A Place in the Sun

In the summer of '94 the trees of a large French garden sway slightly in the weak breeze, barely anything in the 30c summer heat. The garden extends down to overlook the vast fields behind it and is bordered by a 7ft cream-stoned wall on the east side, behind a shadowed copse of tall trees, and fades into a hedge at the bottom. In this shadowed copse a man creeps along with a handheld video camera; it's the best one available of course, he didn't even blink when he saw the price tag. He's tall but crouches down and tries to stay hidden amongst the trees. Through the eye of the camera he films and follows two children playing in the garden as their mother watches from the veranda. They're brother and sister, 3 years between them. The girl has thick caramel blonde hair like her mother while the boy has a darker brown mop of hair that he's constantly brushes out of his eyes. They chase eachother down the garden, both vying for the ownership of a ball their father gave them, and the silent observer smiles as their laughter reaches the video camera. They pass him and stop a few feet away, both trying to guess which direction the other will go in, and the man tries to creep closer in hopes of getting a clearer shot.
 "You don't even like football!" The boy says desperately to his sister as he fails yet again to get the ball from her.
 "I like volleyball." The girl answers as she nimbly twists out of his way yet again.
 "Doesn't count, when do you ever see a volleyball match on T.V?!" The boy protests.
 "It does in America." The girl retorts. She sticks her tongue out at him with a grin and the man laughs quietly to himself at the 6 year old's sharp mind.
 "Here, catch!" The girl says to her brother, finally deciding to take pity on him and share the ball. She's about to throw it when a sharp snap! comes from the trees and the children spin around with wide eyes.
 The man curses and the video footage goes wild as he lost his balance on a twig and tries to regain it. He tries to retreat into the bushes but it's too late, he's been detected. The video camera swings back from the clear blue sky again to catch the sharp green eyes of the girl just as they latch onto the figure of the man in the trees. Her eyes widen and she gasps, nudges her brother and his baby blue eyes lock onto the same position as hers. Somehow, as only siblings can, they understood eachother immediately and begin to count to three.
 Their mother frowns in concern as, ball long forgotten, the children creep towards the trees and suddenly, on the count of three, they launch on top of the man in thee trees.
 "Daddy!" They scream with grins firmly plastered on their faces and they tickle him relentlessly. Despite his height their father cannot free himself of the little monkeys, and only just manages to peel them off long enough to stumble out into the open with the video camera, before they launch themselves on him again and they fall on to the grass in a large, limbs-sprawling, giggling heap. The father still cannot break away from his children and he finally surrenders to them with a laugh and they sit up breathlessly.
 "Mummy said you'd only get here next week!" The girl exclaims in joy as she clambers onto his lap.
 "I thought I'd surprise you." He explains and smiles wistfully at his children for a moment. "Well? Did I surprise you?" He suddenly demands and tackles them down to the ground again with a wicked grin.
 "Yes!" They squeal in joy and he pulls them up again after tickling them. He sighs happily and kneels on one knee in front of them to get to their height. They look at him adoringly, the traces of laughter still lingering on their young faces, and he pulls them both to him in a bear-hug.
 "Have you been good for your mother?" He asks and both mumble their yesses into his shoulders, their faces smushed against him.
 "Good." He says and kisses the tops of their heads, squeezing them even tighter for a second before letting them go. "Now lets have the best summer ever." He says to them with a grin and they walk towards the house with his arms around their shoulders.
 "But you said that last year. How can this year be "better" if last year was the best?" His daughter asks sceptically and her father playfully clips her over the ear.
 "Because it will, cheeky." He says fondly and turns to his son as their mother comes down to join them. "Matt, how's the football coming along?"
 "It's okay, I prefer martial arts now though, like your old fighting tapes! Anna has an awesome high-kick though!" He says enthusiastically and his sister holds her head up smugly.
 "Well that's fine, sure. But you don't always have to follow what I do you know." Their father says but the train of conversation is lost as their mother comes up to them. "Maria." He smiles cautiously as he greets her and Maria smiles down at her children.
 "No, you never have to follow your father." She says to them.
 "But daddy kicks butt." Anna says with utter surety and her parents laugh awkwardly.
 "Neil, a word?" Maria says tightly to her husband.
 "Sure...you two wait here while I talk to mummy, ok?" Neil says to Matt and Anna. "When I get back we'll go and see what car Harold got for me this time, okay?" He says and walks with his hands in his pockets towards the house with Maria, a smile playing on his face as Matt fist-pumps the air with a growly "YEEESSS!" and Anna puts her hands in the air like she just scored a goal.
 "I bet it's a Boxter!" Matt calls after his father as he jogs up the stairs to the veranda. Neil wobbles his palm in the air as an "almost".
 "A Lamborghini?" Anna shouts and they watch with bated breath as he goes to follow their mother through the thick, reinforced glass door to the house. As he steps in the doorway he puts his hand in the air, wobbles, and sticks his thumb in the air. Anna screams in victory and the siblings jump up in the air in excitement.
 Their laughter echoes back on the video camera that's still filming, laying on it's side further down the garden, capturing the last moments of happiness that father and child will cherish forever.

