Life started early for Belinda Mayhew. Her teenage years were mostly spent pursuing auditions for modelling gigs. Her physical superiority had always been her advantage. She was the prettiest out of all her siblings, the tallest, the blondest, and Belinda seemed to have skipped the awkward phase of puberty and looked stunningly gorgeous at the age of 14. She didn’t look 14. From the outside, Belinda was 18 for a very long time.
She didn’t come from a wealthy family, on the contrary, her parents struggled to feed their 7 children, Belinda being the oldest one. With her good looks and posture, her mom was determined that Belinda will be able to use it to earn a living and help the family financially.
Her mom was right, but there were consequences. Belinda was exposed to harassment and abuse while making her way to the glamorous life of the fashion industry. All the adults turned a blind eye, even her own mother because the money was good.
And turning a blind eye paid off handsomely. Belinda was shot to the top, her face was on the covers of every fashion magazine, she walked the runway twice a day and sometimes she even had to be in two countries in a day. The money kept coming in, the jobs were overwhelming.
By the time she was 18 and legal, her life was much worse. She couldn’t tell the difference whether she was a model or a prostitute given the men she had to sleep with and the amount of times she had to keep quiet when someone in high places assaulted her in the middle of the night. Her body was not hers, it belonged to the industry, it belonged to the people who had the power to give her jobs or take them away.
She had to keep her weight down all the time, they deprived her of the freedom to enjoy the simplest pleasure of life which was food. She started doing drugs so she didn’t have to feel anything about the reality of her life. She drank alcohol more than she should. Passing out in the middle of being raped by the modelling agency CEO who was old enough to be her grandpa was better than having to do it sober.
Belinda Mayhew was miserable, but to the outside world, she was a symbol of success, beauty, and what a perfect woman should be.
At 22 years old, she met Joshua Reynolds. The actor was already an A-lister with global fame. He was at the height of his career with 4 blockbuster movies in the theatres around the world playing simultaneously, two nominations for best actor and won one that year which further boosted his fame to a level that only a handful of people have ever experienced in their lives.
Josh was 37 at the time and never married. The ultimate Hollywood bachelor who finally found love in the form of a blonde beauty named Belinda Mayhew who was 15 years his junior. But love knows no boundaries, the age gap was never an issue in the eyes of the public who thought they were a match made in blonde heaven because they shared the same hair color and the good looks of Barbie and Ken.
They hit it off immediately. They were paparazzi’s bread and butter. Pictures of them canoodling with each other were taken and published on every tabloid and celebrity magazines around the world. They were smitten with each other and soon the rumors of marriage surfaced.
Many people in the fashion world advised Belinda to take it slow. She was young and still had some good years to keep her career going. But she was tired of being taken advantage by people who didn’t have her best interest in mind. She stopped complying with the demand of the industry, she even threatened to expose their years of abuse and harassment.
She told Josh everything and he swore to protect her from that day on, he promised that she will never have to endure that kind of treatment ever again as long as she was with him. Slowly the job offer subsided, and her fame went down with it. She tried acting a few times and failed.
When she was 24, she was pregnant with Eli. Josh finally proposed and they were married in what the tabloids called the wedding of the year. Marlon was born when Belinda was 26 and Josh was 41. By that time Belinda had left the industry completely and settled in being Joshua Reynolds’ wife, though she never adopted his name.
It was a few good years for Belinda where she had stopped using drugs and drinking alcohol. She was free from the shackles of her agency that enslaved her through her teenage years and early adolescent. She paid off her mom to leave her alone because she was already an adult. She had met the love of her life whose career kept on rising, and with her husband’s fame came fortune that she will never have to work another day in her life.
It was all good until Belinda finds a new reason to be miserable again. And that’s when the second part of her life began.
The transition from being the Supermodel to the ex-supermodel to the aging ex-supermodel hadn’t been easy for her. It was gradual, slow but surely and she felt like she had to defy time in order to feel like herself.
The first time she found wrinkles in the corner of her eyes was a defining moment. Followed by the lines on her forehead and between her brows. She would go under the knife if she wasn’t so afraid of it. She had no intention of going back to be a model, but she knew her youth was the main reason why she got her new life with Josh. Her husband likes them young.
She kept her figure, not without a struggle. After two kids, it was almost impossible for her to fit in her old clothes again but she worked hard for it. It was almost like an obsession. She was thin again but she can never be young again.
What was once so hot and heavy turned cool and colder every year. Her husband’s priority never changed, even after they were married and had two kids. His job was always the most important thing in his world. He was away a lot and for a long period of time. They would come together between shootings, even so, he still had his tours promoting the movies and she would be home with the kids.
She tried to minimize it by putting the children to ‘work’, have their own activities so she could have more time with Josh. That plan backfired because they were minors and she was expected to be there for them at all times. And once their channel was taking off, it was even harder for her to get away from the demanding routine of constantly putting out contents.
Belinda and Josh drifted apart, and she was sure he was already finding others to warm his bed. She was lonely and frustrated, she found comfort in her drinks and drugs just like how they had comforted her in the past. And this time, she had her children to pour all her misery onto.