8.9 Why do fools fall in love?

Love was in the air for the Kyoti family.  No sooner had Nicola broken up with boyfriend Timothy than she rushed off to the park to meet her next victim true love.

Spencer Funke couldn’t resist her charms, expecially when she gave him an amazing massage.

It wasn’t long before they were a couple, but then Spencer had to suddenly dash off and use the toilet before things could go any further.

Nicola made the most of Spencer being inconvenienced by popping across the road to the Plaza to flirt with Ani Jone;  mooching a good meal from her at the same time.  Nicola had an ‘interesting’ approach to romancing, to say the least.

When Spencer returned, she asked him to join her at the theatre, and promplty dumped him in front of the large crowd leaving the show.

Her aunt Emma Mabel was one of those leaving the show and was somewhat ashamed to see her niece behaving so badly, especially towards one of her many friends.

The next day, Nicola invited Ani over, romanced her, and promptly broke up with her.

Michael looked at his daughter with despair.  Wasn’t this the third relationship she’d had in as many days?  He would never understand that girl – how could he have failed so badly as a parent that she was the result?

Love was also in the air for Wesley, who was hoping to soon top his career.  His relationship with colleague and close friend Jinny Bloomwood was eventually becoming something more.

He invited his boss, Joel Garcia, around that evening to talk about work.  When Gemma heard that Joel was rich, she got chatting to him, and the next day she invited him round to talk some more.

Joanna Kyoti came back from work at the Police Station to find both of her sisters flirting with some guys.  This was yet another of Nicola’s many conquests, and she couldn’t keep up with her, but she was worried about what Gemma was getting herself into: flirting with their uncle’s boss, and whilst Nicola was around to be a bad influence on her.  Joanna despaired.  It was getting harder and harder to be around her sisters.

Sure enough, Nicola got the next boy, Andrew, to agree to be her boyfriend, and them promptly dumped him as well.  Rae went out to see the boy and help pick up the pieces – she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d be spending the rest of her life trying to mop up the mistakes Nicola was making.

Wesley saw Joanna was becoming quite distressed and he implored her not to give in, to stay strong, to be the person she was and not be swayed by everyone else, but Joanna wasn’t sure she could be strong much longer.  She felt as though her sanity was hanging by a thread.

When Rae decided to go and read up on her charisma skilling after work, Nicola decided she’d accompany her mum to the library.  She was delighted to get there and find James, the boy that had rejected her first kiss, was there.  Duping him into becoming her boyfriend and then breaking his heart was the most delicious pleasure she’d experienced yet…

…closely followed by doing the same to her former friend Carey, who’d rejected both her and Jono’s advances not so long ago.

Whilst Nicola was busy dumping her sixth partner…

…Joel became Gemma’s first boyfriend.  He couldn’t resist her cute, kooky charms.

He didn’t quite understand her family though, other than his favourite chef, Wesley.  Gemma’s little brother Seth was especially strange, insisting on asking Joel if he was part of some sort of government conspiracy.

Being loved up clearly agreed with Joel, as he soon promoted Wesley to a Five-Star Chef.  Having achieved his dream, he left Michael and the family with an amazing fridge and went to live with Jinny and set up a restaurant together.

Love wasn’t just in the air for new couples, though.  Amidst all the chaos of their children’s lives, Rae and Michael Kyoti remained just as much in love as they ever were.

…and despite both being on the brink of elderhood, there was still as much passion in their marriage as ever.

2.10 The final countdown

Rhiannon Kyoti was feeling smug.  She’d got herself a boyfriend.  OK, so he was a maid, which wasn’t the most glamorous of careers, but who cared?  She was surely that bit closer to becoming the heir to the Kyoti legacy.

Amanda was finding it hard work to try and meet a man, win her chess games and progress in her career.  She took to sleeping at strange times of the day, and started to neglect her personal hygiene, not quite realising this might be why she was having such trouble bagging a mate.

The twins’ father, Kali, was experiencing the common questions and desires all elders face.  What mark had they left on the world?  What did they want to achieve before their time was up?  What would their legacy be?  He was worried about his daughters and their failure to produce him any grandchildren.  He was worried about his youngest daughter, Carmel, and whether she would grow up well.  There was so much he had to think about, and so much he had to put right.

His first decision was to persuade Alli and Lola that they needed to celebrate their next birthday.  They both resisted.  All of their birthday parties had involved death, and they couldn’t face that happening again.  But he pointed out that it might be the last chance they got to really celebrate with the whole family there.  Everyone was getting older.  The elders in the family may not be around much longer, and the young adults and teens would soon be off doing their own thing.  They decided to hold a joint celebration with Lola’s youngest, Liam, and invited the whole clan round.

Alli and Lola were secretly rather pleased that they could celebrate together for their final birthday.  They were so much closer now than when they were younger, and they were happy to mark that fact.

Still, neither was all that impressed with the aging process…

Liam was equally unimpressed with teenhood…

Amanda left the party early with Garrick, a young man she’d known for a while, and was determined to get to know away from the madness of her family and the stares of her sister.  They went to the park and chatted about work, family and fishing.

They seemed to be hitting it off OK, but Garrick looked at his watch and made some excuse about having to be up in the morning for work.  Dominic was there, though, and they arranged to go for a picnic the next day and catch up on old times.

Amanda discovered he was still with Solomon, but that didn’t stop them having a cheeky flirt and playing a couple of games of chess.

Whilst the girls were busy with the men of Sunset Valley, Kali received a rather unexpected phone call.  It was Stacey, asking him to bring over some vegetables to stock her kitchen.

