereal world disconnected from reality.

The world of Pa Salt.

I noticed the first vague evidence of tears pricking at my eyes as I thought of my father’s pet name, which I’d coined when I was young. He’d always loved sailing and often
when he returned to me at our lakeside home, he had smelt of fresh air and of the sea. Somehow, the name had stuck, and as my younger siblings had joined me, they’d called him that too.

As the launch picked up speed, the warm wind streaming through my hair, I thought of the hundreds of previous journeys I’d made to Atlantis, Pa Salt’s fairy-tale castle. Inaccessible
by land, due to its position on a private promontory with a crescent of mountainous terrain rising up steeply behind it, the only method of reaching it was by boat. The nearest neighbours were
miles away along the lake, so Atlantis was our own private kingdom, set apart from the rest of the world. Everything it contained was magical . . . as if Pa Salt and we – his daughters
– had lived there under an enchantment.

Each one of us had been chosen by Pa Salt as a baby, adopted from the four corners of the globe and brought home to live under his protection. And each one of us, as Pa always liked to say, was
special, different . . . we were
his
girls. He’d named us all after The Seven Sisters, his favourite star cluster. Maia being the first and eldest.

When I was young, he’d take me up to his glass-domed observatory perched on top of the house, lift me up with his big, strong hands and have me look through his telescope at the night
sky.

‘There it is,’ he’d say as he aligned the lens. ‘Look, Maia, that’s the beautiful shining star you’re named after.’

And I
would
see. As he explained the legends that were the source of my own and my sisters’ names, I’d hardly listen, but simply enjoy his arms tight around me, fully aware
of this rare, special moment when I had him all to myself.

I’d realised eventually that Marina, who I’d presumed as I grew up was my mother – I’d even shortened her name to ‘Ma’ – was a glorified nursemaid,
employed by Pa to take care of me because he was away such a lot. But of course, Marina was so much more than that to all of us girls. She was the one who had wiped our tears, berated us for sloppy
table manners and steered us calmly through the difficult transition from childhood to womanhood.

She had always been there, and I could not have loved Ma any more if she had given birth to me.

During the first three years of my childhood, Marina and I had lived alone together in our magical castle on the shores of Lake Geneva as Pa Salt travelled the seven seas to conduct his
business. And then, one by one, my sisters began to arrive.

Usually, Pa would bring me a present when he returned home. I’d hear the motor launch arriving, run across the sweeping lawns and through the trees to the jetty to greet him. Like any
child, I’d want to see what he had hidden inside his magical pockets to delight me. On one particular occasion, however, after he’d presented me with an exquisitely carved wooden
reindeer, which he assured me came from St Nicholas’s workshop at the North Pole itself, a uniformed woman had stepped out from behind him, and in her arms was a bundle wrapped in a shawl.
And the bundle was moving.

‘This time, Maia, I’ve brought you back the most special gift. You have a new sister.’ He’d smiled at me as he lifted me into his arms. ‘Now you’ll no longer
be lonely when I have to go away.’

After that, life had changed. The maternity nurse that Pa had brought with him disappeared after a few weeks and Marina took over the care of my baby sister. I couldn’t understand how the
red, squalling thing which often smelt and diverted attention from me could possibly be a gift. Until one morning, when Alcyone – named after the second star of The Seven Sisters –
smiled at me from her high chair over breakfast.

‘She knows who I am,’ I said in wonder to Marina, who was feeding her.

‘Of course she does, Maia, dear. You’re her big sister, the one she’ll look up to. It’ll be up to you to teach her lots of things that you know and she
doesn’t.’

And as she grew, she became my shadow, following me everywhere, which pleased and irritated me in equal measure.

‘Maia, wait me!’ she’d demand loudly as she tottered along behind me.

Even though Ally – as I’d nicknamed her – had originally been an unwanted addition to my dreamlike existence at Atlantis, I could not have asked for a sweeter, more loveable
companion. She rarely, if ever, cried and there were none of the temper-tantrums associated with toddlers of her age. With her tumbling red-gold curls and her big blue eyes, Ally had a natural
charm that drew people to her, including our father. On the occasions Pa Salt was home from one of his long trips abroad, I’d watch how his eyes lit up when he saw her, in a way I was sure
they didn’t for me. And whereas I was shy and reticent with strangers, Ally had an openness and a readiness to trust that endeared her to everyone.

