The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Lucinda Riley
- Language: English
- Genre: Women’s Historical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I
heard that my father had died.
I was sitting in the pretty garden of my old schoolfriend’s townhouse in
London, a copy of The Penelopiad open but unread in my lap, enjoying the
June sun while Jenny collected her little boy from nursery.
I felt calm and appreciated what a good idea it had been to get away. I
was studying the burgeoning clematis, encouraged by its sunny midwife to
give birth to a riot of colour, when my mobile phone rang. I glanced at the
screen and saw it was Marina.
‘Hello, Ma, how are you?’ I said, hoping she could hear the warmth in
my voice too.
‘Maia, I . . .’
Marina paused, and in that instant I knew something was dreadfully
wrong. ‘What is it?’
‘Maia, there’s no easy way to tell you this, but your father had a heart
attack here at home yesterday afternoon, and in the early hours of this
morning, he . . . passed away.’
I remained silent, as a million different and ridiculous thoughts raced
through my mind. The first one being that Marina, for some unknown
reason, had decided to play some form of tasteless joke on me.
‘You’re the first of the sisters I’ve told, Maia, as you’re the eldest. And I
wanted to ask you whether you would prefer to tell the rest of your sisters
yourself, or leave it to me.’
‘I . . .’
Still no words would form coherently on my lips, as I began to realise
that Marina, dear, beloved Marina, the woman who had been the closest
thing to a mother I’d ever known, would never tell me this if it wasn’t true.
So it had to be. And at that moment, my entire world shifted on its axis.
‘Maia, please, tell me you’re all right. This really is the most dreadful call
I’ve ever had to make, but what else could I do? God only knows how the
other girls are going to take it.’
It was then that I heard the suffering in her voice and understood she’d
needed to tell me as much for her own sake as mine. So I switched into my
normal comfort zone, which was to comfort others.
‘Of course I’ll tell my sisters if you’d prefer, Ma, although I’m not
positive where they all are. Isn’t Ally away training for a regatta?’
And as we continued to discuss where each of my younger sisters was, as
though we needed to get them together for a birthday party rather than to
mourn the death of our father, the entire conversation took on a sense of the
surreal.
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