Lost and Found

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

After a while people seemed to move inside the house, leaving the garden. Amelia had waved at Li a few times assuring her that she was fine, pleased to see her friend was circulating like a celebrity meeting everyone there.  She’d had a couple of beers and was calmer now. Strolling to the gazebo she sat nearer one of the patio heaters. Despite it being a warm evening, it was October...in London, not known for sitting outside in the dark.  Listening to the hubbub of the group gathered Amelia closed her eyes; she’d tried to keep her mind away from the tall dark blast from her past, but to no avail. The six foot two lump of a man was not only here in the party, but he was also in her head.

Amelia could remember the first time she set eyes on Sol, he would’ve been thirteen, and she was probably nine or ten. Her father Maxwell Parkin had been an army major, and for the first part of her life she’d barely seen him, she remembered happy times with her mother, struggling to fill the huge country manor house with noise. But then he was home, fresh from military operations in the Middle East and it all changed. He was a stickler for discipline, believed that children if they had to be seen, should never be heard, this was such a stark contrast to her mother, who smothered her with love and happiness....and singing. Her mother always sang. It didn’t help that her cousin Alec would come to stay for school holidays, he was the perfect son in her father’s eyes, accomplished at hunting, shooting, captained every team in his boarding school from lacrosse to debating. And he behaved ‘impeccably’ to quote her father.

Then one day she walked into the lounge to see a man talking to her father, they were deep in debate. John Tanner had been a lower ranked soldier in her father’s charge, and one night in a dawn raid, he’d saved her father’s life. But that day as he stood in her home, he was devastated, almost at the point of breakdown, his wife had died in a car accident, he was barely consolable, and to his left was the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen, tall with shaggy dark hair, and the loveliest, saddest blue eyes. She remembered like it was yesterday barely being able to drag her gaze from him. He was looking at the floor, struggling to control his grief.

Maxwell Parkin and the word charitable didn’t belong in the same sentence, but as this man had saved his life, he felt obligated to him. John and Sol as she found out he was called, moved into the far wing of the house, starting work for the family, the estate was too big for her father to manage, he had damaged his left leg at some point in the past and physical work was too much for him. On that day the grief ridden Tanner men became part of their family.

Amelia had been a rather geeky child, but she’d always blossomed in his gaze, from the first time she’d found him sat in the garden kicking aimlessly at the dirt.

                “Hi!” she offered. “I can always show you around, if you like?”

The boy had smiled, “Amelia isn’t it?” It was the only time he’d called her by her real name, after that she’d been Hot Meal-ia, Cold Meal-ia, depending on her mood, and one of the worst being Ready -to-eat-Meal-ia when she dressed for a family wedding when she was fourteen.

When she nodded, he held out his hand, “I’m Sol.”

                “Short for Solomon?” she asked.

He shook his head, “It’s Spanish for sun. I was apparently conceived on a sunny day in Spain.”

She’d looked at him blankly completely unaware of what that meant, but she’d looked it up in her dictionary later, and when she was still confused, she asked Carla her baby sitter.  Shock was an understatement, but that revelation just added to the intrigue and appeal that the house guest had caused. That was day one of her crush.