This story has been bubbling away in my head for quite a while and I've put it down more than once as I've re-thought the plot and decided where to take it.
It is a romance but, as in many of my stories, not in the traditional sense. In the end though it is just that, a story.
As always comments, constructive and critical, are welcome.
Enjoy.
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There is always a choice
Part 1
Monday morning was bleak, grey and miserable, the sky full of dark forbidding clouds that promised rain at some time later in the day. Starting out just like any other week-day, Samantha Warrington and her husband Ben got up at 6.15 a.m. as usual, then after eating breakfast they prepared for their day.
As far as she was concerned it was no different from any of the previous mornings, at least not those of the last twelve months. The frosty silence that hung over them broken only by a few succinct sentences related to any essential matters that they needed to discuss before they both left for work.
Trying to ignore the palpable tension that existed between them, as they teetered on the brink of the collapse of their 3-year marriage, she focused on getting ready for another day.
Once she was dressed and done, Samantha simply said a terse goodbye and, without even a kiss on the cheek for her husband, set out for work. Walking to the bus stop to catch the 7.33 to the school where she worked as a TA (teaching assistant) she felt an overwhelming sense of relief to be out of the house.
Despite the gloomy overcast sky and the fine drizzle that was starting to fall, she was grateful that another difficult weekend was over and she could relax, at least for the next few hours.
Taking a seat, she gazed despondently out at the busy streets passing in front of her and let her mind wander back to happier days when she had first met her husband.
~~~~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~~~~~
It had happened at a party.
One she hadn't really wanted to go to.
She had been twenty back then and had just started her final year at college, while he was eight years older and had seemed so sophisticated and charismatic to a rather naïve, inexperienced girl like her.
Not having a boyfriend to go with Samantha's room-mate from college, Briony, had dragged her along to her brother's engagement celebration with the promise that lots of single men would be there. Not that she was really interested in looking for a boyfriend, preferring to finish her studies before getting into a relationship.
That was the first time she ever set eyes on Ben Warrington.
She was captivated from the moment she saw him. To her he was absolutely gorgeous. At six feet tall he stood a good half a foot over her slender 5' 6" and with dark brown hair and deep brown eyes he had immediately set her pulse racing.
Seeing her standing alone he had come straight across to talk to her.
"Hi, I'm Ben. Are you here with anyone?"
"Oh err... hi... I'm Samantha. I'm a friend of Briony's." She had blushed and stammered a reply, her heart rate immediately soaring, "And err... no... no, I'm alone."
They had just seemed to click and spent the remainder of the evening together. Then, when he asked her out at the end of the night, she had thought her heart was going to burst out of her chest it was hammering that hard against her ribs.
Of course, Sam had said yes and he had taken her to dinner a couple of days later.
Although she wasn't a virgin, she had very little experience of men having had only a few boyfriends, none of whom had been particularly serious. She had only slept with two of them, both rather immature and more interested in their own satisfaction than hers. With that sort of background, it wasn't surprising that she quickly fell, head over heels, for Ben's charm and experience.
Ending up in his bed after their third date they became a couple and had been seeing each other for six months when, taking her completely by surprise, he had proposed. She had just turned twenty-one then and, despite her young age and against the guidance of friends and family, she accepted.
She was in love with him and nothing else had mattered.
Both her parents and her close friends told her that she was too young and it was too soon, but she hadn't wanted to listen to what she now realised was very sound advice. Ignoring them all, it was just a mere few weeks later that they were married in a small civil ceremony and she moved out of her student rooms and into the rather run-down flat that Ben was renting.
To her, used to sharing a small room, being alone with her husband was paradise. They were all by themselves in their own little world with no one to disturb them and sex was a daily occurrence during the week and they would often make love two or three times a day at the week-ends.
She didn't worry that the tiny two-bedroom apartment wasn't exactly a palace, her new husband promised her that they would save up and get a deposit together so they could buy their dream house.
It was the first of many promises he made to her that he never kept.
Samantha was still at college for a large part of the first year of their marriage and, fully occupied with her studies and exams, she didn't recognise any of the signs that would have indicated that her husband had a serious addiction.
