The Life Coach Less Travelled

By Pamela Turton

‘My life coach told me I needed to get one before he could coach me on it.’ – Unknown

Susanna Litigio has a troubled past..
Now most of us could use a life coach at some point in our lives, couldn’t we?
But what if your life coach has problems more disturbing than yours?
What if your life coach turns out to be dangerous?

“Life is difficult.” M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Travelled 1978)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pamela Turton
• Release date: Feb 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311540775

Pamela Turton

I was born into a large, loving family in North-West England. Following a convent school education, I entered a teaching career which spanned more than twenty years. During that time I developed an holistic, 'hands-on' approach to teaching, designed to complement a child's natural sense of curiosity and creativity; which helped earn me a place on the prestigious Science grasp programme in the USA. Around the same time I completed my Master's degree in Language, the Arts and Education. With a passion for writing, and my interest in Human Development expanding to incorporate NLP and EFT training, I've recently published a handbook of 'applied positive psychology', two collections of poetry and three novels, in addition to developing educational resources and writing blogs and articles. Enjoying travel, my streak of wanderlust has led me to live in the United States and Turkey. Now, I'm settled in the Peak National Park district,still close to my beloved birthplace of Manchester, with two lovely sons and a lively Lapp Hund.

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THE LIFE COACH

LESS TRAVELLED

A Novel by Pamela Turton

Smashwords Edition | Copyright 2013 Pamela Turton

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters in this publication are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

http://www.pamelaturton.com

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Cover photo by Katherine Evans, UK; cover design by Ski Evans, UK

For the real everyday heroes and heroines in all of the ‘helping professions’ everywhere

My life coach told me I’d have to get one before he could coach me on it.

- Unknown

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.

- M. Scott Peck

(The Road Less Travelled 1978)

SUSANNA

I think I can remember a time when I was happy, before my sister was born. My clearest memory of her is when I was five, going on six.

My saliva was dribbling onto the skin which tickled my lip gently, just at the moment I breathed in fiercely, then sandwiched a chunk of forearm flesh between my teeth, gripping hard, counting one, two, three. I howled protractedly before deciding to lie down and writhe on the rug, rewarded by the sound of the legs of kitchen chairs scraping the parquet and startled, questioning voices already approaching. Lucia, who had been chattering incoherently, insouciantly and clumsily building bright colourful towers and knocking them down to build higher or more interesting ones, jumped at the noise. Instantly she amplified it with her own shocked and frightened wailing, her huge, brown eyes like rain-washed, precious stones.

My parents flung through the door like commandos. My father’s alarmed eyes focussed on Lucia, whilst Mama dropped dramatically to my side. By then I was sucking the flesh above my wrist, whimpering as I alternated between glancing at my mother’s face and turning my head to calibrate the response of Papa. I turned up the volume, holding up my arm, unnoticed by him. His back to me, he had snatched Lucia up into his arms, breathing soothing words in his native tongue into the dark, feathery hair above her ear.

She bit me, I stuttered, wagging my finger towards my baby sister, who had her face hidden, nestled in the warm, rough comfort of my father’s neck. Neither of them turned to me, as I slavered and made tight-strung sobbing noises over my lower arm.

I persevered, holding up my forearm to display the purple, oval wound, the tiny bloodspots and the two curves of tooth-shaped indentations. Mama gasped, taking up my arm in both hands to inspect the injury closer.

The baby bit you? she enquired, more like the trained nurse she was than an alarmed mother.

I nodded vehemently, widening my eyes as much as I could. Papa crouched down, squatting next to me, the baby supported carefully in his arms. Squinting at the livid mark on my skin, he blew out a long, fast breath of contempt.

Since what day the baby has all her teeth? he snarled, loosening a broad, strong hand to swipe at my ear.

Fortunately, I was saved by his need to stop my sister from tumbling out of his arms, and my mother wordlessly leading me out of the living room by my unblemished hand, up to my bedroom. With a release of my arm like a delicate dance move, and an inscrutable, almost lipless face, Mama indicated my punishment. Before closing the door on me she somehow also managed to convey, in a blink of her eyes, tacit approval.

I understand why you would do this.

I imagine now that when she joined my father, steeled for the overflow of retribution and disgust at their first-born like a burst of ice-cold water, she had erased that complicity from her face and replaced it with puzzled concern.

