chapter 14

John had not heard from his grandson and granddaughter for months. Jake had once been very difficult to miss. His pictures were everywhere. Now he had slipped out of the public eye. John wondered what had happened, that was all. He'd not heard of a scandal that he'd been involved in. Maybe he'd even found someone to settle down with, as unlikely as it seemed.
John did not known Jake as well as his grandaughter, but he knew what he'd been like as a young man and Jake was just like him!
John thought he'd give the pair of them a ring. He did, but he received such a strange garbled reply that he was even more suspicious.
He decided to make an unannounced house call.
He was shocked at the state of Sunshine. So shocked, he threw everyone in the apartment out and got Sunshine into hospital immediately.
Jake was nowhere to be seen, but John's suspicions were aroused when he found clothes of differing sizes in his wardrobe. Jake was always so careful about what he wore. Was his grandson gay and did he have a giant sized boyfriend?
John had to hire a private investigator to find where he was. He had Elaine arrested on a trumped up drugs charge, then had Jake sent to hospital.
The siblings were reluctant to change their ways. Jake, in particular, had a warped body image of himself. John hired a psychologist to try and give them the motivation to lose weight. The medic was shocked at how much the pair of them had been trained and manipulated into eating obscene amounts of food. He cracked Sunshine first. Jake was much more difficult.
Jake's apartment was a mess. It stunk of ammonia from stale urine. The stink seemed to be everywhere. John had the place completely stripped, defumigated and redecorated. He'd thrown out the sofas because no amount of cleaning could rid them of the stench that clung to them. Plus it was too unhygienic to even think of keeping them.
John hired a personal trainer to help the pair shed their excess weight. He was a big powerful man of Afro carribean descent with a deep booming voice called Samson.
Sunshine took to him immediately, Jake did not really care for him.
It took the best part of a year to get their weights back down again.
Jake never regained the lithesome fitness he had once had and he did not shed all of his weight. But he had learned his lesson. He never courted publicity in the same way again. He got rid of all his pretentiousness. He didn't want a string of girlfriends who were nothing more than one night stands. He wanted a long and meaningful relationship.
Sunshine fell in love with Samson and eventually they married, but lived in jake's apartment.
In a bit of a strange twist, Jake married his father's old fiancée, called Rosie. Apparently it was perfectly legal to do so because Joe and Rosie had never been married themselves, before Joe died. They lived in a cottage out in the country together and were inseparable.
Once Jake was reasonably slim and fit again, he started auditioning again. He got plenty of work. It might not be the leading role, but he was happy with being a supporting actor these days.
Being a stage actor meant sometimes he had to travel. Sometimes he had to tour with a company. He always took Rosie with him. She could protect him from and predators like Elaine. He was never going to be that trusting or stupid again!
Jake and Rosie went on to have twins... But that's another story....