Page 254 of The Missing Sister

For my Daughter.

I opened it.

Atlantis

Lake Geneva

Switzerland

My darling daughter,

I only wish I could address you by your given name, but sadly I do not know what it is. Just as I have no idea where in the world you might live. Or if you still live. Nor do I know whether you will ever be found, which is an odd thought for both of us if you are reading this, because it means you have been, yet I am gone from this world. And the two of us will nevermeet on earth, but in the next life, which I believe in with all my heart and soul.

I cannot voice or begin to explain the love I have felt for you since I knew of your imminent arrival. Nor can I tell you in this letter the lengths I took to find you and your mother, who were both lost to me so cruelly before you were born. You may well believe that you were abandoned by your father, but that is far from the truth. To this day – and I write to you as I have written to my six other daughters, because I am close to death – I do not know where your mother went, or whether she lived or died after you were born.

How I know you were born is also a story that can only be explained in more pages than I have the energy to write here.

However, write it I did, many years ago, in the journal that I have instructed my lawyer, Georg Hoffman, to give to you. It’s the story of my life, which, if nothing else, has been eventful. You may well have had contact with my adopted daughters and I would ask that, once you have read it, you share my story with them, because it is their story too.

Read it, my darling girl, and know that there hasn’t been a day that has gone by without me thinking and praying for both you and your mother. She was the love of my life... everything to me. And if she has passed on to the next life, which some deep instinct tells me she has, know that we are reunited and looking down on you with love.

Your father,

Atlas x