‘Hi, Mum, it’s Jack. I’ve just talked with Tiggy, and I promise, you’re totally safe to come down.’
‘Oh Jack, I don’t know.’
‘Well, I do, Mum, and you’re to come. Are you wearing that emerald ring?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Because Tiggy has a drawing she wants to show you. I swear, Mum, she’s lovely. Want me to come up and get you?’
‘No, no. If you’re sure it’s safe, I’ll come down. See you in a minute.’
I tidied my hair in the mirror, applied blusher to my pale cheeks and some lipstick. Jack was right: I had to stop running away and face my fears. Taking a deep breath, I left my room and headed for the lift.
Downstairs in the lounge, I saw my son’s blond head immediately, then took a few seconds to study the woman sitting with him. She was small-boned and slim, with a head of thick, wavy mahogany-coloured hair that fell prettily around her shoulders. As I approached them, they both stood up, and I felt instinctively that this young woman had a fragility to her, her expressive tawny eyes dominating the rest of her face.
‘Hi, Mum, meet Tiggy D’Aplièse, who is number...?’ Jack looked at Tiggy for confirmation.
‘Five of my six sisters,’ she said in a soft French accent. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you, Mrs McDougal, and I just want to say that really, we mean no harm.’
Tiggy smiled at me, and even with my paranoia, it was difficult to believe that this gentle young woman was here to harm me.
‘Thank you, Tiggy. And please, call me Merry.’
‘Sit down, Mum.’ Jack patted the space on the sofa next to him.
As I did so, I felt Tiggy’s eyes travelling from my face to the ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. I instinctively put my other hand on top of it.
‘So, Tiggy has been explaining exactly what MK told us both after the visit she had from Tiggy’s sister, CeCe, and her friend, Chrissie. If you wouldn’t mind, Tiggy, maybe you can tell Mum yourself?’
‘Of course I will, but I want to apologise on behalf of all my sisters. I totally understand why you must have been frightened by us trying to find you,’ said Tiggy. ‘I’m so sorry, Merry, I really am. It’s just that, well, as your daughter probably told you, our father died a year ago, and the six of us are all going on a cruise to where my sister Ally – who Jack has met – thinks she saw him being buried at sea. Recently, Pa’s lawyer received some information on someone who my family nicknamed the “missing sister”. Pa named us all after the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, you see, and of course, the seventh would have been—’
‘Merope,’ I finished for her.
‘Yes, and whenever any of us asked him why there wasn’t a seventh sister, Pa said that he never found her. So, when we got this information from our lawyer, our two eldest sisters contacted the rest of us to see if we could help find her. And, if she was who we’ve been told she is, ask her to join us on our pilgrimage to lay a wreath on the sea at the spot where we believe he was buried.’
Of course, I knew this story already, but I felt calmer hearing it from this sweet girl, whose eyes shone with what I could only describe as a kind of goodness.
‘It wasn’t well planned or anything,’ she continued. ‘We just sent the sister closest to where Mary-Kate had said you were travelling to. Electra lives in New York – that’s the woman Jack said you noticed in your hotel lobby in Toronto. She discovered you were going to London next, so my third sister, Star, was sent.’
‘Yes. I did meet her. She called herself Sabrina. Is she blonde, thin and tall?’
‘Yes. That’s Star. She was with her almost-brother-in-law, Orlando. He’s a little on the eccentric side, and came up with a plan to entice you to meet him and Star by saying he was a wine writer.’
‘Well, he did fool me, so it was a good plan.’
‘But it scared you too, didn’t it, Mum?’ Jack cut in.
‘Yes, because even if he’d concocted a plausible story, he doesn’t blend into a crowd. I saw him following me around London the next day.’
‘Oh dear.’ Tiggy gave an embarrassed chuckle and sighed. ‘I can only apologise again for the disorganised and thoughtless way we’ve gone about this. You must have felt as though you were being hunted.’
‘That’s exactly how I felt, yes.’
‘And then there was Ally,’ Jack said. ‘She had me completely fooled, until Mum told me about the other women who’d arrived everywhere she was going, and I put two and two together.’
‘Now you are here, Tiggy,’ I said. ‘Does that mean that between us McDougals, we’ve met all of your sisters?’ I briefly counted up on my fingers. ‘Yes, what with the two Muslim women in Toronto, that makes six. Was the other one Maia?’
‘You know her name?’ Tiggy said in amazement.
