A Life More Ordinary

While a move to Southampton represented the chance of a fresh start for me, it was far from ideal. Mum had moved in with Brian, which I think gave Lydia and Hannah their own room to share, while I was sleeping on a tiny landing on a wafer-thin airbed. It wasn’t a particularly harmonious time and things were quite fraught. After a short time, I moved in with Brian’s mum, who had a spare room, but I felt increasingly lonely and cut off from everyone. I hadn’t managed to find a job and had no friends so at the first opportunity I agreed to return to Horsham to visit Lizz, who by this point had moved out of her parents’ house and they kindly agreed to let me stay there during my visit. What hadn’t helped matters in Southampton was the ridiculous argument with my mother prior to my visit to Horsham and I had very much left under a cloud (as detailed in the post ‘We Might As Well Be Strangers’).

Originally, the plan had been for me to stay for a weekend but I was so relieved to be around friends again that I stayed for a couple of weeks. When the time finally came for me to return ‘home’ I called Mum to say that I would be back the following day. In my absence, however, it had been decided that I was no longer welcome at Brian’s mum’s house or indeed theirs. It was a complete shock to me and totally out of the blue. Essentially, I was now homeless and out of work with barely the clothes that I’d brought with me to Horsham and a handful of belongings. I wasn’t aware that I’d done anything serious to warrant my expulsion from the family unit and neither was an acceptable explanation forthcoming. I had no idea what to do. I suppose that it was probably a ‘gamble’ on their part to ‘teach me a lesson’ and to force me into finding work. Considering that I had no savings and one bag of belongings that I had brought with me, it stills feels like a cruel thing to do and probably should have sounded the death knell for my relationship with my mother there and then. I do wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been treated with unexpected kindness and generosity by two people who had no reason to get involved.

Sometimes, in our lives, we meet people who we are meant to meet, those we are meant to know. Lizz’s parents, Anita and Adam, swept straight into action and offered me a permanent room in their house for which I remain eternally grateful. I went straight out to the local McDonalds, who were hiring and got a full-time job. It may not have been what I had ‘wanted’ to do, but I had to find something and quickly. Gradually, the shock of what had happened subsided and I began to put roots down again. I was surrounded by a good group of people at work and made friends relatively easily, something that I haven’t always managed to do. Most of my time at home was spent in my room or in the dining room as I began to write ‘properly’ for the first time in my life. I wasn’t particularly outgoing so would spend hours at a time filling exercise books with notes, poems, lyrics and potential novels, some of which began to attract some initial interest.

I also began to find out who I was. For the first time in my life, I developed some confidence and became flirty, no longer convinced that I was a dreadful person. I suspect the necessity of having to suddenly do everything myself was behind that change and within a few months of working at McDonalds I started a relationship, which was to be short-lived but this time the problems were of my own making. I suppose the only blessing, if it could ever be considered to be so, was that my relationship with Sarah was still in its infancy when the issues arose. We’d been flirting for some time, enthusiastically egged on by our colleagues, before finally taking things further and I’d already started to have doubts when I fell for somebody else. And I fell hard.

Amanda was quiet with an unassuming air of confidence and we shared a similar sense of humour. She was short with blonde hair, had a small, snub nose and given my lack of knowledge of fashion, dressed in a way that might be described as hippy chick? She had a coy smile that she used well and a way of looking deep into my soul with her piercing eyes. In short, she was beautiful. We hit it off immediately and I did little to curb my newly flirtatious nature. She also lived around the corner from me, so we’d regularly ‘bump into each other’ if we were out and about.

Perhaps the most important part of my attraction to her was that she seemed genuinely interested in who I was and the stories I had to tell. One night in December, I couldn’t tell you exactly how, we ended up sat in the local park, huddled together in the wee small hours, looking up at the stars and telling stories to each other. I suspect that we were both enjoying those moments when we were acutely aware that something was about to happen, revelling in the giddy thrill of it, prolonging the mystery and anticipation for as long as we could. In truth, I think that we may have both been doing this for some time, put off by the knowledge that it was forbidden given my relationship status.

Amanda had been clear about the fact that she had an ex-boyfriend who would still visit her from Kent, where she had lived previously. She’d also said that she didn’t necessarily want to get into a relationship, which I did my best to respect given the strength of the feelings between us. With all of that said, we shared a kiss on that night in the park and sat in the cold for hours just learning about each other. So, while all of the above had been said, I was in too deep already.

I finished things with Sarah, because it was the right thing to do. If I’d been a different person, it might have been easier to say nothing, I doubt that Amanda would have complained given her insistence that whatever it was that we were enjoying wasn’t going to be in any way permanent. Having been on the receiving end of dishonest and disloyal behaviour, however, I felt it was only fair to own up to what I had done and suffer whatever consequences it would provoke. Most people put two and two together to come up with what was essentially the correct answer and for a couple of weeks, we went through hell at work, with most people ignoring us both at best and at worst giving their opinion when frankly it wasn’t welcome but not entirely unexpected. Fortunately for Amanda, she only worked part time as she was a student at Collyer’s Sixth Form College, so she probably avoided the worst of it. I copped the lot though and was very grateful that a couple of people were a little more supportive and one of my best friends at the time, Iain Williams, did more than perhaps he realised at the time in keeping me sane. In fact, Iain was one of the few constants through some pretty challenging times and I remain grateful for everything that he did to this day.

If I’d thought that the silent treatment and the sarcastic comments were bad, worse was to follow. I was sat at home writing one afternoon when I saw Amanda and her ex-boyfriend (I knew that he was visiting so I’d been keeping a low profile) walk past the window hand-in-hand and looking very much like a couple. I crumpled, instantly, hot tears stinging my eyes, my heart breaking once again. Some might say that I was getting my just desserts for my infidelity and they may have a point. It didn’t make it hurt any less.

Once the tears and the initial pain subsided, I felt cold and empty. Somehow, I pulled the following words together, which even after all this time I rate as one of the best things I’ve written, which is unusual as I often find it difficult to remain objective when looking back:

Celestial Spies.

The mystical patterns that swim in my tears

Reflect all my memories, reveal all my fears

The stars watched every night, when we walked hand in hand

Thought our secrets were safe, but our future was planned

We were sculpted by destiny, twisted by fate

We were shackled by time, though we outlived the wait

It might never have been, but then hope took the chance

Shook our lives with a dream and the briefest romance

A part-time love that I couldn’t abide by

It was under the stars that we let our love die

Orion wondered if we’d pass the test

While under Saturn’s waltz we laid our love to rest

Wish upon a falling star and catch a lonely tear

Think of me, the next full moon or the same time every year

When Venus is crying because love lost its way

Dry the tears from her eyes, tell her I couldn’t stay

If someone should ask what the stars knew those nights

Say they watched for a while and then turned out the lights

And if anyone asks if I ever knew love

I’ll say look to the skies as the answer’s above

A part-time love that I couldn’t abide by

It was under the stars that we let our love die

Orion wondered if we’d pass the test

While under Saturn’s waltz we laid our love to rest.

Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2026.