Mistake?

By Barry Larkins

The aftermath of the breakup of a relationship is almost complete. All Issabella has to do is remove all traces of the releationship from her emails. While conducting this exercise she discovers something which could change her life forever.
Horse racing and diving will be the keys to unlocking the adventure but it is frought with doubt. Could it be a colossal mistake?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Larkins
• Release date: Aug 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9780957613430

Barry Larkins

Many writers probably started like me with nightschool classes in creative writing,this progressed when I collected my father's poems, the story is the preface to my first book of poems which explains how I got started.Many of my poems have won awards and short stories too.I continue to write, mostly short stories, although I am writing a biography of a relatives diaries from WWII. Ideas for novels are also in the production line.

Book preview

Mistake?

Barry Larkins

Thoughts of Baz Publishing

Published by Thoughts of Baz Publishing

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Barry Larkins 2013

The right of Barry Larkins to be identified

As the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business, companies, events, locales is entirely coincidental.

By the same Author:

Poetry

Thoughts Of Baz

Scribblings of an Accidental Poet

More Scribblings

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ISBN No: 978-0-9576134-3-0

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Not Bedtime Reading

Silver Threads of Life

Chapter 1

It was a mistake, a big mistake. Issabella stood on her balcony looking out to sea as she thought about it.

A tear trickled down her cheek as she remembered the last three months.

Perhaps if I had called him, told him about it, we would both be here?

The Jumeirah Beach Hotel caught her eye as parts became illuminated. Her attention was drawn to The Wave, as the structure of the hotel is supposed to depict, as its colour changed from green to orange and the strobe lights started flickering all over the building.

Her eyes glazed over as she cast her mind back to the night of the row; to the night she had confronted Jed about his philandering. She remembered how she was staying in to help pay the mortgage while he was out, gallivanting every night.

‘It’s common knowledge that you’re out with a different woman every night,’ she had screamed at him, ‘coming in at all hours of the day and night. Enough it’s finished.’

‘But it doesn’t mean anything; I want to be with you. You make me laugh. I love you.’ Jed had pleaded with her. He held out his hands, palms uppermost in supplication. He sank to his knees, ‘Issabella I love you,’ he’d whimpered.

She was having none of it. ‘Enough is enough. The only thing you love is anything in knickers, and then only ‘till you’ve got them off. Get back to your one night stands and your feckless whores.’

She had thrown the suitcase at him; it hit him full in the chest and knocked him out of the still open front door. Issabella ran after him, threw his raincoat on top of the jumbled heap on the front lawn, ‘and don’t come back.’ She’d slammed the door.

It was true, she thought, I did make him laugh, and he made me laugh too. We were good together, especially in bed; very good in bed.

The tears were flowing now, coursing down her cheeks and dripping off the end of her chin creating damp patches on her dress, one of only two she could afford from ‘The Life After’ second hand designer dress shop.

Her eyes drifted out to sea; at the dhows, which plied their trade up and down the Persian Gulf, of which only the navigation lights could be seen twinkling in the dark.

Dark was her memory of how she struggled to pay the solicitors fees as well as the mortgage, and the steel came back into her eyes as she remembered the fight to keep her house. The bastard had the cheek to try to claim half the house, my house.

I should have known. After all, I first met him under similar circumstances. He left his current girl for me. My mistake was letting him move in. Six months of bliss. Parties, nightclubs, dancing, sex, oh the sex.

Her body, even now, ached for him. She trembled at the thought. She was breathless, panting, and the tears started again.

It couldn’t last; she started to find bills piling up. The high life had to stop, and that’s when it all started to turn sour. He wasn’t prepared to stay in, to cut down on the spending, and her secretary’s pay wasn’t enough to do both. The laughing stopped, the sex became less frequent and suspicion poisoned her mind. She followed him.

The nights were boring in the extreme; visiting pubs, hiding behind corners; watching him doing his laddish performances with his mates. She should have known when it got to Friday that it wouldn’t be the night, Friday is ‘lads night out’ its tradition. She began to doubt her suspicions until Saturday.

He started at the pub as usual, drinking with his mates until nine and then left moving on to a club which held a disco every Saturday. She knew what to expect, she had been there with him in the past.

The night was a long one, he wouldn’t leave until around two but she had no choice she just had to stick it out, luckily it had been a fine night. Quarter to two he emerged with a girl on his arm, got into a prearranged taxi and set off.

Issabella had panicked a little as the taxi headed off in the opposite direction to which she was facing. Finding the road clear she executed a quick turn, ignoring the fact of having to mount the pavement, and followed at a discreet distance.

Pulling up opposite the house she reflected on the district she was in, how safe was she sitting alone in her car? She looked at the house, difficult to see in the dark but she knew the area and could imagine the state of the property, not somewhere she would want to live.

She waited, saw bedroom light go on just like in the private detective films she had seen and imagined herself as a ‘private eye’ but still couldn’t quite believe it when she saw Jed unfastening his shirt just before the girl drew the curtains.

Perhaps the most galling thing was the knowledge that he had been doing this behind her back for some time then joining her in their bed afterwards. She had never thought of herself as particularly beautiful but this woman he had picked up was___, well, quite ugly. How could he abandon her for this___ prostitute? How could she think of her in any other way after-all this was the area of the city she was now in? At least now she knew for sure. There and then she resolved to have it out with him but also to make an appointment with her Doctor. She had no symptoms but wasn’t prepared to wait; she had to know for sure.

After the trauma of the break up, and the court wrangling, she wanted to get her life back together again; work was the only thing that had kept her sane. The house was a mess; she’d lost touch with all her friends, so she decided to take drastic action. She cleaned the house from top to bottom making sure there were no lingering reminders of Jed. Two rooms that were looking rather sad she decorated with the latest trends in wallpaper to brighten them up, all in preparation for a big party to celebrate the fact that she was free, single and available.

She had been sat at her computer one evening after the party, the last thing she needed to do in ridding her life of Jed, dealing with her emails; she hadn’t switched it on for months but felt she was ready to finally perform the killing, the disinfecting of her previous life.

The list was endless. She had been sorely tempted to simply delete everything but eventually succumbed to the need to know who had been trying to get in touch. She had already deleted all the spam, and was busy tackling the rest. She was part way through when she recalled something that Jed had done not long after moving in. He liked a bet on the horses and had entered a free competition using her email address. Something in the spam reminded her. She went into her trashcan and brought her deleted emails back and sure enough there were a number of emails from The Godolphin Seven Stars.

Early in their relationship she recalled Jed trying to explain about the Godolphin Seven Stars; he said something about the splitting of all the horses he owned into seven different stables; to enter the competition all you had to do was select one horse from each stable, register them then monitor the results each time they raced, adding up the points as the season progressed. The entrant with the most points would win. She clicked onto the latest one because it said ‘Congratulations’.

Issabella could not believe her eyes, according to the email the entry had won first prize. She read it again careful to scrutinise the small print, she had heard of internet scams promising money in exchange for your bank details. There was nothing in the email asking for such details. One hundred thousand American dollars, seven nights in the six stars Burj Al Arab and first class air fairs to Dubai; she was dumb struck. She read on. Tickets would be provided for the main stand to watch the annual running of the Dubai World Cup, the richest horse race in the world.

She had read the details again. Everything was in her name so she had replied to the email giving all the details that were requested. She wasn’t interested in horse racing, so didn’t bother trying to understand how the entry had won, but she would have to go to Dubai to collect her prize, what the hell, if she’d won. She’d won!

Returning to her room