Kit - 3. Kit Chapter 3

The next two days were a mad rush, as we prepared all of the downstairs areas of the Villa for the forum, with the Ballroom to be the main event location, as well as using the Library and the formal Lounge room for smaller events, and the formal dining room, was turned into a magnificent dining experience, with seating for the thirty delegates, plus two additional seats for Marcus and I for the formal dinner, which included a four-member string quartet, playing a variety of classical music during the evening.

The whole youth forum went very smoothly, and ended in the late afternoon on Sunday, with a farewell afternoon tea, which the Prince attended unannounced, catching a lot of the attendees quite unexpected and not sure what to do, which made me chuckle, realising that is probably how I looked a few days ago when I first met the Prince for the first time.

As the Prince prepared to leave after making his speech to the Youth delegates, he motioned for me and Marcus to join him. “Finally, before I say goodnight and leave, I would like to especially thank your hosts for this event, Lord Marcus Dessewffy, and his good friend from his school, Master Kye Seabrook from Australia, for all of their hard work to get this wonderful location in order at very short notice. Goodnight,” the Prince announced to the youth delegates, who broke into applause.

Markus and I both blushed at the sudden attention, as the Prince slipped out of the room and headed back to the castle. Half an hour later, after the last of the youth delegates had left to return to their hotels or homes, we headed upstairs, where we had been staying for the past three days, and collapsed into the lounge chairs in the private lounge room, “Boy was that quite an effort to pull off, but I think we did ok,” I commented.

“Ok? Didn’t you hear what my cousin said? We did well in his words, and that is a lot coming from him,” Marcus replied, as his phone indicated an incoming text message. “Its from my cousin, inviting us over to the castle for lunch tomorrow,” Marcus announced. “Oh know, what am I going to wear?” I said dramatically, “You goofball, just smart casual, like he does silly,” Marcus said to me as he texted a reply of accepting the invite.

The casual lunch at the Castle, the following day, went fairly well, even though I was a little nervous for the time that I was there, as well as meeting the rest of the royal family. For the rest of the week, we did some hiking in the mountains, and at the start of the second week of the holidays, Marcus introduced me to sailing on the lake, which I found to be a bit of a challenge at first.

As we neared the end of our second week in Liechtenstein, I wondered what Marcus had planned for the rest of our holiday. “Right, now that we have pretty much exhausted everything to do in this small country, I have decided that we will go and visit a new place. Tomorrow, we return to St Gallen Airport, where we will fly to Zurich, and from there we travel to Stockholm, where we will be spending a week in Sweden,” Marcus announced to me.

“That is fine by me, but what about all the overseas travel stuff?” I responded, “Already sorted, you have a Visa already granted to enter Sweden, and my family will be joining us for part of the holiday, and are looking forward to seeing you again,” Marcus replied.

For the rest of my holiday with Marcus, I had a wonderful time in Sweden, exploring all the different places to see, and it was very sad when I had to return back home to northern Italy, but in a way, I was glad when I arrived back, as I had been on the go all the time.

Uncle Mathias was at the airport to collect me, and I told him all about all of the incredible things that I did, including meeting the Ruling Prince of Liechtenstein and his family, and the Youth Forum that I helped Marcus to host at his family villa. Uncle Mathias informed me that he has managed to get four days off work, so as to spend some time with me, and he planned to take me on a four-day trip cruising onboard a luxury yacht on Lake Como, where we were given the best of service during our time there.

We had breakfast and lunch onboard the yacht, while dinner was at a restaurant in a different part of the region each night, which was an interesting experience, with a wide variety of foods available. For the remainder of the Summer break, I kept myself busy at the local library, where I attended a number of Summer School short courses, one to improve my Italian and another to improve me German, plus I also did some art classes.

By the start of the new school year in August, I was a lot more fluent in both languages, and I had managed to improve my water colour painting in a big way. It was good to see Marcus again, and during our first lunch break on our first day back, he told me about all his boring time in Liechtenstein, missing his good friend, who was back in Milan, Italy, which made me laugh.

