It was true what Jools was saying about Bec. She had such enviable high cheekbones and beautiful, almost translucent skin, the most magnificent bluest of blue eyes, vibrant and piercing, which almost closed when she smiled, and a generous natural mop of thick brunette hair. When the light caught her hair, it highlighted a deep palette of rich browns, ruby reds, and dark auburn colors.
“Now, what do you see: beauty, balance, and structure.”
“In comparison to your natural beauty, Jools, I feel a frump,” replied Bec rather despondently.
Taking in her friend’s caring face, Bec became acutely aware of Jools’s glow, her aura. Jools exuded health and wellness; it was impossible to miss. She obviously lived the naturopathic life that she preached. To Bec, Jools’s radiance made her just naturally beautiful. Using an artist’s eye, Bec took in her thick, shiny auburn hair, her deep brown eyes and her soft skin that was so flawless it needed no foundation, noting how it was subtly highlighted by her only concession to makeup: shiny copper lipstick with a hint of matching eyeshadow. Her delicate perfume gently wafted across from the other side of the desk, as subtle and soft as a lingering memory: sweet honey mixed with citrus; a warm, musky, rounded aroma that suited her perfectly.
Bec was inspired and thought, I want to look as good as you.
“Bec, you’re a beautiful person. Just stand back and take a look at yourself,” said Jools, holding the mirror up again. “You’re beautiful on the inside, you’re beautiful on the outside. Now, let’s get you healthy as well.”
“Jools, I want to look as healthy as you.”
There. I’ve finally said it, Bec thought to herself, as if she had just reached a crossroads and decided to walk a different path for a change.
“Sure Bec, that’d be my pleasure to guide and help you to achieve your goals. But please, never compare yourself to anybody. Be inspired by them yes, but always remember it’s all about you. The journey that you want to embark on to optimum health and vitality is your own personal journey, not mine. Only you can get to where you want to get to. And the fantastic thing is that you’ve now started on the road to the new you.”
“Sorry Jools, you’ve lost me a bit. I thought it was all about taking the correct supplements.”
“There’s a saying that I use a lot with my new patients: ‘The journey begins with the first step.’ And guess what, Bec? You’ve just taken it!” Jools’s tone lifted as she spoke, drawing Bec in with her enthusiasm and positivity.
“You’ve made a decision to improve your health. But contrary to what you may have thought, this isn’t just about taking a few magic bullets and whammo, you’re full of vim, vigor, and vitality. Instead it’s about changing the way you live. What you’re about to embark on is a journey, and a journey means change and confronting some demons along the way. And that’s where I’ll be there to help and guide you, every step of the way if you’ll let me.”
Jools reached over the desk and reassuringly took hold of Bec’s left hand, which she had placed lazily in front of her, giving it a gentle squeeze. She had wanted to help Bec for months but there had never been a suitable time and place, and now finally the time had arrived. Bec was in front of her, listening intently.
“We’ll do this together, Bec. We’ll go on a journey to find you a better place.”
“You make it sound difficult . . . but exciting at the same time. When can we start?”
“As I said, you’ve already started, Bec. But there’s another side to this that’s equally important.” Jools needed to gently change Bec’s headspace and plant the seeds of change that would germinate over the coming months.
“So let’s start at the beginning. Before you can even hope to achieve optimum health and vitality, first you must accept the fact that your journey will be all about finding the correct life balance between the three pillars of health—body, mind, and soul. We need to work on all of these, not just your physical body. I want this also to be a spiritual journey of self-discovery for you. I want you to find the real you; your inner self.”
And to do this, Bec, you need to break free from the lifetime of negativity and second-place-is-all-you-deserve mentality Esther has instilled into you, thought Jools.
“Remember, living a healthy and productive life is about achieving balance in everything that you do,” continued Jools. Helping people find their true selves and inner peace was all in the job description of being a naturopath. And the fact that Jools had an almost unnatural psychic ability passed onto her by her mother, and her mother’s mother, and in the maternal line for hundreds of generations before that, enabled her to tap into a patient’s inner self.
