Free The Olive Tree by Lucinda Riley Page B

thanks to you and your family. I’m so grateful, Alexis, really.’
    ‘It is no more than my duty. After all, Pandora was owned by my family for over two hundred years, until your godfather persuaded my father to part with it.’
    ‘Well, it’s most kind of you to help me.’
    ‘Atcch! Do not be so formal and English with me! You speak as if we hardly know each other.’
    ‘We don’t.’ Helena paused before she added, ‘Not anymore.’
    ‘Then let us get to know each other again. Will you come for supper with me tonight at my house?’
    ‘I . . . Alexis, I can’t leave Immy and Alex.’
    ‘I have asked Angelina. She is happy to babysit.’
    ‘You’ve done what?’ Helena was suddenly angry. ‘Perhaps it would have been a better idea to ask me about this first.’
    Alexis was immediately contrite. ‘I should have asked you. I apologise, Helena.’
    ‘Well, I can’t come, anyway. I have far too much to do here. William is arriving with Fred tomorrow.’
    ‘Mummy! I’m getting cold. I need a towel ’cos I want to get out!’
    ‘Coming, darling.’ Helena stood up and made to move away. Alexis caught her arm before she could.
    ‘At least let us talk soon, catch up on the missing years.’
    She looked up at him, opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head wordlessly and pulled out of his grasp.

ALEX’S DIARY
    13th July 2006
    I am lying on my back, floating in the middle of the freezing pool – I can’t hear any earth sounds as my ears are underwater. Here, as I look up from my water-bed,
I can see the dark, curved dome above me, which is the roundness of the earth and sky. It isn’t flat, but like a cave, the roof sparkling with un-mined diamonds. I listen to the gloopy noises
in my ears, close my eyes and imagine this is the closest thing you can get to being back in the womb. Apart from the fact there are no on-tap chips and chocolate and coal, or whatever your mother
cares to pass you to eat down the umbilical cord.
    It’s a miraculous process, really it is, the creation thing.
    I’m feeling calmer tonight because I have a new womb . . . I mean,
room
, to call my own. Granted, I will have to curl up in the foetal position once I’m in it
– when I reach out my arms, I can touch the mahogany shelves, lined with hundreds of leather-bound books on both sides – but I don’t care. It is mine and mine alone and most
importantly, a Rupes-free zone.
    I’ll also have enough reading material to keep me going for the duration of the holiday, for my new habitat is what my mother rather grandly, under the circumstances, referred
to as ‘the library’. It is, in fact, little more than a broom cupboard (and I’d bet it probably once was), placed just off the drawing room. I shan’t be able to – for
health and safety reasons – invite anyone else into it, as there may not be enough oxygen to sustain two pairs of lungs. Besides, they’d have to lie on top of me as there is no room to
stand.
    Mum has said she doesn’t mind if I pile some of the books up onto higher shelves, so I can at least have somewhere to put my stuff.
    It also has the luxury of a door I can lock and a small window placed high up. Creepy Mr Fix-it has managed to shoehorn a camp bed into it for me to sleep on.
    I turn over and swim to the edge of the pool, then climb out and shake off the excess water. I pick up a towel, which is wetter than I am from previous use, and wrap its sogginess
round my shoulders. I flop onto a sunbed and dry off in the still ridiculously hot night air, hoping I’m not the reason my mother looks so down in the mouth tonight.
    She’s hardly spoken a word to me since Mr Fix-it left a couple of hours ago. She was monosyllabic with Immy too, mind you, so perhaps we’re both in the doghouse, for
reasons unknown.
    I hope . . . well, I hope it’s not because Dad’s arriving tomorrow. Spoiling her love-nest thing with Mr Fix-it. I don’t think it is, because I’m sure she
loves Dad, but I