The Seven Sisters: Book One - Hardcover

Riley, Lucinda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1476759901 ISBN 13: 9781476759906

Verlag: Atria Books, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

The first book in a major new series from the #1 internationally bestselling author Lucinda Riley.

Maia D’Apliese and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, “Atlantis”—a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva—having been told that their beloved father, who adopted them all as babies, has died. Each of them is handed a tantalizing clue to her true heritage—a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of her story and its beginnings.

Eighty years earlier in Rio’s Belle Epoque of the 1920s, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is devising plans for an enormous statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela—passionate and longing to see the world—convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafes of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.

In this sweeping, epic tale of love and loss—the first in a unique, spellbinding series of seven novels—Lucinda Riley showcases her storytelling talent like never before.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lucinda Riley is the New York Times bestselling author of over twenty novels, including The Orchid House, The Girl on the Cliff, and the Seven Sisters series. Her books have sold twenty million copies in thirty-five languages globally. She was born in Ireland and divides her time between England and West Cork with her husband and four children. Visit her online at LucindaRiley.com.

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The Seven Sisters

1

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 school friend’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 kindergarten.

I felt calm and I appreciated what a good idea it had been to get away. When my cell phone rang and I glanced at the screen and saw it was Marina, I was studying the burgeoning clematis unfolding its fragile pink buds, giving birth to a riot of color, encouraged by its sunny midwife.

“Hello, Ma, how are you?” I said, hoping she could hear the sun’s warmth in my voice.

“Maia, I . . .”

Marina paused, and in that instant I knew something was dreadfully wrong. “What is it?”

“Maia, there’s no other 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 passed through my mind. The first one being that Marina, for some unknown reason, had decided to play some form of a 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 realize 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 weren’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 phone 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.

“When should we plan on having the funeral, do you think? What with Electra being in Los Angeles and Ally somewhere on the high seas, surely we can’t think about it until next week at the earliest,” I said.

“Well”—I heard the hesitation in Marina’s voice—“perhaps the best thing is for you and I to discuss it when you arrive back home. There really is no rush now, Maia, so if you’d prefer to continue the last couple of days of your holiday in London, that would be fine. There’s nothing more to be done for him here . . .” Her voice trailed off miserably.

“Ma, of course I’ll be on the next flight that I can get to Geneva! I’ll call the airline immediately and let you know what time the flight is. And in the meantime, I’ll do my best to get in touch with everyone.”

“I’m so terribly sorry, chérie,” Marina sighed. “I know how you adored him.”

“Yes,” I said, the strange calm that I had felt while we discussed arrangements suddenly deserting me like the stillness before a violent thunderstorm. “I’ll call you later, when I know what time I’ll be arriving.”

“In the meantime, please take care of yourself, Maia. You’ve had a terrible shock.”

I pressed the button to end the call and before the storm clouds in my heart opened up and drowned me, I went upstairs to my bedroom to retrieve my flight documents and contact the airline. As I waited in the calling queue, I glanced at the bed where I’d woken up that morning to simply another day. And I thanked God that human beings don’t have the power to see into the future.

The officious woman who eventually answered wasn’t helpful and I knew, as she spoke of full flights, financial penalties, and credit card details, that my emotional dam was ready to burst. Finally, once I’d been grudgingly granted a seat on the four o’clock flight to Geneva, which would mean throwing everything into my luggage immediately and taking a taxi to Heathrow, I sat down on the bed and stared for so long at the sprigged wallpaper that the pattern began to dance in front of my eyes.

“He’s gone,” I whispered, “gone forever. I’ll never see him again.”

Expecting the spoken words to provoke a raging torrent of tears, I was surprised that nothing actually happened. Instead, I sat there numbly, my head still full of practicalities. The thought of telling my sisters—all five of them—was horrendous and I searched through my emotional filing system for the one I would call first. Inevitably, it was Tiggy, the second youngest of the six of us girls and the sibling to whom I’d always felt closest.

With trembling fingers, I scrolled down to find her number and dialed it. When her voice mail answered, I didn’t know what to say, other than a few garbled words asking her to call me back urgently. She was currently somewhere in the Scottish Highlands working at a center for orphaned and sick wild deer.

As for the other sisters . . . I knew their reactions would vary, outwardly at least, from indifference to a dramatic outpouring of emotion.

Given that I wasn’t currently sure quite which way I would go on the scale of grief when I did speak to any of them, I decided to take the coward’s way out and texted them all, asking them to call me as soon as they could. Then I hurriedly packed my luggage and walked down the narrow stairs to the kitchen to write a note for Jenny explaining why I’d had to leave in such a hurry.

Deciding to take my chances hailing a black cab on the London streets, I left the house, walking briskly around the leafy Chelsea crescent just as any normal person would do on any normal day. I believe I actually said hello to someone walking a dog when I passed him in the street and managed a smile.

No one would know what had just happened to me, I thought as I managed to find a taxi on the busy King’s Road and climbed inside it, directing the driver to Heathrow.

Nobody would know.



Five hours later, just as the sun was making its leisurely descent over Lake Geneva, I arrived at our private pontoon on the shore, from where I would make the last leg of my journey home.

Christian was already waiting for me in our sleek Riva motor launch. And from the look on his face, I could see he’d heard the news.

“How are you, Mademoiselle Maia?” he asked, sympathy in his blue eyes as he helped me aboard.

“I’m . . . glad I’m here,” I answered neutrally as I walked to the back of the boat and sat down on the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atria Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1476759901
• ISBN 13: 9781476759906
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar