IKANT

IKANT continue……….

Sandra slammed the door behind him, barely waiting to watch him walk to his car; the Audi TT he could no longer really afford, but was too proud to downsize.  “Men and their precious cars” she inwardly raged.  How dare he criticise her values.   She leant her back against the cold pane of glass by the front door and looked at the chaotic hallway.  Wellies, school shoes, trainers, her own slightly worn boots, all askew, despite every attempt to line them up.  She’d tried to make her home look like those IKEA ads where everything seems to have a place, or at least a means of creating order out of mess.  Those strange Scandinavian names for simple pieces of furniture.  Were they words in fact, or simply random names created by Mr IKEA’s team – surely they couldn’t be found in any dictionary – the “Smoggy” bookcase, the “Dollop” coat hooks.  She would bet someone over there was having a laugh thinking those up in their brain-storming meetings.  Laughing even louder when we Brits buy them up by the car load.  Or maybe they put something in the “all you can eat” meatballs that brainwashes us into thinking that however much ‘stuff’ you have, it can all be neatly housed in a combination of 12” square boxes in the “Oleg” collection.  No, hang on, that’s the new baby meerkat in the comparison website ad isn’t it? 

Where, in those sterile adverts, she wondered, were all those mounds of papers you’ve no need to file, but can’t yet be thrown away either – just in case.  Oh yes, they must be in the Smeg filing drawer.  Nope, that’s an American fridge? 

Oh for god’s sake, why was she thinking Swedish minimalist furniture when her life was crashing around her once again.  

Sandra pushed herself away from the door and pulled the curtain across in a vain attempt to try and keep some heat in the house.  She had no intention of calling after him as she had so often done in the past.  Let him sit out there, or drive off, whichever!    As she headed towards the lounge, she tried to line up the wayward wellies, but let them fall as they undoubtedly would and all the while realising those falling wellies perfectly summed up her and Martin’s relationship.  Her trying to live up to his OCD standards, but there would always be a shoe out of place, a dinner not quite perfect, another goal not reached, which would ultimately send him in to a hail of complaints, resulting in another ruined evening. 

How dare he criticise this home.  Ok, it wasn’t Beckingham Palace, but she was proud of what she’d built for herself and her three children.  Admittedly not exactly built herself, for it had stood since 1975, long before her thoughts ran to owning her own home.  No, in 1975 she was 15 and had just weaned herself off David Cassidy and had switched her affections to David Essex.  Her walls redecorated hastily with posters of this ( “Gonna make you a…..”)  star, who seemed more of a man than the pretty boy from the Partridge Family, whose pictures she had so recently fawned over, but which she had now passed to her younger sister.   There had probably been a real boyfriend on the scene, as she was rarely without one throughout her teens and twenties, often with some ‘overlap’.  Her own Mother had likened her to a frog, leaping from one lily pad to another.  Funny, that pond was looking a little bereft of lily pads right now.  Maybe it was time for this frog to dive in and see what happened – sink or swim.

Sandra wandered into the lounge and flopped onto one of the tired sofas, making a mental note to look at those brightly coloured “Smorgasboard” covers.  Strike that, it’s a Danish buffet she signed.

Laying back against its well-worn cushions, she closed her eyes and wondered at what point she had decided to make such bad choices in men.  Even the Father of her children, Geoff, hadn’t been up to the task.  She could still remember so vividly that fateful night, having not long been in from work.  Sandra had had to work throughout their marriage, even returning soon after Ellouise was born.  Too soon she reflected sadly, thinking of her shy, anxious youngest child sleeping upstairs in her Barbie pink bedroom.   Well she hoped she was sleeping, but after another evening of raised voices and slammed doors, she seriously doubted it.  She’d go up soon and check on her, but for now she sighed and turned her thoughts back to the night she had opened the door to two strangers; two large men in dark coats.   A scream was close to her lips, which was silenced when one thrust a letter into her hand.  Looking from them to the letter, incomprehension turning to dawning realisation that they were bailiffs.  “You must have the wrong house” she blurted out; several times in fact, even as she read the letter which clearly showed her address and Geoff’s name.

The two men, clearly used to this scene, stood calmly whilst she tried to piece together the fragmented information laid out before her.  It would seem that they had to collect items amounting to some £10,000 in payment for a debt she knew nothing about.  Geoff was nowhere in sight, late yet again, but the men were not prepared to wait for his return.  Whilst they were sympathetic and beneath the matching, menacing build they both shared, obviously hired for their looks, they did manage to convey a degree of compassion.  Perhaps mindful that her three young children were equally, no, considerably more confused and afraid and had gathered behind their Mother in the doorway.   “If you just let us remove the items to the value of the debt, we’ll be gone and let you get on with your evening.  You can see that it’s all above board Mrs Denton”.  “Get on with our evening?  How on earth will we do that?”  Not just the evening of course, but life as she had known it?

