Donkey Doubled: A Twin Stepbrother Menage Romance Read online

  The baby was expected to be underweight, but at little over 4.5 pounds, he was dangerously small. The doctors had no idea why it had taken so long for the thing to come out, and figured that it was either to do with Isabella’s age, the fact it was her first, because of the large quantities of medication she was on, or just that Leighton hadn’t wanted to be born at all.

  Philip was absolutely delighted Isabella had given him a boy. He was over the moon that finally, after such a turbulent period in their lives, things were finally on the up. He was named after Isabella’s father, and nicknamed Tempest by the doctors because of the trouble he had caused in being born. It was a moniker that would stick all the way to adulthood, mostly because for a long time in his life, he was known by little else.

  It had been an incredible difficult time, but Philip was confident that now the baby had been born, they’d finally see some light at the end of what seemed for a long time like a never ending tunnel.

  Not long after the conception, Philip began to notice changes in Isabella’s behaviour, the return to past traits, and the reemergence of what was believed to be long since dealt with mood swings. When Philip found her in a bath full of cold water and warm blood, he knew something was seriously wrong beyond the typical malaise of a pregnancy. Isabella’s haphazard slashing of the skin along her arms couldn’t really be considered a suicide attempt more than a desperate call for help, but it was enough for Philip to worry seriously about what he thought could only be a return to diminishing health.

  She denied not taking her medication, and even denied anything was wrong at all, but it was clear something serious was going on. It took a great effort to get her to talk to the doctors, and even more heartache to get her to finally admit, after several sessions with psychologists and psychiatrists what had really been going on. It had been three months and she was more distant than Philip had ever seen. She was breaking up and she couldn’t admit it. After a week in the hospital, for which Philip had to have her committed, a further week of observation, and a reissue of medication, Isabella was allowed back home. For a while she seemed fine, but it only lasted two more months. The next call for help was even more serious. This time Isabella did try to kill herself. The pregnancy wasn’t the solution she had hoped for, and the darkness was closing in. It was easy to get the tablets and even easier to gobble them down. Her stomach was pumped, her life was saved, albeit only just, and her medication was increased again. Somehow, through all of the stress she put on him, through everything that she did to destroy herself, the baby refused to go away. It kept on growing inside her, or as Isabella saw it, sucking her energy and pulling her down. She grew to hate it, resented it being there inside her, and even in some of the darkness times, wished that it were dead.

  After that, in the final third of her pregnancy, after mood swings and arguments and money issues and family problems and days upon days of crying, after finding her on Coney Island beach confused and not knowing how she got there, after yet another failed suicide attempt and days in which she told Philip she didn’t love him just to see him hurt so she could remember what it was like, when he found her holding a pair of scissors against her bump and begged Philip to let her do it, or tell him she would if he dared to get any closer, when she was at the lowest point she had ever been in her life, too low even to take it away, she finally gave in and stopped fighting. She finally accepted there was no way back, no matter what anybody did to try and help. She let it destroy her.

  The doctors put her on so much medication she barely knew her name. There was nothing else they felt like they could do, and there was nothing else that Isabella wanted.

  “Help me”, she confessed one night to Philip. “This is killing me. Help me make it go away.”

  Neither of them really knew whether she was talking about her baby or her illness. She told the doctors to put her on whatever medication she would need to not feel anything. It was a game to them and a game they wanted to win. Isabella gave them free rein to turn her into a zombie. The less she felt, the better. The illness had won. They killed the darkness, but in doing so, they killed the light as well. From that point on, Isabella just saw unending shades of grey.

  “She’ll get better”, Philip would tell the doctors, or his family, or his friends, or anyone who would listen, even though deep down inside he felt like he had already lost her. When he smiled at her, she would smile back, but it was as if there was nothing at all behind her face, nothing going on inside her head.

  “Just wait”, he said. “She’ll pull through. She always has done before”, but this wasn’t like before. Isabella had never been this bad. She had never accepted what was happening to her, never thought her illness was permanent, prone to worsen, life, relationship and world destroying.

  When she had her baby, when Leighton was finally pulled out of her womb, through thin layers of muscle and fat, and then placed after a week in intensive care against her chest, she looked down at the child with a mix of confusion and sadness. It was the first time since the doctors had put her on the medication she was on now that Philip had seen any flicker of deepened emotion within her. It was not the reaction he was hoping for, and one that made his heart sink lower than it had ever been.

  Isabella looked over to him, and in that look he knew she was finally gone to him forever. The day his son was born.

  “Get this fucking thing away from me”, she said, barely a flicker of recognition in her eyes.

  That was the day Philip’s world broke in half.

