COVER

© A Stranger on the Inside, Anthony A. Newman 2020 – 2023

 

Also by Anthony A. Newman

 

The Underworld Island

The Dark Horse

Nifty at 50

 

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81371 Munich
Germany

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QUOTE

 

 

“To live in this world, you must be able

to do three things: to love what is mortal;

to hold it against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go”  

La Préface

 La Préface

 

  Well, here we are, writing the introduction to what is now my third book: A Stranger on the Inside. The original was called, 'An Averagely Mundane Life, but decided to change it as I simply preferred the new title as it fitted better with the story. This one, exhausting as it has been at times, was fun to write. It’s about a girl who embarks on a journey …the rest I will leave for you to want to find out!

  Now, you may be a bit confused by the fact there is a Russian emblem on the front, and yet the inside has French chapter headings. As you start the book, which is almost entirely based in France incidentally, you will see how the Russian element manifests itself.

  How many of us remember the tensions between what was the Soviet Union, or the USSR, as they were also referred to, and the West in the 1970s and 80s? It seems an age away now, although, in more recent times, the hostilities and distrust between these two old adversaries have grown if anything. I guess friction that seems present and relevant with Russia was a drawing factor into what got me rolling that ball of an idea. Although, it wasn’t the initial one.

  The main character in this book is a young twenty-something woman. Like my second novel, The Dark Horse, I take much reverence from strong take life by the scruff of the neck females. They are usually underestimated, even at times under-represented and undervalued. However, what I wanted for Candide in this novel, was to show her as someone who was a reverse of the strong woman, Noemi, in The Dark Horse. Someone who had lived a tough but sheltered life, yet someone who desperately needed someone else, or something else to ground her. For me to get the true essence of what I wanted to bring across, I decided from the very start to write some of this novel in the first person. I think it best described her thoughts and emotions, hopefully capturing them with the honesty and sometimes rawness that I ultimately intended.

  The reason that this book was ever conceived was down to really two things. One was that I felt I had another compelling story to tell. The other was indirectly connected to the continued global pandemic which, even now still sweeps over the world and takes so much from us. This book was, in part, essentially a distraction, although it conclusively turned into an almost relentless endeavour. 

  So, this book, like the second, was written and completed during the COVID-19 pandemic in November 2021, and now it’s finished it will no doubt leave a huge gap in my life. Believe me, that’s fine!

  With what has been almost constant writing, marketing, designing, speaking to publishers as well as being many in also trying to sell my three books, I feel now after I have crossed the T’s and dotted the I’s, that I just want to be able to say ‘Rest!’

  I would like to thank my family who has helped and supported me on this project, but especially my wife for her love and devotion, as well as my good friend Charlie Rymer, who has again saddled up admirably with me.

  I would like to point out that I am not supporting or condemning the activities of terrorists and individuals, as well as any groups and elements they belong to, as featured strongly in this book.

  All characters (including names, but not including historical figures) described in this book are pure works of fiction. Any similarity to characters and character names, (other than those historical figures) are purely incidental and do not depict anyone either living or dead.

 

Anthony A. Newman

Jersey, 2022

Dedicated

 

 

To Covid, Coronavirus, C19 (call it what will will),

and for living with difficult situations, lockdowns,

social distancing and endless nights in;

without whom this book would (likely) have never

been completed.

QUOTE 2

 

When you arise in the

morning, think of what a

precious privilege it is to be

alive – to breathe, to think, to

enjoy, to love.

 

 Marcus Aurelius

  Roman Emperor

   & Stoic Philosopher

   AD121 – AD180

`L’introduction: Chapitre Un

L’introduction:

Chapitre Un

 

 You know, I must have been two or maybe three, when I consciously thought about the first time, I looked out of my bedroom window. I mean, I was probably younger, even weeks old I would guess. But with my very early recollections, my eyes weren’t yet trained to notice anything other than the closest people around me, and therefore my lingering memory of those moments just wasn’t there. I do still recall, however, one afternoon sitting up in my cot and staring out, into what was then a new and largely unknown and unfamiliar world.

  Up until the age of eight, I lived in a semirural area, a location that was sort of country but was not generally considered as such. Aside from immediate family, our closest neighbours were situated only a mile or so away. About thirty miles further from there was officially regarded as the outskirts of town, or the fringes of suburbia as my family liked to refer to it. So, we had the luxury of feeling somewhat rural along with the closeness, convenience, and allure of the city located within an hour’s drive.   

  Of course, back then when I was pondering life, or what I thought I knew of it, whilst sitting on my handmade patchwork quilt, my first recalled viewpoint of the outside world, was looking out of that bedroom window.

  Now depending on the time of year, and indeed even the time of day, every glimpse into the outdoors seemed to be different. In the morning I had the view of rabbits and pheasants feeding on the grassy pastures. In the evenings, before nightfall, I had the rabbits again. This time, however, there were often more in abundance than in the mornings. In my ears, I always heard plentiful and delightful birdsong, their contented chirps before darkness would settle me down to what would be always a most restful and contented sleep.

  Living in this semi-rural setting was so peaceful and tranquil. Pretty much all quiet and still, especially at night. From the warmth and serenity of my cot, and on the odd occasion when I wasn’t asleep, I sometimes would only hear the distant barking of a neighbour’s dog or even a faint cooing of a midnight owl in a tree that was situated just outside of my bedroom window.

  When I was slightly older, now in my first real bed, I would often draw the curtains open to let the moonlight filter into my room. I could look out of my bedroom window then, as during the day. Of course, nighttime was filled with stillness. Apart from the numerous rabbits who were still feeding, there was never anything much new to notice. However, the light and the way the moon’s glow bounced shadows off the land, still captivated, enchanted, and intrigued my young, and somewhat incurious mind.

  Now, I don’t want you to start to think that simply looking out of my bedroom window both day and night, was the only highlight in my very early years. It most certainly wasn’t. In fact, in all truth, it was just one of the very many. I loved the location where I lived, seeing nature and experiencing everything from it, it was to me, at the time, just a fantastic backdrop to my young life.

  We lived on a homestead, my parents and I. Of course, not forgetting my older sister. My grandparents, on my mother’s side, lived a mile or so away. In fact, we could just make out their home from ours, through the trees. When we weren’t at our own home, we were always more than often spending time at theirs. I seemed to always have time for my delightful grandparents. My grandfather, as I recall was forever smiling and playing games with me from what would have been an early age. He always called me his ‘petit candy’ which always made me feel happy and loved. My grandmother too was an almost godly creature, always baking for when my family and I would come around. Obviously, I utterly adored them both. 

  Life was pretty much always constant and busy, especially for my father. It was only ever the evenings and the odd hour or two at the weekend when we ever really saw him relax. He was forever busy attending to his crops. This was mainly barley, which he eventually would sell on to producers, but also to feed our small, but ever-increasing population of both dairy and beef cattle. Depending on the time of year, he largely worked both on the crops and the feeding of the cattle himself. Occasionally, subject to the necessity, he got assistance; seasonal workers would assist him in cutting and bailing the barley before selling it on to whoever wanted to buy it, as well as doing the odd bit of transportation of livestock to market. It was often a back-breaking process that took up long hours and usually required juggling things around in order to get what needed to be done and completed on time. I understand however the payback that he received, more than compensated for the effort, and once the yearly harvesting was completed for another season, our blissfully wholesome family life resumed. However, as for the cattle that was an enterprise that kept him focused and occupied throughout the year, no matter what.

  In his quieter moments, we would all go on small road trips, usually not far from home. These would always encompass nature, walking in the nearby forests, maybe a spot of lunch, and usually some shopping in a nearby town. Those family moments with just the four of us are still so endearing to me, even now.