Without hearing what he was actually saying, upstairs I felt the bass of his anger reverberate in my breast. It was all I could feel, until the sensation submitted to a creeping pain when his voice dissolved, sweetened by the lullabies he could only be consoling my infant sister with.

‘Bambolina, bambolina mia.’

Tears of frustration mingled with spittle as I channelled pain, biting on bite, already rejecting the act as a failure. Only last week, the infliction of a brief and brutal nip on my sister’s shoulder had not resulted in my desired outcome, and had brought about a similar isolation.

It had occurred on the day when it was the turn of my mother to host the neighbourhood ‘Mummy and Baby’ session at our house. Usually, three or four mothers would wheel up their infants, aged between three and eighteen months, for two hours of maternal conversation, filial adoration and even an element of competition. Sometimes I would join in amusing the babies, often I would withdraw to my own bedroom, to make-believe friends more real, and more gratifying than any others I had. Especially when Lucia became the focus so frequently, like a living, moving, rich, delicious cake in the centre of a table.

On that occasion I chose a moment when two of the toddlers were shuffling and tapping with plastic toys in the living room, with Lucia who was in her underwear, having spilt orange juice on her dress. The two babies were balanced on the hips of their mothers in the kitchen with Mama, setting out mashed fruit, soft cookies and lipped-cups of juice and milk.

Pulling up her vest quickly, which merely caused Lucia to shrug her bared shoulder and continue tapping wooden pegs into round holes in a block, I glanced around to ensure the little playmates were absorbed, and struck like a snake. By the time Lucia’s shock had turned to howls of outrage and pain I was running towards the kitchen.

Mama, Lucia is hurt and I don’t know what’s the matter. I pulled at my mother’s hem urgently.

I was convincing, because the effect of adrenalin, my vengeful fury and fear of being caught was interpreted as high anxiety for my young sibling’s welfare.

Oh God. What now? groaned Mama, already behind the other two, who had dashed into the living room with startled babies jogging in their arms.

Lucia, Lucia, what happened, sweetie? she murmured, checking her fingers and hands for signs of missed aim with the little hammer.

Perhaps she caught her head on the furniture, one of the Mummies suggested, so Lucia’s shiny black curls were lifted from her forehead for examination.

Resilient Lucia, irrepressibly sanguine, shook her lustrous head to free herself, and picked up a bracelet of bells from the floor, jingling merrily, nodding and grinning with her four pearly teeth. The mothers shook their heads in bewilderment, with relieved and beaten smiles.

Let’s go and eat, Mama invited them.

I attended to Lucia’s refreshment with genuine pleasure, helping her to hold the cup to her lips, placing strips of bread and cake in her dimpled hands, wondering at the consequences of my secret act. My sense of well-being deepened when I noticed the look of approval on Mama’s face. The two toddlers, however, intermittently directed suspicious, sideways stares at me, each time I moved towards my sister.

Curiously to me, the episode was not mentioned again that afternoon, not even during the habitual exchange of information about how the day had passed, between my parents and my father’s sister, our maiden aunt Maria Pia, who more often than not joined us for our evening meal, leaving after Lucia and I were settled in bed for the night.

Antonio, why don’t you let me help you bathe the bambinas, hey? Give their Mama a break? Maria Pia asked in her usual manner that made a request effectively a command.

Papa grunted assent. Mama nodded gratefully.

Darlings, come with Zia Maria Pia, she sang the rhyme of her title, which always made me chuckle.

My aunt beckoned, picking up Lucia and putting her in Papa’s reluctant arms. He turned the television off with a downward turn of his mouth to follow his sister’s plodding steps upstairs, hand-in-hand with me.

You run the bath, Antonio, while I get girls ready, Maria ordered, settling on the wicker linen stool with her solid, blotched legs apart with Lucia resting in between them on the hammock of her flowered skirt.

Susanna, take your clothes off, bella, and then you can put the bubbles in for Papa. Eh?

I was struggling to get my arms out of my dress, when the first gush of hot water hitting the enamel coincided with a horrified gasp from my aunt. Pulling the dress so it covered my face, I continued to wrestle behind it, sighing and wriggling more noisily to smother the flood of horror being expressed by Zia Maria in vehement Italian, punctuated by the gruff notes of Papa’s worried enquiry. There was silence, briefly. Then my hair was pulled with it as my dress was yanked roughly over my head, and I was exposed. My terrified stare was confronted with the vivid bruise on Lucia’s delicate shoulder. It was the same colour as Papa’s cheeks.

