Chapter Text
NEW YORK CITY
Clarissa Suzanne Murray-Jenkins was pregnant. And she was a little tipsy. And she was crying. There were a lot of things she was doing, in the toilet at a bar in New York City. Initially, she’d only ran in to take her ADHD meds. Then she felt ill, and thought a test from CVS wouldn’t hurt (she’d sort of been in denial for a while). It wasn’t her fault she’d seen an old friend at the bar and gotten a drink to save time. Or that the test had been positive. Maybe both of those things were her own fault, but it wasn’t as if she was well-known for remembering the consequences of her actions.
If she had a baby, would it take her name? She’d always told Mark she’d remove the double barrel eventually, but it was paperwork, and that meant paying attention. It was becoming clear she might need stronger meds.
Admittedly, she also just hadn’t really wanted to change her name. She loved her middle name so much it was basically just her nickname, and her surname fit her. Clarissa Jenkins, daughter of Maggie Jenkins, who ran her travel column like the navy. Because if there was one thing she was good at, it was being on the move. Which might explain the marriage, the baby and the fact that she was in New York when both her husband and mother were comfortably in New Jersey any day.
And Amanda. Amanda was at home.
Amanda was going to kill her for getting pregnant.
Wiping her tears so aggressively her eyes got sore, Clarissa left the bathroom with the test in her handbag. Frankie raised his eyebrows. “You look like you got beaten in there.” When she neglected to reply, he tried to reduce his stature from preposterous to only a little spectacularly giant. “Is something wrong? You can’t play me, I’m a felon, I know when I’m being played. Come on Clary, I promise I won’t tell Donnie. Maybe. Probably. Unless it is very juicy in which case… I can't make no promises.”
Clarissa smiled. She adored Frankie and his weird little brother. Really, she adored most people. But Mark should know first- she knew that much. It was simply bad luck that she was a terrible liar. “I can’t let you be the first person I tell.”
At this, Frankie’s eyes bulged out of his head like a Jack-in-the-box. “You can’t leave me on that kinda cliffhanger! It’s absolutely important. Come on! I’ll trade you. I have loads of secrets.”
“I have none.” Her throat closed up. “Well, I have one now. A very special one, that I need to go home and process first before I discuss it with you, Frankie. I’m sorry, I really am, but I’m afraid I have to love you and leave you.” She kissed her friend on the cheek, a gesture that made him simultaneously cringe and yelp out in disappointment.
“You’ll pay for this, Jenkins!”, but Clarissa knew his words were empty.
The subway in New York was clammy and exhausting on a regular day. On what must’ve been the ninth or so week of her pregnancy, Clamanda found it to be a volcanic eruption of sweat, cigarette smoke and the snot of whichever toddlers were yet to figure out how to properly wipe their noses. Instinctively, she touched her stomach, almost taken aback when it was pretty much flat. She was barely showing yet. If she really wanted to, she could go home and pretend nothing was wrong for a good few weeks.
Not that having a baby was something wrong. Well… not quite. It was all so sudden. She was only twenty three. In this plan of her life she’d made as a nine year old, this segment of her life, her early to mid twenties, was supposed to be dedicated to designating herself in the hall of fame. In travel journalism, this wasn’t anything particularly special, maybe making some expose pieces, practicing her survival skills under strict governmental regimes. It was meant to be 5-10 years of her life she could spend fulfilling herself, preferably whilst married, before resigning to a more stagnant journalist job once she relented and had children. Relented was a poor word choice. Decided.
Her phone was pinging with texts. Her mom, reminding her that she wanted to call her tonight. Mr Wilson, asking if she could do an emergency shift at his restaurant (she wished he would stop messaging her when his daughter was literally right there). Mark, asking what specific time she was returning the next day so he could prepare a meal for her return. Gosh, he was sweet. Amanda too had left her a couple things, mostly TikToks that had reminded her of their dynamic with “us” as her only explanation. The last one was a GIF she’d made of Clarissa age fifteen with her horrendous brace face.
After shooting back a quick “you suck, never send that message again” (to which Amanda began to spam the photo), Clarissa turned her phone off and placed her head in the hands, imagining that all the other subway riders couldn’t see her crisis. Whilst it made sense to return tomorrow, aim for the evening, and share her pregnancy to her husband over a warm, home-cooked dinner, there was something in her that simply couldn’t face him. She wasn't sure how she’d phrase it. “Congrats, you knocked me up?” “Have fun seeing me a lot more often?” “You’ll need to buy me a lot of weird foods soon?”