   My mother’s role in this whole farming endeavour was very much backroom. She controlled the books and did the all-important matters with regard to finances and the accounting side of things. She had a big black book in her office, offset from the main house, and in it, she immediately knew who owed how much and how much they made. More often than not, most people were owed little to nothing. Yet after our outgoings, we made a tidy sum, depending on the season. My family had few overheads, apart from cattle feed, and the seasonal labour wages. We were largely seen as self-sufficient, further supplementing our income from the homestead’s gardens by opening them to the public and selling some homegrown produce from them. The resulting income generated over time was more than ample to finance our household, and we still had some spare cash in reserve. It was long hours of hard work at times, especially for my father. But the effort and rewards kept coming, making the toil worthwhile.

  The country life and the immediate closeness around the homestead were, like a wondrous adventure park to me. I was always inquisitive about everything. Watching nature grow, change colour, blossom then sometimes sadly die. It fascinated my young watchful eyes and kept my mind and imagination busy and interested.

  Those eight years, from watching through my bedroom window to walking myself in those very same grassy pastures, were a magical springboard to the start of my life. I understood the purpose of belonging and of being a loved and cherished member of a family unit. Looking back, those early years honestly gave me memories that I know I would cherish until my dying days. Those young innocent halcyon moments of my childhood you can never get back, and at the time they were just a snapshot of blissful emotion and memory. Yet now, so many years on from then, they seem to me to be so very much more than that. They were like the very first fabrics of my life, and it is only now I realise they put me in good stead for the rest of it.

  So, I lived with my parents and also my older sister, who was eight years my senior. Now, just after my parents got married, and before trying for a family, they decided to build themselves a home that would serve their purposes for at least a generation, perhaps longer.

  Being the kind of man he was, my father was integral to the design and building of this new home. Even though he enlisted a number of contractors to wire, plumb, and construct the dwelling, the whole visionary concept was pretty much entirely his.

  The house had been completed just a few months before my mother broke the news that she was carrying their first child. From what I was told later, everyone was simply overjoyed. Why wouldn’t they be? The timing of starting a family, and in a new and complete home, was impeccable. 

  I understand my mother had a pretty much trouble-free pregnancy up till her third trimester. However, as the weeks progressed, the sizable extra weight she carried in the middle of what was a record-breaking summer with temperatures exasperated her discomfort and led her breathing to become increasingly more laboured. I think this was due largely to the baby putting added pressure on her internal organs. She also reported swelling in her ankles, fingers, and face. The medical physicians at the time put this down to a potentially serious condition called preeclampsia.

  Now, despite the last 8 weeks or so of what was a relatively uncomfortable pregnancy, the baby, my older sister, was born without any underlying issues. However, my mother later told me that she vowed at the time that she would think very long and hard about wanting to fall pregnant again.

  For the next eight years, she had obviously tried her solemn best to veer away from falling expectant for a second time. She loved being a mother to her daughter. To watch this wondrous creation, she had brought into the world flourish from a tiny baby into an adorable young girl was to her simply a revelation that, slowly and gradually, it would become something that maybe she could reconsider and indeed repeat; just one last time.

  My sister was born in July, and I myself was born in January. Lessons had been learned that, as an expectant mother, carrying a child during the hot and sweltering summer months was an unneeded and unwanted endurance, and that winter births were much more advantageous.

  My mother told me I was born in the middle of a snowstorm. This was something that wasn’t unheard of in January of course. However, the severity and quantity of precipitation that fell before and during labour, forced my arrival to occur at home, rather than at the city hospital which would have been dangerous and tricky to have reached.

  My birth cemented our family further and capped off what my parents, and especially my mother wanted to achieve. Although I would have presumed that my father quietly would have wanted a son and for obvious reasons, he would have eventually passed on the family businesses to him.

  An eight-year age gap between siblings wasn’t a considerably great time distance. However, as I was growing up, my older sister was already doing things that I wished I could, and of course, she was always the first to experience life’s milestones before me, and some I was more envious than others I may add.

  Now please don’t get me wrong, despite our age difference, we were particularly close, and mostly our love was genuine and sincere. There was, however, the odd occasion, where an element of me felt jealously, a sense that sometimes I was left out in the dark of things. Even though my parents had planned for me, wanted me, and ultimately loved me, my sister had lived her first eight years with their exclusivity. Now with my arrival, that motherly one-to-one my sister had received had now changed. Somehow, I sensed from time to time that my sister seemed to object to me, or at the very least, my existence.

  Can you possibly know what that feels like to have an older sister who presumes at times that my creation was entirely my parent’s mistake? That despite me doing wrong in her eyes most of the time, it only resulted in me getting the blame for less than a quarter of it. She considered that I frequently got away with murder when I did wrong. Yes, sure even though at times, my parents did veer towards leniency by their own admission, I, however, rarely did anything bad enough to warrant substantial punishment by them, and this in itself ultimately drove divisions between my sister and me.

  When I was eight, my sister was double my age, obviously. But despite the age difference, we seemed, at times, to be more than a generation between us. To me, she was attractive, good-looking, and outgoing and so was obviously well-liked. I was an adventurer who liked my own company and what little friends I did have I chose by choice rather than by necessity.

  Despite my older sister’s intermittent disdain towards me, life was generally skipped along nicely. That was until shortly after the Christmas and New Year holidays when our whole world seemed to collapse in on itself. In times of such crisis, especially within the family, this can either be a case of exploding with the situation or trying to bond tighter together. Luckily, the sometimes-fragile fondness between my sister and me actually brought us closer together. This continued tighter family union lasted throughout the adversity and way beyond.

 One morning, my father was unexpectedly involved in a serious and life-changing agricultural accident, leaving him unable to continue to work. As the weeks went on, the realisation of the daunting and devastating repercussions of him not being able to provide for his wife and his young family swept over him. This meant only one thing: that my family would have no other choice but to sell their homestead as well as the three businesses that came with it.

  For the first year after moving, we settled into my grandparent’s house. Income from the sale of both the dairy and beef operations was fairly disappointing from the offset I must admit. Consequently, my family ended up with far less than they had anticipated and initially had hoped they would receive. 

  The homestead itself, along with the fields and crops of planted barley and all the equipment that the enterprises came with, were eventually also sold separately to an outsider, who my father believed knew little about the seeding, maintenance, and harvesting processes needed to produce a successful harvest of the product. However, my father also realised that the crop was pretty easy to cultivate. As for anything he didn’t know, he could quickly seek expertise from just about anyone in the immediate area. Even though my father didn’t say it in so many words, my mother later said that the selling of the businesses deserved more careful consideration, especially if it was to people who seemingly cared so little about the commodity and were more motivated by the profit from it. My father, however, never had a really harsh word to say about anyone. He was usually a placid man and looking back now this was about as harsh as he ever was in saying anything about anyone.

  Either way, with the sale of both the purpose-built homestead he had built and sweated with his own hands and the businesses from which he had created over a period of many years, his mind and his focus on them slowly drifted off. Because of the nature of my father’s accident, a severe spinal cord injury, it was decided that for the immediate interim at least, we would all move into my grandparents’ home for his recuperation. 

  In all truth, looking back, it wasn’t the best plan. It was awfully cramped in there, and far from ideal. A house that was only just big enough for my grandparents, and maybe one other person, just simply wasn’t best equipped to host another family of four, especially when one of them needed specialist domiciliary care. Besides, even though the house was adequate enough with regards to amenities for my father’s attention and well-being - for instance, the doors were wide enough for wheelchair access for him, it just simply wasn’t big enough for all of us. Consequently, we all suffered living in cramped confinement, which sometimes caused fretted nerves between various family members on the odd occasion.   

  Despite living practically on top of each other, as well as the odd heated word, that following year living at my grandparents after my father’s accident, went surprisingly quickly. I guess it was a combination of me being small back then. In fact, I am still fairly diminutive in stature. But also, the familiarity of their home along with the great relationship we had with my grandparents, who called me their ‘petite candy’, particularly helped. I also had this huge outside area to content myself with, which largely kept me occupied and more importantly, out of the way.