She was also one of those children who seemed to excel at everything – particularly music, and any sport to do with water. I remember Pa teaching her to swim in our vast pool and, whereas
I had struggled to stay afloat and hated being underwater, my little sister took to it like a mermaid. And while I couldn’t find my sea legs even on the
Titan
, Pa’s huge and
beautiful ocean-going yacht, when we were at home Ally would beg him to take her out in the small Laser he kept moored on our private lakeside jetty. I’d crouch in the cramped stern of the
boat while Pa and Ally took control as we sped across the glassy waters. Their joint passion for sailing bonded them in a way I felt I could never replicate.

Although Ally had studied music at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève and was a highly talented flautist who could have pursued a career with a professional orchestra, since leaving
music school she had chosen the life of a fulltime sailor. She now competed regularly in regattas, and had represented Switzerland on a number of occasions.

When Ally was almost three, Pa arrived home with our next sibling, whom he named Asterope, after the third of The Seven Sisters.

‘But we will call her Star,’ Pa had said, smiling at Marina, Ally and me as we studied the newest addition to the family lying in the bassinet.

By now I was attending lessons every morning with a private tutor, so my newest sister’s arrival affected me less than Ally’s had. Then, only six months later, another baby joined
us, a twelve-week-old girl named Celaeno, whose name Ally immediately shortened to CeCe.

There was only three months’ age difference between Star and CeCe, and from as far back as I can remember, the two of them forged a close bond. They were akin to twins, talking in their
own private baby language, some of which the two of them still used to communicate to this day. They inhabited their own private world, to the exclusion of us other sisters. And even now in their
twenties, nothing had changed. CeCe, the younger of the two, was always the boss, her stocky body and nut-brown skin in direct contrast to the pale, whippet-thin Star.

The following year, another baby arrived – Taygete, whom I nicknamed ‘Tiggy’ because her short dark hair sprouted out at strange angles on her tiny head and reminded me of the
hedgehog in Beatrix Potter’s famous story.

I was by now seven years old, and I’d bonded with Tiggy from the first moment I set eyes on her. She was the most delicate of us all, suffering one childhood illness after another, but
even as an infant, she was stoic and undemanding. When yet another baby girl, named Electra, was brought home by Pa a few months later, an exhausted Marina would often ask me if I would mind
sitting with Tiggy, who continually had a fever or croup. Eventually diagnosed as asthmatic, she rarely left the nursery to be wheeled outside in the pram, in case the cold air and heavy fog of a
Geneva winter affected her chest.

Electra was the youngest of my siblings and her name suited her perfectly. By now, I was used to little babies and their demands, but my youngest sister was without doubt the most challenging of
them all. Everything about her
was
electric; her innate ability to switch in an instant from dark to light and vice versa meant that our previously calm home rang daily with high-pitched
screams. Her temper-tantrums resonated through my childhood consciousness and as she grew older, her fiery personality did not mellow.

Privately, Ally, Tiggy and I had our own nickname for her; she was known among the three of us as ‘Tricky’. We all walked on eggshells around her, wishing to do nothing to set off a
lightning change of mood. I can honestly say there were moments when I loathed her for the disruption she brought to Atlantis.

And yet, when Electra knew one of us was in trouble, she was the first to offer help and support. Just as she was capable of huge selfishness, her generosity on other occasions was equally
pronounced.

After Electra, the entire household was expecting the arrival of the Seventh Sister. After all, we’d been named after Pa Salt’s favourite star cluster and we wouldn’t be
complete without her. We even knew her name – Merope – and wondered who she would be. But a year went past, and then another, and another, and no more babies arrived home with our
father.

I remember vividly standing with him once in his observatory. I was fourteen years old and just on the brink of womanhood. We were waiting for an eclipse, which he’d told me was a seminal
moment for humankind and usually brought change with it.

‘Pa,’ I said, ‘will you ever bring home our seventh sister?’

At this, his strong, protective bulk had seemed to freeze for a few seconds. He’d looked suddenly as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Although he didn’t
turn around, for he was still concentrating on training the telescope on the coming eclipse, I knew instinctively that what I’d said had distressed him.