**Staring Into the Void**
Tom and Emma married when they were just nineteen. They couldnt live or breathe without each otherit was a wild, reckless love. Their parents, fearing impropriety, hurried to make it official. The wedding was lavish and unforgettable, with all the trimmings: ribbons on the bonnet, mountains of flowers, fireworks, a grand reception, and the obligatory cries of “Kiss the bride!”
Emmas parents couldnt contribute financiallythey barely scraped by on their meagre wages, which just covered food and, well, drink. The grooms mother, Alexandraor Sandra, as she preferred, since her full name was a mouthfulshouldered all the expenses.
Sandra had warned Tom against Emma. “Love blinds, son,” shed said. “You cant make silk from a sows ear.” But what did he care? Tom swore Emmas parents habits wouldnt touch her. Their love was pure, unshakable.
For a while, life smiled on them. Sandra and her husband gifted them a flat”Live and be happy, my dears!”and soon, Emma gave birth to two girls, Lucy and Rose. Tom adored them, proud as any man could be.
Then, five years in, Emma started vanishing without explanation. When she returned, Tom smelled drink on her. Pressed for answers, she stayed silentuntil the day she spat it out: shed never loved him. It was just infatuation. Now shed found *real* lovea married man with three daughtersand she was leaving.
Tom was gutted. His world shattered.
Emma ran off to some backwater village with her lover, abandoning the girls. “With the right man, even a shacks a palace,” she declared. Sandra, sharp as a tack, took the girls in. She doted on them, giving them the warmth their own mother wouldnt.
Lost and hopeless, Tom joined a religious cult on a friends advice. They remarried him to a widow with two sons, then had them “blessed” by their rites. His new wife, Margaret, kept him swamped with her own troubles. If he so much as mentioned Lucy or Rose, shed snap, “*Their* mother should care for them. Take Billy to football. Feed Jack.”
Tom obeyed, though his heart still ached for Emma.
Seven years later, Emma turned up on Sandras doorstep, holding a four-year-old girlMolly. Sandra eyed her coldly. “Lifes roughed you up, hasnt it? Yours?”
Emma shuffled her feet. “Can we stay?”
“Did he throw you out?”
“I left. He drinks. Hits me.”
“Your choice, wasnt it? Why not run to *your* parents?”
Emma swallowed. “I missed the girls. Let me see them.”
Just then, Lucy and Rosenow teenagersarrived. They stared at this stranger, their mother, with wary eyes. No warmth, just resentment. Sandra often lamented they were orphans with living parents.
Still, Sandra took them in. What else could she do?
A month later, Emma vanished againback to her “beloved tormentor.” Molly stayed behind. Now Sandra and her husband had three girls to raise. Love and kindness filled their home.
Time rolled on.
Sandra passed, then her husband. Lucy married but remained childless. Rose never wed, preferring solitude. At seventeen, Molly had a babyfather unknownand fled to her mothers village.
Emma ended up alone. Her lover, crippled by illness, was taken by his daughters, who blamed her neglect. The village whispered”shameless drunk,” they called her. Glass houses, yet stones flew freely.
Tom eventually escaped the cult and Margaret. He lived in his mothers old flat, scraping by, keeping three cats for company. Cold sheets, lonely nights.
Happiness had knocked once. They hadnt answered.
