Between Two Oceans - Book 2

Chapter 1

- Blaine -

My grandmother told me to never take anything for granted. My father told me that I was the heir to a prestigious title and all the responsibilities that it implies. My mother told me that I was a good-for-nothing, lazy, ungrateful person who had always had everything he wanted without knowing the value of work.

However, I never felt like I was taking advantage of the privileges that were mine. If I had chosen to go and live with my father, I could have experienced more warmth and love towards me, but I chose to stay with my mother and my sister. Mostly for my sister. Only for her, in fact, because beneath her wild appearance with a strong character, Maisie has always hidden a great fragility from which I tried to protect her as best as possible without ever revealing her vulnerability to anyone.

I'd be lying if I said life with my mother had been hell. I lived in the same luxury as if I had lived in the imposing Inverurie Castle or the Manor of Inverness. It was being continually belittled by a woman who thought the greatest humiliation was wringing out a cloth to clean the kitchen tiles that was painful.

I could have been an arrogant little prick but I was never the little prince that most people think I am. Thanks to my mother's behavior and my grandmother's caring nature, I never underestimated anyone, no matter what job they did for a living. Few people live their dream life, most spend years getting up to go to do a job they don't like so they can feed their family. When my grandmother made me realize this, I knew that I would never fulfill my parents' expectations because I had simpler desires than theirs.

It is probably no coincidence that my grandmother wanted to spend the rest of her life at Inverness Manor rather than the family home in Inverurie. She wanted to stay close to me and prevent me from falling into the same vices as my mother. My grandfather had died two years earlier from a fall from a horse. He had kicked him in the abdomen, leaving him to choke on his own blood.

This tragedy has not dampened my love of horses and riding. On the contrary, by going to the manor more often to spend time with my grandmother I could meet the master of the stables Azeem. He became my best friend.

I didn't have many friends at school, just Liam Sowma. He was an Englishman with a strong Liverpool accent which earned him a lot of mockery and bullying which sometimes turned into harassment. He was almost as tall as me but he didn't know how to defend himself. Sometimes he burst into tears, which made the jerks at the private school we attended even more likely to pick on him. By force of circumstances I became his defenders which meant that I too was in the crosshairs of his persecutors, but I didn't care, I could support it and I wasn't afraid to fight back. He couldn't fire me anyway, my grandfather owned the west wing of the building and my father had the east wing built. The library had been financed by my grandmother and a plaque at the entrance paid tribute to her by reminding us that it was "The Catrina MacMurray Library".

Outside of school, my only friend was Azeem with whom I spent more time learning about horses than doing my homework since my grandmother made a point of picking us up every day after school my sister and I and took us back to the mansion so we wouldn't be home alone while my mother lived her life as she always had, uncaring about having two children.

Well, that's what she said, but above all I think that grandmother didn't like being alone.

It was by spending all my free time with Azeem that I discoverd my passion and my need to work with horses. Really working with them, training them, caring for them, cleaning their stalls. I also wanted it just to prove to my mother who constantly told me how good for nothing I was, that my bad grades made her ashamed compared to Maisie's brilliant school report and to what extent I didn't deserve all my privileges that I was capable of lots of things.