Chapter 2

Jennifer’s life wasn’t the same as it was and never would be again. In fact it was nothing at all like it used to be. For a start, that damned internal clock inside her was ticking away furiously. She would be thirty years old next birthday and was still a single woman, living alone, a salient fact that her mother never failed to remind her about at every single opportunity that presented itself. Only her mother could make her marital status, or spinsterhood, appear to be a failure, akin to being late to be potty trained, learn to walk or talk when she was a baby or becoming a toddler.

Even though she loved the little tykes, she was not looking forward to seeing her younger sister’s three angelic children. She knew that her mother would use their presence as a means to make her feel more inadequate, even more a failure in her personal life.

Jennifer was unattached and unmarried because it was only in the past year that she had been forced into leaving her boyfriend of eight years. That break-up still made her so angry. She had wasted eight years on that loser. Eight years of what were supposed to have been the best years of her life. Not only had Scott failed to commit himself fully to their relationship, by proposing marriage to Jennifer, the bastard had proved that he simply couldn’t keep his ... his bloody thingy in his bloody pants! He had always disrespected her, making her feel insecure by ogling every other woman around, and flirting outrageously. In the end she had no choice but to give him up as a lost cause.

Jen’s self confidence had never been so low as it was now reduced to over this last nine or ten months.

She had suspected previous dalliances on Scott’s part, of course, but she had never seen enough evidence to blow their relationship out of the water. However, this last affair was so blatant that Jen couldn’t ignore it any longer, nor accept his glib excuses of his innocence this time around.

That is why she was now renting her tiny one-woman studio flat on her own. Jen and Scott were forced by the breakup to sell the house they had been buying together over the last four years, and lost so much money on it trying to pay back their mortgage loan and legal costs in the current depressed housing market. Neither partner could afford to buy the other one out, so they both had to take an equal share of the substantial financial hit. And Jen couldn’t afford to buy anything at all on her own. All their investment in the house was lost, she fumed, blown away by Scott’s greed for extra affairs on the side, damn him!

Was it really her fault that she couldn’t attract a man who would love her alone enough?

Last Christmas the family occasion was hosted by her parents, Lisa and Andy Webster. It was also the last traditional family Christmas in Jennifer’s family home. Unfortunately, her parents had legally separated, and started their legal divorce proceedings several months prior to Christmas, after having been married for 35 years, but had continued to share the same house until it sold in January. Now they were officially divorced and the family would never be whole again.

The split was apparently amicable, as the soon to be Mr & Mrs Webster had both insisted to Jennifer and the rest of the family. They had simply ‘outgrown’ each other, is how they put it at the time of the announcement, whatever that was supposed to mean. It seemed inconceivable to Jennifer that they would end something that had so much longevity, quite so casually and with such an apparently unemotional conclusion.

The family house still hadn’t been sold by the end of last December, so they were able to keep the family together to celebrate that one last Christmas together, although there was definitely a tenseness in the air between the couple that had never been apparent before. It was there on both sides, just under the surface. That made Christmas an emotional roller coaster ride last time around, Jennifer remembered, so it was no wonder that, with her anxious anticipation of the festival this year, she felt all over the place emotionally.