In fact, it wasn't until she had finished her final year and had begun looking for employment that she started to realise something was very wrong.
They had both been saving as much as they could towards a down payment on their own place. Samantha from her part time waitressing job in a pizza restaurant while Ben was, supposedly, putting in substantially more from his position as a cameraman working for a television production company.
Once she had finished her studies, she began looking for permanent employment and, wanting to make plans for their future, she had decided it was time to review their savings and see exactly what their situation was.
That was when she found the account that they had been putting their spare money into contained barely a few hundred pounds rather than the several thousand it should have had deposited in it. At first, she had thought it was a mistake but when she checked she could see what she had put in had been withdrawn over a period of time.
What was even worse though was the fact that Ben had made just the one deposit, when they opened the account, and in the interim period since then had put in nothing more.
Confronting her husband, he initially denied taking it, then eventually admitted he had used more than three thousand pounds of the money she had saved to pay off his gambling debts.
"There was only three thousand?" Her surprise at how little they had saved was reflected in her voice, "But there should have been a lot more, Ben."
"Err... yeah... well... I... I hadn't been paying in to it." He confessed rather reluctantly.
"What... why the fuck not?"
Sam had been completely dumbstruck by his admission.
Ben looked shamefacedly at the floor, "I... err.... I couldn't afford it."
"But you earn a decent wage and the rent isn't that much. What were you spending it....?"
She stopped mid-sentence when she suddenly realised that her husband's gambling problem wasn't restricted to him making a variety of one-off payments from their savings.
"It was the gambling wasn't it... that's why you weren't putting money into the account?"
He nodded, totally embarrassed, and refused to look at her, simply staring disconsolately at the floor.
"For fuck's sake Ben. That was supposed to be our future." Samantha had been livid with him and she made sure he knew exactly how she felt, "I worked all the fucking hours I could to save that and you were spending it down at the bloody betting shop."
There was nothing he could say. His obsession was out in the open and from that point on she had gradually begun to realise just how bad things had become.
Of course, he had promised to quit, to repay what he had taken, but all it amounted to was more empty pledges.
Sam soon gained a position as a teaching assistant at a local school and, while she wasn't earning much, her husband Ben, was bringing in a decent wage. They shouldn't have been poor, not by any means, but on the other hand they weren't exactly rich either.
Between the two of them there should have been more than enough to get by. However, that never seemed to be the case and every month they struggled to pay the bills after he continually squandered his money gambling.
With their marriage facing the stress and tensions created by her husband's addiction they battled through another two years trying to make the best of it. On reflection it was probably sometime during that period that her feelings for her husband changed; perhaps it hadn't been love to begin with but by the end she was barely tolerating him.
It was soon after that first fateful discovery when things started to go downhill even faster. His gambling problem got worse rather than better and they began to argue almost constantly about money. At the same time sex became something that happened occasionally rather than the regular occurrence it had been when they were first married.
Stuck in a never-ending cycle of debt and disagreements they had struggled on together, trying to make the best of it but almost as soon as she felt things were looking up for them his obsession would rear up again and they would find themselves back where they had started.
~~~~~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~~~~~
Getting off at her stop Samantha put her problems out of her mind for the moment. The children she taught at school would be just the distraction she needed to get her out of the unhappy mood she was in.
She knew that once this week was over, it would be the half-term break and maybe she could get Ben to take a few days off so that they could spend some time together and talk.
'Did she still love him?'
'Did she want to try to save their marriage?'
'Would he keep his last promise to stop gambling?'
'What would she do if they separated?'
So many thoughts flooded her mind that she was walking through the front entrance of the school before she realised it.
"Sam, can Mr Holland see you for a minute, please?" Claire, the school secretary, stuck her head out of the admin office and called to her as she pushed in through the main doors.
"Er... yes sure." She changed direction and set off for the headmaster's office, slightly puzzled as to why he wanted to talk to a lowly teaching assistant first thing on a Monday morning.
"Come in." She heard her boss call out after rapping on the door.
"Ah, Samantha. Good morning. This is Mr Groves, one of the school governors." The headmaster indicated to a middle-aged man sitting alongside his desk, "Do please sit down."
