The Sun Sister (The Seven Sisters #6) - Lucinda Riley Page 0,98

to me like a metaphor for life; we had talked in group therapy about how each decision we made affected the future course of our life – some small and some mighty big, but each one having an effect. Today, as I walked along the worn brick path, I thought about the decision I seemed to have made without even knowing it . . .

‘Why can’t you trust anyone?’ I asked myself.

It was so very easy to blame it on my celebrity status. I smiled ruefully as I thought of all the billions of people in the world who wanted to be famous and how fame had come to me unexpectedly – literally overnight – at such a young age.

But I knew it wasn’t that. Nor was it my sisters finding me irritating, or Pa, though he was partly responsible because he’d put me in that situation in the first place . . .

So why don’t you tell Fi and talk it through? I asked myself.

Because you’re scared, Electra, scared of having to relive it . . .

Besides, it was pathetic, I thought, to base one’s whole perception of trust on one small event in one’s childhood.

And the one thing I wasn’t and would never be was a victim. And wow, had I met a lot of victims here at The Ranch.

I hadn’t come here for therapy anyway, I’d come here to get clean, and I was.

‘For now,’ I said out loud, remembering the Twelve Steps. One day at a time was the mantra. The three weeks had been so hard, like, the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life, and today wasn’t so great either, because being clean meant that you had a brain again, which meant that you had to face yourself and who you were, and . . . well, all that shit. Though it did feel great to wake up in the morning after an actual night’s sleep and be able to think. So even if I didn’t manage to conquer my trust issues, I’d conquered my addictions. And wasn’t that the most important thing of all?

I stepped out of the Worry Maze and headed towards the stables and the field where the horses grazed, ready for all the screw-ups (which included me) to come and pat them.

‘How are you, Electra?’ said Marissa, the young stable hand.

‘I’m good, thanks,’ I said, giving my stock reply. ‘How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m okay,’ she said as she led me into the stable and pointed to the pile of dirty straw. ‘Your turn to shit-shovel.’ She grinned at me, handing me a pair of rubber gloves and a pitchfork.

‘Thanks.’

She left the stable and I wondered what she really thought about one of the world’s top super models up to her eyes in horseshit. Whatever it was, I knew they were (technically anyway) sworn to secrecy and only on pain of death would reveal who and what went on inside The Ranch’s walls.

As I began the revolting but calming task of baling out the dirty straw, I thought about what Fi and I had discussed – i.e. my childhood – and it actually made me think of a happy memory. When I’d been six or seven, we’d been holidaying in the Med as usual on the Titan and Pa had taken me off on the speedboat to some stables owned by a friend of his somewhere close to Nice.

‘I thought you might like to come and see the horses,’ he’d said. ‘You could maybe even ride one if you want.’

At first I’d been frightened, because they’d seemed gigantic and I’d been so small, but the groom had found the smallest pony in the yard and I’d sat up on its back, feeling a million times taller than I ever had before. I’d been led around the paddock, at first bumping up and down, but then letting my body adapt to the natural rhythm of the animal, and by the end of it, I’d been able to encourage the pony into a gentle canter.

‘You have a natural gift with horses,’ Pa had said as he had pulled up beside me on a beautiful brown stallion. ‘Would you like to learn to ride properly?’

‘I’d like to very much, Pa.’

And so Pa had arranged riding lessons for me in Geneva, and then again when I went to boarding school. It had been the highlight of my week, because I knew that I could tell all my secrets to my horse, love him as