I don't understand.
Why did the woman on the cover look so much like me?
When I went into the book store I spotted a rack of magazines; I could catch up on the celebrity gossip of the last 3 weeks I hadn't been in the states.
I still had the magazine a week later.
On the cover of Salut was a photo shoot of a man and woman; the king and queen of Myra, and they looked just like me. I mean exactly like me!
It was so spooky that I bought the magazine even though it was in French.
It had taken me a while to fully translate everything. My French was passable but not good enough to read an entire article.
The article was in celebration of the couples 25 wedding anniversary. It went on about the things they had done in their lives, and the daughter that they had lost.
It turned out they had a daughter, but she had been kidnapped when she was younger and had not been heard from since. They said that they still though she was alive somewhere and that they would never give up hope.
At this point things became even more bizarre.
Pictured in a small box at the bottom of the page was a portrait of King Nickolas and Queen Helena and princess Elliana.
It wasn't just that she looked like me, it was that we had the same name, and that the photo was the same as one my mother had of me in our house.
Which meant it was me! Right?
How could this be possible?
And more to the point why?
One week had now passed and I had to tell someone about princess Elliana. I needed to know if it was a coincidence or if there was something to it!
Diena would tell me the truth.
'What the hell do you think Elle?' She looked at me with scepticism. 'That you're the lost princess who was kidnapped when you were four, and just happen to have found it out and are now going to go and live in a palace and be a princess!?' Her eye-brow rose into her hairline in a gesture I knew well enough to say she did not think my over-thought scenario likely.
'I don't know, but...' I didn't know what to say. She didn't understand my fear. She didn't understand that this could be the crucial piece of the puzzle that I had been searching for.
'Look if you want to know about your father then ask you mum.' She said absently as she returned to her book. My father. I had not mentioned or thought of my father for a long time.
I didn't remember him, except for one time when I remember running into his arms before he spun me around. Mum said that he died in a car accident when I was four.
Oh my!
King Nickolas was that man! He was the man I remember my father to be. Was Queen Helena the woman who was laughing in the background? It had always bugged me that the laugh was not mum.
OH MY!
If that was true, then who was Christina -not my mother but my kidnapper?