Somebody must’ve made a manual for this. Being a first time mom who is both physically and emotionally unprepared whilst technically being in a happy marriage with a man who wanted a family more than anything else in the world. This couldn’t be an original experience. God, she’d forgotten to take her full dose of meds. Pregnancy was already panning out to be an inconvenient distraction. Now she considered it, was she supposed to stop taking methylphenidate? What if it turned the baby green or something?
No. Were Amanda here, she’d tell her she was being silly, and to stop watching Broadway shows whilst on work trips without her. She’d have to tell her best friend eventually, a prospect nearly as bad if not worse than telling Mark. Every hope and dream she’d long discarded existed in Amanda’s brain- a walking scrapbook of all the lives she’d led and hoped to one day achieve. It occurred to her then that she had no memory of talking to Amanda about having children. The whole idea seemed so distant, so obligatory, she only ever mentioned it when her mother or Mark prodded at the subject.
She was Catholic. She’d never really had to bring it up of her own volition, it was automatically inserted into her life. The train had arrived at the station nearest to her hotel, and she lugged her hefty backpack up to her room with a scowl generally unwelcome on her face. As she flopped onto the bed she’d spent barely a weekend in, it wasn’t the only thing that didn’t feel like hers. It wasn’t like she was living a lie- at least, not wholly. Most things she’d done she took pride in. Something was just… missing, and it definitely wasn’t a baby.
On the bright side, there was always mom.
Mom, who wasted the latter years of her life in the same living room she’d been proposed to in thirty years ago. It wasn’t even like she was particularly old, she just acted as if she was a decades retired millionaire who could afford to complain and judge and forget every detail of her only daughter's life. She always called Clarissa her “only daughter”, which was ridiculous; she didn’t have a son. In the darker times, Clarissa wondered if her mom would’ve preferred her to be a boy.
It only took a lame pot of noodles and an episode of Love Is Blind (Clarissa liked to watch other people making terrible marital decisions to feel comfort about her own) before Margaret Jenkins gave her a FaceTime call. Her top button had long fallen off her cardigan and her necklaces had turned from charming to discolored some time ago, but she’d at least washed her hair before dialing. With a pained smile, she nodded at her child. “You don’t look particularly happy, sweetheart. What fate has befallen you?”
Clarissa looked down at her wrist, only to notice she’d picked off a patch of skin in the time her mom had said hello. She’d only done three tests today. There was a possibility the fourth would come up negative. Was there really any need to cash in all her chips on three pregnancy tests and announce it to her mom? Did she really need her opinions? Or was she completely and utterly lost, devolving into the little girl who clung to her mom’s feet when her father raised his voice?
“I’m pregnant, mom.”
Her mom chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes only slightly bulging out of her head. In her surprise, she looked younger. Clarissa couldn’t help but think the expression was reminiscent of twenty years ago, realising she wasn’t able to bear a second child, and having to keep her cool so Clarissa’s father kept his in return. Margaret sighed in some sort of exasperation or disappointment, and looked straight down the lens, seeing her daughter in all her pregnant panic. “So you and Mark have been busy.”
Clarissa was relieved to chuckle, if briefly, as she shook her head. “Mom! You can’t say that!” It wasn’t even overly accurate. She was so busy travelling, and he spent half the day in the shed woodworking, they barely ever saw each other before they were too tired to do much of anything sensual. It was a miracle she’d gotten pregnant this early in the marriage. With the way things had been going, she thought she was destined to be more barren than the Sahara until thirty at least.
“It’s lovely, darling. I’m happy. Relieved, even. Glad. Do you feel glad?”
When she opened her mouth to affirm her mother, Clarissa found no words coming out. Instead she mustered a shrug. It was the way things were. She wasn’t going to get rid of it. First of all it was an emotional toll on her, Mark and her community that she simply didn’t need to take on. Second… it just wasn’t what a girl in her position did. Other women had the option to do whatever they wanted as far as she was concerned. She just wasn’t other women. She was just Clarissa, and this was how things had panned out. She would beg at the devil’s feet before accepting her own isolation. “I was rather hoping you’d instill a little more confidence into me, mom. You’ve done this before.”
Margaret took a cigarette and lit it. She’d pointedly ignored her daughter’s suggestion in years prior of switching to vaping. It was apparently too modern, cowardly and embarrassing for her. She took a long draw, her breath a little trembling. “I was over the moon when I found out I was pregnant with you. Everybody was. Nobody had been sure I was fertile enough for even a pregnancy, let alone a whole baby. Even your father was on the verge of tears when I told him. It’s different for you. That’s not always a bad thing. It’s normal.”
