{"id":826,"date":"2021-05-19T15:54:51","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T15:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=826"},"modified":"2021-05-19T15:54:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T15:54:57","slug":"the-cost-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/the-cost-of-love\/826\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first I knew of our money problems was the day I went home early from work, suffering with a migraine.\u00a0 It was unusual to see mail on the doormat, as John would normally deal with it before I came home.\u00a0 As bad as my headache was, I could not help noticing the words \u201cFinal Demand\u201d were peeking out of the window on one of the envelopes.\u00a0 My curiosity got the better of me and I opened it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I immediately thought that something must have gone wrong at the bank. Hadn\u2019t John said that all the direct debits were being taken from his account and I didn\u2019t have to worry?  I rechecked the letter just in case I was mistaken, then I put it on the mantelpiece until we could talk about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When John realised that I\u2019d read the letter, he turned on me like a cornered cat. He spat out some profanities, accused me of not trusting him and lashed out and almost hit me.  I couldn\u2019t believe the change in his demeanour.  His behaviour didn\u2019t make any sense at all; it was only one bill, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night, sleep eluded me.  My mind was frantically going through the argument, over and over again.  I needed to know what was going on but I didn\u2019t want a repeat of tonight\u2019s performance.  If we had money problems, I needed to know, we needed to discuss what we could do about them.  I decided to get up and look at what jewellery I had that I might sell to get some money.  Perhaps if I had a ready-made solution, John would not take so much offence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grabbed a dressing gown as I crept out of the door and went into the spare bedroom.  After putting the jewellery box on the bed to muffle any sound, I opened the lid. Was it my imagination, or did it seem emptier than usual.  I opened one of the small drawers where I kept my engagement ring.  The ring\u2019s setting was loose and I was going to take it in to be repaired when I had the time. It wasn\u2019t in the usual drawer, or any of the other compartments.  I was starting to panic. I turned the box upside down and poured the contents onto the quilt.  I began to realise that it wasn\u2019t only the ring that was missing. My pearl necklace was nowhere to be seen or any of my other antique jewellery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unbeknown to John, I knew where he kept his login and passwords for his bank account.  I tiptoed downstairs, collected the computer and passwords and locked myself in the downstairs bathroom. His account was in the red.  We were hundreds of pounds overdrawn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I quietly unlocked the front door, found my handbag and the car keys and left for my parents\u2019 house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first I knew of our money problems was the day I went home early from work, suffering with a migraine.\u00a0 It was unusual to see mail on the doormat, as John would normally deal with it before I came home.\u00a0 As bad as my headache was, I could not help noticing the words \u201cFinal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Another #flashfiction from #swanseawriters ...\nThe Cost of Love","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[379,471],"tags":[481,270],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-379","category-may-2021-happily-ever-after","tag-cost","tag-love"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-dk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}