For all of the school year, Marcus and I stayed close, and often he would spend weekends at our place, instead of been stuck at the boarding house all weekend. During the winter holidays, Marcus introduced me to snowboarding and skiing, and I found snowboarding, a lot easier to do than skiing. In the summer holidays, I joined Marcus again to spend four weeks in Liechtenstein, meeting the Prince and his family on a number of times, as I tagged along to functions that Marcus had been invited to attend.

The following Christmas, Uncle Mathias and I spend Christmas in Scotland, which was a great experience, until the say that I had a very serious accident, while snowboarding in the highlands, just three days after Christmas. I didn’t remember what had happened exactly, only what Uncle Mathias informed me, that I had hit an object of some kind in the snow that sent me flying, and I landed on a small group of rocks, that broke a number of bones on my face, as well as my arm, wrist and collarbone.

I spent my sixteenth birthday in hospital, after just coming out of an 8-day coma, and it was another 16-weeks of surgery and rehabilitation before I was permitted to be released from hospital. In that time there, I had to have surgery to fix the number of bones in my face that had shattered, and I now have a number of plates replacing bone that was beyond repair.

Surprisingly the surgeons had made a whole new jaw for me, and I was now able to talk, sing, eat and drink normally again, although it took some time and a lot of physical therapy to be able to do all of those things again, and I was pleased to be not having to eat and drink through a straw no more.

As a result of this, including some plastic surgery, my face was now a lot different than what it was originally, and now looking at my passport photo and looking in the mirror of my face now, it is clearly two different faces, and the plastic surgeon at the private hospital in London had done such a good job, that there was no disfiguration, and there are only a number of very small and well-hidden surgical scars.

Uncle Matthias had to arrange for a new passport to be issues for me, because of the total change of appearance of my face, before we could even leave England to return to Italy. Uncle M had taken unpaid leave from his job to be with me for the whole time that I was recovering from the accident, and they were wanting him to return as soon as possible.

With it now being early May, and with just four weeks remaining of the school year, there was no point in returning to school, and I have been doing all of my school work by correspondence, while I have been injured and recovering, although for the first two months I was not able to do anything, until all of my bones had healed properly. I had kept in touch with Marcus via email while I was recovering, and even though he kept asking me to video chat with him, I wouldn’t let him, using the excuse that my face was still healing and it was hard to talk, and that it just needed time to heal.

After a week back at our home in Milan, I just relaxed, watched a lot of movies, and listened to audio books, when not doing my school work, until one day, I decided that it was time that I head back to school to let them know that I was healed and that I would be returning for the new school year.

I had messaged Uncle Matthias, to let him know of my plans, and he agreed that it was a good idea to reconnect with my school friends again, and wished me good luck with trying to convince them that it was me, and suggested that I take my passport with me for ID confirmation, which I had not thought of.

Catching a taxi to the school, dressed in a formal suit, I was a little nervous as I stood just outside the school gates for the first time in m any months, before taking a few deep breaths and starting to walk towards the administration building. Once inside I went straight to the enquiries counter, where Miss Lucinda Marinoni was working as she usually does.

In my now very fluent Italian, and with a big smile I greeted the receptionist, and asked if I may speak to the deputy principal. She stared at me for a few moments, then shook her head a little as to clear away any uncertain thoughts, before asking my name and what this was about.

I pulled out my passport and presented it to her, “It is you Master Kye! I was not sure when you entered, you look a little familiar, but not at all like you were before your accident, I am so glad to see that you have recovered,” she said to me in rapid Italian, which I managed to only just able to understand.

I thanked her for the kind words, and a few moments later, I was in the office of the Deputy Principal, going through the motions of re-enrolling into the school again, for the start of the new school year, in August.