“You can have a healthy body, but still die of a broken heart. For your total well-being it’s vital that we address all aspects of your life. To wake up feeling fresh and alive, just busting to face the new day, you don’t only need to be in optimum health, but you also need to feel good—no, great actually—about yourself. That’s what we need to achieve together.”
Bec was already beginning to feel more upbeat.
“Bec, we’ve known each other for quite a while now and I think I have a fairly good indication of what makes you tick and where your health’s at. So if it’s okay with you, the first thing I’m going to suggest is that I give you a few pills and potions to get you started. Is that okay?”
It was all sounding good and Bec was in total agreement. For once, someone was listening to her.
“Sure, great.” At this stage Bec would have walked barefoot over broken glass if Jools had suggested it.
Bec was blown out by how thorough, understanding, and caring Jools had been. She had expected the consultation to last for about twenty minutes and walk out with a few pills, but instead she glanced at her watch and realized she had been talking to Jools for nearly an hour and a half. Definitely money well spent as far as she was concerned, but she was now going to be late for her late morning catch-up coffee with her old work colleagues.
Maybe this is what Jools meant when she suggested that I stop running around trying to please everybody else and start having some”me time” for a change? So I’ll be late. Big deal, Bec thought to herself as she was in Jools’s reception paying her account.
As Bec was walking out to her car with a bag full of pills and potions, she sent her girlfriends a text to say she was tied up and wouldn’t be able to make it for coffee. She felt guilty, but strangely good at the same time. Bec then took off to an eclectic little coffee shop around the corner from Jools’s clinic and sat at a table by herself, ordered a large cappuccino, picked up a copy of today’s paper from the rack, and just sat back and chilled.
Yeah, this feels good, she thought. I could get used to this. Me time.
“Hey Sean, it’s me.” As if he didn’t know. His wife’s info had come up on the screen of his mobile phone.
“I’ve just had the most amazing consultation with Jools. She’s unbelievable. I kid you not, I’ve never had such a life-changing experience.”
Bec was pumped and itching to share all the details with Sean.
Oh shit, here we go again. Another fookin’ journey of self-discovery. I wonder how much this one’s going to cost me, thought Sean sceptically.
Sean was a total cynic. He’d been through this a hundred times before, and Bec’s reinventions had never changed a thing in their lives other than to lighten his bank account. And besides, he knew it was all mumbo-jumbo bullshit. Jools was a nice person, but when she preached her crap about”being in touch with your true self” and”being one with some weird universal energy,” well, it was all just crap, wasn’t it? Life was about bricks and mortar and two-by-four pieces of timber, not a higher being who was going to see us all reborn as ants.
So Sean couldn’t help himself when he sarcastically replied, “Every time you go on another one of these journeys to find yourself you end up going nowhere new, it costs me a shitload of cash, and you end up coming to the conclusion after a few months that the trip wasn’t
worth the effort.”
“Sean, you’re such an insensitive prick. Don’t you have any finer feelings? Any understanding about what makes the world tick?”
“Sure do, sunshine. It’s all about earning enough to pay the bills, and then having a bit left over at the end of the day to play with. Bec, unless you can tap into that universal power of yours and convince him, or it, to pay our bills, I’ll just keep plugging on, earning a dollar, and I’ll leave you to look after the other side.”
“Sean, it’s different this time. Jools really made sense. She made me realize that I’ve got to stand up for myself, and to Mum, and stop letting her get to me. And that I need to find some me time.”
“Bec, I know I’m just your husband, but I’ve been telling you that for years. Your mother says jump, and you don’t even question her. You just automatically say, ‘how high.’ And your sister Naomi? Well, now that’s another bloody story.”
Sean and Naomi never saw eye to eye. Naomi always thought Sean was just a common Irish bricklayer. A blue-collar ne’er-do-well. And Sean in his usual way played up to her. Much to Bec’s disgust, Sean even had the temerity to tell Naomi early on in the proceedings that she was a spoiled, stuck-up bitch who needed to stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with her life. Which went down like a ton of bricks and set the tone for the relationship between them right to this day.