  Behind the scenes and largely unknown to me at the time, however, my father was gradually losing the will, patience, fortitude, and resilience needed for recovery. He had been every inch a grafter, but sadly not a fighter and he often remained stuck in his own mind. With this came his own self-pitying, rather than trying to find the best way to cope with his newfound disability. My mother later said that she had lost the very man she was once in love with, and that, for a time, he was reduced to someone who largely became unrecognisable to her. For me, I could clearly see his disabilities compared to the man he had once been, but I was young enough to not witness at first much in detail the vast change in him. However, as the months went on and my father’s condition wasn’t getting noticeably better, I started to notice his depression and growing frustration. Despite being of an early age, I knew that my father had changed. Not just physically of course, but mentally also. From what I experienced in him this was as bad, if not worse, than the disability of the spinal injury he had received. He went from being a patient and placid man, driven by the propping up of the family with endless love, support, and purpose, to a directionless individual whose mental health started to suffer badly. As a man, and as my father, he became an almost unrecognisable shadow of the person he once was.

  I read later in life that a traumatic spinal cord injury such as my father had suffered affects virtually every system of your body, and certainly every area of your life. He needed to rethink how to go about even the most routine and mundane activities. However, it is fair to say he couldn’t grasp that or simply didn’t have it in him to even try to cope. A man who once had a vision and desire to create a home whilst running businesses now didn’t have the enthusiasm to even want to breathe.

  For a man who was as active as he once was, to suddenly find himself tragically cut down to where he had lost a certain amount of his capabilities, which anyone able-bodied would take for granted, he found particularly overwhelming and difficult to accept.

  Within the first two years of his injury, he suffered greatly from depression and anxiety, and certainly, I think an element of post-traumatic stress disorder. To add to his continued misery, he was frequently triggered with chronic and debilitating pain. According to what I read later, this can be associated with steadily worsening mental health.

  I remember speaking to my mother about this a number of years later. Something she informed me, was that the medical staff, including the counsellors and trauma specialists, spoke more to the immediate family, particularly her, than to my father himself. In fact, my mother mentioned that when my father did ask them about certain things they would sometimes decline to answer, or simply refuse to even acknowledge his questions. Even though they provided reasons and explanations as to why they were not answering direct questions from him at the time, depending on what they were, of course, she felt this went some way also to steadily erode his already fragile self-esteem and identity. This, in turn, became yet another contributing factor to his worsening mental health.

  God loves my father, but I know he largely didn’t help himself. He was well aware of the stigma of his delicate mental health and was always reluctant to even admit he needed mental health care. Part of the problem was his bravado. But knowing my father as I did, it was largely also down to his pride. He didn’t want to burden people with his issues, and probably also his thoughts, more than he already had, and he was especially hesitant in seeking help from others.

  What my father tried to do from the offset was to attempt to ignore the chronic pain, wrongly thinking that it would just simply ease off and finally go away, or even having the notion that the lingering pain could somehow be normalised and largely tolerated. What he failed to realise, along with most of the medical professionals, was that certain biological changes which had occurred in his brain were often themselves a symptom that triggered the mental illness. Simply thinking your way out of any suffering just simply couldn’t and wouldn’t ever work. He was often told about possible treatments, which potentially could have partially restored some limited normality back to his life and gotten him functionally back on track. However, his poor mental health usually undermined his ability to follow through with these necessary treatments and recommendations. So, when the family tried to intervene with his best interests at heart, his normally placid and gentile persona would be suddenly replaced with a much more aggressive and confrontational behavioural pattern. It wasn’t at all pleasant to see or be part of. It left all of us drained and on tenterhooks, because of the worsening conduct he sometimes directed towards us; mainly my mother.

  Just over two and a half long years after my father had this life-changing injury and his life seemingly spiralling further out of control, he finally admitted to himself, as well as others, that he had had enough. He was simply just fed up with this new life, and with being largely confined to a wheelchair. Not seemingly limited in his life in general, he felt that he had been dealt with a near-death experience.

  My mother recalled to me, as well as my sister one evening, that our father was having a ‘traumatic breakdown’ and that he simply didn’t want to carry on with this life he had any longer. It must have been difficult for her to have told us, but she knew that she had to as we all had seen the great deterioration and as well as differences in him. As I said, our worries and concerns for him and his well-being had become increasingly grave, to say the least.

  My sister, and especially myself, were too young to fully understand what my mother had meant at the time, and indeed what the implications of her statement were. However, we all knew that my father needed far greater help, assistance, and encouragement than he had previously been offered. In exchange, he had vowed he would finally be prepared and willing to literally pick himself up and dust himself down. To start to become determined enough to admit that self-pity and feeling like a miserable failure and burden, weren’t going to be his intended path or choice any longer.

  With our help and continued love, the groundswell in change that overwhelmed him, in fact, all of us almost instantly from that point on was quite incredible. He had suddenly decided one day, there and then, that his health and psychological well-being were to be his continued and paramount importance and focus. He started immediately on a far-healthy diet, which actually didn’t really become a diet as such, but more a mere lifestyle regime from the offset. He also started to meditate. Believe me, if someone had said that would happen, we would all have laughed out loud as well as completely disbelieved. But these two positive changes combined to result almost instantly in far better sleep, and with that came a far more assured outlook on his life. The colour in his cheeks slowly came back over the course of several days. It was likened maybe to somebody who had, at last, watered a dying plant; its dry and sad-looking golden-pale leaves started to slowly show a restored life flowing back into them.

  In next to no time, the vast change in him was mammoth. Considering where he had been physically as well as mentally, it must have taken a great amount of inner strength to achieve some of his very basic requirements. I mean, please don’t get any grand illusions in thinking he was up and mobile and planning marathons and whatnot. This was simply not the case. But to go from where he had been, at the very depths of human despair, to where he slowly found himself to be a few short months later, was incredibly encouraging.

  The medical signs at the time were also looking positive. However, a setback to us which we immediately thought would be passed on to him, luckily didn’t fully materialise and affect his long-term prognosis. Due to the nature of the accident, where a container of fertiliser had fallen on top of him, crushing his body from just above the waist, surgeons broke the news that he was never going to walk unaided again. As I said, the news was a devastating setback to all of us, but it was also an official confirmation that something we had already known unconsciously would be likely. Luckily for my father, this realisation was something that he already had fully accepted, maybe long before we even had.  

  In time, my father did regain some movement in his legs over the years that followed, largely due to his strengthening physical fitness. He was also capable of walking very short distances with the aid of sticks and crutches. But more importantly, he knew his limitations were not boundless and that scaling mountains, no matter what size they were from now on, was a mental challenge as much as a physical one.

  If I could bring anything positive to this whole saga of my father and his tragic accident, was that over time they would easily outweigh the negatives. Yes, his life was never the same again. Yes, he was in a way cut down and stripped of his independence. But the man who eventually emerged from the somewhat shattered state of his life was maybe more of a man, an inspiration let’s say than simply the barley and beef farmer he would always amount to be. His disability didn’t limit him in so many ways but defined him.

  Whilst his continued progress was being made, we all eventually moved out of my grandparent’s lovely but overcrowded house and established ourselves in a purpose-built residence in the city suburbs. I was now almost eleven. I admit that it took us, and especially me, a while to adjust to our new location. In particular, I missed my bedroom view. Not that I had looked out of it for a couple of years anyway, but I certainly missed the semirural setting with the natural element I was so accustomed to. Besides being closer to many more people I didn’t know at first, as well as the faster pace of life nearer the city, left me feeling somewhat strangely homesick.

  My sister was the opposite, being closer to civilisation was almost to her a personal mantra, an incantation that was constant, resolute, and longed for. She was drawn to the suburbs and the city like a powerful magnet, maybe even like a moth to a light. She was now nineteen, and no doubt was knee-deep and waist-high in all sorts of activities, some likely to be more dubious than others. I definitely think she saw life in a different light than I did. Nevertheless, the life we had, close to my grandparents, living on the homestead with its view of the pastures had now been replaced by something else, and certainly something very different.

