Stockholm

A twenty-two year old woman lay curled, cradled in the arms of a tree, clutching at a well-thumbed book. The sun beat down against her exposed neck despite the shelter of the leaves but she didn’t seem to take any notice, her green eyes trained on the familiar words in front of her. Nothing could rouse her from her world.
“So here you are.” Apart from him of course. Rolling those eyes, the woman raised her head wincing the stiffness away to pay her attentions to the man, coolly leaning against the trunk of the tree.
“Michael, you are literally inescapable. I’m at the ends of the earth and you still manage to find me. I don’t know whether to be flattered, impressed or scared about your stalking capabilities.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm as she studied Michael in all his glory. This Michael was a cool ten years older than her twenty-two and had also been with her for ten years. As in to say, allocated to her for ten years. The truth was that Michael; all six foot of tanned, scarred, dark Michael was her bodyguard. He’d started out at twenty-two to her twelve, introduced during a political scandal where her and her siblings were under threat. He was skilled, slightly disfigured and looked incredibly dangerous but the twelve year old her hadn’t feared him at all. They’d regarded each other coolly before laconically nodding at each other in some kind of mutual understanding. He was new to the job which was why he had been assigned her, hardly a threat to anyone. Michael had watched her grow into the bold young woman she was today and she had softened him, gently eroding the dangerous gleam of blue eyes to a soft burnish without each of them ever realising.
“Stalking you is my job Annabelle.” He interrupted her obsessive thoughts with her full name alerting her to the danger that was fast approaching. Gracefully, as if being probed by the public eye, Annabelle slid down the tree, sliding her forbidden book into Michael’s waiting hands.
“And you are far too good at it.” Her tone was a hushed whisper as her keen eyes spied the vultures that were swopping down on them as they spoke, nearer and nearer until, “Mother! Father, what a pleasant surprise. I hadn’t realised you’d returned from your trip. Was it good?” The smile was stretched across her face. She stepped forwards, winging her arms out as if to embrace her parents before remembering that they didn’t like to be touched. The only hugs Annabelle ever received were from her siblings, their bodyguards, her friends and Michael.
Annabelle Frost’s mother and father, Gideon and Eleanor Frost did not condone the sort of ‘forward-thinking’ parenting that involved touching their children with any affection unless it were to aid their public image. Her mother, with her perfectly styled face and elegant clothes, did not want children’s messy paw prints all over her whilst Annabelle’s father was raised with the notion that if he suffered as a child than others should also suffer.
“What were you whispering to Michael just now?” Her father also believed that pleasantries were not for real men and as a real man he should disperse with them. Annabelle never even batted an eyelid, keeping that same stretched smile fixed to her face.
“Just how good he is at always knowing where I am and what I’m doing. It’s his job, Father, and I’m sure he should get a pay rise because I do absolutely nothing. He just sits around bored out of his mind.” Her grin was real as she walked around to stand by her mother who was raking her gaze over Michael’s lean frame like a cat eyed a mouse, “he does make for pleasurable viewing however. Don’t you think so Mother?” She loved to tease her mother about the unrequited lust she possessed for her bodyguard and enjoyed watching the calm Michael squirm under the scrutiny. Everyone in the household was fully aware of her parents’ extra-marital dalliances and her mother’s desire for Michael was a household secret, meaning everybody knew of course. He was constantly teased by the staff and, even though he attempted to shrug it off, it was clear that the very idea appalled him. The staff thought him gay but Annabelle knew differently. He’d never expressed any interest in the male gender to her, or any interest in anyone at all, but Annabelle still felt he was straight.
“He won’t have a pay rise until he’s earned it.” Tight-fisted was almost the only word you could use to describe Gideon Frost, a word he lived by even down to his emotions. The meaning behind this sentence was that Annabelle had never been threatened and/or kidnapped like her other siblings and Michael had never placed himself in harm’s way for her as there wasn’t any harm to be had. Both of them were starting to feel rather left out, “we just came to tell you that we’ve returned. Michael told us that this is where you spend your time.” His eyes travelled towards the tree with a mixed look of confusion and disgust as to why someone would be crawling around in a tree. Eleanor simply smiled, the blush from Annabelle’s previous comments subsiding enough for her to look her daughter in the eyes. All three of them nodded at each other in their traditional greeting style before Gideon turned on his heels and stomped back up the house taking Eleanor with him.
