Creative Accounting

Penelope Hampton puffed out her cheeks and looked out of the window. It was a dull, overcast, day. Not one to lift the spirit. Caesar was pacing, sniffing and pawing the front door. It was time for his walk and unless Penelope wanted to be cleaning her lovely cream coloured carpets later, it was time to take him.

As Penelope got up to grab her coat, Caesar scampered around her excitedly. Without thinking, she opened the front door as she put on her coat, an over-eager Caesar bolted out of the door.

“Caesar! Caesar! Come here! Caesar!” She fumbled for the left sleeve of her coat as she chased after the dog, the door closing behind her. Penelope pulled up short as she saw the dog leaping, pawing at a young woman just outside the house's front gate.

“Caesar! Get down! Caesar...I'm so sorry. Caesar!” Penelope pulled the dog off of the woman, who was laughing and playing with the dog, quite unperturbed. Penelope attached a leash to the dog's collar and pulled him back.

“Sorry...!”

“It's okay, he's a nice dog.” The woman smiled and walked away. Penelope moved off in the opposite direction her thoughts, directed by the young woman, turning to her daughter, Kate.

She had not seen her daughter for a week now, though she had spoken to her on the phone two nights before.

The divorce had affected her daughter deeply. Her once close relationship with her father deteriorating to a point where they no longer even kept in contact anymore. Penelope's emotions were mixed about the situation. Her feelings toward Claude were almost comical in their intensity. She hated him. He had destroyed her life.

Though they had been estranged for some years, the divorce papers landing on her doorstep – their doorstep, the family home - had come as a complete shock. In an ironic twist, it had also been Valentine's Day.

Not that she had expected a card. Claude had long since ceased any sort of romantic or even nice gesture of companionship. She had picked up the mail expecting, bills, a few cards for Kate, maybe she had an admirer or two.

A few junk mail flyers, cards for Kate and an A4 brown envelope addressed to her. Penelope was sure that it was not a card.

On receiving bad news, people have different reactions. Some accept it as part of life and meet it head-on, others go to pieces, screaming raging, looking for someone to blame.

Some are shocked almost to catatonia, shutting down temporarily, unable to deal with the situation. Penelope's reaction was a mixture of relief, grief and a little shock.

She had read the divorce papers and wept. It was not totally unexpected. She had not seen Claude for over a week, which at that stage of their union, was no longer unusual.

He used to tell her he was ‘working away’ or ‘on a business trip’ when away. Penelope did not know much about accountancy, but she was pretty sure the profession did not involve a lot of travel. Claude went from the occasional day or week, here and there, to a week every fortnight. When she had confronted him about it, he did not even bother to pretend.

“We live separate lives. What I do does not concern you. I pay the mortgage and all the bills. Our daughter has had the best upbringing and you have never had to worry about money, have you?” It had been a rhetorical question.

Even if she had wanted to answer, Penelope was too dumbfounded, struck by his callous disregard for her feelings. He had left the house. She had stood there feeling like a chastised school child. She watched the front door as if, by some miracle, he would realise his folly and come back and apologise.

That did not happen. As their relationship fell apart, ripping apart the facade they had been living, Penelope had to adjust to her new reality. Claude came back the day after the divorce papers had been delivered. Looking at Penelope, he knew she had received the papers.

They stood, holding one another's gaze. Penelope had been anxious, unsure what to say if anything. Claude wished she was somewhere else, his disdain for her pathos at the predicament, a thing he found difficult to disguise.

He nodded almost imperceptibly at her as though she were an acquaintance and disappeared into the bedroom. Some minutes later, he emerged with a suitcase, heading straight for the front door.

“What about Kate?” She pleaded. The door closed without a reply. He left it to her to tell Kate. When she told their daughter, Kate did not say anything for what seemed an age, though it could only have been a minute.