  I guess it took me a good year or so to realise what this new life adjustment meant. I still saw my grandparents, just fewer times with them. I still lived with my own parents, and yet everything else had changed, and of course probably so had I.

  I think my sweet innocent childhood days had suddenly been tapered when my father became infirmed. Despite it being at an earlier stage in my life, I felt that I grew up considerably more quickly in those immediate years afterward. Looking back, this was never a bad thing. I never considered it a burden to look after my father and support my mother as best as I could in this. I think his loss of mobility characterised me rather than hindered me. If anything, our closeness as a family became a greater bond because of it. In some ways, this burden some people often spoke of, and how I, in particular, was dealing with it, was to me just seen as a consequential blessing.

  Speaking of this, my mother had her good days and her bad days. Her life had changed immeasurably too. Like me, and the whole of my family I guess, we were countrified people who suddenly found ourselves like fish out of water. What my parents had learned and forged from their businesses was now pretty much obsolete whilst living in the cityscape. Yet we all had to adjust and adapt, not just from within our own family environment, but also in our social and working situations too.

  With the business experience, albeit non-qualified, and financial involvement my mother had with my father’s accounts, it didn’t take her long to find a part-time bookkeeping job at an established law firm in the city. She needed some precious time during the week and away from the daily ritual of supporting my father. It gave her a much-needed welcome break from what was, at times, an unexciting humdrum of involvement. Her life as his focal carer was challenging at times I think it was fair to say, yet her devotion towards my father never wavered or waned. Besides, it also provided a much-needed income to the household, which of course everybody ultimately benefitted from.

  My sister went to work, eventually too. As I recall she was a dental receptionist at first. As for me, my schooling was my primary focus, as well as looking after the running of the house when my mother was at work. All in all, life was mostly a struggle for me at times. But it also became the new normal and therefore hardships we think of now weren’t as apparent and noticeable to us back then. I guess we were a family who just rolled our sleeves up and got on with it; there simply were no second options.

  When I was sixteen, and with a year or so at secondary school still ahead of me, my father himself became gainfully employed as a support worker. It was almost a full-circle experience for him to speak with people affected with paraplegic and quadriplegic disabilities. He often was enthused with relaying his own familiarities, difficulties, and experiences to others. This whole process provided him, as well as others, with an immensely positive correlation. It was like my father, the support worker, was getting support himself by being able to speak and listen to people who had suffered similar life-changing traumas to his own. It was to him a paid form of counselling and was a significant factor in my father's dealing with life, along with its new qualities.

  He knew, compared with other sufferers, he was in a good and often better position than some. This was to be something he never again lost sight of.

  So, my father and mother had a life they never chose, in fact, no one ever does, I guess. Life in a way chooses you, maybe at times, more than you do. What it teaches each and all of us, is that a good life is a privilege, not an entitlement, and the backdrop to it should always be grateful.

  There I have been babbling on about my family, and my younger years, and here, I haven’t even introduced myself yet. My name is Candide and my parents named me after the heavy snowstorm that was falling when I was born. Apparently, my name derives from the Latin word for white. In my native French, it refers to someone who is glowing white and sweet. From what I have understood over the years about myself, that is something that is definitely far from the case at times.

  My older sister, Suzette, and I became closer once I turned eighteen. She had been romantically involved with quite a few boys before this time, which wasn’t at all surprising. Her long always brown brushed hair cascaded down her back like a glistening waterfall, and I would imagine, amongst other things, made her an enviable catch for any man. She was self-confident, slightly self-assertive, and sometimes even commanded a swagger about her that some would assume was an arrogance that she emitted. Knowing her all my life, all that could possibly be true to describe her, but I often saw through all that. At the end of the day, she was my sister, my only sibling. Her love and her loyalty mattered more to me than what other people’s opinions were of her.

  Despite her affable beauty, we didn’t look that alike. We couldn’t be stood side by side and be considered sisters, but we were often thick as thieves together, and usually, this sisterly trait worked to our advantage.

  I was shorter than my older sister. I was only a mere five feet tall. I often joked that height wasn’t everything, but actually, I knew in my heart it was. She had the legs, and often used them to her benefit and advantage, whereas I maybe had more the brains, and combined we were considered formidable.

  I wouldn’t be harsh enough to say that beauty had never visited me, but honestly, stocks of this commodity must have pretty much dried up when it was being dished out in the gene pool. I don’t want you to consider for one minute I was an ugly bug back in my late teens, but when out with my sister, I was usually the quieter girl who largely enjoyed staying in her shadow. If you could consider for a moment us being a bottle of wine, Suzette was full-bodied and certainly fruity in nature, whereas I was more reserved and especially subtle by default.

  Now I had my moments when that wasn’t the case, but I was usually the quiet girl who spoke little but listened much. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was shy as such, but I would agree I wasn’t one for being in the highlights, my contribution to a successful day or evening out was to laugh, have fun, and largely observe others.

  After I left high school in 1980, I hadn’t considered a career. I knew I was fairly academic, yet decided at the time to take a year out and ‘rest my brain’. So, I applied for a job at a bar, waiting on tables and serving drinks. The pay wasn’t great, the tips neither if I was, to be honest. But I enjoyed my job there, especially the locals who came in and drew out their lives for me in words like I was some sort of counsellor. At times, I think I was their only barrier between living a normal life and then finding themselves hopelessly on the skids. I listened, I smiled, I sometimes advised. But them just speaking to me about life, in general, made me realise two things. Firstly, mine wasn’t nearly as bad or as drama-filled as I had presumed it was, compared to others. Secondly, my life needed to be filled with experiences, other than those that were contained within that bar, or even my family.

  Despite the eager realisation to go see some places, however, my feet graced behind that bar and walked those wooden floors for quite some time. In time, I pondered less about the wider world or even considered other regions of my native France, for too long. However, when I did, my mind would drift off to my once semirural life on the homestead when things were simpler, and I was as carefree as the rabbits that roamed the pastures.

  I became friends with just about everyone who drank there. Most were just acquaintances. But I never would forget the moment I met him; a stranger from out of town, who even from the very first moment I saw him, I knew I wouldn’t be a stranger with him for long.

 

Chapitre Deux

Chapitre Deux

 

  If you could take a dozen guys at the bar, all drinking beer or wine or pastis or whatever, I would go for the guy who was the quietest and who would order a coffee with two sugars and no milk. A guy who would spend five minutes stirring in his sugar whilst listening to the others in the bar wittering on about their wives, their girlfriends, their jobs, or the economic state of France.

  Pascal was like me: A thinker and a listener, and I instantly was regaled by him. Not by what he said, for he spoke little at first, but by his mannerisms. I wasn’t even sure if he was amused by the other customer’s antidotes about their wives in front of everyone. His expressions and emotions never betrayed him, but there was something indeed about him. I think it was his nonchalant attitude and somewhat distant reaction to the sometimes-filthy talk and rude banter that first allured me to him; like a fish would possibly be entranced by a shiny object.

  Pascal was friendly. I mean, he didn’t come in alone, often accompanied by a small group of these guys who wanted to enforce their sex life stories on others, but he never joined in on their conversations. Like me, I guessed straight away it wasn’t because he was shy, or even that he was inexperienced. He was just comfortable being in the shadows, having a presence of sorts. Being on the periphery and only at times casually joining in. To witness that actually captivated me.

  Being in a bar, especially working in one, was a great place to meet people. To understand them and to see the change from sober to ticking was often quite a revelation. To meet someone like me was enlightening. Even, I would say, a ground-breaking discovery.

  Pascal was twenty, six months or so older than I was at the time. He was an educated young man and an enthusiastic socialist. At the time in France, anyone who saw the country for what it was veered towards the left.  

