Debs

Anyone joining this story, please hit fiction in the top menu, and scroll down to “the man who wrote a true fiction” as there it all begins.

Her name was Deborah, it never suited her.

She met George at college in Newcastle way back in the 90’s, about the time that Jarvis Cocker was getting famous with that line.

Deborah was doing medicine and George was emptying the bins, as he put it. They were the exception that proves the rule, in every sense. They actually met on the dance floor, if jumping up and down to Indie music, or the Prodigy counts as dancing.

Both families had been dead set against the match, George’s family thought Debs’ people were a bunch of posh southern tight wads, and Debs’ mother thought George was an idle fool with no prospects, but George and Deborah got on, and she found escape in his little apartment in Heaton from the chaos of people and their problems and their boasting in her student house. No one thought it would last, least of all George and Debs.

The wedding was fun, they rented a chapel in the Yorkshire Dales, “to appease” George’s family, who mostly didn’t come and would not have been comfortable if they had.

They never really fell out, but there was never any way Debs could go at George’s speed, she had big ideas, and George was never likely to keep up. Debs went to work abroad, George didn’t even ask where, sometimes he wouldn’t see her for years, and the arguing didn’t start till she came back.

Meanwhile George wasn’t idle, he’d made a bob or two in NHS contracts, and in the end, when Debs had moved back in, it was her career that was on the rocks, George didn’t understand, but suspected she’d gone a bit nutty. To be brutally simplistic, Debs was brainy enough, but hopeless with people, patients and colleagues. She’d evaded this issue by staying in study, and then research as long as possible, and all that work abroad, but George had always been there for her, and, though they argued, she knew he wanted an easy life, and if she didn’t force the issue…. And he gave her space, which was all she ever really wanted. She didn’t even notice they’d often go most of a week without speaking.

George and Debs were even more isolated as they’d lost contact with both families, and since George had moved to London as an “economic migrant”, he’d lost touch with a lot of his own mates, they had already been thinking he’d gone posh. Debs didn’t really want family or friends knowing what a mess she’d made of things.

So aged 48 and 44 they’d been living most of their married life apart, and Debs had only moved in “permanently” a few months ago. They’d settled into a grim cohabitation with Debs holding down a busy job as a locum, that still meant some nights away, and George, made his living without even noticing.

They’d thought of getting a dog, but George liked to be able to get away and “hit the hills”, and didn’t think he could rely on Debs to look after it.