They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

7 Early July 2007 — Looking back

Where does anything really start, in life? For me, Sandy Grace, or for any of us? The lightbulb moment some people talk about, that sudden flash of inspiration that pops seemingly from nowhere. Or maybe nothing so dramatic, just a simple spark of excitement when we suddenly find ourselves more alive than we ever did before — because we’ve found our mojo — or whatever.

Or the polar opposite. The feeling one morning, when you wake up, that today is the first day of the rest of your life and you don’t want the rest of your life to be this same old, same old, any longer. That was how it was for me. A very short while after I first met Tamzin.

I’ve heard that a bad back is one of the symptoms of unhappiness — when life is not panning out how you want it to be. Maybe that’s true — or maybe people with bad backs say that because misery likes company. Whatever, I’d ricked my back trying to move a sofa into a different place in the living room. I wanted good feng shui in our new home — all that ancient Chinese stuff about bringing balance and good vibes into our living spaces.

So I got great feng shui and a messed-up back. Or, in medical terminology, prolapsed discs L4 and L5. I had sciatica for a year — if you’ve never had it, you are lucky. You have no idea how painful it is. Think of sliding a red-hot wire all the way down inside the skin of your leg, from your bum to your foot, and then twisting it a few times before plugging it into a live socket for several seconds. I’m not exaggerating.

My best friend, Becky Jackson, had joined a Pilates class. Like Roy and me, she and her husband had been struggling to conceive, and she’d read in a magazine about two women with infertility problems who had been helped by Pilates. Becky gets most of her information from magazines. She was raving about how Pilates made her feel, and her instructor had told her it could help my back. So I gave it a go. And one of the girls in the group was Tamzin Heywood.

And within a few weeks, two things happened. The first was that my back improved dramatically. The second, that I wanted to be Tamzin Heywood.

Badly.

So badly I lay awake at night thinking about her with pure, undiluted envy. It was her lifestyle. I thought about everything she had that I didn’t. Someone once told me that the secret of life is to know when it’s good. And she was making me feel the exact opposite of that about my life.

My rather grey little life. In our grey house. Just a couple of years ago it was my dream home. Detached, four-bedroom — well, three and a half really — with a good-sized rear garden, and so close to the sea you can hear it. I put my imprint on it, the inside is light and airy, all minimalist, and I created a Zen garden in the rear. I really thought it was fine, lovely, far grander than the bungalow in Seaford where I grew up. Our forever home.

I’d planned the children’s rooms; the eventual loft conversion, when we could afford it, where we could wake in the morning with a sea view — well, a partial sea view anyway. Then I went to Tamzin’s house.

Shit.

She and I are the same age. I’d always liked nice clothes but I’d never been fussed about brands — before now. She wears the coolest — and of course most expensive — gym kit brands, as well as insanely bling and covetable Prada trainers (£550), she has gorgeous hair and, naturally, perfectly manicured nails. Perfect everything.

Her husband, Ferris, owns a string of estate agents, but Tamzin’s no idle kept woman, no vacuous airhead Housewife of Brighton. Of course she isn’t. She’s a passionate animal lover who spent two years recently studying to qualify in canine myotherapy — that’s dog massage to you and me. It’s her passion — as well as her own source of income — helping dogs with their mobility and muscle health. Being a fellow dog lover, I immediately admired that about her — and respected her for it. Roy and I agreed a long time ago we could never like anyone who doesn’t like animals.

Tamzin and Ferris live in a house styled like an Italian palazzo in Roedean, an exclusive enclave at the eastern extremity of Brighton — where an expensive girls’ school is located. Their house has a sea view to die for, out across the English Channel, and all the toys. Indoor and outdoor pools, tennis court, gym, sauna, steam room, the whole enchilada. She drives a convertible Porsche with a personal plate. I drive a ten-year-old Golf that had 90,000 miles on the clock when we bought it.

But it’s not just their house, it’s their whole lifestyle. They have a debenture at Wimbledon, which means they go to all the best matches throughout Wimbledon fortnight. They are members of Glyndebourne so they go to the opera regularly throughout the summer season, all dressed up fancy. My envy of Tamzin and her life really came out when they invited Roy and me to see Carmen, but at the last minute he had to cancel because a dead body had been found in a park.

So I went alone and was determined to have the best time. We all had way too much to drink, and they invited me back to their house after. Their three kids were sleeping over at the grandparents’. Tamzin convinced me to stay as it was so late, and we were all so drunk. Ferris went up to bed leaving Tamzin and me drinking a magnum of white.