  Chapter 20

  Isabella was permanently committed less than six weeks later. Philip, in consultation with his father, Isabella’s parents and the medical team they were struggling to continue to afford, decided Isabella had a much better chance of survival, and a greater possibility of a comfortable, stress-free existence, within a professional medical facility. Deciding to do it, making a decision behind Isabella’s back for her own good felt like the worst kind of treachery possible. Taking her there, where she held Philip’s arm tightly out of fear to plead with him not to leave, and he saw within her a flicker of the Isabella he used to know, and for a fleeting moment it was that summer in 1971, when he first laid eyes on her, broke his heart. She was confused because of the medication, but she knew exactly what they were doing to her. This was the beginning of the end, and no matter how much she wailed or pleaded for them to change their minds, the decision had already been made.

  “I love you, Isabella”, Philip said, tears choking the words in his throat.

  “Please, Philip, don’t leave me here, I’ll do anything, don’t leave me here. I’ll get better, I promise, I’ll get better.”

  Her words, the look she gave him, the fear he saw in eyes that had once lit up when they were together, those things stayed with Philip until the day that he died. They were there when he slept, they were there in the needy screams of their just born son, they were in every cupboard, in every room in every house he lived in, and they were in the mirror when he stared for hours at a time at the face he was slowly beginning not to recognise.

  Without Isabella, Philip had nothing.

  After six months, and still without a job or success with any of his many personal projects, Philip and Leighton had to move back in with his father. He had begun to visit Isabella regularly, but as the weeks passed, and Philip became more depressed looking at a woman that reminded him in every way of his Isabella but wasn’t, he decided to stop visiting at all. He couldn’t take it anymore. He could barely look after their son on his own, he was just able to scrape enough money together to get by, and every day that passed, he was losing himself more and more to drink and depression.

  Philip did the best he could for as long as he could, but like everyone, he had a point where he couldn’t help but crack. He loved Leighton with all of his heart, and where Isabella began to resent him for what she saw that he’d done to push them apart, and Philip could so easily have done the same, he didn’t blame the baby for anything t
hat had happened. It wasn’t Leighton’s fault that his mother was sick. Isabella had an illness, and as difficult as it was to cope with and accept, Philip knew there was no-one to blame. It wasn’t for hate, or resentment he decided to give the boy up, it was for love. It was because he knew he would never be able to provide for him in the state he was in, he knew he’d never be able to protect him, and he worried he wouldn’t be able to give the boy all of the things he needed, and deserved, as he grew.

  There were times when Leighton’s screaming drove Philip to distraction. There were times where he would look at the boy and wish that things were different, but he never, ever stopped loving him. Philip had already lost the thing he loved most in the world, there was no way he would have volunteered for the second thing to be taken from him, unless he absolutely had to.

  Isabella’s parents wanted nothing to do with the boy. They thought the whole thing was Philip’s idea, and believed the pregnancy was what had eventually pushed their daughter over the edge. They couldn’t have cared less about what happened to him. The day after their daughter was incarcerated, they cut all ties with Philip and would have banished him from the hospital completely had they been legally able to do so. They couldn’t have been happier the day Philip decided to take that decision himself. Not once did they even want to look at Leighton. As far as they were concerned, the baby didn’t exist at all.

  Philip’s father was the only one who assisted Philip in any way over the first half a year of Leighton’s life, the pair of them as clueless as one another in how they ought to raise him, but it still wasn’t enough. Philip was twenty years old, and barely out of his youth himself. There were times when he wondered if the decision they made together was the right one, and would remember the day they made it happen, and how happy it made them both to think about a future that now no longer existed.

  Philip drank to cope. He drank to cope with Isabella’s schizophrenia, he drank to cope with the challenges of fatherhood, he drank to cope with the failures he faced in his professional life, and he drank because when he did so, he didn’t have to remember who he was. If Isabella hadn’t have been there when his mother died, he would have drunk then too. Now he needed her more than ever and she was gone.

  Philip’s father had to jimmy the door open with a crowbar. It had been a week since he’d heard from his son, and twice he’d passed by the apartment to knock without receiving a response. When he finally got into the apartment, and he saw Philip sprawled out across the living room floor, he thought his son was dead.

  Philip lacked the constitution for suicide, but had he been given the option in that moment, would have struggled for reasons to want to be stay alive. Leighton was screaming in his cot. It had been over forty eight hours since he’d last eaten, and there was piss and shit all over the sheets. Before Philip’s father rescued his grandson, he made sure his own son was alive by turning him over and shaking him violently. Philip moaned, wrestled free from his father’s grip, twisted to the side and puked all over the floor.

  “Your a fucking disgrace”, Pieter said to him. “A fucking disgrace.”

  Pieter knew his son was struggling, but he never knew it was this bad. Philip had become adept at hiding his true feelings, plus he would only contact his father if there was an emergency with his son. It had been a while since they’d last spoken, and Pieter would never had guessed that anything this serious would ever happen, despite the burden his son had been made to carry.