It all gradually unfolded, over the weeks and months. Geoff had begun to gamble.   Small bets to start.  Card games with friends, but it had started to get out of hand and like most gamblers, he felt he could get it all back.  In order to do that though, the need to carry on gambling just grew and grew.  And by then it was a need, for there was no other way to recoup his losses.  He had tried to keep it all a secret, hoping that no-one, especially Sandra, would have to find out.  The knock on the door brought all that tumbling down in one foul swoop.  No way to explain it, no justification. 

When he arrived home that night, after Sandra had managed to calm down their three children.  Well not calmed exactly, but got them into their beds, which understandably they feared would be snatched out from under them.  She just stared into that face which she had once loved for all its imperfections.   Now though, as he tried to squirm his way out of the mess he’d created and with everything seeming to happen in slow motion – her waiving the letter at him, his words, so pointless and useless in solving anything – any love she had felt melted away in that moment.  If it had just been the two of them she could probably have forgiven him, but to risk their children’s home – utterly unforgiveable. 

They limped on for a few months, barely speaking.  Sandra had to call on her parents for money, something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager.  So humiliating.   Divorce was the only way out.  How could she trust him to look after them all any longer.  Bottom line was she didn’t trust him to and so, now divorced, she got on with relying on herself, but with much help from friends and family, to keep the home together, as much for the sake of Jeni, Jack and Ellouise as her own sanity. 

Now, as she looked around the lived-in living room, she realised she had done a pretty ok job of it really.  The children were fed and clothed.  Jeni and Jack no longer children, she at uni and he doing well at school, but it was little Ellouise she worried about most.  Geoff had moved out some six years ago and at nine years old, her youngest child could barely remember her Dad living there.  They saw him of course.  He would take them out, or once she had met Martin and wanted to spend evenings or nights with him, Geoff would come over and be at home with them, but it’s not the same as having a full-time Father living at home is it?

Martin.  Oh how he had seemed the answer to her prayers;   So together, good job, nice car, nice house, too perfect?  A mutual friend had introduced, no, match-made them, “I’ve got a man for you, let me give him your phone number?”  Why would she have refused that?  And so it began and he was perfect; attentive, caring, wined and dined her.  All the things she had missed while trying hard to keep a roof over her head.  He was working then.  How things had changed once he lost his job.  Sandra had been without work in the last five years since they had been together, but she reflected now how much a man pins his personality on his career (almost as much as his car), so that without one they fall so completely apart (wayward wellies sprung into her mind again).   And with each period of unemployment, he became more and more difficult and spiteful.  Seemingly jealous that she had work.  But why should he begrudge her that.  It was at these times that she paid for everything, and without complaint too.  He wasn’t too proud to accept that was he.  What he did instead was to snipe; small and sometimes not so small, criticisms of her home, the way she dressed, the colour of her hair for goodness sake. 

Their evening had begun much like that tonight.  He begrudgingly agreeing to come over for a meal.  Arriving with a face like a bulldog stung by a wasp.  Sandra smiled at the thought that a local friend has a bulldog, and believe me Martin didn’t look half as handsome as that bulldog when he walked in.  Maybe she should just get herself a dog.  At least they can’t gamble away your home or sap your self-confidence - happy with a pat on the head and a good meal - much like herself, she laughed again.  Hey look, I’m having more fun here, she thought to herself, than she had had in the last few months with Martin in the same room. 

It was hearing the sound of her own laughter, a sound she hadn’t heard much of late, neither had any of her friends and family come to that, which made her mind up.  Picking up her phone, she saw that Martin had tried to call her several times.  Deleting his number and any texts he’d ever sent, she then blocked his number.  She was starting to enjoy the feeling of control it gave her and wandering around the house, she gathered up the few possessions he had left at her home; not that there was much – indicative probably of his lack of commitment.  A toothbrush, a book he’d started reading and not finished and a spare shirt.  Not much to show for 5 years together and stuffed them inside one of the wellies, put it outside the front door with a note, so that when he came back, which he undoubtedly would, he would have no need to knock at the door which she shut and locked behind her, noticing as she did that the welly fell over and, smiling, there she left it.