I still remember the day my marriage ended.
I came home early and found my wife, Brenda, in our bedroom with Craig.
Craig was not just the rich man next door. He was the man I would have called my closest friend.
I stood in that doorway and could not find a single word.
Brenda found plenty.
“Are you honestly surprised?” she said. “You could never give me the life I wanted. Craig can. He took me to Cabo.”
I could not process it.
“Brenda. We have seven children. Maisie’s two.”
It made no difference at all.
She packed into suitcases while I stood there and told me the children were my responsibility now. She said she had given up enough of her own life. She was going to go and have the one she wanted, and seven children did not fit into it.
Then she left with Craig.
They did not say a proper goodbye to any of them.
So I was on my own with seven frightened children who did not understand why their mother had gone.
Some nights three of them would wake up crying at the same time.
They asked when she was coming back.
They asked whether they had done something.
There is nothing you can say to that. I tried everything and none of it worked.
The years after that tested me in every way there is.
I took a second job. Then a third.
Between the house and the food and the school things and the shoes — seven sets of everything, always — it never stopped.
Stopping was not an option, so I did not stop.
I did not remarry. Most women who found out I had seven children at home were not interested in a second date, and I understood that, and I was not really looking.
My children needed me. They were the whole thing.
Even on the worst of it I never once wished I had chosen differently. Watching them turn into decent, hard-working people was worth every hour of it.
At first Brenda would text now and again to ask how they were.
Then it got rarer.
Then it stopped.
She had another life and I never worked out how a person does that, but I refused to let it eat me.
Ten years went by.
Yesterday we had Maisie’s birthday. She is twelve.
A few of her friends came over and the rest of us did a barbecue in the back garden.
It was a good afternoon. The kids were out on the grass and the older ones were winding each other up and everybody ate too much.
Then the doorbell went.
I went through to see who it was.
Brenda was standing on the step.
And Craig was behind her.
My stomach turned over.
She smiled at me like she had been away for a fortnight. Before I could say anything she stepped round me into my house.
Maisie was in the kitchen cutting herself another piece of cake.
She turned round and she went completely still.
Her mother had been gone for ten of her twelve years. And there she was, in the doorway.
Brenda went straight to her, beaming.
“Sweetheart. Now we can finally be a proper family again.”
