Chapter 2

Before the drinking, before the beatings they had lived in a nice little three bedroom house and a younger more innocent Karen had been excitedly looking forward to starting a family.

She had never seen Richard drink more than a single beer when they went out for an evening. She knew as a teenager he and his mates would go out for a ‘session’ as he called it and they would all drink a lot, but that had been left behind when they had got married.

Then Richard lost his job, he didn’t tell her at the time, he hid it for ages. He would dress for work everyday and kiss her goodbye before he headed off to work, or so she thought.

When the first of the letters arrived from the bank she was sure it was a mistake. They had tucked away most of the money that she had inherited when her parents had died but there was always money going into the bank, first there was Richard’s salary and then monthly interest payments from several of the savings accounts they had used to put mum and dad’s money away somewhere safe, they would be able to use some of the interest and the rest would be for the kid’s college or university fees. Now the bank was saying they were overdrawn and the mortgage payments hadn’t been met.

Karen had never really looked at their bank statements, that was always Richard’s domain and she had been happy for him to be in charge of their future, secure in the knowledge that he knew finance better than she did and would look after his family. She had gone to the cabinet where she knew he kept all their financial records and found it was locked, she searched around but couldn’t find the key anywhere.

Karen had fretted all afternoon waiting for Richard to come home from work. Eventually he got home and Karen had asked him about the overdrawn bank accounts.

At first he tried to tell her it was just a temporary thing, it had been an expensive month and a lot of money had gone out so far this month, they were waiting for one of the savings accounts to pay it’s monthly interest. Karen persisted and eventually Richard admitted that he had lost his job and they had been living from the bank accounts while he was looking for another job.

Karen was angry that he hadn’t told her but was sure they could cope for a couple of weeks while he found another job.

“We will have to cash in one of the smaller savings accounts for a few weeks until you’re back in work.” She told him.

Richard just sat quietly staring at the floor.

“Oh you didn’t!” She stated disbelief clear in her voice.

Richard just nodded still looking at the floor.

“What all of it?” She asked incredulous.

When she eventually got the full story out of him it turned out Richard had been sacked almost two years ago for drinking repeatedly on the job. He had looked for work, he found two other jobs and got sacked from each of them for drinking. Over the two years their normal bills had swallowed her entire inheritance. Richard’s drinking had also ran them up several thousand pounds worth of debt.

Karen knew that she should have gotten up and left him then and there. She should have, but she still loved the big idiot. She was hurt that he had let her down and that he had been hiding it all for the last two years, but he was her husband for better or for worse and she was sure it would get better.

At the time she didn’t realise how much worse it could get.

They had been forced to sell their lovely house and move into that rented mobile home. Richard still claimed to be looking for work but most days he lay in bed drunk until mid afternoon then got up and went out drinking again.

Two months after moving into their caravan the owner came by one morning while Richard was still in bed, the guy told her Richard hadn’t paid any rent since they had moved in.