Page 97 of Secrets and Seashells at Rainbow Bay
‘Yes, he just upped and left one day – no warning, nothing. I thought we were getting on fine. Obviously we had our moments, like all marriages do, but I just thought that was normal.’
‘He just left you and Charlie without telling you why?’
‘Uh-huh. When he’d been gone over twenty-four hours I was on the brink of reporting him missing to the police. Grahamalwayswarned me if he was going to be late, or anything was unusual. It was completely out of character for him just not to come home.’
Tom nods. ‘So what happened then?’
‘I was about to sit down and ring the police, when I found a note. It was under the table; it must have blown off on to the floor after he left so I didn’t see it.’
‘What did it say?’ Tom prompts gently.
‘It said . . . ’ I take a deep breath. I don’t need time to remember because I’d never forgotten. It was just difficult to voice. It always had been. ‘It said he was living a lie and that he couldn’t do it any more. He said he still loved me and Charlie, but that he needed to get away for a while to get his head together.’
‘Did your husband have a high-powered job or something?’ Tom asks. ‘Was he stressed out by work?’
‘Hardly. Graham worked in a bank – not as manager or anything. Just as a cashier. His job had actually helped us out when we wanted to get a house – our mortgage was that little bit easier to come by. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have tried to take on such a big house. But we were getting married, we wanted a family. This was supposed to be our forever home.’
My voice breaks a little, and Tom puts his hand on my knee.
‘And we were happy. Well, I thought we were. We had our dream wedding, then I fell pregnant with Charlie within a month of us trying – it was all so perfect. From the outside it seemed like we had everything; from the inside too, actually. But apparently he didn’t see it that way.’
‘So what was his problem – thisGraham?’ Tom asks harshly, with obvious disdain. ‘It seems to me like he had everything a man could want. A beautiful wife, a gorgeous son, and a family home to return to every night. What could possibly have gone wrong?’
‘I never really found out. I was left with a young son and no money – oh, yes, he took all that too. He probably figured I had enough with the house, but what he didn’t think about was how I was going to pay the mortgage. I didn’t work then, I just looked after Charlie. You can imagine how quickly my perfect life fell apart, how fast the mortgage company repossessed our home when I couldn’t meet the repayments. How quickly we found ourselves without anywhere to live.’
‘But couldn’t you have stayed with friends or family until you got back on your feet?’
‘You’d be surprised how quickly so-called friends vanish when things aren’t going well for you. My problem was our friends were mainly his friends, so when he disappeared they all went very quiet.’
‘Did they know where he’d gone?’ Tom asks, again sounding annoyed.
‘I don’t think most of them did, maybe one or two. But they’d been well primed not to say anything to me.’
‘What about your family, then? Couldn’t they help?’
‘My dad died when I was eighteen, and my mum a few months before Graham left.’
‘He left you just after your mum died?’ Tom asks in a voice so low it’s barely audible. ‘Can this . . . I’ll call him a fool to be polite, this fool stoop any lower?’
I shrug.
‘What about any brothers or sisters – couldn’t you go to them?’
I shake my head. ‘Only child, me, like Charlie. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want him to be. Anyway, the council kicked in eventually, and we had a few different homes before we ended up on the estate that Benji found us on. By that time I had a job and we were just about surviving on the money from that and the few benefits I was entitled to. The next part of my sorry tale is Fairy Godmother Benji turning up on my doorstep one day, telling me I now owned a castle, and then magically persuading me to come here. Tiffany said my story is a bit like a fairy tale, and I’m inclined to agree with her now after hearing myself tell it.’
‘It is some tale,’ Tom says, smiling sympathetically at me. ‘From council estate to lady of the manor.’
‘I guess. So after hearing it, can you understand why I’m a little bit wary of putting my trust in people? Why I protect myself within my “shell”?’
Tom nods. ‘I can. But what I still can’t get over is why your husband just left like that. And you never heard anything more from him?’
‘Nope, not until about a year later when one of my ex so-called friends spotted him. I think she felt bad about abandoning me the way she had, so she got in touch again to tell me she’d seen him – over Facebook, of all things. As you can imagine I hadn’t really been in the mood for updating my profile, or looking at what perfect lives others were pretending to lead, so it was a shock to get an email telling me someone had sent me a message. It was Andrea, saying she’d seen Graham in Doncaster out and about with his new partner.’
‘He had a new partner!’ Tom asks, his eyes wide.
‘Yep, and not only that, his new partner was a man.’
Tom’s mouth drops open. ‘You’re kidding me. No, I’m sorry, obviously you’re not. So he’s gay – or does that make him bi?’