The summer home, "Lily" as we called it, due to the amount of lilies in the gardens, was as confined as it was expansive. The back garden was entirely fenced off behind the hedge, and on both sides the garden had a 7ft wall that connected to the house, no gaps. The security-system was the best available, dad never cared about costs, not with his career, and there's no area of the house it didn't reach, and all the recordings were sent to a private server in dad's office, and when he wasn't there his partner François Huse who was stationed nearby, always checked in on us every 2 days.
 But we didn't care about all that, all we cared about was that we were all together, we had our dad back home for a few weeks and we would have "the best summer ever" every year, and it was our place in the sun.

http://youtu.be/W8lVPMWLCBQ?t=10s

But that video camera hadn't finished yet, it was still rolling and had one more moment to capture.
 As the door shut behind their parents with a resounding thud and click of the automatic lock, silence quickly fell on the garden and for some reason the summer heat and sun didn't feel so warm to the two siblings. Trying to shake off the apprehensive feeling they turned away from the house and began to walk back down the garden to their ball.
 "So...we both keep the ball?" Matt said lightly as they approached the abandoned camera, trying to lift the mood but Anna just nodded silently. She was about to say something herself when a loud smash of a vase came from behind them and they both ducked and covered their heads instantly, Anna falling to the ground in shock. They looked around and saw that their mum had thrown a vase against the lounge window, it hadn't broken it but it was still loud enough to get through the 3 inch glass. And now, so were their parents' voices. Maria had just about reached a screaming pitch and Neil was yelling back just as much.
 With faces pale in horror Anna couldn't help but let out a small whimper as she edged away from the view of the window slightly. They knew their mother had been tense lately but this was beyond what either of the children had expected.
 "It'll be ok sis, they'll sort it out." Matt said weakly to his younger sister, trying to put on a brave face. "Then we'll have a great summer with dad...you'll see." He said brightly, but neither of them really believed it. Not now.
 The shouting match between their parents had apparently reached it's height and they could see them clearly behind the window as their mum slapped their dad across the face. For a second it looked like he was going to hit her back but he held himself back and after a furious pause stormed out of the house. They heard the front door slam and then the sound of what Anna distinctly recognised as a Lamborghini engine roaring and driving off beyond their hearing range within seconds. Silence fell again but this time it was worse, the disaster had happened and now all that was left was the unsurety and helplessness of the two observers as their world began to fall around them.
 "Matt..." Anna suddenly said, her timid voice sounding like a foghorn in the silence.
 "Yeah?" Matt replied.
 "We'll always be together, won't we?" She asked, the sudden outburst of the argument making it occur to her that it could happen to anyone.
 "Of course we will. Always." Matt said firmly and focused on his suddenly vulnerable sister.
 "Always?" She asked uncertainly and Matt took her hand reassuringly.
 "Always." He repeated with certainty. He meant to grip her hand but instead the sweat on their hands, induced by both the heat and panic, made him slip and they ended up just clutching little fingers.
 Anna gave a small smile at the new handshake they'd invented and they stayed like that as they picked themselves up. "Always." She vowed and with a smile they went to pick up the ball that only minutes ago seemed so important to them, and headed towards their treehouse at the bottom of the garden, both knowing that the house wasn't a good place to return to right now.
 Still unseen in a patch of long grass, the video camera continued filming that precious moment that would come to shape their lives, and the last moving image it caught were the worn red sneakers and sleek brown trainers walking past it on either side.
 Their dad did return later and they all ate together (Maria claiming she was tired) in silence, and pretended nothing had happened for the rest of their holiday, but it was far too late.
They would later learn that that argument was because Neil had blown all of their money on getting the holiday just right for his family, and would now have to spend even more time at work to get enough back to live, which according to Maria was very inconsiderate towards her.
 Despite their hopeful outlook, this was only the beginning, and that handshake would become a traditional symbol between brother and sister that no matter what happened they still had eachother, that some day everything would be ok.
 When they had to sell their French villa to move to a new home in London, they clutched their little fingers just as they got into the back seats and pulled away to a new life, a stony silence between the two adults at the front. When Matt broke his leg in a karate lesson they were both attending, they did it over the hospital bed and had great fun with the wheelchair while he recovered. Their normal friends couldn't understand the close bond they had, that nobody else could get into or overcome, and even when they hit their teenage years the tradition still continued.
 When their mother started drinking heavily they could be seen doing it in their bedroom or behind the sofa when the arguments and shouting matches ensued; when Maria discovered that Neil was having an affair; when Anna broke up with her first boyfriend; when Matt broke up with his girlfriend; when their parents officially split and they favoured different parents over the case; when Anna began to suspect that Neil favoured Matt over her; when their mother tried getting with another man and only ended up becoming more of an alcoholic; at their mother's funeral after she'd committed suicide and finally when Matt left home to take on his spy training just like their father had brought them up and trained them to.
 It was their one assurance through life of sanity, somewhere in the darkness there was a place in the sun, and that they'd always be there for eachother. Always.

