I decided that, for now, I did not. I still wanted to belong to Pa and Atlantis.
Having replaced the envelope in the plastic wallet, I drew out the jewellery box and opened it.
Inside lay a small black figurine of an animal, perhaps made of onyx, which sat on a slim silver base. I took it out of the box and studied it, its sleek lines clearly denoting it was feline. I looked at the base and saw there was a hallmark, and a name engraved on it.
Panther
Set into each eye socket were tiny bright amber jewels that winked at me in the weak morning sun.
‘Who owned you? And who were they to me?’ I whispered into the ether.
Replacing the panther in its box, I stood up and walked towards the armillary sphere. The last time I’d seen it, all my sisters had been crowding around it, wondering what it meant and why Pa had chosen to leave us such a legacy. I peered into the centre, and studied the golden globe and the silver bands that encased it in an elegant cage. It was exquisitely fashioned, the contours of the world’s continents standing proud in the seven seas surrounding them. I wandered around it, noting the original Greek names of all my sisters – Maia, Alcyone, Celaeno, Taygete, Electra . . . and, of course, mine: Asterope.
What’s in a name? I quoted Shakespeare’s Juliet, pondering – as I had many times in the past – whether we had all adopted the personas of our mythological namesakes, or whether our names had adopted us. In contrast to the rest of my sisters, far less seemed to be known about my counterpart’s personality. I’d sometimes wondered whether that was why I felt so invisible amongst my siblings.
Maia, the beauty; Ally, the leader; CeCe, the pragmatist; Tiggy, the nurturer; Electra, the fireball . . . and then me. Apparently, I was the peacemaker.
Well, if staying silent meant peace reigned, then maybe that was me. And perhaps, if a parent defined you from birth, then, despite who you really were, you would try to live up to that ideal. Yet there was no doubt that all my sisters fitted their mythological characteristics perfectly.
Merope . . .
My eyes suddenly fell on the seventh band and I leant in to look closer. But unlike the rest of the bands, there were no coordinates. Or a quotation. The missing sister; the seventh baby we’d all been expecting Pa Salt to bring home, but who had never arrived. Did she exist? Or had Pa felt – being the perfectionist he was – the armillary sphere and his legacy to us would not be complete without her name? Perhaps, if any of us sisters had a child, and that child was a female, we could call her ‘Merope’ and the seven bands would be complete.
I sat down heavily on the bench, casting my thoughts back through the years to whether Pa had ever mentioned a seventh sister to me. And as far as I could remember, he hadn’t. In fact, he’d rarely talked about himself; he’d always been far more interested in what was happening in my life. And even though I loved him as much as any daughter could possibly love her father, and he was – apart from CeCe – the dearest person on the planet to me, I sat there with the sudden realisation that I knew almost nothing about him.
All I knew was that he had liked gardens, and had obviously been hugely wealthy. But how he’d come by that wealth was as much a mystery as the seventh band on the armillary sphere. And yet, I’d never felt for a moment as though our relationship was anything less than close. Or that he’d held back information from me when I had asked him something.
Perhaps I’d just never asked the right questions. Perhaps none of us sisters had.
I stood up and wandered around the garden checking on the plants and making a mental list for Hans, the gardener. I would meet him here later before I left Atlantis.
As I walked back towards the house, I realised that, after wanting to be here so desperately, I now wanted to fly back to London. And get on with my life.
4
London in late July was hot and humid. Especially given that I was spending all day in a stuffy, windowless kitchen in Bayswater. In my scant three weeks there, I felt as though I was learning a lifetime’s worth of culinary skills. I brunoised, batonneted and julienned vegetables until I felt like my chef’s knife had become an extension of my arm. I kneaded bread dough until my muscles ached, and delighted in that moment of ‘spring back’, when I knew it was ready to prove.
Each night we were sent home to plan menus and timings, and in the mornings we would complete our mise en place – preparing ingredients and placing utensils on our workstations before we began. At the end of class, we would clean every surface until it was sparkling, and I felt a secret satisfaction that CeCe would never wander into this kitchen and cause a mess.
My course-mates were a motley bunch: men and women, ranging from privileged eighteen-year-olds to bored housewives who wanted to spice up their Surrey dinner parties.
‘I’ve been a lorry driver for twenty years.’ Paul, a burly forty-year-old divorcé chatted to me as he deftly piped the choux onto a baking tray to form delicate cheese gougères. ‘Always wanted to be a cook, and I’m finally doing it.’ He winked at me. ‘Life’s too short, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed with feeling.
Thankfully, thoughts of my own stagnant situation had been pushed aside with the pace of the course. And it helped that CeCe was as busy as I was. When she wasn’t preoccupied with choosing furniture for our new apartment, she was off riding the length and breadth of London on the red buses that snaked around the city, gathering inspiration for her current creative fetish – physical installations. This involved her collecting a whole heap of clutter from around the city and dumping it in our tiny sitting room: twisted pieces of metal which she’d gathered from scrapyards, a pile of red roof tiles, empty and smelly petrol cans and – most disturbingly of all – a half-burnt man-sized doll made of bits of cloth and straw.
‘The English burn effigies of a man called Guy Fawkes on bonfires in November. How this one here lasted until July, I’ll never know,’ she told me as she loaded a staple gun. ‘Apparently it’s got something to do with the fellow trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament hundreds of years ago. Bonkers, as the English say,’ she added with a laugh.
In the last week of the course, we were put into teams of two and asked to prepare a three-course lunch.
‘All of you know that teamwork is a vital part of running a successful kitchen,’ Marcus, our flamboyantly gay course leader, informed us. ‘You have to be able to work under pressure and not only give orders, but receive them too. Now, these are the pairings.’
My heart sank when I was teamed with Piers – more a floppy-haired boy than a man. So far, he’d contributed very little to group discussions, other than jokey juvenile comments.