Everybody's changing

His sun rises and sets with you she said, stroked some blond hairs from my forehead and kissed my cheeks. It could have been filled with love, that act, but I knew mother far to well after 10 years to belive such a thing. She was hiding something.

The next day was my birthday, and mother had decided that I was no longer a kid - I had to have a grown up dinner party to celebrate the year gone by. She invited her friends, hairdresser and the women she drank wine with every tuesday afternoon at The Connaught. My friends? Well, I was allowed to invite a few. Amanada was given permission only if her parents were to come with her and Chloé came all the way from Paris with her aristocratic mother by her side. And the three of us sat at the end of the long table, eating macaroons and giggeling while mother tried to entertain the guests by telling the story about how she met Roberto Cavalli once and went on a trip on his yatch. Awful story, a ten year old girl should not have to hear what she did, and Frank looked uncomfortable the entire evening. I felt sorry for him.

Mother slept for the rest of the week, since she swallowed sleeping pills with cocktails. Father figure (at the time, just "father" though) Frank and I started taking long walks. On some rare occations he told me stories about his worktrips to Paris, Milan or Dubai. He showed me some pictures, and told me he would give me the world someday. Promised I would not have to stay in that seven bedroom apartment with expensive jewellry kept in shoeboxes and designer dresses on the floor.

Then he left.