“How you doing mum?” She eventually asked. Penelope had been taken aback by the response. Kate could see her mother's surprise at her reaction but, as she explained, it was not as though they – her parents – had a close and loving relationship. Ever since Kate had gone away to university, even before that, her parents had seemed like strangers sharing a mortgage.

She had barely seen her father over the past two years and when she did the encounters were civil rather than emotional. The two of them were very much alike. Kate guessed that this was what created the tension between them, that and his treatment of her mother in the last few years.

They had been so close once. When she thought about that, Kate felt both sadness and anger. Sad at having lost that relationship, never to be the same. The anger was at being duped by such a callous and duplicitous man.

Angry at the shame of knowing that she had the same characteristics within herself, knowing that she could, quite easily, act with the same selfish disregard for those who expected and deserved better. She did not want to be that sort of person. She did not have to be that sort of person.

******************************************************

Stella Braden was a beautiful young woman. A mesmerising vision, who would turn the heads of both men and women, wherever she went. Having graced the planet for twenty-four years, and always having had that effect on people, Stella was oblivious to it.

She was used to strangers approaching her and fawning, salivating, gushing about her looks - “I can't live without you!” “you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen!” “Oh.....my....god!” - she had heard every compliment and line, crude pick up, dodgy job offer, not to mention the marriage proposals.

At five feet eight and a half inches, weighing sixty kilos, Stella had breasts which regularly took attention away from her face, hips and a behind that moved as though they had their own funky little band.

She had the slim, toned legs of an Olympic high jumper and her skin glowed, a mocha-bronze type of colour, a complexion inherited from her Hawaiian mother. Her eyes were bright green, contrasting with the clear, healthy whites, the only other thing, along with her height, that pointed to her deceased, Irish father's heritage. Her hair was black, like her mother's, and shoulder-length most of the time.

Stella was not only a beautiful-looking woman, but she was a lovely person as well. She had a positive outlook on life and always looked for the good in every situation, every person, a smile never far from her face.

She saw life as the best gift there was. There were few things which Stella could not find a positive side too, rare the person she could not see a grain of goodness in.

There was one person who, for some reason that she could not fathom. He unbalance her psyche and challenged her perceptions, her core beliefs. That person was her mother's boyfriend, Claude Hampton.

At the hospital, Stella approached the reception.

“Hi, could you please tell me which ward Claude Hampton is in?” The nurse behind the reception repeated the name as she type it on the keyboard. She focused on the screen a moment.

“If you go along this corridor, to the end and turn left, take the lift to the third floor. He's in Leamington ward.” Stella thanked the nurse and walked down the corridor. In the lift Stella watched as the numbers flashed for the floors, she did not notice the gaped mouth male nurse ogling her, even though he was less than a metre away.

As the door opened for the third floor, Stella was engulfed by a sudden foreboding. There was something about Claude that got under her skin. Seeing a sign for Leamington ward, she followed the sign’s direction.

In the ward, she looked left and right as she sought Claude. About halfway down the ward, she found him. He looked frail and poorly. His physical presence seemed diminished by the wheelchair he sat waiting in. Stella approached him.

“Claude? It's me...Stella. Are you ready to go?” Claude looked up at the sound of her voice and smiled. Stella gasped silently as her eyes met his. There was no life in his eyes, they seemed utterly soulless and betrayed no recognisable emotion.

“Hello Stella. Don't you look pretty?” Claude murmured. The stroke had affected his right side, his speech noticeably slurring, his face mildly lopsided.

Stella tried to hide her shock. She smiled a little not knowing what else to do. Somewhere deep in her mind, she could see the humour in his comments, given his somewhat horror show-esque look at the moment.

She felt her hands sweating and her ears burning. Her discomfort at that moment made her wish that her mother had been able to pick up her own boyfriend. She quickly positioned herself behind the wheelchair.

“Shall we…go?” She steered him out of the room.

