Soul Mates. The Beginning.

by Christine Wood

  That’s no surprise, as that’s where we had our tryst and so her baby is not my child. I breathe a sigh of relief, though I am still insisting on the paternity tests to be done and I am saddened, which confused the hell out if me. Surely the feelings I should be feeling were those of elation? I do not want to see Gina, nor the child and Henry is arranging for their things to be taken to a hotel, from where Gina’s mother is to be flown home to Italy with the child, Gina, a nurse, and yes two security guards, just to make sure she gets to the hospital. I am paying for the best care for Gina and paying her mother a generous settlement on the child, it isn’t the child’s fault and Gina’s mother is poor, the kid it is not to blame for having Gina as it’s mother.

  I fall off the wagon for a stiff and much needed drink. I send Bella news that I am not the father of the child and I hope she gets back to me. I wish she would, though Luis has said to give her time, the smack Gina gave her hurt her and blacked her eye, I wasn’t even aware she had been hit, let alone marked. I am having a few days at the ranch, relaxing and riding. I also supervise the transportation of two horses for Bella, the birthday gift Coffee along with my ‘sorry for ruining your trip here horse’ he is called Gallant and is my prized stallion Aztec, so she can start her own stud in Spain, it is the least I can do. Then I spend time seeing to the hotels in Mexico and then seeing to the other refurbishments on the Home Hotels, the first one is about four weeks from completion. Good old Dad is fuming at the rebranding of my new cheap and cheerful hotels that are opening up next to his exclusive and upmarket establishments, something he bends my ear about daily hell, some days it’s all he does all day long. I screen his calls after the tenth call of the day to call me an ungrateful bastard. In his eyes I am, in mine I am just the boy he forgot about, until it suited him.

  I am keeping my days busy and carrying on, and though I have feelings like no other for Bella, it’s for the best that I keep the distance needed. It would never have worked, because the look as she saw Gina and her hands all over me ruined it, I was reaping what I sowed. I am moving to Australia for the time being and concentrating on the business of mining. It’s got a whole lot bigger than I anticipated and the seam we hit, is massive and bringing with it a whole plethora of problems to the area, with the new jobs, comes the need for new houses, new businesses, and a whole new community is springing forth and the economy here is booming. So, I am opening hotels here too, and investing heavily in real estate in the area of Yangaroo, in Western Australia. My home for who knows how long.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  Bella:

  As the wheels lift and we are safely in the air, I run to my bedroom and lock the door and I cry. I cry over something I had no control over, I have control over nothing, only me. I sob so hard I am sick, my breakfast makes a return and I feel happy, all that stodgy food was making me fat, and that’s why he didn’t like me, even though she was heavily pregnant, she was skinny, all his women are skinny, I will be skinny I will watch what I put in my body, I will be how he wants me to be, skinny. As we are coming into land, I sit back down.

  “Miss Humphries your belt please...” Argh the Luscious Luisa, she has a few pounds she could lose, big boobs and backside, that’s why she was not his type too fat. “...about the letter Miss Humphries?”

  “What letter? Sit down and stop worrying, besides, his girlfriend turned up expecting his baby, you are well off out of it, he’s a womaniser apparently?” She sits down as Tanner looks at my eye.

  “I fell of a horse Tanner and you have to agree, or lose your job, what did I do?”

  “Fell off a horse Ma’am, really is that going to explain the black eye?”

  “Yeah, I’ve had a couple of throws from horses, Daddy doesn’t like it but doesn’t question the falls, just gets mad that I get back on the bloody horses, besides you and Henry slipped up, and I don’t want to lose you now that I have you so well trained.”

  “Miss Humphries, if you’re sure, then thank you?”

  “Positive, and I had a great time and it was fun. Christopher was an amazing host and his ranch was beautiful, I don’t want them to know about the she devil in his kitchen, do you hear?”

  “Yes Ma’am, but will Mr Holland not inform your father?”

