Two years. On paper, they seem like the blink of an eye, but for Belinda, they had been a prism through which the light of her life had decomposed into a thousand different colors—some as brilliant as the sun over the Strait, others as dark as sodden earth. In those twenty-four months, spent between managing the "Samuele's Beacon" fund and the winter storms that returned to lash the coast, Belinda had seen her existence transform into a mission of pure solidarity. She had chosen to remain in the trenches, amidst rubble to be turned into playgrounds and families to be consoled, sacrificing the daily warmth of her daughter to guarantee her a peace that Sicily, at that moment, could not offer.
It wasn't that she didn't want to rush to London, take Azzurra in her arms, and never let go. But every time she looked at the calendar, a new commitment held her back: a school to inaugurate, a bureaucratic dispute over the recovery of the piers, or simply the profound fear that her presence—heavy with memories and that esoteric gravity that still weighed upon her shoulders—might shatter the fragile yet splendid glass castle that Azzurra was building in Richmond.
The summers had become her oxygen. Belinda waited for July as one waits for rain in the desert. She would watch Azzurra step off the plane with Erica and Mattia, and every time, her breath would catch: her little girl was gone. In her place returned a young woman of fourteen, taller, with the slender neck of a swan and a composure that seemed to have erased the uncertainties of her trauma. But as she embraced her, Belinda felt the fabric of London-cut clothes beneath her fingers and noticed in her daughter's speech an ever-increasing use of English terms, a more sober way of gesturing, a detachment that stung.
"Azzurra, my joy, never forget where you come from and whose daughter you are," Belinda would whisper during dinners under the villa's pergola, while the sound of the sea played in the background. But she felt that, year after year, her voice reached her daughter as if from behind a wall of crystal. Azzurra would return for the holidays, breathe in the salt, weep at Samuele's grave, but then she would leave again. And every time the plane took off toward the North, Belinda felt that her daughter was a little more English and a little less Sicilian.
Yet, in that detachment, Azzurra was not alone. In those two years of hard work at the Richmond Academy of Dance, she had built bonds that Belinda only knew through enthusiastic video-call stories. There were two names that resonated constantly: Oliver and Maya.
Oliver was the boy every dance teacher dreamed of having and every classmate secretly admired. A year older than Azzurra, he was the living portrait of nobility of soul fused with physical vigor. Physically, Oliver looked as if he were carved from Carrara marble: tall, with broad shoulders and a long, wiry musculature that gave him a natural elegance even when standing still. His hair was a dark blonde, almost ash-colored, often tousled by sweat after hours of rehearsal, and his eyes were a stormy gray that seemed to change hue depending on the light filtering through the windows of "The Castle."
Character-wise, Oliver was the personification of dedication. He was a quiet boy, almost introverted, who preferred to let his jumps and his lifts speak for him. He had a protective instinct toward Azzurra that was almost moving; it was he who had supported her physically and morally during that first year, when the exhaustion seemed ready to crush her. He was not a ruthless competitor, but a traveling companion who believed that dance was a form of secular prayer. His laughter was rare, but when it exploded, it had the power to illuminate the entire rehearsal hall.
Maya, on the other hand, was the hurricane of life that Azzurra needed to keep from sinking into Sicilian melancholy. The same age as Azzurra, Maya was an explosion of multicultural energy. Of Jamaican and British descent, she had amber skin that seemed to radiate heat and a mass of wild black curls that struggled to stay pinned in a classic ballerina's bun. Her eyes were large, dark, and perpetually lit by a spark of mischief or enthusiasm. She wasn't particularly tall, but she possessed incredible explosive strength, excelling in contemporary pieces where the earth and rhythm were fundamental.
Maya's character was the glue of the group. She was blunt, at times almost sharp in her London sincerity, but endowed with boundless empathy. It was she who had taught Azzurra not to take herself too seriously, to eat an extra gelato after a bad evaluation, and to laugh at life's small daily misfortunes. Maya was lightheartedness personified—that uniquely youthful ability to live in the present without being weighed down by the past or the expectations of the future.
For Azzurra, Oliver and Maya had become the guardians of her new world. With them, "The Castle" was not just a school, but a safe harbor. They played tag in the school gardens between music theory and ballet lessons, swapped secrets while eating scones hidden under dormitory blankets, and worked hard until their muscles burned and their feet bled. In that microcosm of sweat and laughter, Azzurra felt alive, far from the shadows that still haunted her mother.
Belinda, on the other side of the continent, watched the videos her daughter sent her. She saw Azzurra joking with that girl of indomitable curls and being lifted with trust by that boy with gray eyes. Belinda smiled, but deep in her heart, she felt a pang of benign jealousy. Those kids knew the Azzurra of today, the one who smiled at life; she, the mother, remained the guardian of the Azzurra of the past—the one who had wept amidst the mud and the prayers.
"It is only right," Belinda repeated to herself every night, closing the charity ledgers. "It is the price of her freedom."
But the prism of time continued to turn, and as Azzurra became increasingly international, Belinda felt that the thread uniting them, though golden and resilient, was thinning dangerously, stretched between two realities that seemed no longer able to touch, save for a few weeks a year. Sicily was rebuilding its walls, but Belinda feared that, in the process, she was losing the beating heart of her own family.