Sean was getting bored with the conversation. He had other, more important things to deal with than airy-fairy bullshit.
“I feel good about this,” continued Bec in an insistent tone. “You’ve got to ride with me on it.”
“Yeah, all right, we’ll talk about it in a month. Now I’ve got to go.”
“Oh Sean, cut me some slack!”
“Okay, if you’re still positive then and all’s good, then maybe I’ll change my mind. Remember, you don’t exactly have a good track record when it comes to reinventing yourself. You usually end up fatter and unhappier than you were before you started.”
Sean’s words cut deep, but Bec held her tongue.
This time I’ll show you, Sean O’Rourke. You just wait and see.
“Sean, just before you go, I need to run something past you.”
“Yep? But make it quick, will you. I’ve got a concrete pour happening in half an hour and I need to check the formwork first.”
“Well it’s important, Sean. I’ve been thinking about what Jools said on our girls’ walk the other day, you know, about Rishi’s bashing and the effects on our business.”
“Bec, not this again. Just let sleeping dogs lie, would you. We’ll talk about it tonight if we have to, okay?”
“No, I need to tell you something that you can think about today, then we’ll talk about tonight. Good compromise?” Emphasizing the word”today,” Bec’s newfound, more assertive self took over, and she felt nervously good about it. Uplifted even.
Sean’s actually listening to me!
“Yeah, shoot,” said Sean, realizing that Bec wasn’t about to back off.
“Well, I’ve been joining the dots. The more I bring everything together, and add in what Paul and Steve have been telling you . . . well, I just can’t get it out of my head that they’re not being totally up front with us.”
“Bec, they’ve told me that everything’s in hand and going according to plan. They’re the financial guys. I just build the bloody things.”
Bec was gaining more confidence by the minute.
Jools was right! I have to be more assertive and stop letting people walk all over me. And Sean’s actually listening to me!
“I know you’re not the questioning type of person, but I think you trust Paul and Steve too much to do the right thing.”
“Bec, we’re fine. The building’s going according to plan.”
“No Sean, it’s not the building that’s the problem. You’re doing well. It’s the effect of everything else on the business that’s happening around us. You know, the drop-off in real estate prices, the credit crunch by the banks, the anti-Australian sentiment in India. Well, it’s not good.”
Bec paused to catch her breath and center herself, drawing on the newly found confidence that Jools had awakened, then continued, “They’re pulling the wool over our eyes, Sean. You’re not being shown the whole picture. And this twenty-million-dollar loan Paul’s talking about. Well, I won’t be signing off on that one, that’s for sure.”
“Bec, as I said, we’ll talk about it tonight, okay.”
“No Sean, you’ll think about what I just said first, then we’ll talk.” Bec was uncharacteristically insistent.
“All I can say is, thank God that something good has come out of Rishi’s bashing. It’s opened my eyes to what’s happening. We’re not in as secure a position as Paul and Steve have told us.
“Trust me on this, Sean. Please,” said Bec. “It’s food for thought.”
With that, Bec let Sean return to his concrete pour and hung up. She picked up today’s paper again, picking up where she left off in the unfinished article that was calling her from the Features section.
“Excuse me,” she said and looked up at the barista. “That was so nice, can I have another coffee, please?”
Another twenty minutes of me time won’t hurt before I head off to the Brotherhood for the afternoon.
Like a giant silver worm, the train burst out of the dark tunnel into the daylight, shrieking and screaming, running at breakneck speed past weary graffitied walls, broken-down sweatshops, under bridges, looking into unkempt backyards and through the dirty windows of cheap apartment blocks, past disorganized storage yards full of battered forty-four-gallon drums and rusting machinery, past workers wearing bright orange neon vests leaning on shovels, but all Cait could see . . . feel . . . sense . . . was Rishi.
