Margot climbed into bed. She looked across at Perry who was already asleep. How could this man not realise what he had done to her? He was so self-absorbed, so selfish, and worse than how he acted towards her was the way he treated their sons.
When Perry started to snore she almost turned out the light, but she wasn’t tired, because she couldn’t stop thinking about those suitcases in the basement, how she could pick one up, pack it full of her things and change her life. The problem was, every time she thought seriously about going through with it and leaving him, she had Perry’s voice in her head telling her she would never make it on her own; she would always come crawling back. She had some money to her name but it wasn’t a huge amount, and she had no job or skills to find employment. She was stuck with his voice telling her that if she tried to leave then it would be her fault that their family broke apart. He’d said that to her one day when they’d been arguing. She couldn’t remember what the fight was about now, but she could remember him laying the responsibility of holding the family together firmly at her feet. Putting the boys through that hadn’t been an option for her, but now they’d both left home, now they’d put distance between themselves and their father, was it finally time to think a bit about herself?
She picked up the book on her bedside table, romantic fiction and going by the blurb on the back it was about a man who was rough around the edges after being through a huge ordeal, and a woman who’d come to adore him anyway and change him into the loveable character that he was. She was happy to read this one. Romance would do what it said it would – there would be a happy ending. Whatever problems came along they would be solved between the pages.
If only real life were that easy.
She’d thought at one point that it really was.
That first night she met Perry, when he’d asked her to leave the pub with him, they’d gone a bit further down the street and into the next pub, a much quieter place with no sign of any drinking challenges.
‘I’ve never met a Margot before,’ he told her.
She’d liked it when he said that. It was as if he was charming without knowing it. The demeanour seemed to come naturally, effortlessly and with no agenda.
They’d had another drink and then he’d walked her home, putting his coat around her shoulders as it grew colder. He’d kissed her goodnight – a gentle kiss with a lingering promise – and asked for her phone number. She was smitten. He’d said he’d call her.
And he did, less than forty-eight hours later.
Their first date was another seventy-two hours after that.
And thirteen weeks after the night they met, she was pregnant.
When she told Perry she was expecting a baby, he sat on the edge of the bed in her room at her shared flat in disbelief. She’d done the test the day before. She’d told one of her flatmates, unsure of what she was going to do. She’d had a plan, you see. She was in the first year of her four-year degree course. In the third year she would go over to America for twelve months. A baby wasn’t even in the mix. Nineteen-year-olds and babies didn’t go together, and a nineteen-year-old at university with a baby really didn’t seem like it would work.
‘You can’t get rid of it,’ Perry said when she told him she didn’t know what to do. ‘I mean you could, it’s your body, but…’ He turned to her and took both of her hands in his. ‘But it’s my baby too.’
She reached out a hand and put it against his cheek. Her kind, gentle Perry, who worked so hard at his graduate job and looked at her with eyes that pleaded for her to make the right decision. She’d decided then that she’d met her real-life hero. A man who was in this one hundred per cent.
‘I’m going to go home this weekend,’ she told him a couple of days later. ‘I need to tell my parents. I can’t do this alone.’
He rallied. ‘But you’re not alone. I’m here for you, Margot.’ He cleared his throat, then he stood up before sinking down onto one knee.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Margot, would you marry me?’ He huffed. ‘I don’t have a ring, but we’ll choose one, a great big diamond if you like. Be my wife, Margot. You’ll never want for anything.’
She’d thrown her arms around him. ‘Yes, yes! I will marry you.’
They’d gone to tell her parents together. It had been hard. Her father cried, but with Perry at her side they had her parents’ support. It didn’t go quite as well telling Perry’s parents three days after that.
‘What the bloody hell were you thinking?’ his father, Phil, roared. Margot could hear him shouting from the next room, yelling at his son as if he’d done this on purpose. She was sitting opposite his mother, Linda, in the lounge, watching Mrs York twist her wedding ring around her fourth finger. Margot’s palms were clammy; the room felt too hot. All she wanted to do was leave. She wished that none of this was happening.
