Earthquake Ch. 02

Slut! You have now officially burnt your bridges. I've come to the end of any attempt to reconcile, I can see now that it was never going to happen. You can fuck off now and be his slave, if that is what you want. I no longer care."

I pushed her off and stood up.

"Has he started divorcing his wife yet because I'm told that everything is still hunk dory around the gym? I don't believe that story at all. This is still about polyamory isn't it, but you couldn't survive a ménage de trois. I know you and you're fucking dreaming."

I continued, "I don't think you actually know who you are going to cohabit with. I know all about his disciples at the Gym. It seems he is grooming a harem and you are the first recruit. He obviously has groomed you well. So which wife are you going to be, wife Number one? Oh no! That will be Hera. So, will you be taking orders from her? And who is going to be next wife?"

Lisa's demeanour changed with these words and she was on the back foot. She opened her mouth but could not reply.

"Right to business, Ok, I have spoken to you father. We have agreed you go live with the sod but you can only take Jimmy. Since he only has girls he is obviously very proud of his son and for all I know that's all he wants from you.

Say, an initial separation of 6 months and maybe you will realise what a social reprobate you have shacked up with and just maybe we can work something through.

So you can give him a call and if he is not too afraid he can come and pick you up. Right! That said, you can take Jimmy and fucking get out today."

At that time only Jimmy was home and he was sleeping downstairs. Our shouting hadn't woken him.

"Sarah and Hugo will stay with me. I will shortly go and pick them up. Give me a call this evening and we will talk about sharing their time."

"No!" yelled Lisa, "They go with me!"

The shouting continued for some time but in the end it was agreed that Sarah and Hugo would stay with me but not before Lisa had taken off her wedding ring and thrown it at me. I looked at the wedding ring on my finger and wondered when I would be taking mine off.

I began leaving, saying I would contact a lawyer about the formal separation agreement.

I had been attempting to be very business-like but in my mind, hearing myself talk, a feeling of foreboding came over me with the realisation that the conversation was contaminated by my hate and had not helped the situation one iota.

Finally I looked in on Jimmy and as my tears welled up I walked purposely from the house, no looking back, no goodbye to Lisa.

For the week that followed there was a strange feeling of relief. Lisa was contactable by her phone and always sounded reasonable when we spoke. We made arrangements that she would look after Sarah and Hugo Monday to Thursday and I the rest of the week with help from both her parents and my own. Financially, I said if James is claiming Jimmy, he can look after you both. We can review that with a formal agreement. In the meantime I reorganised the bank accounts to myself.

I met Lisa's father at least once a week, a vain attempt at battle planning, I guess. Both of us had not totally given up hope, the point being that this was a love affair from Lisa's point of view but she and Jimmy were actually in danger from this guy. We did not know what his intentions were but they were not normal. We agreed that even if reconciliation was not possible her father was insistent that we needed to protect Lisa somehow.

It was a couple of weeks before I was able to drop Sarah and Hugo off. Lisa was living at James's house. I did so on the Sunday night so Lisa could get them to school and preschool on the Monday morning.

All seem to go well until a dreadful call on Tuesday evening from Lisa. She was crying on the phone and asked me to pick them up straight away.

When I arrived Hugo and Sarah were both at the gate and visibly upset. Hugo was pleading to go home and Sarah was crying. I could not see Lisa anywhere but Hera was peering through the half open front door. As I suspected there had obviously been no progress on the supposed splitting up of Hera and James.

Talking to Hugo, he described how Hera had been mean to them. They were not allowed to play with her girls and they got hardly any food and had to watch the girls eat what they liked. Hera was making Lisa do things. I asked "like what?"

"Oh, stupid things; she had to scrub stuff. We were not allowed to talk to her and we had to sleep on the floor in a spare room."

I asked about James; "Oh things changed a bit when he came home but he did hit Sarah when she cried."

"Hit her? Did he hit you?"

"No. Hera hit me all the time though and she hit Jimmy."

"Hera hit Jimmy??"

"Yeah."

"How bad?"

"I dunno; he cries a lot."

I rang Lisa back and she just said things are a bit tense, as you would imagine, and she had been just helping with some improvements around the house. There was never anything to worry about. Jimmy was fine. But she thought that it would be better if we had a different arrangement. I suggested she comes over in the weekends and that we had a shared time more like a real family. The kids would like that. She thought for a bit then said brightly, yes that would be nice.

