Spurs!

Spurs! Chapter 1

Devoting yourself to hating another human being is indeed a difficult thing to do, especially when you're not naturally the type of person who enjoys hating.  Undertaking such a mission is significantly more challenging when you haven't actually met the subject of your animosity.

But, on a clear September spring afternoon, Grayson Lewis sat in her dark and dreary bedroom, focussing her attention on the newly found, precious newspaper cutting before her and her birth certificate.  She ignored the sweet smell of jasmine wafting through the open window, and the invitation from the chirping of newly hatched birds to come outside and enjoy the day.  Instead, she focused all her energy and strength into concentrating on trying to despise the person in the article - a woman she had never met.  Alas, no matter how valiantly she tried, she couldn’t help but feel that this person was not as evil as she imagined her to be.  There was something about the way she was smiling in the photo and the unmistakable sparkle in her warm eyes; she just wasn’t the type of person she could really happily loathe.

“No, no, no!” she berated herself, rubbing her forehead with the palm of her callused hand.  “Stop imagining her as a modern day, bloody Mary Poppins; this woman abandoned you!”

Throughout her life, Grayson had always been painfully aware that she was adopted.  After the untimely death of her kind adoptive mother when she was just four years of age and with no relative willing to take her in, she had become a ward of the state.  Subsequently she had been shuffled from one dreaded foster home to another.  Most were good, however a few had been horrendous and at times she found herself on the streets at night, having run away yet again from an environment her young instincts had warned her was unsafe. 

At thirteen, her long lost adoptive uncle had finally been located and, with great excitement and expectation, Grayson ended up living with him and his wife; a move that she dearly wished had never taken place.  Barry Lewis had turned out to be an abusive, cruel man who she both feared and despised.  Sadly, his wife wasn’t much better.  Truth be known, they had only agreed to take her in for the pitiful government assistance that came with her.  When she started her first job at fourteen, they also insisted Grayson hand over the bulk of her meagre earnings as a stable hand.     

She turned her attention back to the copy of her birth certificate.  It read:  Mother - Anna Shaw, age 16, place of birth - England.  Father – unknown. 

Sixteen! she had thought in shock, that was three years younger than she was now.   

The life-changing newspaper article although only a week old, was already tattered and smudged as she had handled it so many times.  It was about English born Anna Shaw and the comeback race of one of her star horses after a career threatening injury.  Anna Shaw, it said, had relocated to Australia three years earlier after a very messy divorce with the hugely successful fashion designer, Ricardo Diccento.   

Grayson had almost fainted when she first saw the article and accompanying photo in the Herald Sun.  It was like looking into a time-warped mirror - it could easily be her in twenty years time. 

This very Anna Shaw was her mother, she thought, it had to be!  Between the uncanny resemblance, the fact that she appeared to now be in her mid thirties and that she was English born, made Grayson almost certain.  How she had a child in Australia was the one part of the intriguing story that concerned her.  There had to be an explanation.

Looking at the photo again, her eyes starting to well up she whispered, “Why didn’t you take me with you?”  She had thought these words countless times over the years and now finally, she had an actual image to direct them to.  Oh how different her life could have been, she thought sadly.  She never contemplated that it could have been worse.