The shouting continued. Perry’s mother shifted uncomfortably, offered Margot tea or a drink of water, talked about where she and Perry might live when they were married. She was behaving as if nothing out of the ordinary was playing out in this house, that there wasn’t an almighty row going on in the next room, that this was a minor problem that would be dealt with when to Margot it was life-changing.
Over time, Margot saw Perry’s father, Phil, for the man he really was. Perry seemed to shrink in his presence. He was always telling him about his achievements, his successes, and for very little praise in return. She saw Phil snap at his wife many a time, he put her down in front of others, he was a bully. Linda waited on Phil hand and foot too, without so much as a thank you or gentle affectionate touch from him to show his appreciation. Margot didn’t know how Perry’s mum put up with it. And she’d never thought for one minute that she would ever become that woman.
Perry and Margot married when she was five months pregnant. She was slim and the bump, although there, wasn’t enormous. They’d had a lovely wedding and her dad had been proud as anything, his daughter marrying into the York family who, unbeknownst to Margot when she met Perry, were prominent in the philanthropic sector as a result of a very successful business venture, which Perry’s father launched two decades earlier and sold off for millions. The Yorks had paid for the entire wedding, and both sets of parents seemed excited about becoming grandparents despite Perry’s father’s initial bellowing.
When Sebastian was born things got harder. Perry couldn’t take much time off work and Margot was bogged down with nappies, feeds, bathing, sleep schedules, and trying to stay sane. Neither set of grandparents could help out much as they lived some distance away and Margot wasn’t keen on any of them coming to stay in their tiny flat. She’d rather deal with it all herself. But in those hazy days she’d leap on Perry the second he came through the door, desperate for some adult interaction and some help. Her uni mates visited for a while, which was company of sorts, but they had their own lives – they had the life that she should’ve had and she realised one day that she resented it. She stopped inviting them. Their lives had gone on different trajectories and she could barely stand to see them and witness what she was missing out on.
But oh how she loved Sebastian. With his big brown eyes, his shock of chestnut hair and the way he smiled with his entire face, his gurgles, his chatter. When Sebastian was a year old, they moved to a terraced house bigger than the flat but not by much. By then Perry had started to come out of his shell a bit and he was doing really well with his job. Margot hadn’t really given it much thought; she’d been proud of how hard he’d worked and how he was growing up to take responsibility. She’d never once thought back then that he was slowly turning into a man very much like his father.
In the new rental property, Margot struggled with Perry being away for work so much. She had stairs to tackle with the pram, which was never easy. The neighbours on both sides were noisy – it didn’t bother Perry when he was there because he slept like a log – but it bothered Margot. Her sleep was all over the place, she tried to sleep when Sebastian did, but their neighbours were loud in the day as well as the evenings and she was running on empty.
She almost had a breakdown when Sebastian was a toddler, brought on by the stress of it all, by lack of support and so little rest. Perry had stepped in that time. He’d taken leave from work, he’d sent her to a hotel for four whole nights and she was ordered to recuperate. She couldn’t have been happier in that moment for despite his busy job in London, he really saw how things were for her. And by the time Sebastian turned three, they were in a much better position financially. Perry had had two promotions and started to receive an annual bonus, and they found a small house to buy to get them on the property ladder.
Family visits were always tense for Margot. She hated going over to the Yorks. Linda was lovely. She always fussed over Sebastian, always cooked them a delicious meal and never let anyone lift a finger, but Margot began to resent how much Perry changed when he was in his dad’s company. He’d drink more than he usually did, they’d have cigars like it was something Perry did regularly, and on those occasions, Perry seemed to Margot like a little boy craving the approval he’d always wanted. Perry would talk nonstop about his job, his achievements at work, and his dad would offer praise, but he’d talk about his own success too, then he’d ask what was next for his son as if he hadn’t achieved enough yet. Margot saw the immense pressure Perry was under every time his father was in the room. The pressure seemed to drive Perry to be even better, to succeed, to get the next promotion and the one after that. But all the while Margot wished he was doing it for himself and for them and less for his dad. Slowly the young man she’d met that night in the pub was fading before her very eyes until he was almost unrecognisable.
