I was suffering badly with sickness and had struggled to get threw the day, being pregnant wasn’t much fun for me. But I had decided to make a real effort and get the housework done and make his favourite meal for tea. The pork casserole was bubbling away in the oven and even though the aroma was making my sickness even worse, it was well worth it knowing I would make him happy.
I had taken maternity leave from the hairdressing salon where I had worked for the previous two years and welcomes the much deserved rest. We had now moved from the very small and dingy bedsit into an old two bedroomed cottaged house in a neighbouring village.
It was far from the Ritz but it was a great improvement upon our last home, it even had a small garden and I could sit and imagine our little girl playing happily in it, maybe buy a slide and a little swing, I had so many intentions.
I was just about to dish out the steaming hot food onto the plates when he appeared in the kitchen doorway, I threw a huge smile in his direction, but a face of disgust was looking back at me.
“ I am leaving you” he told me. There from nowhere she appeared hanging her arms over his shoulders from behind. “ I have found someone else”. She stood smiling at me.
“ What you cant leave me, I need you, please don’t leave me “ I had begged, the tears were stinging my cheeks as I grabbed his arm while promising to be good from now and changing my ways.
All the time the pair of them stood laughing at me.
He went upstairs and threw some of his belongings into a holdall and walked out of the door, with his shadow happily following him.
It was two weeks before Christmas and the decorations hung upon the ceiling and the tree shone beautifully with the lights twinkling but as far as I was concerned there would be no celebrations, my whole world had crashed to to the ground. The love of my life, the father of my unborn child had left me and there was no way I could live without him.
I reached for the bottle of pills and slumped onto the hard kitchen tiled floor, it was cold but I felt nothing but emptiness. I emptied the contents onto the floor and cried so much that my whole body shook that it physically hurt.
I pushed a tablet into my mouth and retched, the taste of the white powder made me feel rather nauseated, remembering back to the tender age of fourteen when I had first taken an overdose I thought about the life I had led so far.
If I died here on this kitchen floor nobody would care, nobody would even notice, I had nobody who cared for me, I was alone.
I tried to swallow and think maybe I managed to take twelve tablets before the contents of my empty stomach were emptied onto the tiled floor. I went to bed praying that I would not wake the next morning.
He had been gone a whole four days, when he just walked back into my life, he spoke no words, just went into the kitchen threw his bag onto the floor and switched the kettle on.
I hugged him and thanked him for coming back home to him and swore to myself that I would change everything about myself so that he would never feel the need to leave me again.
“ She told me she was HIV positive” he told me after we had finished intercourse that evening.
“What” I had cried hysterically “ Did you sleep with her,does that mean you might have it and now I will, tell me, what about the baby”
He just laughed at me and got out of our bed, pulled on his clothes and headed for the door.
Thankfully I was tested and after weeks of waiting for the results, I was in the clear.
Its safe to say Christmas was a wash out and I did not do much celebrating but as usual I smiled in company and we behaved like the happily proud parents of our growing unborn child.
I heard the letterbox slam and wondered sadly what bills overdue would arrive today, with me no longer working finances were a struggle. With only 3 weeks until my first child was due it was a constant worry.
I was quite surprised to find a little brown paper parcel addressed to me, it wasn’t very often I had presents sent. I ripped open the paper to find a pair of red silk thongs. This puzzled me as I read the note :
The ones I wore after I slept with your boyfriend
This became a normal routine, she often sent me posted items threw the post. She even sent me 4 red roses, one for each day she had spent with him. The most disturbing gift was that of a blood stained pair of ladies pants, to prove she was not pregnant also with his child as she was on her period.
Of course he loved the idea that another women was interested in him and loved to explicitly inform me how better she was at giving him sexual pleasures.