  It was now the summer of 1981. Only a couple of months earlier, François Mitterrand had taken the Socialist party to victory in nationwide elections. I must confess, I had few thoughts and cares about politics up until that point. Few people my age did, in fact. But once Pascal got speaking about things that he strongly believed in, his normally quiet demeanour would erupt into passion and emotion. This normally quiet, coffee-drinking man was an educated scholar, an articulate person who seemed on the surface to be as similar to me and as laid-back and chilled as anyone in that bar. Yet, the only difference normally between him and others in the bar, myself included, was that Pascal was always sober.

  Being a thinker, a studier, a listener, a watcher, you can almost read people at times. To me, I read Pascal as if he were a book that was right in front of me. When he wasn’t stirring sugar or listening to flim-flam at the bar with his friends, I would catch his eye. More often than not I would notice he would be looking at me.

  Do you believe in love at first sight? Well, actually, do you believe you can be in love with someone even if words haven’t yet escaped your lips together? I am not into wishy-washy. Well, I wasn’t, but truly, mutual attraction for us was real. I lost count of the number of moments when I had looked at him, not sensing anything at the time in particular, but just noticing he was sharing his gaze with mine. Our intimate eye contact became a non-talking point between us.

  Geographically speaking, I lived in France’s Massif Central, in a city of over a hundred thousand citizens called Clermont-Ferrand. About one hundred and fifty kilometres or so to the east was Lyon, a city far greater in size as well as population.

  It took me little to no time to establish, that Pascal was from Lyon. He had just finished his university course there, where he majored in political science. He now had sought somewhere other than his native city where he had lived almost all his life and had chosen Clermont.

  Pascal rarely drank. He also didn’t smoke. If I was to be completely honest, he wasn’t any oil painting or what some would consider an Adonis. However, he was interesting and intelligent. Once we got over our staring eyes stage, we never stopped talking about a whole range of things that fascinated us. I also found him to be also kind, sincere, and genuine, and in that summer of 1981, we fell fou amoureux in love together.

  One would think that meeting a man who only really ever drank coffee, whilst being nineteen years old and drinking at a bar, would soon lead to a fizzle in our relationship. I know that there were people who voiced such opinions. People even told me, and I also thought they would be wrong. I immediately knew Pascal and I had something meaningful. To be honest, something else I knew almost from the start was that it would be adventurous and memorable. I wasn’t wrong.

  Pascal’s passion was politics, but he wanted to find a career that wasn’t flag-wavering for the socialist party. He knew that there were plenty of those flag wavers already. Besides, he had come to Clermont-Ferrand for another reason; engineering.

  At the time, the city was a smoking hotbed for engineers, construction workers, and designers. Because of its location in the middle of the country, it was easily assessable nationwide in only hours. He knew some of the basic principles needed already, and so applied for several positions which were currently on offer. This was under the stipulation that whatever he didn’t know with regards to his skill set, he would study for the qualifications required and at his own expense. Pascal told me that some of the company executives had dismissed this as mere folly. However, the attraction of an articulate and immediately impressionable young man who would want to come and work within the industry did tempt a few would-be employers. In next to no time, Pascal had job interviews coming in from every direction. It was just a case of selecting the ones that he thought offered the best opportunities, as well as weeding out the non-starters.

  After the preliminary interview and subsequent others, he eventually plumped for a position as an apprentice road designer. Luckily, the position was based here in the city. This, therefore, meant that travel would be kept largely to a minimum. As promised, he would study for the necessary qualifications himself and attend courses and evening classes for about a year or so, or until he had gained the suitable criteria and knowledge needed for the role. It went without saying that this aptitude, largely self-propelled, was greatly admired by his peers in the company he worked for. Within two years, he was promised that a promotion both in terms of salary and title would certainly be on the cards.

  Whilst this promise of quick career ascension was happening, our love was going stronger. We would often find ourselves hopping on a train and travelling to places like Limoges or Avignon. But our favourite place of all we went to, was our beautiful capital. Glorious Paris.

  To be young, in love, and in the city of love was truly spellbinding, especially for me. Pascal didn’t seem as animated as I was, but even he couldn’t escape the bright lights which were something I typically used to shy away from. But Paris was chic, Paris was glitz. Most of all, Paris was Magnifique.

  The shops, the restaurants, the museums, the landmarks, as well as the energy which flowed like the river Seine throughout our capital, were almost electrifying to me. It truly surpassed my expectations immensely.

  As we walked hand in hand along the horse-chestnut-lined Champs-Élysées, I felt I was living an almost dream-like existence. I realised that the once shy girl in me, the country girl from the small homestead, was finally filling her life with a rich abundance of experiences.

  Of course, there was always a flip-side to my happiness, and that was the apparent neglect I was now showing to others. Even though I still at first lived under the same roof as my parents, I gradually spent less time there. Consequently, I of course spent less time seeing them. I guess it was a testament to me living my life and enjoying my time and the moment I lived in. However, looking back I felt that neglect could be a word best chosen for my behaviour. I partially neglected my family and friends, only staying in contact with my parents on the days when I came home to visit them. After a while, even that became more infrequent. Being in love and having a job took up much of my time and my immediate consideration for my family and my close friends suffered. However, I must emphasise my love for them never did.

  We had been dating for about four months before I even considered the thought of taking Pascal home to meet my parents. I was nervous. I didn’t know how he would be in front of my mother. However, I was more concerned about how I felt about him seeing and meeting my wheelchair-bound father. I mean, please don’t get me wrong, I didn’t feel embarrassed by his disability in the slightest. In fact, my father was an impressionable and inspirational man throughout his life and even after his accident. No, I was more concerned about how I felt that Pascal would be interrogated by my parents. Particularly my father, who would have wanted to know everything about this mysterious young man who had literally swept me, their youngest daughter, off her feet, filling her heart with something she hadn’t ever experienced before. Love.

  Love rules in many ways. It sometimes gets you where and when you least expect it. Families tend to have love, usually unconditional love. But that isn’t the love Pascal and I had. We had deep love as well as a deep sense of understanding of each other. A love that couples married for a lifetime maybe sometimes fails to even achieve. Or at least, that’s how it felt like to me at the time.

  Knowing my parents, they would meticulously question Pascal about his life like someone would do when intricately picking a lock. I mean, they would be kind enough in the process of doing what they would do. Nevertheless, I always knew they wanted the best for me, and so they would try to turn over every stone during the process they could to uncover the man, the real man, I had fallen in love with.

  What was a slight concern to me also was that even I didn’t know the full and complete story of Pascal’s life as it was back then. I mean, a twenty-year-old man who lived in Lyon, went to university there, and now settled in Clermont was hardly the full story of anyone’s life up till that point. There was bound to be more, much more about him. Yet, that was all I really knew. I had asked him several times about his family and his upbringing. His reaction, while not sounding untoward or indifferent and seemingly quite normal, was vague and lacked substantial detail.

  I got the impression that the relationship between his mother and father was possibly dicey at the best of times. I didn’t pry further at the time although I know I wanted to. I just had the belief that he didn’t have the best relationship with either of his parents. He rarely mentioned them, and in time I didn’t even bring the subject of his parents up.

  I thought at times about the seemingly broken relationship Pascal had possibly had with them. I came to the conclusion and belief that this was maybe a reason that he had left Lyon in the first place: to simply avoid seeing them and having direct contact with them. But for what real reason or reasons, I simply didn’t know or understand.

  My logical rationale at the time was that if he didn’t want to say anything about his family, which was clearly the case, then that was fine. I wasn’t going to ask. However, that didn’t stop me from certainly being intrigued. That was precisely how my father, who up till that point hadn’t met him, would definitely see it.

