Our New Home

By the summer of 2007, I had managed to get a lucrative new job and we had moved into a beautiful house in the bustling, hip city centre of a new town. It was right in the midst of things, but not too noisy because it was not on one of the busy thoroughfares. I loved our new home, even though it had far too many stairs for its narrow four stories. The children still talk about it fondly too. Moreover, it was just a two-minute walk to my place of work. That was a fantastic luxury for a man used to crushed trains and hour-long commutes.

Unfortunately, that was not a fun time. It should have been full of joy because I was raising a beautiful young family and making new friends in an exciting new town. However, by then, my marriage was miserable. So it was an intolerably painful period of my life; an incredibly stressful job coupled with an unhappy and unsupportive wife. But we loved the children dearly, and, in spite of everything, we managed to make sure they had a happy home environment.

The marriage was all but over by the arrival of early summer, 2009. But a drama was about to unfold around our youngest daughter and with it, our circumstances were about to get even more complicated.