I slowly went back to my learning routine. I was still home-schooled and, besides all regular curricula a seven-year-old must grasp, I also had to deal with family history and genealogy, etiquette and protocol, daily walks with Her Grace in the estate and surrounding properties and, honestly, this whole circus that had just come to town just left me so exhausted, that I had very little remaining time to think about my little life.

The weekends were very full as well, as Mami always found some sort of cultural event to attend. We shared a love for opera and the theatre, for History and museums, nature walks, the lot.

What I always did find time and headspace for, was the ability to calculate the time difference to Macao, to talk to my brother and, still unilaterally, to my sister.

I believe that, whatever sins my grandmother thought she had committed with my mum’s education, she tried to atone with mine and she did smother me with timetables and gentle discipline, but I don’t blame her for that. If I ever did have something to hold against her, it would be the dome she did create around me… There was not much staff at the house anymore by then, and my only friend was still Peter. I never really had any problems talking to grown-ups but I could never, for the life of me, interact much with other children.

I do praise Peter for sticking up with such an insufferable person for all these years. You are such a good friend!

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My Mami stayed true to her word and I did, indeed have birthdays and Christmas’ with the rest of my family. It was good, yet heart-wrenching, to see how much they had grown, every time I met them. They both thrived with my dad and he was, himself, over the moon to have them. He was also a great father.

They had two Macanese nannies, Maria and Jacinta, who taught them Patuá and Cantonese. Tommy promised he would teach me Patuá, so the three of us could share a more secretive language, but I ended up never really learning it. He and Clara spoke it amongst themselves, for many years still, when they wished to keep the conversation from prying ears.

I could almost see the rope made of love that stretched between continents, tethering me to them, and I wanted to pull on it so desperately it hurt. I just did not want to feel alone.

But, looking back, I’m glad they got to stay together. I would choose loneliness time and time again, if it meant they could have each other.

But this sudden ripping of ties did have a strain on me. It was, in fact, devastating. According to my therapist many years down the line, there were two roads opening up in front of me: the one where I would try and shift the focus of attention onto me, jumping up and down and shouting until I had the limelight I craved, and the one where I would become overbearing and overprotective. I went down road number 2 and I know I would move Heaven and Earth for my siblings. For them, I would sacrifice everything I’ve worked for and conquered.

Of course that, if I already felt a need for control over my life, after these two earth-shattering events, I became even more of a control freak and it took me many, many years to break that pattern and to just let things flow and not micromanage every single aspect of my career.