  I decided to call round to my parents a day or two before our expected ‘meet my boyfriend’ rendezvous, as I had hoped it would lay some of the groundwork needed for any questioning my father was to possibly devilishly conjure up. My thought process was surprisingly unfounded. They were pleased to see me, of course, and were almost excited to be meeting ‘my male friend’ as my father had casually put it, asking no deep probing questions about him, to me at least.

  Deep down, and only because I knew them, I knew it would give them a chance to realise how happy I was. I had seen them, briefly two weeks previously. But that night, on an evening off from work, I had a chance to spend some good quality precious family time with them. I am sure they could sense I had changed. I reckon my face was practically glowing with happiness and contentment. But I also knew that this man I spoke of constantly was someone they would have a positive assumption about but had never met as yet.

  Now I love my folks deeply, of course, but if there is anyone who would judge a book by its cover you can bet your last five francs that it would be my parents. I guess it’s a little like describing a painting: you can give as much detail as you can about it, but it’s only when you show someone that they know if they will like it or not. I hoped the painting, or the impression, I had drawn of Pascal would be enough of a benchmark for them to like him. Their opinion still mattered a great deal to me. Even though it wasn’t everything, it went a long way towards giving me enough affirmation that my choice in my partner was adequate, hopefully even more than adequate.

  Apart from the track-laying that evening, I wanted to see if they would be in for the idea of meeting for supper at the bar I worked at before I brought out the big gun to them. Apart from the Pastis drinking, wine guzzling, and bière swilling clientele, we also had a fine bistro that served a mean escalope de veau, which I happened to know was one of my father’s favourites. Besides the fact that Veal was on the menu, it was also a chance to have their initial introduction with Pascal on neutral territory. This did sway more in my favour for obvious reasons. My way of thinking was that if things didn’t go quite to plan and Pascal was subjected to an unpleasant and uncomfortable introduction, not that I could see that would happen, then the nasty interrogation rigmarole would be a much quicker and somewhat less harsh process for him than if he was at my family home.

  The only stumbling block I could possibly foresee was my father’s possible reluctance to be seen out in his wheelchair in front of the drinking public at a bar, especially at a bar I worked at. However, before I had a chance to even begin some gentle coaxing in my mother’s direction in getting him to agree, the unlikely acknowledgement came out of the blue like an unexpected jolt.  Maybe it was the temptation of veal? Maybe it was that my father needed a night out and to feel part of a socialising evening community again? Either way, my brave inspirational father made me proud and gave me hope that no matter what he said, how he said it, or how hard the interrogation was, the fact he was coming out at all was enough for me to rejoice. I distinctly remember crying with joy on my way back to Pascal’s later that evening. My initial worries were promptly unfounded. My hopes and dreams weren’t dashed. The fact my father was coming without any real cajoling on my part, along with my mother, was a triumphant symbol in itself.

  It goes without saying that my opinion did matter above little else. My parent’s acceptance of Pascal was wholehearted and genuine. In fact, it was somewhat profound, especially after my father heard that Pascal was paying for his own qualifications in order to meet the grade necessary for his occupation. What especially compounded my realisation even further was that even with the knowing that Pascal was a full Socialist party supporter, my father did not ruffle his feathers once. In fact, the opposite happened. The conversation which they struck up about politics and the current state of the republic almost led me to believe that my father had become a converted socialist himself that evening.   

  From time to time, my mother would glance at me. Sometimes, I knew she was looking but I didn’t acknowledge that she was. I could tell she was smiling, happy and content. When you know someone inside and out, sometimes the most beautiful of emotions are the ones that require no words. Unconditional love often requires no words that would express the most. That night, after my father proclaimed it had been the best escalope de veau he had ever had, which incidentally was probably a massive lie, I still felt every possible happy emotion a human being could ever wish to feel.  

 

Chapitre Trois

Chapitre Trois

 

  In many ways, my older sister Suzette was largely the complete opposite of me. I was often quiet and somewhat unassuming. She was confident, sociable, sometimes wild in nature, often spontaneous, and certainly a little pretentious. Depending on her alcohol levels, she could also be unreserved. Considering our shared genes, it’s hard to truly fathom out how two sisters could yet be so different. When I described her, to others who didn’t know her, I would try to make a point of buttering her up to make her look and sound more divine. However, I knew at the same time that this was ridiculous. She was more popular than me and certainly more beautiful. Yet despite potential faults, some may have seen in her, because let’s face it no one is perfect, it just seemed an honourable and noble thing to do and to keep loyal and stand up for her. Because she was my sister after all, and that ultimately meant family.

  I never knew if she would honour me with such similarly gracious compliments. I would doubt it in all truth. Finding, and then speaking about something that glorified beauty, other than in herself, seemed at times an alien concept. Yet equally, I knew she would do anything for me at a moment’s notice. That was all the love and commitment I could have ever wanted and expected from her. Our family’s loyalty and bond were unwavering and unflinching. We all knew we would help each other out when we needed to at a drop of a hat. 

  Whilst I was busy travelling off to cities on my off weekends with Pascal, my sister was more than likely to be flaunting herself with various random men. She seemed unapologetic when it came to men. She often joked, although she seemed sincere and genuine when she told me, that men were like test-driving cars. You had to ride about in around twenty before you could be certain about the one you picked was the one you needed. At first, I laughed it off, as silly comments like these were largely in her very nature. But I also knew that twenty was never going to be a big enough number for her. Nowhere near it, in fact. Hardly a month would pass when there wasn’t a new ride that had pulled up on the scene. It was a darn challenge keeping up with her and her antics I can tell you!

  I often wondered what I could possibly achieve if I turned out to be something like her. Popular probably, but I realised over time that the higher some people get, the further those people would fall. After the occasions of falling a few times, and she had done, she soon found out who her true friends were. I mean, she had her loyal bunch of die harder’s, the ones who stuck it out with her through thick and thin. Then there were the ones who weren’t particularly close, however, they hung out because she made them look good. Then there were the ones who weren’t popular. We called them the bottom feeders, the elite group of low socialites whose mere existence of survival was to feed off and scavenge from the popular people. As I say, Suzette ultimately was popular.

  Could I have handled being more confident and popular in myself? Well, that depended on one thing. If I had become big-headed at the same time, then no? That wouldn’t have ever been me whatsoever. However, if I could have been more self-assured, and more focused, would that have been a benefit to me, I often wondered?

  You know, I was happy in myself to a certain extent. But I always questioned then, and I still do in fact, whether anyone is truly comfortable in their own skin all the time? Do people have many regrets when they get to those pearly gates, I wonder?

  The truth is, I have always painstakingly questioned my ability and been very wary of deviating from my comfort zone too often. Pascal actually completed me in a way that I felt he made my comfort zone either evaporate completely or decrease it so much that I felt as comfortable and as safe as if I was with my parents. That was real contentment and solace for me, although at times even though we were so similar in nature and even temperament, his intelligence seemed to always out-flank and out-shine my own, and I am certainly no thicket. 

  I remember sleepily waking up one morning, the year must have been now 1983. Pascal and I had now been living together for over a year in a rented townhouse apartment closer to the centre of the city. He was still asleep, and I found myself awake, laying on my back and looking sleepy-eyed up at the ceiling. Despite my sleepiness, my mind was thinking actively, as it seems to tend to do at times. I was aware that I had a boyfriend. I had my parent’s blessing in seeing him and they seemed to like him. To me, that was worth more than its weight in gold. I still had my job at the bar. This still didn’t pay considerably well, even with the occasional generous tip. However, despite all that, I woke up that morning suddenly feeling anxious and worried about my future.

  I never showed my true feelings when my father was first coping with his spinal injury. It cut me deeply to see my beloved parent reduced to drinking out of a straw and lying horizontally virtually all day. I understood him feeling sorry for himself; I felt sorry for him too. However, I also cried often, worrying about what possible conclusion would come from all this. I know I was young, but age still affects you, maybe more so. I had my usual daily ritual of anxiety attacks to always contend with, which would start like the regularity of a morning cockerel. Thankfully I largely grew out of these. A possible reason for this was that my father’s mindset had become more positive. Another was possibly because the mental fog had lifted in all our lives to reveal an oasis of colour again. However, that morning as his chest expanded with shallow breaths resting against my skin, I felt the same sense of anxiety that I hadn’t felt in nearly ten years.