*******************************************************

The wedding had been beautiful. Mia had stayed towards the back of the church. Bobbi had wanted her to be more upfront, sitting near the family. Mia had declined. She did not want to be in such close proximity to all that emotion. Keeping her own in check was difficult enough with so many memories swirling around on the day. She knew her normal level of control would be hard to maintain in the church.

It was estimated that the human mind has sixty-thousand thoughts in a day. In her puberty, when her ability first manifested itself, Mia would be under constant assault from all around her. Every person who passed her, or was even close to her, seemed to radiate their thoughts her way.

For a while it was a curse, a relentless onslaught of random words and pictures, battering at her. She would stay in her room, crying, her head buried under her pillow. Her parents thought she was going through some adolescent phase. They were sure she would grow out of it. Mia thought she would go mad – hoped she would go mad – anything to stop the cacophony of thoughts cascading down on her. Her salvation came from the most unlikely place. Uncle Milton.

Uncle Milton was perhaps one of the world's most miserable people. He was Lana's older brother and she had not seen him in nearly three years. They all thought he was crazy. He lived like a hermit and rarely ventured out of his home. Not that anybody knew where his home was. Nobody knew how he made his money, though Lana suspected it was through computing.

The girls never got to know him very well. Bobbi, who was six years younger than Mia, had only seen him twice in her short life. He hated David, a vicious rage welling up in him every time he laid eyes on her sister's husband. David opened the door to a glare from his brother-in-law.

“H..hello Milton, how are you?” Milton pushed past him, striding into the house. He walked around as though searching for something. He walked into the kitchen, where Lana was preparing dinner.

“Milton? What are you doing here?” Milton ignore her and went upstairs. He opened Mia's bedroom door slowly. He could see her small shape under the bed covers in the darkened room.

“Get up. Get up! You need to get up!” Lana was behind Milton.

“What the hell are you doing?! Leave her alone!” He ignored his sister moving closer to the bed. “It's like hearing....you don't hear everything do you? Because you don't want to. This is just the same. You've got to control it. Get up and block it out.”

David grabbed Milton, pulling him from the bedroom. Milton pushed him away and dashed down the stairs.

“Block it out! That's all you have to do. Now get up!” Milton disappeared out of the front door. Mia got up.

That had been a long time ago and, for the most part, she never suffered like that again. She had learned to block out the emotions of those around her. She even blocked out her own. Crowds were still difficult. Especially, gatherings such as this one; family. With all the history, plus the heightened emotions a wedding brought, Mia felt this could be a very tiring day.

She also knew, deep down, that she did not want to get close to Raine’s husband-to-be. She had never met him, never laid eyes upon him until the day of the ceremony.

Gerald Adam Drubber. That was his name. Raine Drubber, Mia thought, or Raine Drubber-Scott, or would it be Scott-Drubber? It did not matter. As long as Raine was happy. As estranged as they were, Mia still wanted her big sister to be happy.

That is why she did not want to get too close to Gerald Adam Drubber. She did not want to be in his head, to know any secrets, dark or otherwise. On this occasion, she would embrace wilful ignorance and trust that her sister was wise enough to have picked a good life partner.

The organisation of the wedding was very well handled. The reception was less than one hundred metres from the church. So, as the photographer lived his dream of a Vogue fashion shoot, most of the guests made their way to the reception hall, Mia included. She was not one for photo ops.

The room was set out beautifully, the tables covered in crisp white cloths, all with floral centrepieces and candles. The tables had been staggered in such a way so as everyone could, without too much effort, see just about anyone in the room. It was very professional and Mia could not help but be impressed.

She looked about the room, her eyes alighting on a woman who seemed to be directing proceedings. She was a dark-haired, attractive woman, in her forties, Mia guessed, though she could probably have passed for late thirties.

Mia thought she looked Filipino or Maui maybe. The woman looked at her watch and frowned, a pensive look crossing her face. As she watched the woman, a thought jumped out at Mia. She wondered who ‘Claude’ could be.