A/N - Hello! Well, I've had people ask if I would write some more romance stories, but while I like to write them, I also like to write stories filled with a little drama. I'm also one of those authors that occasionally likes to beat down on his protagonist for a while only for them to rise like a phoenix.
Not everything that happens in the first stanza of this story is realistic as according to Australian law surrounding divorce. But the laws around divorce and child custody in Australia don't exactly lend themselves to a lot of drama!
Not the usual caveats. Yep, spelling is still usually spot on as Word is kind enough to underline anything spelled incorrectly, and I still use Australian / British standard English, otherwise known as proper English. However, I now have an editor / proofreader, fellow member
OhDave1
. He offered his services being a fan of my work and I gratefully accepted. All mistakes are owned up to by the author. Please remember this is just fantasy and I'm still an amateur.
Comments and feedback are appreciated as always.
*****
It's often said by many that you must fall to the bottom before you can start to rise. I understood the sentiment but had no idea what it truly meant until my life started to unravel over the space of around a year, from the moment my wife told me that she was leaving me until, well, I lost everything that mattered to me.
It's often suggested that the husband is the last to know. I don't know if it's the fact we're blinkered because of our genuine, wholehearted love of our wives, or if perhaps we don't want to face the truth to prevent our hearts from being broken, or if some of us are just totally oblivious to the behaviour clearly taking place.
Arriving home from work after another long day getting my hands dirty as a 'tradie' - tradesman to the rest of the world - having worked for my father since leaving high school at sixteen, working for him full-time since though I'd graduated various courses over the years to increase my skills and understanding. I now worked primarily as a 'sparky' (electrician) having passed the final exams a couple of years back though had started out as a 'chippy' (carpenter).
Parking my ute next to my wife's Toyota hybrid, I walked in and was met with silence. Though my kids were now early teenagers, they were at least polite enough to meet me when they heard my car pull up. Walking through the kitchen, I found my wife sitting at the table, a bottle of wine and a glass in front of her. When she met my eyes, there was no smile, and I had a sinking feeling already. I knew I was going to hear four words in particular...
"Where are the kids?"
"With my parents. Take a seat, Mark. We need to talk."
Ah, the four words that send a shiver down the spine of any man when mentioned by his partner. Nothing good has ever followed those words. Figuring I might as well just face the executioner without the blindfold, I grabbed a beer from the fridge, popped the cap and took a pull before I sat opposite her.
"Okay, the floor is yours, Carly. What do we need to talk about?"
The bag she took to work rested on one of the chairs beside her. I knew she carried her laptop and other things inside it, retrieving a manila folder and sliding it over the table towards me. "This is a separation agreement that I've put together with my lawyer over the past month..."
"Who is he?"
"Who is who?" she asked innocently.
I wasn't going to buy her bullshit. I met her eyes, and she held my gaze until she looked away. "I'm not stupid, Carly. The reason I'm being given these papers is that you've obviously met someone. It's just poor old Mark who is the last to know what's going on. Do the kids know?"
"They're aware I'm not happy with our marriage. They know they will be leaving..."
"No, they're not leaving."
"Read the paperwork, Mark. They will be leaving with me. It is why they're not here right now because I know you'll be difficult about it."
The insistent tone gave me pause. I had a feeling there was going to be paperwork that meant my kids were being taken from me without me able to do a thing about it.
"Who is he?"
"I've never cheated on you, Mark."
"Don't give me that shit, Carly. It might not be physical, so it was at least emotional. You've at least left the marriage in every sense but the physical. I'll ask you again and you might as well just answer the fucking question. Who is he?"
She sipped at her wine before finally nodding. "Fine, you want to know. It's Lucas." Raising my eyebrows, I knew the name very well. And it all made sense rather quickly.
You see, I made a good living as a tradesman while my wife worked in an office as a personal assistant for an executive at a global corporation. The problem is that despite our decent wages combined, we were one of hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders who had been priced out of the housing market. When the average house price is over a million dollars, even in the western suburbs, unless you wanted to live in what I considered 'the sticks' on the very western edges of the metropolitan area, then add the cost of bills, fuel, school for the kids, and all the other essentials that need to be paid every fortnight, we'd learned early on that obtaining a mortgage with the required deposit was almost impossible. Even the banks of Mum and Dad couldn't really help us.
We'd been renting our current house for the past five years, thankful that although we'd moved a couple of times since the birth of our children, we'd managed to stay in the same area of the city. I wouldn't say life was a struggle. In fact, we lived rather comfortably alongside our neighbours, but while I was content with our life though always wanting a little bit more, I knew my wife always had her sights set on a hell of a lot more. She'd always been far more materialistic than me.