After this event I had coffee with her father. We pondered getting welfare in at this point. We decided to have a watching brief before we took this step; thinking it might be too drastic. With Lisa coming at weekends we would have plenty of opportunity to quiz Lisa on her and Jimmy's welfare. That was to prove our fatal mistake.

As it happens, it was never to be. Every week there was an excuse and eventually no contact at all.

About three weeks after this event I had dinner with Gordon and his wife Claudia. Claudia was still going to the Gym and I was curious to find out what was happening there and why she hated James so much.

Claudia said that Lisa had been back working in the Gym. She seemed to look happy although perhaps tired. Curiously James seems to largely ignore her there. He still had his disciples but Claudia noticed he had been paying particular attention to another Woman who was new to the Gym. She seemed to be a glamorous type and seemed quite wealthy. Her name was Judith Hallows and Claudia thought she was actually a prominent lawyer. We chuckled on that, wondering if he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

I gave Claudia a run down on our married life and what eventuated. I was at a loss to how an intelligent Woman could be attracted to a guy like that.

Claudia thought for a bit.

"Mmmm, there was obviously some gap in your relationship. How much do you know about her life before she married you?"

"Well we used to discuss everything so I imagine I know quite a lot. She did have a fabulous gap year before University. She travelled to San Fransisco, Burning Man, New York, London , Paris , Prague, Berlin you name it."

"You don't think she knew James before?"

We pondered that, but it seemed a long shot.

Claudia asked, "Did you know that before she met you she used to be quite the fashion statement around Wellington? I didn't know her myself but with her height and dress sense she was noticed. I am sure she did a bit of modelling because I think I have seen her in a magazine. She would often be seen in the right places but oddly always seemed to me to be a bit of a loner."

"I think you two painted yourselves into a corner," Claudia went on. "By what you have told me, you admired intellect, self-assurance and no nonsense feminism."

I defended, "Yes but that's how she presented herself to me."

Then Claudia scored the coup de grace; "Yes but I think she was doing that because that's what she thought you wanted."

I took a while to get my head around that one but finally the irony of the situation dawned on me.

"Possibly she was not as self-assured as you imagined," Claudia added, "it seems to me a couple can talk too much about ideals but remain in denial about reality."

"You know, before I met her I was not that much different in outlook from what you described of Lisa's. When I started University I was very social and very conscious of being cool. I was flatting with fashion students for a while. It was one of the reasons I eventually stopped playing rugby."

"When I started working on my doctorate I became a bit of a monk and toned it all down; I finally got rid of my piercings when I joined the corporate world.

I suppose I did see some of that, and it was one of the things that attracted me to her.

Possibly," I continued, "we were both under the shadow of her father and perhaps we were tailoring our lives a little to please him. Lisa had become totally Mumsie with the kids as well."

Claudia was having an "aha!" moment; "That gap in your marriage is vanity. She did not feel able to express that side of herself and it became her Achilles heel when she came up against James."

Both Gordon and I were stuck for words with that.

Claudia carried on, "She would like to be flattered. He would do that."

Gordon chimed in, "you're so bloody honest and earnest, Gaz, if she asked you if her arse looked big in a skirt you would agree then give the size differential down to less than a centimetre."

"Oh, ha ha, Gordon."

Claudia added, "seriously Gaz, when did you last give Lisa flowers?"

I shook my head sadly, "I didn't think she liked flowers."

"Really? How do you know?"

"I..I just assumed, I suppose."

"Listen, I'll explain what I know about James."

Gordon looked at her suspiciously. "You haven't had some kind affair with him too?"

Claudia reddened little; "Well no, that's not to say he hasn't tried it on. But perhaps because of my natural scepticism or maybe experience I didn't buy into it....You see he is very attentive when he engages with the ladies. When you first meet him he can be quite funny and sweet. As he goes on, he likes to do things for them. Even give them presents. I bet he gave some of that Gym gear to Lisa."

"Oh shit you are probably right," I said.

Claudia continued, "In time he gets the women doing little things for him and boy some of them like that and he exploits it."