  “I will phone Luis and tell him my side of the story, and tell him to tell Chris to keep away, and for a long bloody time. She was a maniac, and he was blaming it all on her, what man does that? Shit it was like it was all her fault. He stuck his dick in her, so he’s as culpable in all this as her. If you sleep around, male or female that shit happens, or as in this case babies happen, enough now, I have a headache, remind me never to want to have sex ever again.” She sniggers and I think thanks God for my turning my light and womanhood to celibacy!

  We come into land and dad’s cars are there to pick us up. I make a harried call to Luis, and I explained everything, he gulps and says he will do as I ask, and he will contact Christopher for me. I emphasise the need for him never to contact me again. The ride home is long and boring compared to the reception I get when we arrive back at the hotel. It turned into a rather heated row, about how I should have been more careful, then poor Tanner took some flack, and I had to point out that horses don’t come complete with seat belts, and poor Tanner could not sit on the horse with me, given she hates horses and dad should thank her for saving my damned eye. I was very lucky she was even up on one because she was able to help get me back, she got his apologies. Dad then argues that there needs something that needs serious investments in a workable seat belt for saddles. I will get right on it Dad I say.

  The next few days here were boring, and at last I was going home and putting the good ole U, S of A, behind me. I had no reason ever to come back here. My studies for the next term were damned easy, and the love hate thing with food was working, I’d already lost half a stone, seven whole pounds of fat had gone, but I could do with perhaps losing at least another stone, if not two? I thought I had hidden my dieting well, until one fateful day I forgot to put the lock on the door, Tanner caught me and I was whisked into rehab again.

  I was told that my horses would be gone if I did not sort myself out, that shocked me, because the horses I already had were all on an equestrian web site and were there to be sold. I wasn’t about to lose that part of my life and they were willing to resort to blackmail, after everything else seemed to fail, but they hadn’t heard about Kelly Bostaov, when they did this. The new girl in the group joined us after I’d had fifteen weeks of refusing to eat. She took an instant dislike to me, and I was not the only skinny girl in the group either, so that wasn’t why she hated me, not the cutter Sally, or the druggie Macey, not the sex addict Lorna or the other anorexic girl Tonya, yep it was a mystery alright, a real mystery as to why she only hated me? I was in there for twenty long painful weeks in total and after three weeks with her, I suddenly started to turn my life around.

  I spent a lot of time talking shit through and taking art classes as a form of therapy, and hundreds of group sessions with even more talking, shouting and fighting. Such fun I had being told I was a freak, by a ‘Jabba the Hutt’ lookalike, that was what I called Kelly, who was an overeater and who thought I was a freak, she even called me a retard, the nasty bitch was gunning for me. Fuck me, I nearly killed her when she said I didn’t stand a chance of ever getting a man, they would only see me as nothing more than a walking skeleton. I’d never be a woman to them, nor would I ever get a man, why would they want me, who would want to screw me for fear I’d snap if he tried. She had men pay her to feed her, so she was way more fucked up than me. She said I wouldn’t be able to have sex ever again with my boyfriend, he wouldn’t wait that long for me to fatten up, and besides I’d be dead of starvation and never get to see him again. A man, who in her opinion was just a figment of my imagination, a dream that I would never have, because if he was real, he would want a woman, not a skinny arsed child, that was a low blow. I knew I was too young she didn’t need to tell me that I knew alrea
dy.

  What did she think I was a whore for food like her? I was denied a visit from Mum and Dad after we fought, and I had a bruise to my face and a sore body, because the damn Jabba Bitch sat on me, and I couldn’t move, damn that hurt me so fucking much. My swearing whilst here was very eloquent and tasteful, fuck was my new word and used a lot as in fuck off, fuck you, thanks a fucking lot for nothing, fucking hell and fuck no… Then after even more weighing and more talking was done, and if I never speak again about my very valid, in my opinion, reasons for watching my calorie intake, it will be a day too soon. I found out too from these sessions that Kelly had been horrifically abused. So, I quit being a bitch and listened, she’d suffered horrid things done to her at the hands of her uncle.