As they grew older Matt still looked like himself, baby blue eyes and a mop of brown hair, an indistinguishable mix between his parents. Anna, however, began to look more and more like her father; her blonde hair that was once just like her mother's darkened to the exact ash brown shade as her father's, the green eyes they shared stood out even more and the Roman nose become equally prominent, and she hated it. Because through it all Matt, always so protective and fair, trying to see both sides of the argument almost always favoured his father, after all Neil wasn't the one becoming a deranged drunk. But Anna saw the other side of it, she'd witnessed something first-hand that her brother hadn't while he was in his wheelchair. Always particularly good at sneaking around silently, Anna had caught her father with another woman in their house, and they saw her as she fled the room. Afterwards her father was more awkward and cautious around her, never sure what she was going to do or when she was going to burst, and so naturally he began favouring Matt guiltily, it was the one relationship he had that wasn't spoiled. But she didn't care, her unquestioning daughter's love and trust of her father had been torn to pieces and all that remained for Anna on the other side was a depressed, sometimes even violent, drunk. That her beloved daddy had caused. So she always favoured her mother's argument and when she killed herself, it was the last straw for Anna. She was 16 and her childhood aspiration of following in her father's footsteps as an MI6 agent was suddenly not so appealing. However she was -once- his star pupil, and though being multi-lingual, a proficient fighter and having an exceptional tactical mind - these weren't exactly talents needed for a normal job. And besides, she wanted to hurt him like he hurt her mother, she wanted revenge. So using his contacts and the knowledge that he'd given her, she left home and joined the other side, not even bothering to change her name - she wanted him to know exactly what she was doing.
 Though disagreeing with his sister Matt still understood why she was doing it, and even though they were now on opposite sides of the board as spy and criminal, the siblings still kept in contact every year with a handwritten letter at the very least. But father and daughter, once an inseparable pair, never spoke to eachother again.

Chapter 1:

In the streets and back alleys of the rough, warehouse district of a city a pair of size 4 red sneakers slapped leisurely along the dark and damp cobbles while chaos ran rampant behind them. A pair of larger and sleeker brown ankle boots jogged up beside them and were practically skipping in anxiety to get going while they were forced to keep at their pace.
 "Honestly Anna, don't you think we should pick the pace up a little?" Their owner asked while constantly looking at the fight between cops and mobster thugs behind them, his usually neatly styled and jelled dark blonde hair flopping around everywhere in the light drizzle. "Georgio isn't exactly known for his patience you know. Especially now we've just pricked his bum by selling out all his guards to the cops." He said as he looked back at the fistfight yet again and winced in sympathy as a cop delivered a particularly low blow to one thug's torso.
 "No, the moment you start running the enemy know they have you.