Chapter 3: The Fall and Rise of John

My name is John Sibly; I'm five foot eight and at the time this all started I lived just in the suburbs of the great city of London, with my beautiful wife Angeline, our daughter Rebecca and our new-born son Paul.

I am the sales manager for an engineering company. Things are not going too well for the firm. The "powers that be" are "stick in the mud's" and our product line is old fashioned and out of favour. The sales team have to work their socks off trying to meet their quotas! To be honest, the writing is on the wall. It's just a matter of time.

Why don't I jump a sinking ship? I really don't know! Loyalty, I suppose. Not to the firm's directors! But to the employees. If I give up, I know most of the sales team will take it as their cue to abandon ship. Without their hard work the place would close in weeks. So I soldier on!

Angeline had not found her second pregnancy as easy as her first, and after the birth suffered from quite serious Postnatal Depression. She appeared to have recovered after a few weeks. But for the rest of the year she would get into weird moods, sometimes extremely happy but other times she would get upset over silly things. I would come home to find she had pulled everything out of one of the cupboards. She would complain about the cleaner we employed not cleaning the house properly and do it all again herself. I did my best to cheer her up but it seemed most things I tried would upset her. I would often find her looking at me with a strange expression on her face. Our sex life never really got going again after her depression, and she would rarely tell me that she loved me anymore.

When I tried to talk to her about our problems, she would often start babbling on so fast that I couldn't really understand what she was talking about. Often the subject she was talking about (normally things that I had done) would change so fast that I couldn't keep track of what she was on about either. The one thing I did learn was that she was extremely unhappy with me but I had no idea why. I just couldn't get her to tell me what I had done to upset her so much. I loved her with all my heart, but somehow I knew I was watching her slip away from me!

Since the birth of our son I had noticed that Angel did not appear to be overly interested in playing mum anymore. She looked after the children just fine. But you know, there was something that told me, if the children weren't there it wouldn't really worry her in the slightest. I really thought, if we didn't have the children she would have left me. I just couldn't figure out why she had changed like that. It was like she had fallen out of love with me.

Then one day completely out of the blue, Angel announced that she was fed up staying at home all the time. She had found a day care centre for the children, and she was going to get herself a Job. I queried the financial benefits after we had paid for the day care! But Angel had made up her mind, and she was soon working in a local estate agent's office.

Angel's demeanour improved somewhat, but still for some reason I wasn't her most favourite person. She seemed to throw herself into her new job and appeared to get on quite well. She hadn't been working there very long before she was upgraded to a negotiator and would spend most of her time showing people around houses and flats.

As time went on I began to get phone calls from her, asking me to collect the children from the day care centre as she was caught up with clients and would be late getting home. I admit, I would get annoyed with her, as I was very busy myself and would often have to get one of my staff to collect the children for me, and bring them back to the office, until I was able to go home.

Things came to a head, when one Friday, Angel got me to collect the children and never came home until well after midnight. Angel walked in the door a little unsteadily on her feet. Obviously tipsy. I demanded an explanation. Well, to tell the truth, I went bloody ballistic! No one bought houses at bloody midnight. She just told me to mind my own business and stomped off to bed. I slept in the spare room that night.

In the morning, she had a monster of a hangover. I cooked breakfast with an enthusiastic flurry. Crashing the frying pan about just as she used to do to me when I had a hangover. Angel did not see the funny side of it, and retreated to our bedroom.

She reappeared around lunchtime. I again asked for some kind of an explanation as to what she had been up to the night before and she said that they had had a really successful day at the office, moving a record number of properties.

The boss, Mr Steinman, had taken the whole office out to dinner, After they had eaten, they had all sat in the bar and talked until the restaurant closed. Most of them had drunk too much; they had to leave their cars and get taxis home. I pointed out that she had come home in a brand new BMW; they are somewhat rare when it comes to Taxis! Angel told me, Mr Steinman doesn't drink and he had driven her and a couple of the others home.

I told her that things couldn't go on like this. I couldn't keep nipping out from work to collect the children, and it wasn't fair on my staff to get them to collect them all the time. Angel said that she had the answer. I thought for a moment she was going to give up her job. But she told me she had engaged a nanny. I was completely taken aback.

"Don't you think we should have discussed this?" I asked.

"What's to discuss? I knew you were finding it awkward collecting the children. Now the nanny will look after them at home. They will not have to go to the day care centre so you won't have to collect them! I am going to be working longer hours now that I have been promoted. So I wouldn't be able to collect them!"

"What do mean promoted? You haven't mentioned any promotion to me!"