Once it was all completed, I headed out of the building, with plans to have a quick look around the school, while everyone was still in class, before heading back home to the apartment, which I accidentally bumped into another student, as he passed me, and I stopped and frowned, when I realised that it was Marcus that I had bumped into. “Sorry mate, I am in a bit of a rush,” Marcus said in English, forgetting to speak in Italian, and this made me laugh a little.

“What is so funny?” Marcus asked me in English, sounding annoyed, “Nothing at all mate, I am sorry I bumped into you,” I replied, in Italian, wondering if Marcus would recognise my voice, as he started to walk away, then stopped and looked back at me and frowned.

“Kit, is that you?” Marcus asked me, still uncertain at all and I smiled broadly and nodded my head yes, and suddenly I was wrapped in a tight hug by my best friend. “I have missed you so much, and wow, you look so different,” Marcus added. “Yeah, I know, I had to have a new passport issued, or I couldn’t leave the UK, because my face is so different from all the surgery,” I replied.

“Have you come to re-enrol into school for next year?” Marcus asked me, and I nodded my head yes. “Mr Dewson, you have permission to take an hour off from school to spend some time with Mr Seabrook,” a voice called out, and looking in the direction of the admin office, we saw the Deputy Principal standing there, and we thanked him in unison, before heading off the school grounds.

For the next hour we sat in a nearby park and chatted non-stop, getting up to speed with each other’s lives, even though we had been emailing each other twice a week for the past few months, and when it was time for Marcus to return to school, he gave me a big hug, before rushing off towards the school, while I headed to a café to have some morning tea, before heading home.

“It’s been awesome to see you again my friend. At the end of the day, I will be requesting to spend the weekend with you and your uncle, can you clear it with him please. Marcus,” was the text message I received from Marcus just as I arrived home, and I smiled and forward the message on to Uncle Mathias, with an added note to it, “Request from Marcus, will this be, ok?” and a moment later, I received a text message to say that it was, and I messaged Marcus to let him know that his request had been approved.

The following day, just before 4pm, Marcus arrived at the apartment, with a weekend luggage bag with him, and he wrapped me in a tight hug again, as soon as I opened the door. “I’m not going to have any bones left, if you keep doing that,” I gasped as I tried to get enough air into my lungs, and Marcus just laughed before releasing me of his tight hold.

We had an awesome time together, just hanging out, not doing much in the way of activities, more of just taking long walks, and talking, like we had just left off from the conversation we had last time we saw each other before we headed off for the Christmas break. Marcus informed me that his cousin had been regularly requesting updates on how I was progressing with my recovery, which surprised me a lot, and I asked Marcus, to pass on my thanks for his enquiries, in regards to my recovery from the accident.

Uncle Matthias came home after a Saturday morning meeting, just as Marcus and I were preparing some lunch, and I noticed that he didn’t look at all happy. “Anything the matter Uncle?” I asked as I watched him put his jacket and shoes in the closet near the door. “Yes, take a seat Kye, I have some news from Australia, that I need to tell you,” Uncle M said to me.

“Err, I am going to go into the bedroom, while you talk about this,” Marcus said as he took one step in that direction, before I grabbed his arm and made me follow him to the lounge, where we sat down, and we watched as Uncle M paced a little bit before taking a seat in his recliner chair.

“There is no easy way to tell you this. My Aunty June, that is your Grandmother, passed away in her sleep last night. I had a call from my cousin, your mother early this morning while I was at work.

The funeral is on Wednesday, in four days’ time, so as to give us time to get there to attend it. My boss isn’t too happy about me taking a week off work again, after such a long break with your recovery, but since it is direct family, he has made an exception.

I spent a bit of this morning making all the travel arrangements, we leave tomorrow afternoon from Milan to travel down to Rome, before flying over to London, arriving there at 2230 hours. After an overnight in London, we leave on a direct flight leaving at 1150 hours on Monday, and arriving at 1225 on Tuesday morning, Perth time,” Uncle Mathias informed me. “Can Marcus stay until we need to leave for the airport here at Milan?” I asked. “Yes, we can drop Marcus back at the boarding house before going to the airport,” Uncle M replied.