Kali’s vegetable business had been earning him a tidy profit, and Stacey was offering to pay well.  With a family to support after his death, he couldn’t really pass up the opportunity… but he hadn’t seen his ex-wife since Carmel was little.  He’d heard she was broke but other than that knew nothing about what she was doing these days.

Full of trepidation, Kali approached the door.  What would things be like between him and his ex-wife?  He’d hated her at the time for breaking his heart, but a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then, and he was too old to bear grudges.  Part of him wanted to make amends – after all, she was the mother of his children.

Somebody clearly wasn’t broke any longer.

They chatted for hours.  They both apologised for the mess they’d left their marriage in and forgave each other.  They hugged and held each other tight, both glad they’d managed to heal the wound before they reached the end of their lives.  Kali invited Stacey to Carmel’s birthday later that week.  She was nervous about whether she’d be welcome but he assured her that it was his house, and she was his guest.

Stacey was incredibly nervous at the party.  She found it difficult to interact with the rest of the family, and felt uncomfortable being back in the home that she’d found so repressive when she was a young woman.  She looked back on her life and wondered if she’d made good choices, and most importantly, whether the decisions she’d made had affected her daughters.

Kali encouraged his ex-wife to join in with the party, and brought her to the front of the group so she could see Carmel age up into the beautiful young woman he was confident she’d become.

Carmel did indeed grow up to be stunning… but also insane.  Perhaps the stress of losing her mother at such a young age and being reunited with her on the threshold of adulthood had caused her deeper scars than anyone had realised.  Stacey bought her daughter a twinset and pearls.  Begrudgingly, Carmel wore them…

…but as soon as her mother left, she changed into something that was much more her style.

Kali seranaded his youngest with a special birthday song.  He was so proud of raising three beautiful daughters as a single dad, of seeing his two little sisters age up into confident women with families of their own, of becoming a renowned musician, fisherman and gardener, and of healing the rift with his ex-wife.

There was nothing more he needed to do.

Surrounded by his whole family (plus Garrick and Andrew), in the afterglow pf Carmel’s party, Kali breathed his last.

The Kyoti family’s most frequent party guest may have turned up a little after the cake for a change, but he was still here…

Elias was the first to break down and cry as his best friend departed.

Amanda turned to Garrick and cried on his shoulder.  She told him he was such a strong support to her, she’d love it if they went steady.

Amanda whispered to her new boyfriend that if he really wanted to help her through her grief, there was one thing he could do for her…

…Funnily enough, Rhiannon was upstairs saying the same things to Andrew…

Whilst the rest of the family cried downstairs and cleaned up the cake crumbs, Amanda and Rhiannon took their boyfriends up to their bedrooms in the hope they could persuade them to give them the one thing they needed in this time of grief… a baby…

2.9 I want that man

The rest of their family may have been content with simply focussing on the mundane things in life such as working, aging up and building their skills, but Amanda and Rhiannon were young women on a mission.  Their father, Kali, was an elder, which meant they needed to get on with the serious business of deciding who would be the heir to the Kyoti legacy.  The first of them to bear a child would inherit the role.  Amanda found another guy at Liam’s party wearing the Dungarees/grey sweater combo that was all the rage in Sunset Valley.  They got chatting, and it turned out he was called Dominic.  He was in a relationship with some guy called Solomon, but Amanda figured this relati0nship might not be all that serious, and even if it was, she might get a new gay best friend out of it.

It didn’t take her long to convince him to stay over that night.  Or the next.  Or the one after that.  She figured his relationship with Solomon couldn’t be that special if he was spending all his time with her.  They started to flirt a bit, and even kissed.

The rest of the family weren’t impressed with the growing friendship between Amanda and Dominic.  Carmel and Rhiannon accused her of being disloyal to the family.  Amanda was nonplussed.  They pointed out that Solomon was their cousin, son of Delbert  (Stacey’s brother).  Amanda hadn’t ever met her uncle or cousin, and she didn’t think her sisters had either, but apparently they believed blood was thicker than water or somesuch nonsense.

Rhiannon was also unhappy with Amanda’s growing closeness to Dominic, as it meant her sister was a step closer than she was to becoming the heir.  She couldn’t understand it.  She’d been trying to talk to every guy she’d met at a party, at work or in the park, and none of them were interested.  This made no sense, she was the pretty twin, after all.  In desperation, she asked the maid, Andrew Seay, to hang out one night after work.

She wasn’t surprised to discover that Andrew’s ‘civvies’ were the same as most of the guys in the Valley.  They stayed up all night talking about Rhiannon’s new job in the business sector, her Aunt Alli’s illegitimate daughter, and how much of a bitch her mother Stacey was.

The girls’ competition to become the heir started to escalate.  They were not only spending as much time as possible with Andrew and Dominic, they also tried their luck with every vaguely eligible man in Sunset Valley.

When teen Eric Frio came round to play chess with her, Amanda asked him to stay on, and promised to help him with his homework.  He was only a few days off becoming legal, and they were only a little bit related (his granddad was Connor, brother of Amanda’s granddad Jared), so it wasn’t too wrong… was it?

Rhiannon saw what her sister was up to and decided that anything Amanda did, she could do better.

When Carmel brought home a friend from school, it was Rhiannon who started dancing with him…

And whenever Andrew came round to clean, she made sure she was wearing her low-cut swimsuit that highlighted her figure so well…

Amanda even went looking for men on the internet, although when she went to use her dad’s computer, she found he was in his bedroom with Elias ‘composing new material’.

Rhiannon took to stalking Andrew in his off-time.  She followed him to the swimming pool, where she saw him chatting to another girl.

She wasn’t having any of that, though, and soon muscled her way in to the conversation.

She’d finally bagged herself a man… was it now game, set and match to Rhiannon?