Saturday 20th January
So, where did our love go? Suddenly I found myself in the sad situation of loving someone who no longer loves you. And you keep hoping against hope that things will change, that they will see sense, that they will realise how much you love them, how much you have both been through already. But of course they don’t. And you know you are being stupid, you know it is only a matter of time, but you are also helpless. All you can do is get through each day and wait for the inevitable.. You know that day is coming but can do nothing to avert it, or speed it up or avoid it completely.
We also had the problem of her being pregnant again. Despite her obvious condition she still went out every evening drinking with Liz. Then she let me know she was seeing someone – an Irish man, quite a bit older than her. Seamus was his name. And she hid nothing from me, in fact I suspect she was teasing me with the fact that despite being very heavily pregnant she was still attractive to someone else.
Well, eventually her time came and strangely she wanted me at the birth. I deluded myself into thinking that maybe she cared after all, that this Seamus had simply been a dalliance, that there was a chance, slim maybe, that we could get together again.
That too was short-lived. I came home one evening to find a practically empty flat. Her mother dropped off my son; she had been looking after him for the day. She left me a letter from Carol. I kept it for a few years but have long since lost it. Basically she was going to live with Seamus in Belfast, taking the six week old little girl with her but leaving the boy with me. Thank God she did too. Without him who knows what might have become of me. I may have gone completely to pieces. But he started to cry, and I bent down and picked him up and dropped the letter on the floor. In a way he saved my life, I had to be strong for him, I had to carry on for my son. And I did…