I texted Roy a drunk message: Don’t wait up, back at Tamzin and Ferris’s. Magnum open. Party time! Love you. X

It was all so hedonistic. We were laughing, spinning each other around and dirty dancing to the music. Then she surprised me by kissing me as we danced, her soft tongue on mine. Everything slowed down. My God, it felt like the best kiss ever. I’m ashamed to say it but I was smitten, I just didn’t think of anything or anyone else at that moment. Not Roy. Not Ferris. I was selfishly in lust and out for myself. We ended up making love together on the sofa in the living room then crashing out in each other’s arms.

I woke up at 6.30 a.m., with the hangover from hell, my head was thumping, and I was alone with just a blanket over me. As soon as my thoughts allowed, I felt embarrassed. My face reddened as I imagined my parents’ reactions. Then more embarrassment at why I cared about my parents’ bloody reactions at my age. But this was not my house. What if the kids came back at any moment? I’d outstayed my welcome; I should leave and get back to Roy. I painfully pieced back together the night and snuck out before they got up, closing the front door with almost no sound behind me.

Then came the long walk of shame home, high heels in my hand, clearly last night’s clothes. I texted Tamzin to say thanks for a great evening, wink, kiss. Then I vowed to get my drinking under control. Seriously. Sort my life out. My grey boring life. Find happiness in my life with Roy. I loved him and desperately wanted our marriage to work, and still hoped beyond hope that we would have a baby.

But when I think back on it, no surprise, that’s when the dissatisfaction with my life really started. I couldn’t get that fling out of my head, I’d enjoyed it. I craved it.

The worst thing of all was that Tamzin was so damned friendly towards me afterwards. As well as being genuinely warm, kind, funny, generous and interested in everyone, she never, for one moment, seemed to take her privileged life for granted. She never mentioned our brief encounter, not once. It was as if it had not happened. Not that it could have continued, of course, but, looking back, it was another rejection. And it hit me hard because I had enjoyed it. It took up way too much of my thoughts. What if this, what if that. One thing I knew for certain: Roy must never know about it — it would ruin him. Well, it must never happen again, and I must work harder at my marriage. What sort of a wife was I? I ended up feeling disgusted with myself.

That summer, when I had quit my full-time job with a firm of accountants to work part-time as receptionist at a doctors’ surgery — our infertility specialist had advised me I shouldn’t do any stressful job — we were invited over to her house a lot. Such happy, fun afternoons around the pool, with some very nice wines from their cellar. Sometimes in the company of their three beautiful and polite kids — with their equally beautiful, and dutiful, nanny. And always with their two adorably daft and soppy golden retrievers, nuzzling us for cuddles and ever-hopeful of treats.

I so wanted her life and that night together had just intensified those feelings. Not that I could tell anyone. And the problem was that I wasn’t just envious — Tamzin had made me start to question my entire life. And to be fair on Roy, that wasn’t his fault, it was mine. When I met him, all those years previously, my life — and my aspirations — were very different.

Roy is two years older than me, but in some ways it often feels much more. He’s so stable, so calm, so wise. I was nineteen when we met, and my life up until that point had pretty much been a train crash. I am an only child, as is my mother who was born to German parents. But, unlike modern Germans I’ve met, she totally lacks any sense of humour. She’s just a cold fish, and bitter at the hand life has dealt her, in the shape of my seriously weird loser of a father.

He worked all his career as a car mechanic in a small garage in Eastbourne, and spends his retirement building scale model Second World War aircraft, like Spitfires, Hurricanes, Wellingtons and Halifaxes, as well as all their German counterparts. He likes to tell the few visitors who come to their home in Seaford these were aircraft his father had flown in the war, first as a fighter ace with seven kills, then a bomber pilot.

He has always maintained — and still does — that his father was one of the Dambuster heroes, whereas in reality he had been an aircraft fitter and had never been posted anywhere near 633 Squadron. Partly on account of the fact he would have been just fourteen years old at the end of the war.

And to make it worse, my mother has always gone along with it. Maybe, when I look back at her in a charitable frame of mind, I wonder if it’s because she was traumatized by what her country did in the war, and this was some weird way, in her weird mind, of her assuaging her guilt.

She had been brought up in England and eventually, to her regret (my supposition), met my father and lived unhappily ever after.

I haven’t read much poetry, but I did come across a few lines I really liked from someone called Philip Larkin about how your parents fuck you up.

Oh yes. That resonates. I was fourteen when I first decided I didn’t want to live a life like theirs.