Chapter 1: Chapter 1

When Francis George-Bode died at fifty-five; he did not leave his beloved twenty-five years old daughter – Monica George-Bode – an old wrinkled mother, an ancient, ghostly house, an ugly, worn-out pair of leather shoes and a scrappy, jalopy car. He left her a beautiful, loving mother and a wealthy business empire, stretching in oil, gas, steel and real estates. So, Monica was an incredibly opulent woman.

Francis George-Bode died in a fatal plane crash, on his way to close a business deal overseas. The plane had plummeted and slapped itself onto a deep ocean, slitting in two, and killing everyone onboard. It was a heartbreaking and difficult time in Monica’s life and that of Helen, her mother. They grieved Francis’s death for months with a heavy heart. And for Monica, it was as if she would never get over it. She was very fond of her loving father – the shrewd and loving business mogul.

Francis George-Bode suffered a great deal in life. Ravaged by poverty and having to support his widowed mother at an early age. It was from where he learned his prudent and entrepreneurial skills, and through the sweat of his brows; his hard work and tenacity, he rose from nothing, like the Phoenix, and built for himself an incredible and impregnable business empire that made him the ‘Rockefeller’ of his time.

Helen, Monica’s mother, married Francis because of his vision and persistence. She saw in him a man who was standing on the shoulders of giants, with fire in his belly, and with the wildest dreams unimaginable. She fell in love with him and married him at twenty-three, and their marriage was a happy one, and was complete when Monica was born. Everything seemed to have fallen into place as Francis George-Bode’s business flourished in leaps and bounds and became the totem of the business world. But their cloud turned dark when Helen began to have several miscarriages, and bearing another child became as difficult as going to the sun. It was in this incompleteness that Francis George-Bode died, leaving Monica as the sole heiress to his outlandishly wealthy business empire.

Monica had a great education. And of course almost everything she ever wanted. From sweet, creamy chocolates to beautiful and exotic clothes, vacations in five-star hotels in the most beautiful parts of the world, shiny toys and chauffeur-driven snazzy cars. There was just one thing that had always left Monica sad, incomplete and empty. It was her seemingly endless search for true love – for that man that would love her just or more than her father ever did; that man that would love her not because of her wealth or name, but because of who she really was. But that yearning had remained unfulfilled and strangely distant. Sadly, too, it was the one thing that her money could not buy.

Yesterday, Monica had returned from the office in the sweltering afternoon earlier than she was used to, with a puffy face, and her eyes trickling with tears as she ran into the living room of her lavish mansion and slouched on the plump chair. She was weeping when Helen clattered down the shiny marble stairs to the living room.

‘I heard the car wheeze outside, with your bodyguards. What’s wrong with you?’ she asked her sobbing daughter.

‘It’s Richard! Mom, I broke up with him,’ Monica said tearfully.

‘You broke up with your boyfriend and you are crying, what sense does that make?’ asked her dumbfounded mother.

‘I didn’t mean to break up with him. Mom, you know how much I love Richard; you know how much he means to me. But I have been stupid to think he feels the same way for me. The bastard has been cheating on me with Jane!’ she screamed.

‘You cannot be serious about that,’ said the shell-shocked Helen, ‘Jane? I thought she was your best friend?’

‘Yes, Mom; the same Jane you know. The same one that is decent and responsible than me,’ Monica said sardonically.

‘But I do not understand why men cheat,’ Helen said; staring at her husband’s large-framed photo that was placed on the shiny wall; somewhat detached from Monica’s predicament.

‘It’s simple, Mom. It’s because it’s in their blood! It’s congenital!’ Monica shrieked, ‘Richard said I don’t look African. He said I don’t have the backside and curviness of Jane. He called me a “Paperback,” Monica said, sobbing.

‘Paperback? I thought that was for a book. What else does it mean?’ Helen asked.

‘It means a woman that does not have rounded buttocks. The one that is without a big backside,’ Monica replied. ‘Do I not look good enough? Is it my fault that I do not have big buttocks?’ Helen stared at her daughter with pity and a little amusement. She had loved and cherished Richard. In fact, she had dreamed of marrying him. After she picked him up from the dirt and cleaned him up, giving him his present genteel air. Richard, the twat and ingrate, now had the nerve to play around and cheat on her beloved daughter. Breaking her heart and calling her a ‘Paperback.’

Helen gave a short sigh and went over to the chair and sat with Monica, fondling her shoulder soothingly.

‘It’s okay, my daughter,’ she said to Monica. ‘He does not deserve you. He is just a pig. When one cleans up a pig, it does not stop it from going back to the dirt. It’s the same with a kite, even when you kill a goat for it, it does not stop it from hunting chicks. You shall find another man who will love you for who you are, and will never look at another woman and compare her with you. That man that is yours will never call you a paperback.’ When Monica picked Richard up from the gutters, and from his life of squalor, he was blind then to see that she did not look African. And that she was far from being a goddess. Now it was so amazing that he could see so brilliantly, Helen thought inwardly, as she pressed Monica’s face to her chest. Just as she hoped that after she had cried out her heart, she would feel better and then find the courage to move on, and learn from the many ups and downs of life, that would in the end make her wiser and stronger.