Times of Trouble Read Free

first few days after realising there was no
point going on. I woke up every night at 3:00 am and spent hours
trying to get back to sleep, my mind full of hatred and hurt at my
ruined dreams. It wasn’t like someone I loved died. It was worse
than that. I felt like I had died. The person I planned to be had
died, and with that realisation, my will to live disappeared. The
weeks that followed were like a muddy dream, filled with days of
tears, the occasional meal, sleep, and sulking. Mum put up with all
this. I lost a lot of weight, and sure, I wasn’t exactly looking
after myself. Showering and brushing my teeth were completely lost
from my daily routine. But the thing that worried mum most was my
lack of speech. The day she demanded I go to the doctor with her,
she claimed I hadn’t said a word for three days. The doctor put me
on HP’s. My prescription was for anti depressants but I hated the
word ‘depressed’ so I called them Happy Pills.
    After a while, the
HP’s started to work a bit. It wasn't that I felt happy, but the
deep, hollow misery was blunted. One day I got out of bed, and said
to mum that I had to do something with my life. I couldn’t become
an invalid at the age of 24. So I made do with the only career
choice I had left - piano teacher. When I finally felt brave enough
to leave the house, and people asked me how my piano playing was
going, I brought out the old line ‘those who can do, those who
can’t teach’, so as to give them a laugh, and show I was coping
fine. But I wasn’t fine and I’m still not fine.
    I slowly realised I
had spent most of my life hiding behind my piano playing. It was
like my talent was such an important part of me, I never bothered
to become anyone except ‘Ellen the amazing pianist’. And without
that, who was I? I’d never been very sociable. I’d never been
extroverted, or even what one might call friendly. But I could wow
people by playing beautiful music, which made me happy. I pictured
people who knew me listening to me play, and feeling proud they
were part of my life. But why would anyone want to know me if I
wasn’t a pianist? What else did I have to offer them apart from
that? And now I didn’t see anyone. Except mum and my students. I
guess my students couldn't come anymore, now I was losing Picasso.
But that was tomorrow’s problem. Today mum’s problem took centre
stage. It had been hanging over her all this time, and I was too
self centred even to notice. It was amazing how the sudden threat
of homelessness put life into perspective.
    I felt a bit better
for knowing how much we owed. But I still had absolutely no idea
how we came to owe it in the first place. And it dawned on me that
mum didn't tell me what the money was for, because whatever it was,
she knew I wasn’t going to like it.

Chapter 2

    When she left her
family, she told them she was going to find a better life. Her
mother was devastated to see her leave so young, but she had no way
of stopping her. There wasn’t enough money to keep her at school,
and her younger brothers and sisters needed mothering more than she
did. She could hardly believe her luck when the man came to their
house, and offered her a job as a nanny in London. Was it really as
easy as that to move to another country? With a job in England, she
would send them as much money as she possibly could. Her friends
were so jealous she was going to London. That’s where the
celebrities lived; that’s where people had a chance to make it big.
But when she arrived, the job wasn’t what she thought at all. She
told him she'd never done anything like it before. He didn’t seem
to mind though, and was hardly listening when she checked to make
sure he knew how old she was.
    ‘ You are beautiful,
Veronica. You are going to be a huge star,’ was all he
said.
    The first scene they
shot wasn’t as bad as she thought it might be. There was only one
man, and it didn’t last long. They told her what they wanted her to
say, and