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Chapter 1 Dee Hanover
“Dee! Dee Hanover, this way, Dee!” The young man trained his camera on Dee’s lithe body, snapping shots of her as she exited the court house. “Look at me, Dee!”
Dee watched in slow motion as the man’s body jerked to life and the camera leapt to his eye in a reflex action, desperate for the best shot possible. He possessed a kind face filled with youth but his photos would contain cruel angles, each frame combed to produce the one with the most devastation on her face, the slump of her shoulders and perhaps a digitally added tear or two. “I won’t miss this,” Dee muttered to her lawyer and he smiled.
“It should die down now, at least until you fall in love and marry again.”
Dee snorted. “Right! Never then.”
“Dee, how did it go? Anything helpful you can say to the women of New Zealand?”
She stopped so quickly, the elderly lawyer ran into her back. “Don’t!” he hissed as Dee opened her pretty lips to speak. “Don’t!” he said again, his face falling into a grimace as he saw her glazed look.
“Yeah,” Dee said. She took a step towards the journalist standing next to the cameraman. Both looked elated. The blonde highlights in her straightened hair glinted in the summer sunshine and her faultless makeup played to the camera lens, a striking woman with immense anger in her blue eyes. “Tell them not to marry arseholes.” Dee tossed her head, squared her shoulders and walked towards her lawyer with catwalk precision, putting on a show for their benefit. The tears would come later, in private.
“I can’t print that!” the journalist shouted and Dee gritted her teeth. “They won’t let me print that!” he repeated, tutting at her retreating back.
“He’s out!” the cameraman shouted, gripping his camera and moving off in an ungainly run with the strap around his neck, pulling his head forward. Dee stopped to watch as a crowd of journalists, photographers and news reporters gathered outside the front of the courthouse to greet her husband. He postured in an expensive suit and tie, his salt and pepper highlights giving him a distinguished look which Dee always loved.
“Come on,” the lawyer said, dragging at Dee’s arm. “The last thing you need is a long lens taking a shot of that look on your face. It would make the perfect headline.”
Dee allowed herself to be led along the street to the lawyer’s aging vehicle. The Jaguar sat in the safety of a private parking garage off one of Auckland’s busy main streets and the old man waved to the attendant as the car moved through the barrier. “Can we drive past the courthouse?” Dee asked, a slight catch in her voice. “They won’t see me through the tinted windows.”
The lawyer nodded and obliged, slowing down as they passed the wide steps covered in Michael Hanover’s adoring paparazzi. Dee took a long, last look at the man whose cruel revelation sank her world in one sentence, waiting for the emotional bite in her heart to kick in. Nothing. “Former husband,” she whispered.
“Pardon?” The bristly beard turned in her direction and Dee’s lawyer tipped his head to hear better. “I didn’t catch that.”
“I said, former husband,” she repeated. “That’s who he is now. I need to stop calling him my husband.”
“I know it’s hard,” Derek Gallagher patted her hand. “But you’ll start again.”
“No I won’t.” Dee’s jaw showed through the line of her soft cheek as she stared through the window at the Auckland skyline. She picked at an acrylic nail on her index finger, trying to remember what her own looked like underneath. The polish chipped under her picking, overdue a trip to the beauty salon. She’d made an appointment for the day before and then cancelled, unable to face the bitchy women for whom she was no longer a soldier in arms, but a piece of gossip to be picked over. “What did I do wrong, Derek?” she asked, her voice plaintive. “I thought he’d tell me what I did wrong.”
The old lawyer sighed as he parked his prized vehicle outside the neat villa in an Auckland suburb. He took Dee’s right hand in both his, arthritic joints pressing through twisted skin. “You did nothing wrong, sweetheart. You married young, built a business together and he traded you in. Thirty-eight is no age, my love. I promise you’ll find love again, but this time we’ll make a pre-nuptial agreement to protect you.” He caressed her writhing fingers with fatherly care and Dee gripped his hand as though searching for a lifeline.
“Did we do ok?” she asked, her blue eyes filling with tears. “Did I lose everything?”
“No.” The divorce lawyer smirked, his foray out of retirement as a favour to a friend, the highlight of his year. “We asked for fifty percent of his business and settled at thirty-five. It’s not fair but it’s enough. The arrogant son-of-a-bitch thought you were desperate for control of the company and his fancy lawyers focussed on minimising the damage.”
“Well, I did want more control,” Dee sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I wanted to be part of things when we were married; go to board meetings and make suggestions instead of Michael using my vote. At least now I know why he didn’t want me there. It’s probably not a good idea to have your wife there as a director and your mistress taking shorthand.”
“No, indeed.” Derek patted her hand. “Dee, after we spoke last, Mabel and I talked and I made some changes to the settlement. I need to talk them through with you.” He peered into Dee’s glazed eyes and nodded. “Let’s go inside for coffee. Mabel’s done baking; can’t you smell it?” He raised his nose and sniffed like a dog. “Blueberry muffins. My favourite.”
Dee shook her head. “I think I’ll grab my car and just go,” she sighed.
“No, you won’t,” Derek said, heaving his eighty-year-old body from the vehicle. “I’m under strict instructions to take you inside or Mabel won’t speak to me for the rest of the day. And seeing as it’s probably one of my last, I can’t afford to waste it!”
“Don’t speak like that!” Dee’s bottom lip wobbled as emotion rose like a tsunami in her chest.
“Now, now,” Derek soothed, tugging her arm to get her out of the passenger seat. “It hurts now but it won’t always, I promise.”
“How would you know?” Dee complained into the laughing brown eyes. “You’ve been married for fifty years.
Derek’s face became serious as he peered at Dee, the lines under his laughing eyes more obvious in the sunshine. “I was a divorce lawyer a long time, Dee. I’ve seen all the cruel and spiteful things done in the name of love. I saw abuse, depravity and terminal selfishness until I was sick to my stomach. And then I came home to a good woman and appreciated her so much more because of the poor souls I interceded for.”
Dee nodded as the first tear dripped from her long eyelashes, taking a blob of expensive mascara with it. Derek knew the warning signs and clicked the central locking on his Jaguar, taking Dee’s arm and helping her up the steps to his home. Dee leaned on his crippled frame, remembering Michael’s hoot of laughter as the old man stood in court to face the judge. Her husband’s legal team, selected from his array of private school drinking buddies, snorted and nudged one another as the old man said his piece. They agreed to the terms, surprised at how easily the old man allowed them to beat him down to thirty-five percent for twenty years of participating in one of New Zealand’s biggest information technology companies. Less than half the company for twenty years of raising her daughter while Michael worked late, living on loans and scraping together food, doing the books until they could find an accountant and taking cleaning jobs to bridge them during the worst times. Dee shook her head as the numbness cleared and sheer devastation set in.
You can download the next novel, Deleilah HERE.