Staring vacantly out of the train, taking in everything yet seeing nothing, Cait shortened her field of vision and looked at her own reflection in the window, but the image wasn’t hers, it was Rishi who was staring back at her. He was ever present, blinding her to the moving picture of life that was rushing by outside the security of her carriage. The vista was flashing past in a mesmerizing blur, the repetitive, almost musical clickety-clack rhythm of the train speeding forward was numbing her senses and blinding her to everything other than what she was churning over in her head.
Rishi, Rishi. Rishi, Rishi. His name repeated over and over in Cait’s head in time with the clickity-clack of the wheels.
He was there, chatting to her, telling jokes, philosophizing, playing the fool. Her friend who she emphasized with, laughed with, saw bands with, studied with was in Cait’s mind, talking to her, playing with her emotions.
“Hey Caitie, you there? Come back to earth for a while,” said G. He was concerned about his daughter as he could sense a piece of her slowly dying inside, getting caught up on an inward spiral of memories that were leading nowhere.
“Oh, yeah . . . sorry Dad. I was off in another world there.”
Cait turned and faced G, diverting her attention away from the moving panorama outside. G immediately noticed that the sparkle and zest for life which usually shone from his daughter’s vibrant blue eyes was missing, instead replaced by a vacant stare that peered back at him though such sad, sad eyes.
“I just can’t seem to get Rishi out of my head, Dad,” said Cait. Memories of her friend being carted away in the ambulance were bruising her mind as the mists of sadness and concern cast a depressing mantle over her thoughts.
As G took in his daughter’s edgy, brittle voice, in his eyes she was suddenly a young, impressionable fourteen-year-old again who had just experienced her first rejection from the past week’s”boyfriend,” and she was devastated . . .
“Sweetie, you’ve been through a very traumatic few days. The whole family has actually, so it’s no wonder you feel like you do. Jools and I are shattered as well. So’s Dec in his own way. I know it’s hard, but try not to feel too bad about it. It’ll get you nowhere and certainly won’t help Rish
i get better.”
“Thanks, Dad. I know what you’re saying is correct, but it’s just so hard. Rishi just won’t go away. He’s always there inside my head.”
Cait paused to take a swig from her water bottle before continuing. Her mouth was dry, her voice almost a hoarse whisper. She was past crying; she had shed enough tears over the last few days to fill the Great Lakes. Now all she was left with was a cold void where warmth and friendship had existed less than a week ago.
Oh God, Rishi, I hope you’re going to be all right, thought Cait.
“Just go with your emotions for a while, Caitie. Let them guide you to where they want you to go. And talk about how you feel. You need to bring it all out.”
Cait looked down at the floor of the carriage, taking in the thin, worn carpeted floor where a thousand feet had trodden before hers and then as if on autopilot, running her fingers slowly through her blonde hair, threw a handful of hair backward off her face and looked up at her father.
“Thanks, Dad. I know you’re always there for me.”
G gave her a loving smile that radiated warmth and caring, wrapping Cait up in its glow. She leaned forward in her seat and grabbed her father’s hand which he had resting on his knee and squeezed it gently in a”I really appreciate you being here for me” manner.
Placing his other hand over the top of Cait’s, G said, “So tell me about it, Caitie. Tell me where your head’s really at right now.”
Cait paused momentarily, staring down at the protruding blue veins on the back of G’s hand. Then, as if she had just experienced an epiphany, she slid her hand out from his warming grasp, grabbed her water bottle and handbag and abruptly stood up. Grabbing the overhead storage shelf as the train jerked with a sudden sideways movement, Cait moved over to the other side of the carriage and sat next to her father, staring up at him like a flower searching for the warmth of the sun’s life-giving rays.
“Thanks, Dad. I really appreciate you just being there. But you’ve always been there . . . for all of us.” Cait leaned into her father and gave him a daughterly hug, finding comfort in the familiar sweet, slightly musky smell of his body. She was fourteen again and she needed her father’s strength and protective embrace.
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 12