Just Like Starting Over: Chapter One

It's friday... so it must be... erm Top of the Pops?
Sorry about the dated reference.

As promised here is the first chapter (of sorts) of the book Just Like Starting Over: Based on a True Story. If you read and enjoy, please pass it on, whether it be through Twitter or Facebook or any other way... hell you can even just tell someone about it...

Once again, any comments are welcome-

Just Like Starting Over

Based on a True Story

By David Simpson

What you are about to read is based on a true story.

All names have been changed to protect the identities and reputations of those described.
(Or more correctly to save me from a multitude of lawsuits.)

Day 1

At 3.24 am, my life fell apart.

We needed to talk, me and Linda, it was an ominous statement. She’d texted me earlier and I should have known that something was up. Something bad. Should it wait until the morning or be done now? It was difficult to guess what was coming next, but what did would change my life. Now, I should point out that when she started I had no idea what she was going to say, but as I went through the possible things there was one thing that kept going through my mind ‘What has happened recently that is significant?’ Answer? Linda passed her Police Applications. Only one logical thing went through my mind:

She’s pregnant. She’s finally been accepted into the Police and she’s pregnant. She won’t want to keep it. She will want an abortion.

If only that’s all it was.

I almost laughed at her saying ‘I want to split up.’ It was like being told that we neverlanded on the moon, that 9/11 was a government conspiracy, that we are all descended from a large aubergine. I was stunned, left sitting on the bed, unable to understand what was going on. The past few months had been hard, hell I’d go so far as to say the last few years had been hard, but we came together, we pulled through and I thought it made us stronger. Our arguments were never to the point of ‘I’m leaving’ or throwing things around the room, they were never arguments from out of a typical Alan Bleasdale drama or the Connie/Carlo scene from Godfather. Sure, they were shouting and loud, but nine times out of ten they were about something so petty that we always ended up laughing about it later. I was transported back to my childhood, watching my parents separate for no reason that I could see, or understand. Mum just stopped loving Dad and that’s just the way it was. It wasn’t my fault, but deep down you knew that you must have been a factor… somehow.

But I was obviously a factor in this.

The past year I had become bitter and twisted by my job, seeing no progress and no way out. I wanted to leave, but the money was so good that I couldn’t consciously do it without being accused of being foolish and the sheer idea of dropping all that money to just work a normal job was insanity and wouldn’t exactly improve the stability of the household now would it? At least my shifts were a regular pattern of night shifts 5pm-3am or thereabouts, whereas she could spend a week on nights then a week on days and then a week on early shifts. There was no way of knowing and no way of planning around it, or maybe there was, but she didn’t want to. I got used to working the night time and sleeping during the day, true it wasn’t the best thing, but for over twenty thousand pounds a year who wouldn’t? I mean the average day job here only gets (possibly) sixteen if you’re lucky… and most of them were high management jobs that I could never go for. She never seemed to understand that I wasn’t working here because I enjoyed it; I was doing it because I had to, and because of our debt problems no other job would even come close to covering what we needed. Whether she cared or not, I couldn’t say, but I always felt like she resented me working and to some extent looked down on my job as pointless and meaningless. True, but you could say the same about so many jobs.

I walked out of the room, spellbound. Did I really just hear what I think I heard? I sat on the couch, stunned. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Yes, I must have imagined that, I must have and so I walked back in and she was on the bed curled in a ball, not sleeping, thinking I guess. I sat on the bed and she sat up, I moved closer and put my head on hers as I had done for so many years and I made my last effort, my one mighty swing of Excalibur: ‘What can I do to get you back?’ It was all I had. It was all my energy, all my hope compressed into a ball and hurled for one final touchdown.

‘Nothing!’ she murmured.

I died inside. Everything that I was, or thought I ever would be died then. She could have said anything, anything and I would have done it. She could have said:

‘Eat a whole watermelon, pips and rind and all!’

‘Walk the length of Gloucester Road naked!’

‘Quit your job and work 9-5 in some call centre for half the money!’

‘Stop wasting your time writing!’

‘Dye your hair green!’

‘Join the Police with me!’

‘Sell everything you own to fund our wedding!’

ANYTHING!

But I never got that chance. I never got anything. I was struck out before I’d even swung the bat, so I left her and went to the kitchen. Turning the kettle on I looked up at the cup hooks that she’d only put up a few weeks ago and there it was:

‘To Linda… The Sexiest Fiancé Love Michael x’

And I collapsed like an accordion. It was over! It was all over!