“Ah, my father,” Annabelle half-skipped over to where Michael was still leaning against the tree, arms still behind his back to hide the book. She crossed her legs when she halted by the trunk and dropped to the floor lightly, “as tight-fisted as ever. I wonder if it makes it hard for him to have fun. I imagine it’d leave him quite blue in the face.” She reached her hand up to take the book but Michael pulled it away before claiming a shaded spot next to her. Gazing at his ward he asked,
“Tell me Ann, do you actually like Lady Chatterley’s Lover or do you just get a thrill from reading the only book your mother has ever banned you from reading?” He turned the book over in his hand, warm from an hour or two in the sun, breaking and falling apart. ‘Well-loved’ was the word that Ann used to defend the state of all of her books. She snatched the book back,
“Are you kidding me? D.H Lawrence is a God and Connie is the alter at which I worship. I have half a mind to go out into this world and find my own Mellors. Besides my mother only banned me from her copy of the book. That’s the one is where she keeps her porn collection.” And with that Ann delved straight back into her book, ignoring Michael like he had never been there at all. Michael merely leant back against the tree to close his eyes. Ann hadn’t been lying when she’d said that she did nothing. Most of her time, when not in university classes, was spent by herself reading up in trees that she loved to climb, doing her homework in her university dorm room or spending time in the club that her sister owned as the security was heaviest there. Michael’s job usually consisted of coat-holding in the clubs, sitting in silence and doing whatever he wanted. In her dorm there was an entire game console system set up for him and he liked to read the books from the university library, feeling that they expanded his intellect somehow. He was now fluent in German, could recite reams of Chaucer and even understood the difference between vicia tetrasperma and vicia hirsuta in a horticultural reference. Sometimes, when he was extremely bored, he’d call up his family or friends outside of work who were desperate to have him back with them. It whiled away a few hours of his day trying to explain to them that he only got three days off a year and it would be impractical to return for that period as he was usually in the Maldives and they were in Ireland.
Ann was so used to having him around that he was even part of the furniture by now. She’d place a coat over the chair he was sitting in because she didn’t see him and her carefully designed eyebrows would arch in surprise when he made a noise. Wordlessly she’d give him things to hold if he was in the room and she needed someone there. She dyed her hair often, in a prolonged act of rebellion towards her parents, a variety of different colours and delighted in wearing clothes that insulted their very refined tastes. However, the clothes, the hair dyes, the manicures and so on were always designer. Despite Ann’s irreverence towards her parents she did enjoy spending their money and did it casually, like it was nothing. One might call her spoiled if she wasn’t fully aware of the fact that she was privileged. Her parents had decided that their children should volunteer in homeless shelters or animal shelters from a young age, yet again for the benefit of the public. In the end, this publicity stunt had been a good move both aesthetically and for the welfare of their children. Instead of spoiled children with no real comprehension of the world outside of money, the children grew with a firm grasp on the situation around them and outside of them.
Sure they had holiday homes all around the world, for Christmas it was the Maldives, for the summer a variety of places and even a holiday home for Thanksgiving, and were given anything that they wanted so long as it kept them quiet, they knew that this was an almost unique situation and that they were lucky to be in it. All of them were well-known donators for various charitable organisations and were considered golden children by the world, pleasing Gideon and Eleanor. None of them had any reason to complain about anything.
It was probably for this that Michael felt sorry for Ann, for them all. They would never grow up normal, like the majority of Western teenagers, which made it hard to socialise nor have friends. Ann had very few friends that weren’t selfish or one dimensional as most people were too afraid to approach her believing her to be too blessed for them. Every lifestyle has its own hardships and trials but no one would understand hers or even get close enough to attempt it. The one downside to her life was loneliness. She may not feel it now, close to her siblings and him, but in the future she would when he was no longer there because Gideon and Eleanor would not tolerate their friendship for much longer. Partly due to Eleanor’s feelings and the fact that they were so close, relationships with charges were prohibited because emotion could compromise his ability to protect her, although friendships were to be expected but none so close as theirs.

Their unusual bond probably started when Ann was thirteen and Michael twenty-three. For the first year of his job the two had some kind of weary acceptance of each other, an understanding that they were going to be with each other whether they liked it or not. They’d developed many habits over that year but one had been developed recently. Ann liked to be read to sleep and had chosen Michael for the job because she liked the lilt of his Irish twang. One night they’d been reading a Patricia Cornwall novel when Ann had interrupted,
“Where did you get that scar?” He was used to her straightforwardness but never was it used directly at him until tonight. He’d blinked at her for a while before realising the scar that she meant as her eyes were transfixed on his lips. At a diagonal angle that stretched from the corner of his nose to the other side of his chin, there was a very deep dent that curled his mouth ever so slightly, faded after time but still very noticeable.
“Back home, a drunken brawl got out of hand, someone pulled a knife and my lip managed to get in the way.” He made a sharp cutting motion over his face to emphasize the way the scar was made. It wasn’t a particularly exciting story; he wasn’t risking his life to save someone or to stop a fight. He was just drunk and at that Ann lost interest. Michael had never been so indebted to someone. Usually women liked to show that they were accepting of the scar, run their hands over it like in some dramatic movie moment, make them feel better about themselves, that they could accept him disfigured. Ann accepted it to the point that it didn’t even interest her which was possibly the nicest thing she could have done. Her attention was attracted to his other scar. There was a series of thick white spiderweb like marks, clustered on the right hand corner of his forehead, clearly a burn scar.
“So where did you get that one?”
“I was caught in a fire when I was a young lad. My house burnt down because my mother had accidently dropped a lit cigarette and ignored it.” It was another boring story to her, proving that Michael was no dashing hero like she’d probably imagined. The acceptance of each other’s sheer normality, Michael had long since accepted that she was like any other child he knew and now felt strangely thankful of her indifference towards him, allowed a friendship to form.
A friendship that was soon to be tested in ways neither of them had foreseen.