The Olive Tree by Lucinda Riley Page A

Today!’ Fred joined in Immy’s chorus, banging his spoon on his plate in tandem.
    ‘Enough!’ William barked. ‘If you promise to eat everything on your plate, we’ll go later on, when the sun’s gone down a little.’
    ‘You might be right about the skip,’ mused Helena. ‘But where on earth I get one from, I’ve no idea.’
    ‘Can I have a drink of orange juice, Mummy? I’m thirsty,’ Fred asked.
    ‘I’ll get it, Fred.’ William stood up, glanced at Helena and gave her a wry smile. ‘I’m sure your friend Alexis would know. Why don’t you call him?’
    Helena and Alex stood in the doorway of the box room, mainly because it was impossible to step inside.
    ‘God, Mum, where do we start?’ As Alex looked at the furniture and endless discarded brown boxes, stacked to the ceiling, he began to regret not joining the others at the water
park.
    ‘Bring the chair from Immy and Fred’s bedroom, and we can stand on it and pull down some of these boxes and stack them all on the landing. Then at least we can get in.’
    ‘Okay.’
    Alex fetched the chair, stood on it and lifted the first box down to Helena. He climbed down to watch as she opened it.
    ‘Wow! It’s full of old photographs. Look at that one! Is that Angus?’
    Helena surveyed the handsome, fair-haired man in full military regalia and nodded. ‘Yes. And in this one . . . he’s on the terrace here with some people I don’t know, and . . .
goodness, that’s my mother with him!’
    ‘Your mum was very pretty, she looked like you,’ remarked Alex.
    ‘Or I look like her, and yes, she was,’ Helena smiled. ‘She was an actress before she married my father. She did rather well, starred in a number of West End plays and was
thought of as a real beauty.’
    ‘Then gave up her career to marry your dad?’
    ‘Yes, although she was well over thirty when she married him. She didn’t have me until she was forty.’
    ‘Wasn’t having a baby so late unusual for those days?’
    ‘Very.’ Helena smiled at Alex. ‘I think I might have been a bit of a mistake. She really wasn’t the maternal type, your granny.’
    ‘Did I ever meet her?’ asked Alex.
    ‘No. She died before you were born. I was twenty-three and dancing in Italy at the time.’
    ‘Do you miss her now she’s dead?’
    ‘To be honest, Alex, not really. I was packed off to boarding school at the age of ten, and even before that, I had a nanny. I always felt as though I was rather in the way.’
    ‘Oh Mum, how awful.’ Alex patted her hand in a show of sympathy.
    ‘Not really.’ Helena shrugged. ‘It was what I was brought up to expect. My father was much older than Mum, nearly sixty when I was born. He was very rich, had an estate in
Kenya and used to disappear off shooting for months at a time. They were what you might call socialites, my parents, always travelling, throwing house parties . . . a little girl didn’t
really fit in to their lifestyle.’
    ‘I never met Grandpa either, did I?’
    ‘No, he died when I was fourteen.’
    ‘If he was so rich, did you get lots of money when he died?’
    ‘No. My mother was his second wife. He had two sons from his first marriage and they inherited everything. And my mum was a real spendthrift, so there wasn’t much left when she died
either.’
    ‘Sounds like you had a crap time growing up.’
    ‘No, just different, that’s all. It made me very self-sufficient, anyway.’ Helena felt the usual sense of discomfort that welled up within her when she talked about her
childhood. ‘And determined to have a proper family of my own. Anyway, let’s put this box to one side. If we’re going to go through the contents of every one we bring out of there,
we’ll never get it cleared.’
    ‘Okay.’
    They worked solidly for the next two hours, pulling Angus’ past out of the room. Alex unearthed a trunk containing his old uniforms, and followed his mother downstairs to the kitchen
wearing a khaki peaked cap and carrying a