  Sometimes you can have panic attacks and not have an absolute clue what is the cause or reasoning behind them. Anxiety is similar in a number of ways; however, I did know what the reasons for my worry and uneasiness were that morning. It was usually my sister who was often the cause behind my worries, but this was only partially true that particular morning.

  I had been dating Pascal for over two years now, and I would be confident in saying we never had a dull moment and never spoke a bad word to each other in that time. I could honestly say to myself that I had struck gold. That’s precisely how I felt and I knew that Pascal was not only my soul mate, my lifelong companion, my beloved boyfriend but was now also my fiancée.

  That’s right, he had bent down on one knee and proposed only that previous evening. It was nothing cliché, or ridiculously slushy. Just a lovely romantic gesture that, at the time, made me weep almost uncontrollably.

  To tell you the truth, I knew this occasion was on the horizon. Like everything, we had already discussed this and when he actually did bend down and ask me to marry him, it was a deed I certainly knew was coming.

  As I sat staring up at that ceiling that following summer morning, with the knowledge that I was now engaged and that I had a gorgeous new engagement ring on my finger, I realised that my heart was skipping gleefully, whilst my mind was in turmoil doing summersaults and cartwheels. 

  You see, I was worried on two fronts. Firstly, my mother had called yesterday evening saying that my sister hadn’t been seen for now over twenty-four hours. This in itself wasn’t especially unusual; however, she had revealed to my mother a week earlier that she was starting to see a man who was considerably older than her, and that he had had a somewhat shady past. However, according to her, he was now largely on the straight and narrow.  At the time I didn’t know how much older he actually was, but I later found out that he was over thirty years her senior, making him not far off being sixty years old. I was a tad naïve back then to consider what a woman who wasn’t even thirty herself would want with an older man who was double her age. I slowly must have come to the conclusion that if it wasn’t his pelvic popsicle that was big, rather than the money in his wallet which must have been. Either way, my parents were obviously upset and worried. Of course, this made me uneasy and concerned too. But something else had also changed: my perception of her.

  My sister craved attention. I guess most people do to a degree. But when you knowingly upset your family by not purposely keeping in contact with them, whilst at the same time cavorting with men who were, quite frankly, as old as our father, well that was pretty indefensible in my book.

  Suzette once confessed to me that she had slept with over two hundred men. I mean, seriously? I considered myself fortunate that even one guy wanted to do it with me, and that I was completely satisfied with them. What would want to possess anyone to hop in and out of bed and sleep around like that, I thought?

  Now I don’t want you to consider I was by any means a prude back then. This was certainly far from the case, let me tell you. She was obviously old enough to look after her own responsibilities and her failures with them. But ever-increasingly of late, Suzette had been acting in a far more reckless and thoughtless manner. No matter how much my parents, particularly my mother, had tried speaking with her, they were told in no uncertain terms to not interfere. I didn’t speak to my parents directly about Suzette’s behaviour, as I know that was always a hot-potato topic. But I could sense that their disapproval of her and growing concern was becoming more and more evident as time went on.

  My mother had given me, unexpectedly, the name of her new infatuation to see if I could find out anything about him. It was a long shot. Clermont-Ferrand had a population of over one hundred and forty thousand, yet it was seen as a desperate attempt, as my mother figured that with me working in a bar and with Pascal’s work contacts, we could both simply ask around, discreetly of course, and find out a bit more about this mysterious gentleman.

  That said, her disappearance wasn’t particularly a concern. Not really to me, at least. My father had tried calling the house telephone number she was allegedly staying at and there hadn’t been a reply. However, he had expected her to have called round earlier that previous day, as it was her birthday week and she knew that my parents had obviously brought her something.

  My immediate thought process was that she had probably spent a night of debauchery somewhere. She was certainly renowned for it after all. Even so, my parents were worried sick about her. Of course, that made me worried for them, although I knew my sister was old enough to look after herself, and maybe even knew what she was capable of more than they were.

  The other matter, which actually overshadowed that of my sister’s well-being, and what was on my mind that morning concerned Pascal. As I said earlier, he had just proposed to me that previous evening and I was so very much delighted that our love had now made it to the fiancée stage. However, there still remained a huge question mark dangling over him. That was, who really was he?

  I agree that was an odd question to ask about someone who I had seen almost every day for the best part of the last two years, and who I now lived within our rented apartment. Yet, that was the only Pascal I knew and loved. The question I was now asking myself was, who was this lovely man before he had come into my life?

  I knew so much about Pascal the man with who I had shared my life up till that point. Yet he wasn’t open whatsoever about his earlier life in Lyon and indeed his family. This became an increasing concern to me. I had hoped that despite my feelings at the time about this lack of detail, as it did give me a sense of disquiet and some element of agitation, that becoming his fiancée would go some way to unlocking this guarded door that he had been preventing me from going through. I had asked him several times, but he always seemed to clam up with regards to giving any details concerning his parents, or his family. However, from time to time he had shown me old photos of both his parents, but that was no real substitute to have actually met them in person.

  Even at this point, I had started to question what he was trying to hide from me. Was it somehow something he simply didn’t want me to find out, or was ashamed of? Was it maybe something else, even something that he was trying his best to protect me from?

  The first real concern I had about all this keeping me unenlightened wasn’t about the fact that I had never met his family or knew about them of any real detail. It was something entirely separate from that.

  A few months prior to our engagement announcement, I had decided that it would be great for both of us to travel out of the country and muted the possibility of going to Barcelona, as we were both keen on the Gaudi architecture amongst other things. At the time he sounded pretty keen and excited, so I looked into the transportation side of things and determined that there would have to be a quick train connection to be made in Nimes, still in France, in order for us to travel on to the Spanish Mediterranean resort. I, therefore, saw it as still certainly doable. I estimated that it would take six hours or so of travel to get there. 

  We were both eager at the prospect of going away to somewhere new, especially that it was to be the first time that either one of us had ever been outside of France. However, a couple of days after having the idea of going, Pascal had had an unexpected and sudden change of heart.

  At first, he said that he would be unable to go as there was a project scheduled for completion that week and it would have been highly unlikely that he would be able to get time off. To avoid disappointment, I suggested that we go another weekend, one that would be more suitable. He seemed less than enticed about venturing away then, especially now as I had mentioned travelling out of France, meaning that he would need a passport to cross over the border into Spain.

  I couldn’t understand his abrupt change of mind. He seemed quite open and looking forward to going away initially, but something unbeknown to me had changed in him.

  It just so happened during this time and with the change in heart on Pascal’s part, there was a deadly bomb attack in Spain. According to news reports at the time, it was carried out by the separatist group ETA, who had targeted a hotel complex near the city of Barcelona where we were planning to go.

  So that was that. We didn’t get to travel over to Spain or anywhere else outside of France during that early summer. However, as the weeks went by, I got the impression that the real reason Pascal didn’t want to, or simply couldn’t leave the country, was because he failed maybe to have even obtained a passport.

  I decided to ask him straight out if he had a passport or not. After skirting around the subject for a moment or two, he suddenly announced that indeed he didn’t. I didn’t want to argue with him. I wasn’t particularly confrontational back then. I certainly wasn’t like my sister. But I was really narked that if he had said all along that he didn’t possess a passport, he wouldn’t have had to hide behind a cover story of having to work or create any other roadblocks to our plans. I think I even offered to pay for him to get a passport issued, but the wait for it would have been several weeks and it still wouldn’t have arrived in time for us to go to Spain.