"Oh! Didn't I? I must have forgotten. You and your staff work so many late nights nowadays. I hardly ever see you any more!"

With hindsight, I should have picked up on exactly what Angel had said. But it was many years before I realised that I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I queried what she was really getting at.

A few days later, the Witch arrived. God, she was a Witch. The kids and I couldn't stand her! But Angel said she came very highly recommended and was the best available!

For the next six months, Angel and I saw less and less of one another. She was rarely home before eleven. I knew that our marriage was about to collapse, Just like my firm was. I had begun to drink just a little too much as well. So when Angel and I did meet, there was normally an argument.

Then one evening I came home to find Angel coming down the stairs carrying two suitcases.

"I'm leaving you!" she announced, "I've got fed-up with you running around on me, so I have found a lover of my own, and I'm going to move in with him!"

I was both stunned and speechless. I had never looked at another woman since I had first got close to Angeline. The thought of going with another woman had never crossed my mind, even though it had been nearly a year since Angeline and I had sex!

She just walked down the stairs and past me. I know I was trying to say something, but I don't think that anything but gibberish came out of my mouth.

As I stood there watching Angeline drive away, the Witch came out of the kitchen and started to tell me that she was a nanny, not a house keeper. She then proceeded to lay down a whole lot of conditions as to what she would and would not do, around the house.

I couldn't believe this! My wife had just walked out on me, and this old cow was telling me how the home was going to run from now on.

"Pack your fucking bags and get the fuck out of my house tonight!" I yelled at her.

"I'll sue you for wrongful dismissal!" she replied.

"Look, you old bat! I never fucking well hired you. Angeline did. She has paid you your wages, not me. So go sue her and her fucking boyfriend!"

"I'll speak to Mr. Steinman. He'll make you pay me!"

Mr fucking Steinman. So that's were this old bitch came from. I wonder if he's also Angel's new fuck buddy!

"Fuck Steinman! Now get the fuck out of my house!"

The old bitch went up to her room, I assumed to pack.

To be honest I didn't know what I was going to do. I had known something was going to happen sometime between Angeline and me. But I didn't think she would go out and find another man, then just walk out on the kids and me.

With the Witch upstairs packing her bags, I realised that I was going to have to tell the children in the morning that their mother had left. I just didn't know what was I going to do. I needed help, someone to talk to, someone to help me look after the children. I did what a lot of bosses do when they are at a loss. I called my secretary, Jenny! Jenny had worked for me since I had taken over as sales manager. At fifty-nine, she would be retiring next year. She had become the confidant that Angel would have been had it not been for her depression and her strange behaviour since.

Twenty minutes later, Jenny and Sheila, a young girl that also worked with us and lodged with Jenny, came through the door. Jenny came into my lounge and sat with me on the sofa, her arms around me, comforting me much as my mother would have done if she were still alive.

Sheila went directly to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. That's Jenny's influence showing through. As far as Jenny was concerned, whatever happened, the first thing to do was have a cup of tea. Shortly after, Jenny and I heard raised voices in the hall, and then Sheila came in with the tea. As she settled into a chair and began to pour the tea, Sheila told us nonchalantly that the Witch had left.

"She said something very odd to me." Sheila commented, "She said that I might have at least waited until the bed was cold! I suppose she thinks I'm going to take over her job as the children's nanny."

It was years later that I realised that the Witch's departing comment to Sheila was another clue that I had missed, as to just what had caused Angeline's strange behaviour and her leaving me. But my mind was on other things.

"You couldn't do worse than that old cow," I said to Sheila. "The kids hate her, and I've never been able to stomach her for long. Do you know I was still at the door watching Angel drive away, when that old bitch started telling me how the house was going to be run in future. I just told her to fuck off! If you will excuse my language!"

"Don't mind us, boss! You never do when you lose your rag in the office! And if you do decide you need another nanny? I wouldn't mind giving it a go, The children know me, and I've entertained them at work enough when they have been there. If I have any problems, I'm sure Jen would put me straight. This could be the only chance I ever get of looking after little ones!"

"Sheila, we have made a mistake with you. We should have put you out on the sales team; you're getting pretty good at selling an idea!"

"Well, I've had a couple of years watching a master at work, in you, John!"

"Christ, Jenny, she's stealing your tricks now. You're the one that uses flattery to get me to do what you want."

"I've been trained by a couple of experts in the last few years. Come on, John, how about letting me look after the children? I could leave my job, we all know that redundancy is awaiting all of us, so I will be for the chop before long anyway. You know you can't protect me forever. Jenny told me that you had my name scratched from the list in the last wave. Let me repay you for the help you have given me in the past. You won't have to pay me much, honest!"