A Model Mother

Chapter 23

4th May 2013.

Hello everyone,

  This chapter is retrospective, it flips back one day to Saturday, the day before Rose met up with Miles at his flat  and it describes the lead up to Max’s overdose. You are also going to find out, finally, who commissioned the photographs and why. You will find this out via Max’s POV, as he reflects on the past eighteen months and writes up the sequence of events leading to him handing the photographs over to Miles.

As with the previous two chapters, I am dedicating this chapter to a Wattpad author whose work I particularly enjoy. This time it is FlorenceBlack, for her book “Never-Man.” The heroine is 25 year old Aria, a high-flying lawyer who at the start of the book has the perfect life which then starts to unravel. She is a really sassy young woman and I have laughed out loud at some of her reflections and dealings with the men in her life. Florence Black hasn’t posted a chapter for a while, but I hope we can persuade her to update soon!

The previous day:

Serge:

Late Friday evening, Serge had got the confirmation he had dreaded. A cctv camera close to the restaurant where he had taken Rose had caught a car going in the direction of the restaurant at 10pm and returning at 11.15pm. The description matched that provided by a neighbour of the restaurant, a credible witness, who, hearing of the incident had offered the information to the police as he had seen a car parked outside his house at the critical hours. He had been suspicious of it because the owner had remained inside for so long and had noted the car details. The police now knew the registered car owner was Irena Kupetsky, Serge’s ex-wife.

Serge had already made some phone calls and found out, eventually, that she had given her family and the medics the slip and entered the UK well over a year ago. In fact, all the time he had been led to believe she had been in Russia under the watchful eyes of her relatives, she had been travelling all over the world. They had done everything to stop him finding out because they were scared he would refuse to pay her divorce settlement. Now that she had that massive amount of money at her disposal she could do anything she wanted and pay for anything she needed - a thought that made Serge break out in a sweat.

The police had tried to locate her but to no avail so far. She had not returned to her rented London flat where the car was registered although there was still a fair amount of her possessions there. One item they had found was a cardboard folder, stuffed away behind a wardrobe, full of newspaper articles and photographs. They had brought them to Serge for him to look at. And it was because of what he saw in the file that he now had a constant nervous, nagging feeling in his gut. The clippings had included ones of him and Rose when they had been going out together, ones of Rose and Miles together and then lots of articles detailing with the split of Miles and Rose. The most recent one was the photo from Pink! of Rose holding Lloyd. To Serge’s surprise, there had been several in there of Irena with Max Whitlock – the poses suggested they had been close, intimate possibly.

Serge knew Irena was calculating and could be pathologically vicious; drug abuse had added to the paranoia she suffered as part of the schizophrenia. She had stalked him in Russia he was certain now that she was doing it again. What bothered him more though was whether she would extend her stalking and paranoiac behaviour to those he loved. His public engagement to Rose must have infuriated her. Would she start harassing Rose? Had she already started following her? Serge wondered if she had engineered, in some way, the split between Rose and Miles with the help of Max. If Max had fallen in with Irena it would explain the substance abuse; Serge would bet that Irena had taken every opportunity to surreptitiously ply Max with drugs in order to get her own way; she had been caught doing the same at a previous rehab clinic in an effort to escape. For those who were not wise to Irena’s deviousness she would come across as entirel plausible, no matter what mischief she was up to.