Saturday 6th January
So, a new start A new beginning. At last we could begin our real married life together. Oh yes, we had got married a few months ago, on the spur of the moment really. No parents came, just a couple of fair-weather friends. And for a few weeks everything seemed good. I scoured the second hand shops and bought a wardrobe. a sofa, table and chairs, cups and saucers and pots and pans. And paint. I painted the whole flat white. It certainly looked better. Then Carol announced that she was pregnant again. Oh. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or not. Carol herself seemed pretty pissed off. I tried to reassure her that everything was going to be alright – but her mood had darkened. Really, who could blame her – she was barely more than a child herself and here she was pregnant again. Actually of course we were both barely more than children forced to grow up too soon by our own stupidity.
I mentioned that the ‘flat’ we had was the ground floor of a Victorian house. But as this was temporary accommodation there was no separate entrance and the flat upstairs and ours shared a common hallway. Upstairs was an Irish couple; the husband rarely seemed to be home; but the woman Liz got friendly with Carol and pretty soon became almost a permanent feature in our flat, drinking tea most evenings when I got home from work. Carol was starting to neglect Justin too, he always seemed to have a wet nappy on – maybe the same one I had put on him in the morning. Then Carol told me she was going out for a drink with Liz. We had very little money but I felt it would be mean of me object. She said she wouldn’t be long, but rolled in, a bit tipsy around 11.30. She said she had had a great time, and began to berate me for not taking her out anymore. I was saving all my wages to try to make our little home nicer. That argument was brushed aside, and she started going out most nights with Liz. I would return from work to babysit.
I knew things were going from bad to worse but felt powerless to even argue with her. I can remember sitting up and waiting for her return, and imagining the worst.
And then one night, drunk but still coherent she said she had started seeing someone else. I can’t even describe the despair I felt. After all we had been through, was that all our love meant. And yet I felt powerless to do anything about it all. I was simply existing on autopilot, working and babysitting and torturing myself with this living nightmare. It really was the lowest I had ever been. And now, what the hell was going to happen…