We Have to Talk

Angela is now approaching her 73rd year, is still working, and married her third husband in 2014 on her 70th birthday. She first married at age 16, pregnant with her first child, divorced at 23 years then married again. She has three children and four grandchildren.

Angela lived with her Australian husband in Sydney for 25 years where she ran a successful interior design business, and returned to England after her divorce, where she now lives.

Dedication

I would like to thank all my friends in both Australia and the UK for all the help they have given me over these turbulent years both financially and emotionally. Without them I would never have got through and at the place I’m at today.

I’m dedicating the book to my wonderful husband Paul who is the most loving kind and devoted husband anyone could wish for.

He has had to deal with a feisty and opinionated woman who has been single and independent for eight years. I love him to bits.

Angela Helm

We Have to Talk

Copyright © Angela Helm (2017)

The right of Angela Helm to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78693-719-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-78693-720-9 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-78693-721-6 (E-Book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2017)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank John, my husband of 32 mostly happy years.

Without him there would be no story.

Also all the friends that have stood by me and supported me through some very difficult and troubled times.

Finally I thank my present husband Paul, who despite his own troubles lifts my spirits when I’m down, relaxes me when I’m tense and never allows me to think negatively. However many years we have left, I know they will be happy ones.

Chapter 1

8.00pm on Thursday 8th November 2003. It was four months after my 59th birthday.

A time – a date which brought my world crashing down.

I was in the kitchen of my cottage in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I had eaten my dinner and was just clearing away, when my husband of 32 years returned from the pub. He had been coming home later and later in the past couple of weeks, and I had stopped waiting for him so that we could eat together.

The business – my business – was in trouble, and there had been a lot of tension between us as to how we could get it turned around. So when he said ‘We have to talk’, I was relieved that we were finally going to have a discussion as to what to do, something he had been avoiding.

‘Yes we do,’ I replied, and sat down next to him.

He looked me straight in the eye, and said, with no emotion, ‘I’m leaving you’

My stomach turned over. ‘What??’

‘I’m leaving you, I need some space’

I felt sick.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re too controlling. I want to make my own choices. I want to eat white bread, sugar, chips, and meat pies.’

I had to ask the obvious.

‘Is there another woman?’

‘No’ he said. ‘I just need some space’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and was having great difficulty taking it in. This couldn’t be true. We were happy weren’t we? There wasn’t a day that went by without him telling me he loved me. There had to be some mistake. We had problems with the business – true, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted. Never for one moment did I think that our marriage was in trouble.

I was unable to speak or cope with what I was hearing, and had to get away from the situation to clear my head, which felt all woolly. We had a holiday cottage in the next street, and so I ran, walked, drove? I don’t remember which, to Brightlands. Then I wept and wept. I don’t know how long I cried for, but at some point I phoned my brother-in-law and asked him to phone John, just to see if he could make any sense of it. When Peter phoned me back, he could shed no light on anything as John had said the same thing to him. He was as shocked as I was.

I have no recollection of where I spent that night. I don’t remember if I returned to Serendipity Cottage, or stayed at Brightlands, and the next few days were a blur.

I know I went to work the following day. I had to, I had a business to run. The business that I had been running successfully since arriving in Sydney in 1980, but which had taken a turn for the worse since John had joined me in it. I was sure we would be able to turn it around, but it would take two of us to do it, and one had just thrown in the towel.

With just a few short sentences the bottom had fallen out of my world.

Chapter 2

I had met John at the beginning of 1971. He was on a working holiday from Australia, and I was a single mum with two children aged 6 and 10.

I had left my first husband, and moved to the other side of London to work as the manageress of a shoe shop in West Ealing. I had a three-bedroomed flat above the shop, and was able to work and live in the one place.

In those days there was no single parent allowance or child maintenance, so most people in unhappy marriages just stayed put, and remained unhappy. I am not most people, and having been brought up in a dysfunctional family situation, was not prepared to spend my life in a miserable marriage as my mother had done.

Each day I took the children to school in the morning before coming back to open the shop. In the afternoon I would collect them whilst my assistant minded the shop. At night after closing the shop, I went upstairs to feed and bathe the children, and then I either read or watched television. At age twenty-three, that was my life.

Although I chatted to the customers during the course of the day, I became very lonely. I was 23 and had been married since I was 16. All my friends remained in Putney and here I was with two young children in a very unsavoury part of London, and very much alone.

I befriended the window cleaner who came in for a cup of tea each day, and it was through him that I took on a second job working in a trendy pub at Ealing Common. It was at that point that I also became an irresponsible mother.

I worked about three shifts a week, and my Saturday girl babysat for me whilst I worked. She had a black boyfriend who her mother disapproved of, so she was happy to be at my place and look after Vivienne & Spencer. However, when she was not available, I still went to work, and Vivienne had the pub phone number if she needed me. When I look back now, I’m horrified that I could have left them on their own at such a young age but of course now, I’m older and wiser- possibly.

The pub turned my life around, as it gave me a social life. I didn’t make much money as I had to pay the babysitter. But the landlady – Ada – was very good to me. I was bought drinks all night, but as I was working I left them behind the bar for later. Ada allowed me to sell them