Despite the turmoil it had seen, our house was as much a part of the family as the people who lived under its roof. But unless my fairy godmother waved her magic wand, we were going to lose it.
I wasn’t stupid. I loved a little gossip as much as the next person. So I knew many people in the village were talking about me. I’d see them looking away when they spotted me in the street, unsure of what to say. I heard whispers at the school gates from the other mums. I had my suspicions they thought Simon had walked out on me, only because I’d have probably thought the same thing if I was them.
So I played my rumoured ‘abandoned wife’ status to my advantage and pleaded ignorance to my debts during an appointment with our bank manager. I even felt a twinge of guilt when I turned on the waterworks in his office with surprising ease to prove how hard I was finding it to cope. But it worked.
He offered me a further eight-week stay of execution, giving me a total of four months to climb out of arrears before his hands became tied and we lost our home. I could have kissed him, but instead I skulked back home, ashamed of how I’d let things slide. Then I decamped into the dining room and faced the reality of my money woes on a table littered with old statements and red letters. A bottle of wine gave me support as I watched figures on reams of pages twirl around like whirling dervishes, daring me to take a closer look at the mischief they’d created while I was distracted. Eventually, I calculated my outgoings were triple my incomings. No matter where I thought I could make some savings, the debts were still going to mount up.
The fact that Simon had, as far as the authorities were aware, not actually died but gone AWOL made it much harder to claim welfare support. I’d slipped into a grey area that wasn’t recognised by black-and-white regulations. I wouldn’t receive a widow’s allowance, as there was no proof he was dead, and I’d not been ‘actively seeking work’, so I couldn’t claim unemployment benefits. I was allowed family support, but that fortnightly payment didn’t stretch far. I was caught between a rock and a hard place.
Frustrated, I poured myself another drink while my eyes filled up faster than the glass. I was both angry with him for leaving me like this and at myself for being in denial. Something had to change. It was time to remove myself from my pity party and start being the breadwinner.
I began by selling the family car I rarely used, then reluctantly pawning my jewellery, including my gorgeous wedding and engagement rings. Never in all our years together had I taken either of them off. Not even when we’d spent all our waking hours glossing doors and staining floorboards or lifting concrete slabs. If I scuffed my rings, it didn’t matter – they’d be reminders of what we’d built together. Even when four pregnancies made my fingers puffy, they remained where I could see them at all times. Now Simon’s disappearance had made them the saddest objects I owned. The only thing stopping another round of tears was the knowledge that when we found him, I’d be able to buy them back.
A house clearance firm I found in the telephone directory made up the rest of the mortgage shortfall. I begged them to come late in the evening, as I was too embarrassed for the neighbours to see strange men taking our worldly goods away in the back of a truck.
I sold the Welsh dresser from the kitchen; a sofa and television we barely used from the den; Simon’s writing bureau; two bookshelves; three wardrobes; the dishwasher; a chest of drawers, dressing table and sideboard; lamps and crockery we’d been given as wedding presents. And while it killed me to do it, I even sold the children’s bikes. By the time the removal men left an hour later, I still had a home but barely anything left to fill it.
I sat broken-hearted, gazing at the empty floors and empty walls in our empty shell. And as I nursed my wine and glanced at my empty finger, I felt like a hopeless failure, as a wife and as a mum. It seemed like it might be harder than I thought to leave my pity party early.
21 October
My children gave me an unselfish, beautiful, organic love that grew as they grew. But the love Simon had given me was something altogether different. It had made me feel desired, appreciated, respected and needed. And I missed that; I missed it so much. He took with him something I didn’t believe I could hurt so badly for.
But as each week passed, I gradually figured out I shouldn’t need another person to validate my life, no matter how much I had loved or now longed for it. It was something I could do myself and it began in our local supermarket, of all places.
I knew checkout assistant and shelf stacker wasn’t the greatest job in the world when I saw it advertised in the window. But this beggar couldn’t afford to be a chooser, so I gagged my inner snob and applied for it.
I stared into the staffroom mirror that first morning and barely recognised myself. I was a thirty-three-year-old bag of nerves dressed in an ill-fitting, brown Crimplene uniform and wearing a ‘Trainee’ badge.
I’d become used to mirrors tormenting me. I made a weekly pilgrimage to the one in my bathroom for some brutal home truths. Inch by inch, I’d pull on loose skin from the stone I’d lost since Simon had gone, prod rogue folds and carefully examine my body and face for any obvious signs of collapse. I’d sigh as I charted the progression of an army of silver silkworms weaving their way across my crown. I could have lost a finger in the crevices around my eyes that had once been subtle laughter lines. Ironically, they’d only grown when the laughter died.
Neither Simon nor youth were on my side any longer. While I was still more Jane Fonda than Henry Fonda, the gap between the two was growing closer. But, whatever the direction my new life was going to take, I was going to give it my all.
Most of the checkout girls seemed decades younger than me. In reality, there were only a few years between us. But a missing husband and raising a family on your own ages you in a hurry.
Working kept me busy and stopped me from feeling sorry for myself. The mums swapped parenting stories and gave each other knowing smiles when the student part-timers swapped drunken tales and complained of exam stress like they were pioneers in the field of drinking and homework. Secretly I envied them, and tried to remember what it felt like to have so few worries or battle scars.
Sometimes I’d listen to the housewives moan about their lazy, selfish husbands, and I’d want to shout, ‘At least you still have yours!’ But I’d smile and nod along with the rest of the sisterhood instead.
My husband’s disappearance still had a curiosity factor attached to it, like the village had its own Bermuda Triangle. It was usually the older customers coming in for their weekly shop who seemed eager to share their opinions, like only elderly people can.