  He did apologise for not being immediately honest, but he said at the time that he believed he didn’t require a passport to go from one European country to another. In 1983 this was certainly required, as freedom of movement within the continent hadn’t yet been ratified.

  Me being me, I quickly and easily forgave him. He was, after all at the time, the love of my life and I didn’t want to make him feel like I was bullying him or being controlling. However, what it did do was start to place a seed of doubt in me about him.

  I wasn’t convinced that a man like Pascal, who spoke about Europe with a certain authority, wasn’t aware you needed a passport to leave France. So, one day a week or so later, when he was at work, my intrigue got the better of me and I decided I would go through some of his belongings and paperwork which he kept locked in a secure metal suitcase. Luckily, I had guessed where he stored the key for it.

  After spending a little time riffling through his paperwork, I came across a couple of things I hadn’t quite expected. In fact, I was knocked off my feet, the shock was so great.

  I came across a letter written by someone I wasn’t aware of. The contents of this letter were not a revelation in itself, but the name on the front and who it was addressed to, certainly was.

  The second item of note I came across was a red coloured passport. As I opened it, I felt at the same time my heart sink to a new depth when I realised it was indeed Pascal’s passport. Although, in a sense, it wasn’t.

  Despite him telling me he didn’t have one, I now had it in my hand which proved he had lied.

  However, both the name on the front of the envelope from the letter addressed to him as well as the name on the passport was identical, but they weren’t what I knew Pascal’s Christian name or surname to be.

  From day one Pascal has told me that his family name was Thomas. I had no reason whatsoever to ever doubt him or believe any different. Yet now, suddenly this appeared in writing, as well as his photo on the passport as proof of it not being true. In fact, it was certainly very different. To compound matters further, his passport was not of an individual of French citizenship, but that of another nation. My mind and thoughts were left reeling from this. I found myself literally hyperventilating from this startling revelation that I had just learned. Somehow, something I had presumed about Pascal, was now proven to not be correct, indeed far from it.

  From then on, my whole perception of him appeared to change. I found myself just slowly starting to unravel the real truth in my mind. I felt a mixture of betrayal, worry, and anger. But I also quickly suspected that he had hidden this information about himself away from me for a purpose. A purpose and a reason that as yet I wasn’t aware of. What I did know was that I wanted to keep him close in order for him to give me at least a satisfactory explanation as to why he had withheld this information from me. Ultimately, why had he blatantly misled me and lied to my face, deceiving me throughout the entire length of our relationship right up till now?

  He returned later that afternoon from work, and I tried so desperately to not let on that I had rumbled him.  I wanted an opportune moment to approach the subject instead of going gung-ho, potentially having him walk away from me. Then, I would never know anything regarding the truth I sought. You must understand, despite him keeping even his real name from me, I was now also starting to actually feel afraid. I had found myself beginning to ask so many questions about him, most of which I didn’t know the answers to.

 Over the course of the next few days, it became blatantly obvious in my mind that there would probably be a lot more that I currently wasn’t aware of about this Alexander Chervonenko, aka Pascal Thomas.

  Despite us talking in the weeks previous about the likelihood of us getting engaged, I wasn’t completely certain as to the timing of this. I did get the impression, however, that he had sensed a subtle change in attitude on my part. It wasn’t an obvious change, even for me, but I suspected it may have been enough for him to wonder what was on my mind and why I seemed slightly different, certainly more aloof and a little quieter with him than usual.

  In fact, the day before he actually popped the question, I remember him asking me what was wrong. This was out of character somewhat. I think I fobbed him off by answering that it was nothing or maybe that I was tired or something else as untrue as that.

  A day later after he had proposed, and as I lay in bed that morning, Pascal still asleep alongside me, the anxiety and worry had been swirling around, not leaving my mind all night. I honestly didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, be happy or sad. In all truth, looking back, I was probably all four.

  When he eventually woke up, which was a Sunday morning, he cuddled me like he always fondly did, and as I lay there with him, our hearts almost combined, I pretended that I was the luckiest girl alive. Part of me still believed I was.

  However, I also felt hurt and betrayed by this dishonesty and for keeping things away from me. I had believed that our love was based on trust and loyalty, but now I knew this had been partly eroded. At that point in time, I didn’t know why he had chosen to mislead me, but I certainly wanted to know the reasons.

  After our cuddle, we instigated what was to us a Sunday morning ritual. An unrushed love-making session. As I recall, it was wonderful as it always was. But something had changed in me that was now damaged or even missing. I knew instantly at the time exactly what it was. Repute.

  Now I know what you must be thinking. I must have been stupid to still want to stay with this man who insisted to me he had no passport and yet did. Then finding out that his name wasn’t what I had always known him to be. You’d are right. I was bloody stupid and naive. A part of me was scared of losing him, but another part insisted I find out and determine why he had lied, giving me this elaborate and false account of himself in the first place.

  You see, happiness prior to meeting Pascal was the love I had for my grandparents and parents. Spending time with them, working at the bar, going out occasionally with my sister. But above all that, I knew I had lived only a little life up to that point before meeting him. Most of my justification for my naivety was that I didn’t want to return to being that person who once had a life filled with happiness and therefore being merely a product on a returns shelf. I knew I strongly believed that I needed to speak with him and to find out what he had to say for himself. Basically, I wanted to fight to somehow keep that spark between us alive. That magnificent reason alone was my sole rationale for why I was being so stupid and blinkered because I firmly wanted to keep this profound and largely wholesome happiness alive for as long as I could. I was prepared to listen and understand why I had been lied to and misled because at that time I presumed that no matter what the reason was, the excuse and reasons given probably could be easily validated. Part of me, maybe most of me still presumably had faith in this man, no matter how much this deceit had already been woven and how many lies he had told over almost two years. I wholeheartedly presumed that there would be a sensible justification to it. But at the same time, I guess I was just petrified to discover what it was, as well as the potential aftermath from it, yet nevertheless it needed to be done.

  Like I say, I was afraid and worried too. Worried about the truth, the reasons, the lies. But I was also worried about the realisation and the consequences of him leaving and ultimately us breaking up.

  It took me a couple of days to pluck up enough courage to speak to him. I mean, I wasn’t afraid of bringing the subject up. I was more apprehensive and afraid of what he would reveal as to why he had lied and misled me about his true identity for so long.

  I decided that a romantic candle-lit meal at home might have gone far enough towards softening the blow in confronting him. Not an immediate response most people would have, admittedly, especially as it was me who had unwittingly unearthed the truth about him. However, earlier that same day when I was planning on the meal and what to cook, I took a phone call that suddenly shattered my heart into a million pieces.

  It was my mother, in tears and unable to speak coherently enough for me to immediately understand her. I initially went into autopilot, presuming that something devastating had happened to my father. Then my mind went into some tailspin, thinking that it might be something dreadful concerning my sister. After a brief moment of composure, she finally got the chance to be able to say enough for me to understand her. Once telling me of the news, I recall it made me drop the phone and slump onto the floor in tears.

  My beautiful grandfather had had a massive heart attack that morning. He had been rushed to a hospital here in the city where sadly, he had been pronounced dead before arrival. I was truly devastated and heartbroken by this

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 25.02.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-0847-5

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Widmung:
This novel is based on the lives of three people. Candide, a shy and naive young woman, a head-strong but mysterious man by the name of Pascal, and lastly, Marcel, a man who had always lived a life beyond the fringes of normality or conformity. Despite their lives being very different; they each share a tragedy and hopelessness they struggle to shake. This story starts with Candide, a girl who seems more than content to live in the shadows and protection of others, whilst still having to cope with the tribulations of life & family. Her quiet and introverted character, over time, changes when she falls in love. At first, everything seemed perfect, although over time, realisation started to set in that her lover was harbouring a mysterious secret, which started to slowly unravel. Despite finding love and independence, certain elements she had once taken for granted, slowly tangle together, until she realises she has become embroiled in a world, she no control or understanding of.