When I hear myself now, it’s laughable: didn’t ‘do’ neurosis? What about the kind caused by marital breakdown, betrayal, fraud? Who did I think I was?

You’ve probably already decided that. I know everyone will be judging me – believe me, I’m judging myself. But what’s the point of me doing this if I’m not going to present myself honestly, warts and all?

#VictimFi

@PeteYIngram Hmm. IMO losing your posh house isn’t on a par with being the victim of violent crime.

@IsabelRickey101 @PeteYIngram Wtf? She’s homeless!

@PeteYIngram @IsabelRickey101 She’s not on the street, though, is she? She’s still got a job.

*

What do I do for a living? I work four days a week as an account manager for a large homewares retailer – recently I’ve been involved in our new line of ethically sourced rugs, as well as some beautiful pieces by Italian glassmakers inspired by spirals.

It’s a great company, with a really holistic and forward-thinking ethos: can you believe they suggested my reduced hours to fit better with my parenting? And this is retail? They’d signed up for an EU initiative to support working mothers and I was in the right place at the right time. Well, you know what they say when that happens: never leave.

It’s true, I could probably earn more working for one of the big cut-throat conglomerates, but I’ve always valued work–life balance over salary. Some of us don’t want our throats cut, do we? It’s a cliché, I know, but I love working with the kind of handmade products that really make a house a home.

Yes, even now I no longer have one of my own.

Bram, Word document

I worked for the best part of ten years for a Croydon-based orthopaedic supplies manufacturer as one of their regional sales managers for the South East. I was on the road a lot, especially in the early years. I sold all kinds of braces – for knees, elbows, you name it – and neck pillows and abdominal binders, but really they could have been anything. Paperclips, dogfood, solar panels, tyres.

It was meaningless then and it’s meaningless now.

4

‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:10:42

Yes, Bram and I have been separated since last summer. Will I tell you why? I’ll tell you precisely why, precisely when: 14 July 2016, at 8.30 p.m. That was when I discovered him fucking another woman in the kids’ playhouse at the bottom of our garden.

I know, what a place to choose! A beautiful, secluded, sun-dappled oasis filled with hydrangeas and fuchsias and roses; home to a wonky rectangle of fraying lawn, with a blue-and-white football goal, scene of many a penalty shoot-out. A children’s den.

Almost as unforgivable as the act itself.

I was supposed to be out for office drinks and Bram was on shift with the boys, but the drinks were cancelled and rather than phoning ahead to let the family know, I thought I’d surprise them – you know, that cliché of swanning in for the bedtime story and seeing their little faces erupt with joy. Mummy, you’re here! Get a bit of acclaim for what’s usually taken for granted. I admit that I also thought I might check that Bram was sticking to the proper routine, but only because I hoped to see that he was.

Of course, he would argue that what I really wanted was to catch him messing up and now I wonder if maybe there’s a grain of truth in that. Maybe he sinned because he knew I expected him to, maybe this whole horror show has been a self-fulfilling prophecy.

(Victims tend to blame themselves. I’m guessing you know that.)

Anyway, the house was quiet when I let myself in – there’d been delays on the trains again and I’d missed catching the kids’ bedtime after all. I assumed Bram was still upstairs, having nodded off reading James and the Giant Peach (there was not a man in Alder Rise who hadn’t done that, soothed by his own voice, stupefied by the parallel narrative about work in his mind). But when I tiptoed upstairs to check, I found the boys in the right beds in the right rooms, blackout blinds pulled, night lights aglow on their little blue-painted bedside tables. All was as it should be – except for there being no sign of their father.

‘Bram?’ I whispered. As I moved from room to room, I felt my annoyance rise in an unattractively righteous way. He’s left them, I thought, marching back downstairs; he’s bloody left them home alone, a seven-year-old and an eight-year-old! Probably to go to the Parade for some revolting takeaway or even a quick pint at the Two Brewers. But then I thought, No, be fair, he’s never done that. He’s a good father, famously so. More likely he’s left his phone in the car and nipped out to fetch it. We were rarely able to park outside the house, thanks both to our proximity to the Parade and to the fact that so many households on Trinity Avenue owned at least two cars, and it wasn’t unheard of for us to have to park all the way down past the intersection with Wyndham Gardens. I’d probably missed him in the street by seconds: he’d be coming through the door any moment. If we dug up the front garden for off-street parking we wouldn’t have this palaver, he’d say, and he’d chuck the car keys into the designated dish on the hallway table.

But he didn’t say that because he wasn’t coming through the door and the fact remained that had my drinks not been cancelled, the kids would have been in the house without an adult to protect them.

Yes, of course I was concerned that something might have happened to him, but only very briefly, because as soon as I reached the kitchen I spied an open bottle of white wine on the counter. The frosting of condensation suggested it hadn’t been out of the fridge long, so if he’d been abducted by aliens then he’d gone with a glass of Sancerre in his hand.