You see this on your sorella? he jabbed angrily at the air, pointing at the wound.

I nodded mutely.

You know about this happened?

I shook my head, repeating the denial wordlessly until my father’s fury transmuted into exasperation. Maria Pia, shaking her black and white head in synchrony, muttered words of sad incomprehension as she poured the clear contents of a bottle into the bath and stirred it up. With a culprit’s intuition and experience I knew how, if I confessed nothing, the genuine fear of the guilty freezing my features could be interpreted by the suspicious as something more honourable, more acceptable, such as shared pain for my little baby sister, or the petrified emotions of a child in the face of parental rage.

My mother’s face was a study of slits when she was called to the bathroom.

Any of the children could have done this, she murmured dispassionately, examining tenderly the mark on Lucia’s back. I’ll mention it to the twins’ Mum when I get the right moment.

She swung Lucia gently into the bath, frothing up the bubbles to make her forget, and when Lucia’s attention was in the fun of the foam, she and Maria took a hand each, helping me to lower myself in the warm waters beside my sister. With nothing more to say or do, Mama left me immersing myself in entertaining Lucia, observed by Papa, leaning detachedly by the sink, and our seated aunt, her facial expression twisting between affection and disappointment. For me, it was the recession of my father’s attention which was more unbearable than even my mother’s impassive and dutiful neglect, which was consistent and accustomed.

A subtle skill in pinching became my practice towards my sister from that incident. At first I experimented on myself, the exact nail pressure and timing to produce a sting of pain which, on new skin like cotton blossom, after a few seconds left no evidence.

As the pinching became routine I explored variations, concluding that undermining Lucia’s charm and vivacity was a much more effective strategy than getting caught out. That was a humiliation I found more painful than a slap, or a solitary stint in my pink and beige bedroom.

Sometimes adults would bring tubes of bubbles for our amusement. One Sunday morning, when Papa had been left to mind us while our mother was at Mass, he engaged us in the thrill of gentle blowing followed by the ecstatic release of rainbow spheres. Once my father’s interest had waned and he had drifted back into the kitchen with his newspaper, I allowed a few minutes to pass, enticing my sister with the fragile, floating air-balls, while she clapped and giggled.

Lucia blow now, I encouraged in my softest peach, big-sister voice.

Lucia grabbed the stick with awkward, infantile enthusiasm, puffing out a noisy, wet raspberry with her lips and to her own and my astonishment, inflated a huge, wobbly genie of a bubble through the little hoop. Lucia squealed with excitement, stumbling on her sturdy, novice legs as she chased her piece of magic. I offered her the hoop again. As Lucia grinned and grasped her chubby fingers round it, I closed my own hand over my sister’s. I dipped the stick into the bottle and firmly brought it up again, dabbing it in the corner of my own eye before letting go. Lucia looked at the hoop then at me, her squinting sister, with innocent enquiry before resuming her happy huffing at the liquid lens.

A piercing crescendo broke through Papa’s peaceful equilibrium.

What the hell? he yelled, stamping like a bull into the living-room, scaring Lucia into frozen muteness, prompting me to elevate my puce shrieking.

Papa shouted more forcefully, his noise surfing mine.

What? What? Why you crying now this time?

I graduated to snivelling, still rubbing my eye and blinking grotesquely so he could see the stinging redness. With the other hand I pointed at Lucia.

She didn’t mean to, I whimpered, as Lucia’s luminous, dark eyes grew rounder and more fluid, and my father glanced around for evidence.

His hostile confiscation of the bottle, and the alleged weapon from Lucia’s hand, caused her to cry too, opening and closing her little berry mouth, pushing out disconsolate bubbles of hurt around a square of four tiny, white teeth. I observed in silence, half-smiling at my father’s tense, broad back disappearing through the door.

The teddy-wetting was contrived for my mother, because that kind of soiling was offensive and humiliating to her, and could be relied upon to irritate my father indirectly, having to listen to mother’s complaints and urgings to ‘do something’.