"The real down side is that he stores up all these intimate details the women tell him and uses it to manipulate them for his own gratification. In the end it is not about them, as they think. It is all about him."

"Did he do that to you?"

"Yes, to a point, but I fed him bullshit. I think he hates me as much as I hate him. He never got me into bed. I embarrassed him by calling him out when he tried regurgitating my bullshit into his home spun philosophies he was feeding one of the girls."

"Home spun Philosophies?"

"Yes that's the other side of him; the prick thinks he's a genius. He has all these wild ideas; the problem is that once he has them trapped into his little snare the women believe anything he says. He continually talks pseudoscience. He has a real interest in race and DNA. He makes the women feel superior by extolling the virtues that they inherit and benefit from their DNA."

"What you mean some form of modern eugenics?"

There was a long silence. Some things fell into place.

Finally I said, "I have a theory. I think Jimmy is the key. Lisa comes from a lineage of high achievers. He probably thinks with his genius and Lisa's intellect he has created a genius or something in Jimmy."

"To rule the world!" Gordon followed with a guffaw

"Shit oh dear," I replied, "Do you know he gets Lisa to call him "Sir".....A master slave relationship referencing her father, I would say."

Following the dinner I called a family conference for the following week. It included our respective fathers, one of Lisa's sisters, Beth and her husband Alex and my sister, Georgia, who actually flew in from University for the occasion. The venue was dinner at Beth and Alex's place.

Lisa's Mother Pandora however refused to take part, now saying that Lisa was more suited to James's type and we should give them a chance. She blamed me for having them charged for their little tryst. She encouraged them and fundamentally gave her assent to Lisa's arrangement.

It gave me hope that given our respective families Lisa had potentially a strong support network if the worst happens, whatever that might be. I gave the rest of the family a rundown on the conversation I had had with Gordon and Claudia. There were a lot of unknowns.

Beth wondered if James had some kind of cult going, in which case perhaps we could kidnap her and have her deprogrammed. There was a concern about Lisa's father's high profile position and that could blow up in our faces. Ed suggested we get a private investigator gather more information but what and for what end?

There was no point in getting the police involved, as at the present we were not actually aware of them breaking any laws. Despite the effort of everyone getting together, the conference ended with a lot of food for thought but no direct plan. We knew the charges were about to come up in court. Lisa and James were appearing separately the same week which was two weeks following the conference. I was summoned as a witness to appear at both.

The hearing was not a big event. It received no publicity. It was the first time I had seen her since she left and I thought she did not look that well. She avoided looking at me and we never spoke. I thought she would be discharged without conviction as a relatively minor first offence but she was not. She was convicted and her sentence suspended. I believe that has something to do with James but it was not divulged publically in court.

Later that week James was convicted. He was put on probation and had to undertake community service.

A month later Claudia called me to say James and Hera had been sacked from the franchise and there was a new manager. Lisa had gone as well. Claudia thought the lawyer Judith Hallows had sprung James's little game. We wondered if there was more behind the Judith Hallows affair than we knew of, but decided after consultation with Ed that it would be best if we kept well clear of her.

I was not given an explanation why Hallows was off limits but Ed was adamant. Ed knew her and asked us to trust him so I had to respect his decision. Perhaps there was some baggage there.

I now believe that Ed knew more about Hallow's involvement than he has ever let on.

When I called Alex and Ed we decided that we needed to act and that Alex and I should go and see Lisa but when we arrived at the house we found it empty. James and Hera had been renting it. We traced the landlord but he had no idea where they had gone. We also discovered that James was in breach of probation and the service could not trace him either.

Ed did hire a PI but that rapidly drew a blank as there was nowhere that anyone could think of to start. Claudia could find out nothing from the Women at the Gym. A few of them were very upset at their departure and could possibly have been protecting them. The PI did a search on line and pulled up nothing useful.

A month went by and another month with no word or sighting.

My life had settled into a business as usual mode and I was coping with Sarah and Hugo with the assistance of the family. Lisa's Mother Pandora had become upset that Lisa had not called her. She still blamed me but was particularly attentive with Sarah and Hugo and despite all, was a fantastic Grandmother to them.

I was able to carry on with the business and progress was well under way with the first of the major projects to come.

.....Then came the fateful day.

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