# I took the plunge and I left him. The money wasn’t worth the pain. He’s like his father – he thinks a woman is there to scrub and cook and attend to his every whim. Now my dad died too, just a couple of years after my mum, and I don’t have to worry he’s going to feel humiliated with his friends because his daughter is estranged from her husband. You know, it hurt me when he used to say we were going to eat out, because I knew it would be at the restaurant just across the road from dad, and he didn’t even want me to visit, let alone ask him to dine with us. How could I relish my meal if at the back of my mind there was always the thought that dad was going to look out of the balcony, for once, and see the car? Now, I will be all alone at Christmas. It’s the first time I am actually happy that he didn’t want us to have children.

# He wasn’t talking care of his diabetes. I used to find sweet papers and cake crumbs in the paper basket every morning; so probably he used to wait till I was asleep before pigging out, and hope I’d blame the kids. Now, one of his legs has had to be amputated, and he took it really badly. He says the doctors ought to have told him what might happen if he wasn’t careful; he blamed me for tempting him by leaving sweet things around the house. He blamed the children for making him so nervous that he “had” to eat and eat. In short, he blames everyone but himself. He does not want me to have anyone over for Christmas, and insists we do not visit anyone, or go anywhere, to avoid having people stare at us.

# My husband and my son have both been made redundant. And my sister has just told me she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. It will be a very frugal Christmas for us – not that we were every spendthrifts, but you know, we never got into the habit of putting money aside, because we never thought this could happen to us. My sister has always been my rock; and I cannot understand how she fell ill, because she never smoked or did drugs, she always stops drinking after one shot of whiskey. I have no one to talk to – my husband’s siblings cut him off because they expected him, as the youngest, to stay home and take care of the parents. When he married me, his mum actually said I “stole” him from them. Lousy days ahead.

# I couldn’t believe my eyes. My sister had called me and told me to go to the car-park right then, and I saw him kiss her. And then when he came home and I’d already changed into my pyjamas, he said that they’d had to stay overtime to finish a report because the computers were down for most of the afternoon. I feel as if I married a stranger. He is still as suave and attentive as he ever was – the (im)perfect gentleman. He is very, very careful, and he never calls her from here, and she has never called him while he’s here, not even on his mobile telephone. My sister has told me it has been going on for some time, but I never believed her. Now I do. Poor baby; he will be born into a home where his mother hates his father.