  What the hell had happened to me was nothing. She told me I was to grow the fuck up, I was not a stupid girl, I was bright and had a brain, she told me my problems were in my thinking I wasn’t good enough for him. I was, and why did I never think it was him who wasn’t good enough for me? I was stupid to let him ruin my life, what was he? A man too old for me, way too over sexed and he didn’t want me, it was no big deal, it certainly wasn’t anything to starve myself over, because he wasn’t worth it. She went on her extra-long rant and relished telling me what she thought I needed to hear. I could and should control my studies, my horses, my life, not what I put in my body or didn’t. I needed to put my private education to good use, and grow the fuck up, wow I thought Kelly was going to bust a gut as I whined about how the man I loved only liking skinny women and I needed to do the things I did to get him back, wow what a session that was. Kelly and I were never great discussion buddies, but I did listen and I learned there were far greater problems in the scheme of things, than being skinny for a man. I grew the fuck up like she said.

  I actually believed everything she said to me over those fraught three weeks, and I finally began to see the light when I saw his picture in a magazine. No food magazines were allowed there were no fashion magazines, so no Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, or Vanity Fair their models were skinnier than I was. No, I was reading a nice copy of Emigrating to Australia, one of the nurses was moving there with her family, and had dumped her whole magazine collection on the residents lounge table, and there he was, right there in black, white and colour, with his date, a very curvy voluptuous model, she was his date for the event. The magazine article featured a six-page spread about the opening of his new housing estate, his new real estate agency and his charitable works. She was not a skinny freak like me, no she was a proper woman complete with boobs, a bum and a body to die for, and she was beautiful and blonde.

  I’d had enough and I started to eat, and over the final two weeks I ate more and weighed more, my summer spent in rehab was enlightening and much needed, and though I will never be hundred percent friends with Kelly, she did more for me in five weeks, than the whole clinic did for me in fifteen weeks. When Mum and Dad came to see me, I asked that they helped to pay for Kelly to get the more time and help she needed, as she could only afford to be there two more weeks and needed to be there to help her lose weight. She was doing really well and had lost a massive two stone in the five weeks she’d been there she just needed longer.

  Dad agreed, so part of my debt to her was paid, she smiled as I left and said she was sorry, and that she was as she said, ‘a bit marfie?’ Her cockney accent was so broad. I think she meant, she was gobby like me? She was to stay and get as much help, as she needed, and the aftercare too, and the use of Dad’s gym in the hotel near her home in Bethnal Green, with an added personal trainer, she didn’t f-in Adam and Eve it, so, I guess she was shocked?

  I left rehab a little body heavier and a little lighter in the thought department about Chris, and with my new life in Spain to look forward to, I decided in putting the childish notions of Chris behind me once and for all. My ponies from both Chris and Dad were delivered and I was shocked to see an extra guest in my stables, and wonderful Aztec stallion, called Gallant, and with their paper work, was a thick letter from Christopher. I childishly ripped it into pieces. I accepted Gallant and rode him more than any of my other horses. He was a head strong at first, and did not like to be challenged, had I not known better I would have sworn he was the horsey counterpart of me. Strong headed and knew better.

  I’d received word via text he was not the father before I was admitted to Barfin-Up-Prison and I was happy for him, he’d had a wakeup call, because had he been the father, that woman would have been in his life forever. Luis and I had hardly spoken, he was too busy being a lawyer in New York, but Rachel came to see our Dad the week I returned from Barfin-Up-Prison, and yeah, she wound me up no end, taunting me about getting caught barfing, and being a failure in that too, despite her showing me how to do it correctly.

