CHAPTER SIX
THERE WAS NOsign of Alessandro when Georgie woke up at a little after seven and peered outside her door.
She’d set her alarm. If they’d planned on heading off at eight-thirty, then she wasn’t going to cut it fine.
His door was ajar and she paused in front of it then hurried through the adjoining door to find that Flora was up, although still in bed and drawing.
The bed drowned her and her long dark hair spilled around her small face. She looked like a tiny angel and that was even more evident when she glanced up and smiled at Georgie.
‘Have you been up long?’
Flora shook her head and Georgie strolled over to see what she was drawing, to find that it was an eerily accurate depiction of a cartoon character she was copying from a book.
Listening out for the sound of footsteps, she perched up on the mattress and then her natural instincts took over.
She remembered how satisfying it had felt when she had begun as a ski instructor, the kids all trusting her expertise, eager to learn and quick to pick things up.
She remembered that wonderful feeling of finding her place, a place where she felt comfortable, where she no longer anxiously wondered whether she would ever settle into anything. Comparing herself to her clever, talented sisters had become so ingrained that, despite the fact that she adored both of them, their easy successes had always cast long shadows over her and the choices she had made in life.
Her dyslexia had made her early years academically challenging. Until she was diagnosed, she had learnt to hang back as a means of self-defence against being laughed at in class and had nurtured a lack of self-confidence that had ended up bleeding into her emotional life. As a tomboy, there had been no need to prove herself successful with the opposite sex, but she had been unprepared for her headlong rush into crazy infatuation with Hans, the first guy she had ever felt truly fancied her, until she’d seen him with that other girl and realised that camaraderie had been more powerful than lust.
She looked at Flora’s dark-haired beauty, such a replica of her handsome father, and mentally told herself that the hurt she’d felt with Hans would be a pointless experience if she didn’t learn from it and snuff out her inappropriate interest in a guy who had no interest in her whatsoever.
She heard herself chatting now as she reached for a piece of paper and began to draw freehand.
‘I used to draw all the time as a kid,’ she confided. ‘It was the one thing I was really good at.’
‘What about Maths and English?’
‘I got by. When I started secondary school, I got diagnosed with dyslexia. That’s when things are jumbled up in your head and it’s hard to make sense of words and, in my case, also numbers. I don’t tell anyone that, so you’re very special. But what I’d do was I would draw, just like you.’
‘I draw because when I’m home, Mum doesn’t like me waking her up. Sometimes the nannies come but I prefer to stay in my room and draw or colour.’
‘Why doesn’t she like you waking her up?’
‘She puts on an eye mask and says she needs to sleep or else she’ll get wrinkles. I’m not allowed to disturb her. The nanny drops me off to school. My friend’s brother has what you have.’
‘Hmmm…yeah…?’ Georgie was busy mulling over the picture taking shape of Flora wandering through an empty mansion, surrounded by nannies and all the stuff that money could buy while her mother dropped in now and again to touch base.
She looked at her phone, which she’d brought in with her, and saw that it was nearly eight and, with no sign of Alessandro, she suddenly felt a spurt of panic.
‘Okay, Flora. You wait right here and I’ll go check on your dad. I’ll switch the telly on. You can have a look at all the stuff there is to do here. Would you like that?’
She didn’t wait for an answer. She switched it on anyway but kept the volume low.
At the door, she turned around and said, ‘Shall I get some clothes out for you?’
‘I always pick my own clothes.’ Flora looked at her and smiled a shy, angelic smile. ‘And shoes. I’ve picked my own clothes and shoes since I was three.’
Georgie smiled. She’d read somewhere that the younger a child was when she picked what she wanted to wear, the more it indicated a measure of self-assertion and independence. Those were things that would get Flora far, even though the image Georgie had of her was of a trapped little bird in a golden cage.
She understood in a whoosh why Alessandro had done what he had, why he had coerced her with veiled threats to come on this trip.
He would surely be aware that his ex-wife might not be the most devoted of parents. From what she had picked up, Sophia was materialistic and manipulative and happy to use their daughter to further her own ends.
But he hadn’t played hardball until he’d reached a point of having no choice.
Why was that?