“When am I supposed to be excited? Once I tell Mark? After the baby shower, knowing the gender? The second I see an ultrasound? Or does it happen the moment I see the baby’s little face, and recognise little bits of my own? Am I supposed to have that intrinsic connection straight away or does it grow over time? How do you confidently name a baby? I’m making a human life that could last eighty or ninety years. I don’t want to be responsible for something someone has for that long.”
The cigarette was stubbed with a harsh crash. “Mark can help you with all of this stuff, you know.”
Clarissa screwed her eyes shut. “Probably. But I called you, mom.”
“Well sweetie, you know I’m not gonna be around much longer to help you out.”
She promptly opened her eyes so that she could stare at her mother with a more obvious frustration. “Mom, you’ve been saying that exact thing for the past five years. You’ve got a long time left in you. Might as well accept it.”
Margaret scoffed. “Yeah, well. Your father didn’t expect to go, did he? Gotta be prepared.”
“Dad should’ve been prepared with the way he drank.”
“Clarissa Suzanne Jenkins, that is no way to talk about your father!”
“If he wanted me to be nice about him, he should’ve been nicer to me. And to you. I don’t know why you care so much, mom. It’s not like he stuck around or helped you to raise me. He sucked. Lots of men do.”
Margaret Petunia Jenkins rolled up her sleeves as if she was preparing to clock her daughter in the face between her glasses. Then, as if she’d recognised it would somewhat counteract her point of being frail and elderly, she sighed and sank deeper into her rocking chair, pulling a matchbox out of her cardigan pocket. Clarissa couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Predictably, her mother had done little to put her out of her misery. Maggie loved Mark. Maybe he was reminiscent of Clarissa’s father. Seeing red at every stop sign.
“I’m sorry, mom. I didn’t mean to go that far. I think it’s the hormones.”
“Maybe. Or you might just be a bitch, darling. Lots of women are. It’s an exchange. Plenty of men suck, plenty of women are bitches. The reverse can also be true. I recently got into feminism. Lots of good books.”
“Okay mom.”
“You ever heard of Audre Lord? Crazy stuff. A lesbian.”
“Oh okay, mom. I’m gonna go now.”
“Isn’t your friend Amanda a lesbian?”
It was an odd question. Contrary to popular belief, Clarissa has a good head on her shoulders. Amanda was definitely unlike most people in that respect, but she had the courtesy to keep her questions to herself. She’d ask Amanda anything in the world, but this one thing just seemed too personal. And once she heard it aloud it became a lot harder to avoid. “I don’t know, really. I never asked. It’s rude. Plus, she was raised religious.”
“Child of divorce though. Not very Catholic of them.”
“You like Danielle.”
“I can like a woman and judge her marital collapse. Two children and she still couldn’t keep her shit together for the sake of them. They’re both a little self-centred. Parents like that would have a daughter who likes other father’s daughters. It’s twenty twenty three, Clarissa, people sin with every breath they take.”
Instead of pointing out that Mr Wilson ran a pizza restaurant, literally organised her wedding and was an all round outstanding man, Clarissa decided trying to debate her mother on complicated issues like these was futile. Her opinions were as rooted as the dying potted plants she insisted on littering her bungalow with. She’d scarcely even agreed to downsize in house after Clarissa moved out, and it wasn’t until her daughter helped pay off the mortgage that she said she stopped regretting the choice. Like her ancestors before her, she tried to live where she died and stick to what she knew.
“Well, mom you’ve been… an experience. I’m going to go now.” Slightly sombrely, she added, “I love you, and please don’t tell Mark.”
“Love you too, sweetheart. I won’t. I don’t even leave the house unless I run out of Killer Kakuru books. Speaking of which, bring some from New York to me if you can. I heard they sell special edition ones there.”
“Gotcha, mom.”
“Bye!” and the line went silent.
Unexpectedly, Clarissa noticed her cheeks were wet. The more she blinked, the wetter they were, and the more her eyes stung. Actually, her nose was beginning to become blocked up, and her head was foggier than a Winter’s morning. During the phone call she’d reckoned she was perfectly level headed, only to realise that she was on the verge of an emotional breakdown the second she was left alone with herself. Which, considering everything else, really shouldn’t have been that surprising at all. Her whole body trembled, and she remembered that the city never slept, and neither would she.