  The one good thing about her visit, Dad had heard all that conversation too and was saddened, so yeah fuck off Rachel, she was told her money was to be stopped until she did a nursing course. God help the patients she’d kill them, not cure them. She sulked off and told him to screw himself, so I guess she’s not doing the nursing course then? Good riddance to bad rubbish. We are living back in Spain, Dad had bought a new ranch here and we moved back to hot and calming weather in Spain, gone the wet cold British summers and back to the sunshine, yeah for me. I would be attending college in Zaragoza and from there would be doing my university degree in Germany, my life was mapped out and Christopher Holland was not in it anymore, in my heart yes, just not my life.

  My life carried on and was a harsh, yes it was a damned awful time for me and my family. What with my personal food hell, we were also hit by yet more bad news, when Mum got breast cancer, but thankfully she caught it early enough, and sailed through the operations and treatments like a trouper. She was given the all clear and word that she was in remission, by the time of my eighteenth birthday came around and would you believe they actually suggested I had a coming of age party! Were my parent’s two morons? The last two birthdays didn’t go too great, did they not remember the crying I did and what I did after Chris let me down, apparently not?

  “Bella, we have to celebrate, Mum has got the all clear and you have passed your college course nearly, we need to have a little fun Bella and laugh and drink let your dark hair down and have some fun.”

  “Alright Daddy, as long as he isn’t on the list and don’t look at me, you know he and I had that big fall out.”

  “I still don’t know what about though? I imagine about paying for the other horse he gave you? He asks about you all the time Bella, all the time. Give him another chance?”

  “Daddy do whatever you want, invite him, don’t invite him, he will be too busy to come to a kid’s birthday party.” Or remember the promise he made, that when I was legal and if we were not with other people, we would take things further, yeah like he’d remember that. I still keep up with the tabloids, even though he lives in Australia, he still puts it about, though these do seem to be models and rich daughters of business friends. Still I lust after him like a sappy child, damn him he’s going to ruin another landmark birthday. “Right I’m going to the stables for a run out, which hotel are we having the ball in this year?” Not Australia, not Australia?

  “New York and the responses to the invites this year have been wonderful, and yes Christopher has said he will try to get here, though he’s very busy, but he said he’d try.” There it goes my heart has smashed again. He’d try, man speak for something else more important came up. I waved to Mum as she sat on the veranda, taking in the warm Spanish sunshine. I am going to miss this when I go to Munich, it’s cold the rainy there, and there’s no horses either. Four years is a long, long time without them.

  I take Chocolate for a ride and as I look back, my new protection officer is struggling on Gallant, Julie Preston. She is nothing like Tammy Tanner, this woman I boss around and she goes straight to Bedford and whines like a bitch. Tammy left to marry Henry, so she now lives with Chris, and though I wanted to go to the wedding, he was t
he best man so I didn’t go, Luis went to see his mate be best man and Dad went too, Mum didn’t as she was stuck with me, besides she was hairless and crabby at the time.

  “Four feet rule Preston? Get a move on, you said you could ride when you got the position as my protection officer, what did you ride, the carousel?”

  “Ma’am, I ride, just not as well as you and this damned horse is playing up.”

  “Here take Chocolate then. She is a being quiet today.” As we swap over, there is a flash of light on the hillside, and Preston panics.

  “Get down here now.” I do as I am told. “Bedford, have we estate workers on the Northern ridge?” She speaks into her sleeve.

  “What’s going on?” I look towards the hill, I see a jeep and a man with a camera, and I think it’s no biggie, surely?

  “It is nothing to worry yourself about Ma’am.” She puts her hand over her ear piece, like I can bloody hear what they talk about. “Yes, a reflection from a mirrored object, on top of the ridge, negative the subject has not moved and is still there.”

  “Tell Bedford we are coming back.”

  “No Ma’am, the team are going around back, Bedford and Luis are nearly here Ma’am, please stay calm.”

  “I am calm, he hasn’t moved and I am sat on my arse in the Spanish sunshine on top of a damn ant’s nest, perhaps he’s just a walker? Why the sudden need for more protection, have there been more threats and more nasty letters?”