Eighteen-month old Lucia was being coaxed out of nappies and on to a bright yellow potty with butterflies on it. Typically, when left to her own devices, Lucia adapted to this with winsome willingness, enough to convince Mama she could be left to totter bare-bottomed for short intervals throughout the day. Until the afternoon that I, one ear on the sound of dish-washing in the kitchen, had squatted over Lucia’s favourite teddy, the specially made one from Italy.

Mama, I yelled, Come quickly. I think Lucia has had an accident.

The suggestion of harm induced Mama to hurry in, wiping her hands on a towel.

Accident? she asked me anxiously.

I apologetically placed the sodden teddy in her arms. Even I had not anticipated the theatrical scream of frustration from my mother, though to watch Lucia being bound urgently and ungently in terry cloth, and the squeak and snap of the plastic pants, was totally expected.

Nonetheless, not this incident, or any of my efforts, could prevent or reverse my mother becoming Rita and a nurse again, or Lucia from spoiling my life.

RITA

In my heart I stopped being Carita from the moment Lucia had burst out from me, as if taking my very life-spark with her; a vivacious bullet, lighting up my husband’s eyes in a way they never had been for his first-born, or even for me. His eyes shone like candles, his words dulcet-voiced like prayers spoken, as he took her in his arms for the first time and I stopped feeling.

I had been smitten by my husband the moment our fingers touched around the cone of a generous ice-cream, mingling in the melting slush and sweet, red sauce, when Antonio was helping out his brother in the van one hot Sunday. With the heat of his fingers and smile lingering on my skin, I stood and watched the van’s jolly, musical exit down the street, cornet in hand. Shortly after that, before Antonio and I began smiling, stilted conversations, I became Carita, which I had discovered meant ‘beloved’ in Latin. It was how I introduced myself to him on the early evening of the following bank holiday, by the gates of the local park; the occasion allowing me to dress prettily and adopt light-heartedness.

So he’s Italian, your new boyfriend? my mother had asked, in tight tones which gave away the control she was exerting as she passed the mashed potatoes around.

My father brought the fork down from his mouth, unconsciously resting it in his fist on the table, waiting.

Yes, I beamed at them both intensely. He calls me Carita. I laughed gaily, intending to infect them with my love.

Carita, they repeated, exchanging restrained glances.

Question-marks hung in the air, invisible yet as tangible as the silence that occupied the space between them.

I was Carita for seven years. Before I was just Rita again, I became Mama. My first baby, Susanna, the lily, was named for her perfect, downy whiteness, in contrast to my second; born dark and still. The longer my husband wept, hunched in possessive grief over the lifeless body of our son, the more forcefully I felt gratitude that my twin daughter had pulled through, was on my breast, living and breathing; a force doubly steeled with fear of losing her, and determination to protect her at all costs.

My milk dried up for Lucia. Antonio busied himself beatifically with dried milk powder, hot water and bottles, testing temperature on the soft inside of his elbow before gently finding Lucia’s lips, a trusting curl in his arms. The more he spilled over with joy for her, the more I felt mine leaking away, and could not stop it, as I did not know why or where I was cracked and torn; where the puncture holes were. Something had to be poured back in somehow, to save me, so I re-filled with Susanna’s needing, and then, wanting more, found work to do it.

For me, the happy coincidence of Lucia achieving ‘dryness’ and the event of Susanna reaching school-age, meant I could excuse myself from some of the darker places of domesticity. Maria Pia was brought in for day and evening duty, and I, able to sleep during the morning, became a night-nurse at the local hospital. I had given up my nursing job when I was pregnant with Susanna at Antonio’s insistence that he could look after us, so I could stay at home after she was born. We were very content then, in our first little ‘two-up, two-down’ house, which we had cheerfully painted, sewn and sawn into colourful comfort.

It was partly the mortgage on the semi-detached property with garden, which we promoted ourselves to the year before we conceived Lucia, that helped me to convince my husband life would be easier if I went back to work. Everyone knew the ice-cream van trade was struggling against the cheap treasures of the vast supermarket freezers. Antonio and his brother Vincenzo were no exception. I presented my case to him carefully, with a list of financial facts and figures, domestic and work timetables. Thinking he would need cajoling and persuading, pleased that it all looked so clear, so efficient, practical and sensible on paper. Not anticipating that he would scan the papers perfunctorily, nod with impatient agreement without one sigh of complaint that while I held hands, attended, whispered and bent over strangers in beds, I would be absent from ours.

I