Jack of all
Bella returned to Australia after thirty long years. She lived on the other side of the town so that her childhood memories would not revisit her. She was a skilled painter. Her paintings gained popularity within weeks and she set up her own studio in less than a month. Her family realized it was their daughter Liza who fled thirty years back on a ship, was here again under her new assumed name. Bella was already nearing fifty. She had a small family to take care of. Her third husband Chen and their seven year old son Andrew tried to settle down in a land they had never been to. She had come back to Australia not out of any interest. It was the only distant land she knew she would be safe.
Liza, as she was named by her parents was a skilled dancer. Though her family had a modest background, she had always wanted to be a part of the upper echelons of the society. Her dance took her places. Right from her schooltime, she had been touring the country for various performances. She started making money from these performances and her education took a backseat. She learnt the allied arts and picked up skills to be successful in her career, which she decided would be dance. It was around this time, when she was seventeen years old, that she fled from her country. She boarded the ship to France, with the dream of becoming the most sought after dancer.
Liza registered herself as an immigrant with the French officials under the name of Kate. Kate lived in the immigration camps for a few weeks until she rented out a place on Rue des Fleurs. She made money by dancing at the evening clubs and made contacts. During the day she learnt tailoring and quickly became a master at it. She stitched her own dresses and soon found another way to make money. It was around this time that she made contacts with the politically affluent men. Because she knew English, she worked as a secret agent for both the British and the French governments. There were times when she had to defend herself and the easiest of all, she thought was to knock off her enemies. What started as a self-defense became a serious disease. Each person trying to mess with her became her target.
Kate became Julie in Italy and Isabel in the United States before finally returning as Bella. Her victims were both men and women, all who weren’t happy seeing her grow.
Not long after Bella establishing herself and her brand at Australia, did she decide to become a philanthropist. She always carried heavy bills and wore expensive jewelry. It was all well and a truly new beginning until someone entered her studio while she was all alone and she was killed. “I haven’t been dead for very long”, she told them. It was only the 2 men who heard it. They had chalked out a clean plan meticulously that the case was closed as there was no clear evidence to point in their direction. They had taken her diamond rings, her ears torn and her wallet snatched, thousands of dollars missing from her studio safe, but did not really understand what her last words meant. Was she taken over by a spirit? Was she dead at heart? If so, what made her so? This is not something they could ascertain.
Thorough investigation revealed how her life was rewritten by her numerous times, making it easy for her to trash everything and everyone in the past and walk like nothing had happened.
This is the second of the Prompt a month series by Susan Dennard.
