Read Chapter 4 “The Investigation”
The Brief History
30. October 2018
It’s a day before yet another Halloween, which usually marks the end of the warm weather and the start of the frantic Christmas preparation. Jim is “working late” again tonight. I still haven’t found enough courage to confront him. I’m just scared, and the longer I think about having to talk to him, the bigger my anxiety becomes. What if he really is in a relationship with her and has been sleeping with her behind my back for months? What then, what do I do after I know the truth? (So far my investigation hasn’t been going well. I found zero evidence, or maybe I don’t know how to look.)
I wasn’t always scared; there were times when I was brave, willing to talk, ask and live my life to the fullest. But it all seems like another lifetime, or rather like a life that belonged to someone else, of which I was just a passive observer.
Before I became a mum, and I love being a mum, I had a successful career in the corporate world. I started as a journalist, but within a few years, I moved onto writing for corporations and working with PR teams before I ended up as a senior copywriter in an ad agency.
The corporate jobs were never as fulfilling as being a journalist, but the money was much better. Since we only had one income, Jim was still building his company; it was a logical step for me to take to make our future together better.
The moment Jim’s company turned a profit, and he was able to pay himself, we decided it was time for us to have children. We already had a lovely house in a good neighbourhood with good private and state schools around. So now I just needed to get pregnant. The plan for me was to work for as long as I could, and then do freelance jobs once my maternity leave was over. Well, the plan was perfect on paper, and what possibly could have gone wrong with a perfect plan, right?
While pregnant, I was sick all the time. There were days I couldn’t even get out of bed. All the worldly smells were making me throw up, and I needed to stop working earlier than I planned. I did try to be upbeat, regardless of the pregnancy sickness, but some days it was hard. Not to lose my mind completely, I read a lot of books, stayed in bed till late, and tried to move as little as I possibly could.
As soon as my daughter was born, I wanted to go back to work, by the time my baby was three months old, I was working again. My new, job wasn’t as well paid as the one that got shipped to India, but I had an income coming in, and the company seemed to be much less rigorous than the previous one. However, soon enough, I found out that I was pregnant again. It was a mixture of happiness and fear. I wanted to have another child, but not so soon.
I stayed with this company for as long as I could before another maternity leave. After I had my second daughter, I decided to stay home for at least a year before returning to full-time work.
I loved every moment and every minute of being home with the girls. Jim loved it, too; we used to have long breakfasts or go for long lunches or coffee breaks in the middle of the day. It was so much fun.
But something somehow must have gone very wrong for us.