CRISIS OF LOVE

CHAPTER 1

Living by the sea had been a dream of mine since our first holiday as children. I even made my choice to study Nursing, based on which University was near a beach.

I wanted that sea view, fresh air, and the option to head down to the beach to study on a sunny day without being stuck in the car or on a plane for hours.

Add to that paying extortionate prices for hotels or caravans. Nope, I couldn't afford that as student, so it was location, location, location!

Find accommodation near a beach, that was the plan. I wanted to sit on a wall eating chips being dive bombed by seagulls. Take a dog for a walk and throw it a ball (I'd have to get a dog first). It would be bliss and my family could come visit for a free holiday.

That was the dream.

The reality was that I never got to go to the beach because I was always working, rushing to lectures, panicking about getting a space in the library to study as it was freezing cold in my student accommodation to the point I often felt ill and exhausted.

On the rare night out with friends I'd left early as I had course work to hand in or exams to study for.

In hindsight I don't know why I had dreamt up some stupid version of Holiday in the Sun meets Baywatch, as it was more Casualty meets Rouge landlords. I was overworked, underpaid and struggling with my studies. Family didn't visit as I never had time to spend with them and we all got on with our lives.

When I went home at the end of a Semester I'd cry because I didn't want to leave. Each time it got worse, to the point I cried when I got there out of pure relief, and started crying several days before I was due to return as I just couldn't face it.

I hated being a poor student with so much responsibility and was determined to quit, but after a heart to heart with my dad I realised it was the accommodation that was my main issue. Not the Nursing or the study... it was the bloody cold I hated being cold.

Trying to sleep when it was freezing, waking up several times a night with a cold head, shoulders and feet, made it impossible. My little heater packed up and shortly after the boiler did so I couldn't even have a shower to heat up. The landlord couldn't give a shit. The quick repair from his mate lasted a week or two and after months of promises to fix it black mould grew on the walls and windows in my bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

I didn't have the pleasure of staying in student accommodation like some of the others. I couldn't complain to campus maintenance team. I was stuck and couldn't afford to move. My dad had warned me to wait on him to view the property with me but I wanted to be independent and prove I could do it alone. I was conned by the lick of fresh paint covering up the disasters. I didn't test appliances or ask for safety certificates. I assumed my bond was put in a protection scheme but when I asked for it back so I could move I discovered it wasn't and he wouldn't return it without a fight in court. I was screwed.

This time around my dad took on more work to help me afford a new place for my final year. He used his contacts to find me one that was way above the usual student standard so I could study, relax, stay warm and fed. Basically a home away from home and I was to video call him every night so he could with his own eyes that I was happy and healthy. If he didn't like what he saw he vowed to get in the car and drag me home.

My dad's friend secured me a small studio apartment in the back of house, which had originally been built for his auntie's son, but he was working abroad for two years so she offered to let me use it for my final year.

My dad made all the arrangements and even stayed with me for a few days until I felt settled.

Ok, maybe it was a week... or two... but I'm a daddy's girl and proud of it. He rarely had time off, so I took full advantage.

The landlady was lovely and had gone out of her way to buy a new sofa bed for the apartment with the intention my dad could stay whenever he wanted. Most of the furniture was brand-new. There was a TV, access to free Wifi, my own kitchenette and an ensuite.

My dad joked that he was never going home, not just because I wouldn't let him and cried if he tried, but because he loved my little pad.

We made so many wonderful memories. He helped me unpack and mapped out the local area. How to get to work, where to eat and shop. Where to avoid! I had shopping list and would have to show him the receipt and meals I cooked as part of our video calls.

When I finally felt at home my dad left, promising he would be back and bring my brother.

My twin brother was off the scene, as usual, because had met someone special and was too busy getting laid. We had heard it all before. He would fall in love/lust every few months. They were all as flaky as him.

His promise to visit with my dad and introduce us to his latest flame never materialised, and we chalked it up to another notch on his bed post, but it appeared this time we were wrong, and she really was special.

I met her for the first time at Christmas when they announced their engagement, and pregnancy, at the same time. Yep, a baby!

The brother I knew changed before my eyes. He went from the annoying but adorable dickhead, to a nervous boyfriend, hoping we made a good impression and not scare her off like Florence.

Florence was a massive twat and the least said about that wretched whore the better. I'll never forgive her for making me so angry that I pulled a plant out of the garden and threw it at her. She dragged that tiny bit of dirt she got in her eye as a consequence out for months. Scratched retina my arse. I threw an uprooted pansy not a hedgehog. It was more likely her cheap colour contact lenses or an STD that gave her a gooey eye. My money was on the STD as she cheated on my brother.

Despite that my brother still forgave her for cheating on him with his friend because 'he shouldn't have tried it on. He knew she was drunk and not capable of making good decisions'... utter, utter, bollocks. She shagged your mate. She had already been flirting with him. Sexting him. Went to the party to see him because you were working nights. She was a dirty cheat who knew your friend was married with a baby on the way. She was a home wrecking dirty tramp.

So anyway, yeah... I hate her, and when he finally dumped her ass, he went dick crazy and shagged his way through half the town in a month. My dad had to put him on lock down... or cock down as we more fondly remember it.

As a result we weren't prepared for the whole 'Fiancée and baby' thing. We would usually laugh at something so absurd, but it was the way he said it that left us staring open mouthed, waiting for a punchline that was never delivered. We knew this was not a joke.

He was engaged to be married and going to be a dad. What the fuck?

Our dad had been forced to stay with me at Uni because I cried and here was my twin getting married and having a baby.

Even right up to the day of the wedding, it had not sunk in. There he was, washed and shaved, looking handsome, as my dad straightened his tie and told him how proud he was. Lenny cried as his bride walked towards him. He truly loved her. Anyone could see that, and she felt the same. They were 100% into each other and the wedding was set out so intimately it felt like we were being invited to watch them put down the foundations, as they built their own little world to live in.

The wedding was perfect, and his wife, my sister in-law, was hilarious. She didn't shy away from the 'pregnant bride' look, she embraced it. She had the scan picture embroidered onto her wedding dress right where the baby lay. She surprised him with a 4d video scan of their son, where someone had done a voice over like the film 'Look Who's Talking'. Promising to ruin his parents sex life once born, so they should make the best of the honeymoon.

We kept it a small affair as his wife Rachel was an only child who had lost her parents when she was a teenager. The died just a few months apart, her mother to breast cancer and her father to a brain aneurysm. Her grandmother became her guardian but passed away shortly after from a stroke, leaving Rachel alone in the world, as her only other relatives had emigrated before she was born and she didn't know any more than that.

Lenny and I could relate to that loss. He told her the story of our birth shortly after they met and I think in a weird way it brought them closer together.