For The Love Of Chéri (CHAPTERS 1-112 REWRITTEN)

Chapter 79 : Lennons Happy Childhood

Chéri found life was sweet and harmonious at his boyfriend's family home. He wandered around the large living room with its rustic fireplace a focal point and looked at the many pictures and portraits on the wall.

He saw first-hand an environment, filled with love and encouragement, that Lennon grew up in, and called home.

Chéri could also see how much each member of the family loved each other and could sense some kind of concern over Lennon, but he did not know why. Chéri never had this much family love and harmony. He always felt the odd one out, left in the cold.

There was a serenity to the large country home, with all of the religious imagery in every room and lots of framed pictures of the family throughout the years. Chéri would look for Lennon in every picture, and often, there he was, always smiling widely with bright and happy eyes. It made Chéri think of the picture of them both in the cafe the day they met.

He liked the childhood pictures of Lennon in a sandpit as a child, on the beach, playing in the garden, on whole-family days out and vacations. Then there were pictures of him as a longhaired teenager and as a young man, often with his brothers on snowboarding trips or their wild lads holidays.

Chéri particularly loved Lennon and Logan's graduation pictures. He felt Lennon looked exceptionally attractive in his scholars gown with his longer, wavy blonde hair which curled around his ears.

It was nice to have Insight on the kind and handsome stranger that he met randomly on a motorway in England. Chéri was so caught up in knowing Lennon as his foreign lover, that he had not considered that Lennon was also a son and a brother to someone.

Chéri felt at peace here. There was not the hierarchy, conflict or psychological games and intrigues that Chéri had grown up in, and it was refreshing to see someone who had a happy childhood, and who carried no negative emotional baggage.

As Chéri looked around their happy home, loud with the echoes of many happy years, he pondered how they never would have met if he had held his thumb up a moment sooner, or a moment later. Maybe they wouldn't have met if it was not raining so hard. Their lives had led right up to that moment, and their paths crossed. Chéri made the snap decision to hitchhike, and Lennon had made the decision to pick him up.

Chéri was happy with God's roll of the dice this time.

Chéri continued looking at pictures, then happened across a picture of Merrick and Monique on their wedding day. Lennon bore a striking resemblance to his father and it gave Chéri insight as to what Lennon would look like in the decades to come. He also saw features on Lennon from his mother Monique, who was a true Parisian beauty and had married his father while she was quite young after an exceptionally short-lived marriage to her first husband, a Parisian French man she had met in Quebec.

From their pictures, Merrick and Monique looked like they had a blissful marriage, which had produced three children, and they were very much in love. This was a far cry from Chéri's own parents Sheridan and Dolores, who could hardly bear to be in the same room despite having had nine children.

Chéri felt a sense of loss for something he never had. He had been packed off to the finest boarding school, not taken on camping trips or family vacations.

He missed having a father figure during his formative years and always found himself searching for the protection and staunch guidance of an older, paternal man. Chéri always found he had that in common with Spangna. They both had been desperate for the approval, guidance and time of an absentee father figure, and it had affected them for life in different ways.

Chéri saw on a small table, by a large armchair, there was a weekly medication organiser with an array of tablets in it. Near this stood a huge oxygen tank with a clear mask that covered the nose as well as the mouth, and he felt a sense of dread looking at the medical equipment, so continued looking at the happy pictures on the wall.