  Leighton was taken to the doctors and deemed to be in generally poor health. He was malnourished, dehydrated and underweight for his age. Philip was given almost exactly the same diagnosis, and then handed a prescription for antidepressants. None of them seemed at all concerned about Philip’s ability to look after his son, nor what had led them to the hospital in the first place. It seemed their intention was to treat the symptoms, not find a cure for the cause.

  Philip took a massive bollocking from his father, who decided that the time had come to think about an alternative for the boy. Philip was clearly in no state to look after him, and with his whole life ahead of him, Pieter reasoned that having a son without a mother to look after him, would do nothing but hold him back.

  It came down to a simple equation. If Philip could not look after him, then Leighton would have to go to someone who could. Pieter couldn’t possibly fill that role with a shop to run and no wife of his own now to speak of. Philip was a complete mess, and had to concentrate on getting his own life back on track. The boy would have to go, there was no doubt about it.

  In Brooklyn, in 1981, there were three orphanages, all of which were bursting at the seams with kids. Philip reluctantly called them all, and each one said they couldn’t possibly take him in. In the five boroughs that made up New York, across the seventeen orphanages that existed, only one said that they had space for new born babies and were happy to take him.

  Leighton was barely eight months old. One side of his family didn’t even want to admit that he existed, the other were unable to look after him. Philip carried the infant in his arms across the city, staying with him at the orphanage well into the night before he was finally able to let go. With Isabella it had been gradual, with Leighton much more sudden.

  “If you’re not ready”, one of the volunteers said.

  “Maybe it’s best if I hold him”, another one said, her arms held out passively.

  “His name is Leighton.” Philip wiped tears away from his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. “Leighton Tempest. Please don’t tell him I brought him here.”

  Philip handed his son over to a complete stranger, and would never be able to forgive himself for the rest of his life.

  All that existed to link them was Philip’s knowledge of what happened. No one else knew where he’d taken the boy, and all that the staff at the orphanage knew about him was the fake first name he had given them, the date he had arrived, and what he looked like in person. About the boy, all they had was a name. Leighton Tempest had a past that had just been erased, and a future that was about to be written.

  Ten years after…

  Chapter 21

  Philip never forgot that day. He never allowed himself to, and he never forgave himself. There were moments he wanted to change it all, go back and make it never happen, but he knew the impossibility of turning back the clock, and he was a stubborn man of conviction that felt like if he tried to change what he had done, he’d only serve to ruin a life he’d allowed his son to have for himself. There was no question that Leighton was better off without him. There was no question that had he stayed with his Philip, he wouldn’t have turned into the boy he was now. He might not even have survived at all.

  Philip’s life had changed too. He’d turned himself around completely. He’d finally had success with one of his projects, and he’d made the million that he always promised Isabella he would. Buying the house that looked out onto the park seemed churlish without his childhood sweetheart there to enjoy it with him, and besides which, over the last decade, he’d grown tired of the city completely.

  He visited Isabella once a year on her birthday. It had taken a long time for him to get over what had happened to them, and once a year seemed like just about enough time for him to be able to cope with the journey back into their past. Isabella had her moments. She had good days and bad, happy moments and sad, but seemed content enough with the life that she had been forced to lead, and stable enough not to try and take it away from herself. Philip had moved her to a private facility, which offered almost resort like facilities, and it was a far cry from where she had begun. It wasn’t exactly the house over central park, nor indeed the flat they had shared in Coney Island, but it was the best that was available, and appreciated greatly by Isabella, even if she was unsure of the details of its provision.

  Isabella greeted him like an old friend. They talked about the past as though they were still living it, and every once in a while she would smile like she used to when he would juggle apples or try
to impress her. She never once asked about Leighton, nor referred to the period of time they had spent living in Coney Island. It was as if that year never existed for her.

  Philip never fell out of love, even though he knew the person he loved was buried so deep inside this one, she might not have existed any more at all. It was a pain he had grown to deal with, like a birthmark or a distinguishing scar. It was something he knew would never fully go away.

  Kids began to filter out of the school, running into arms of waiting parents. It had taken Philip a long time, and a considerable amount of money to find out where he was, and as he waited patiently and watched, he felt like he could hardly breathe.

  It had been ten years since he’d seen him. A whole decade for the boy he gave up to grow older. The photo they’d given him made his heart leap. It was somehow everything he expected and nothing at all like it all at the same time. It was definitely their son, but somehow more than that. A life and personality of his own.

  For a while the kids kept coming, they found their waiting parent, shared a moment of conversation and went on their way, until there were fewer and fewer parents waiting, and fewer and fewer kids left to be collected. When all of the parents had gone, Philip thought he’d somehow missed him, until one last kid trudged slowly out of the school gates, shrugged his shoulders up into his neck against the biting cold and turned directly towards him.

  Philip’s heart skipped a beat and his skin went cold. There was no doubt about it, this was Leighton. This was his son.

  Leighton walked to the curb where Philip’s car had pulled in, peered at it with the curious interest a ten year old boy has in droves, and carried on up the street.