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‘Well, that worked out well.’
She held her hands up in mock surrender. ‘It was absolutely not my fault that the son of the German ambassador ended up with cherry juice all down his front just seconds before the photographs.’
Lykos raised an eyebrow.
‘He got handsy! And how on earth was I supposed to know that my skirt was tucked into my knickers on the red carpet on the New Year’s Eve parade?’
Lykos choked on his beer. ‘What about the suspension from boarding school?’ he demanded when he’d recovered.
‘Yes, okay. I’ll admit to that, but—’
‘And the skiing trip that cut your mother’s trip short when you were fourteen?’
It was as if a knife sliced through the afternoon, silently knocking the air from her lungs. Marit hated that this one moment in her history still had such a debilitating effect on her. She tried to smile it off, but Lykos had seen, she could tell by the way he leant forward across the table, the way his eyes narrowed.
‘What?’
‘What?’ she asked in response, as if she had any hope of covering it.
‘Marit.’ His voice was a warning.
‘Ah, yes. The infamous skiing trip that ruined my parents’ very important trip to Japan,’ she said, her tone full of a humour that hurt. ‘The one where my mother was photographed leaving the private plane chartered to return her home. Snapped on the steps of the hospital looking so very concerned as she spoke to the senior surgeon. And even caught in the act of shaking the hands of the nurses that had helped care for her daughter. The one,’ Marit said, unable to conceal the years’ old hurt from her voice, ‘where my mother never actually came to see me.Thatskiing trip.’
Marit hated that she sounded like such a child. Hated that it made her want to cry. In front of this man who had endured so much worse. Did he know just how embarrassing it was to admit that her mother couldn’t even be bothered to come and see her in the hospital? That Marit mattered so little to her.
She wished she could make him understand. But how could she explain the agony of the loneliness of her childhood? The anguish of feeling invisible in a palace full of people. As if she were screaming and no one heard her.
Lykos ground his teeth together to prevent the words from coming out of his mouth. Was he guilty of seeing her cynically, as ‘the poor little Princess’? Absolutely. Could he understand why her parents couldn’t conceive of her as a musician? Probably. He wasn’t sure why it seemed unfathomable, but it did. But for her mother to cancel a trip, ensure that she was photographed arriving at her child’s sickbed and not visit the child?
Lykos had been forced to grow up quickly and, although he’d never admit it to a living soul, he’d still never stopped wanting his mother. There was only one reason he had stayed away from her all this time and that was because it had been her request. But Marit’s mother had been at the hospital andnotseen her child. He just couldn’t comprehend it.
‘Were you unconscious when she visited?’
Marit looked up, blonde hair gently curling in the wind, eyes wide as if half afraid that closing them would release the tears he could see gathering. She risked it and only one fell, but Marit didn’t seem to notice it as it slipped down her cheek. The sight of it tore at something deep in his chest.
‘No. She left before I was out of surgery.’ She shook her head and painted on a smile. ‘Freya arrived so it was okay.’
‘When did she arrive?’
‘As soon as she could.’
‘When?’
‘Three hours after I’d woken up.’
Finally, as if she were too tired to fight any more, the mask dropped and he saw it. The hurt, the rejection—so different to his own yet so familiar. How had it taken him this long to recognise it in her? Was that why he reacted so strongly to her? He was normally infallible when it came to seeing what people wanted to hide; when had he become arrogant in his assumption that she was simply the spoiled runaway Princess?
Christé mou, he cursed. There was nothing spoiled about her.
The waiter came to enquire about their drinks and, checking his watch, Lykos asked Marit if she was ready to tick something off her list. The smile on her face and the brightness in her eyes was his reward and someone dropped a glass and Lykos didn’t even notice.
They ordered lunch and Lykos moved the conversation to easier things, partly so he could take in and reframe all that he knew about her. She ordered a pizza and ate it with her hands, laughing more in the sunshine than he could have imagined. He had pasta, but he’d never be able to say what sort it was because the only thing he remembered of that afternoon was feeling lighter than he had done since he could remember.
While she was freshening up his phone rang and, absentmindedly, he answered.
‘What are you up to, Livas?’ The Russian accent coming through the phone’s earpiece was thick and harsh in the Italian sunshine.
‘Actually, I’ve decided to take a bit of a holiday.’
