Friday April 13

I’m speechless. Dumbstruck. Betrayed and undermined by my own family at every turn. What an appalling state of affairs. I’m the only one who seems to take things seriously around here. And for what? Stuart and Julian delight in dragging me down to the level of that grotesque family next door. I can’t bear it! If things had gone the way I’d planned in meticulous detail, none of this current tragedy would be unfolding.

Amber, that dreadful troll from next door has done it. She’s finally succeeded in exploiting my witless son, who seems ignorant of the terrible situation he’s now in – that we’re all now in. She’s having his baby! She’s pregnant to Julian.

I’ve been completely betrayed. Primarily by my husband. Stuart has been going through a period of supreme self-indulgence over the past few months, ever since we moved into our new Ponsonby home. Somehow this move triggered a late midlife crisis of epic proportions. A few little problems in the operating theatre prompted him to decide that supporting his family and providing for our financial needs was no longer any concern of his. He stopped work and moved into the shed. Impressive, don’t you think? He stopped talking to me, more or less, while I kept working and trying to dream up strategies to keep the family afloat. Meanwhile he became a reclusive hermit, glugging back red wine while spending his time with that lifelong adolescent, Spencer. Julian moves out complaining that he can’t live with the stress at home anymore, and it occurs to me that a little rent money for Julian’s room might help pay the odd bill? So Hemi, my pilates instructor, moves in.

Hemi is so easy. He’s pleasant and fun. He enjoyed listening to me reading the sexy bits from my manuscript – and encourages me to make it hotter! Clearly Stuart is in no position to engage on this level. His idea of hot is cool-to-lukewarm. In the midst of editing my manuscript, Julian appears out of nowhere. Great, I think, he can pick up Ollie from Bonnie’s new place. Julian seems strangely distant. When I ask what’s wrong, he says, blithely, that Amber is having his a baby. That the baby is his! Then he takes the keys and disappears before I can figure out if he’s making a joke, to wind me up, or if he’s serious. Stuart is in the garden, and when I demand to know if he’s heard anything about a “baby” he tells me yes! But I’m not to know about it because it’s “fragile” and the situation needs time to “unfold”!!!!

You can imagine how I felt. Stunned, speechless, heartbroken, angry, with a blood pressure that was going through the roof! That’s when I spot that demented slapper, Amber, at the washingline over the fence, and before I knew it I was shoving my way inside the back door of their filthy house, screaming my head off at the horrid girl. Her father appeared at the same time, just as Amber was claiming that Julian didn’t use a condom - as if it was anything to do with him! It flitted through my mind that Arthur might feel like I did, flattened by this tragic news, but no. He was clearly elated, obviously having no sense of responsibility for the lives he was about to ruin, including mine. He threw me out.

Never in my life have I felt so undermined, so disregarded. Julian failed to return with Ollie until much, much later, clearly freaked out by what had transpired... all I could think of to do was to calm myself with a few drinks while I made the final editing changes to my book. Which is when Arthur, in some deranged state of mind, started thumping on my front door demanding that I open up. Of course I wouldn’t! Then he took to the door with a spade and smashed his way inside. I was screaming for Stuart to protect me, while Arthur barged in over the broken glass and shouted at me that if I was to attempt to salvage the wretched situation he wouldn’t be responsible for what he would do to me! Never in my life have I been threatened in this way. And off he stomped, having done at least two hundred dollars worth of damage to the property.

That’s when it all became clear. Stuart announced that Arthur was a hero. That finally someone had stood up to me. That Stuart himself was on Arthur’s side, and that he felt grateful for Arthur’s intervention. What’s more, when Ollie appeared, and told me that Julian had gone next door, Stuart then took it upon himself to prevent me from returning to Arthur’s house to bring Julian home!

In a state of numbed despondency, I finished the changes to my book and emailed it off to my publisher. Things had come to this. And I finally realized that if anything was to save me, to show me a possible future, it was this book itself. This was my ticket to freedom, from Arthur, from Stuart, and from the socially doomed bunch of cells that was already dividing and growing inside my demented neighbour’s daughter!!!!