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....?"