So she might as well leave.
And she did.
Clarissa couldn’t quite explain how she’d managed to end up on a plane. All of it was a bit liminal, somewhere in between a hallucination and a sickness-induced haze. At some point she and her luggage had made it comfortably on board, and with a neck pillow hugging her, she turned her phone onto airplane mode. Even during her journey to the airport it had buzzed like mad. Mostly it was everybody trying to check in to see when she intended to get home, and her mom apologising for forgetting to be nice on their call. Normal stuff, because it was a broadly very normal day.
The flight took off and Clarissa turned on her headphones, looking out the window as she ascended, leaving behind the beautiful New York skyline. Some part of her would miss its comforting busyness, although she knew she’d be back eventually. She sipped on a Ribena shed bought in a grocery store, reminding herself she’d be retiring from drinking for the next eight or so months. It was all a very depressing miracle. No wonder her mother had only brought one child into the world.
Clarissa frowned to herself, then smiled, knowing she was heading right where she needed to be.
West Country, England.
MEANWHILE, IN NEW JERSEY
Amanda Wilson was done. For the past hour, she’d been writing out consent forms, monotonously preparing for sessions the following week. It wasn’t horrendous- she liked her job. She was good at her job. As her therapist had told her constantly, she was a good therapist, and it was only out of necessity that she had her own therapist. Many of her former clients had gone on to brilliant things. One did a marathon for cancer research. Another divorced her coercively controlling husband. A third got a dog that filled some of the gaps Amanda herself couldn’t help to repair. Her first full year was coming to an end, and now there was paperwork.
This meant tears practically came to her eyes when the phone started ringing. Finally what she was good at. Within an instant, a familiar voice was ringing in her ears. “Hello?” Mrs Jenkins cried out, “Hello? Amanda, sweetie, you there?” At a garbled affirmative, Margaret swiftly pushed onwards. “I wasn’t sure whether to pass it on to you or Mark, so this is a three way call. Mark says hello.” Mark obviously didn’t say hello. He was just as confused by Amanda’s presence as she was his.
“Petunia, what’s the problem?”
“I’m getting to it, Mark, sweetheart. Also, whilst we’re at it. Petunia is my middle name, you really don’t need to call me by it. It’s Margaret. Clarissa always tells me you have a middle name problem. Anyways, it’s Clarissa I’m calling you both about, actually. She expressly told me not to tell you, so I’ll side step properly saying anything out loud, but it’s urgent, I promise.” Over the phone, her breathing was heavy and laboured. “Basically, our Clarissa has some stuff cooking in her oven. What’s the phrase?”
Amanda’s throat was dry. “A bun?”
“Yes! Thanks Amanda. She’s got a bun in there. I knew it was something obvious.”
Even hoarser than Amanda, Mark mumbled, “Can you repeat that Petunia? Just… I’m not sure I heard you right.”
“She’s got a bun in the oven. She’s eating for two. A pea in the pod. A joey to her kangaroo. You, Mark, have gotten her knock-”
“Okay. You can stop. I get it.”
Amanda could feel the wind brush against the hairs that stuck up along her skin in a room with no open windows. She could hear a child down the road yelling at her father. The paper on her desk smelt slightly of the coffee she’d spilled onto her hands whilst spell-checking it. Her own shirt clung to her stomach in a way that made her painfully aware of her own sweat. There was a slight reflection in her phone screen that showed her out face, cracked like a porcelain doll with hair fraught from being tugged on over many hours.
Clarissa. With a child. With Mark. Clarissa, who she’d known since more or less the day she was born, was going to give birth herself. Would trap herself in her house for eighteen years, unable to travel for work, quietly seething until it caused her to have some kind of seizure since she could never tell a lie, let alone live one. At least, that’s what she thought. When Amanda had done babysitting as a teenager to bring in some extra money, Clarissa never offered to help. If she had to, she’d usually just shut herself in the kitchen making the kids food whilst Amanda actually entertained them. She’d even struggled to bond with Amanda’s brother Hamish until he’d turned thirteen and gained “sentience”, whatever that meant.
It was rude to say her best friend wouldn’t be a good mother. Amanda just couldn’t picture her being a happy one. In all fairness, she tried not to picture Clarissa’s future at all. Whenever she did, it was as if she had fallen into quicksand, her body progressively paralysed as her own mistakes killed her. What if she’d spoken up? Where would she be for that? Why hadn’t Clarissa let her be next to her during her DIY wedding? Why had she been sat so far away? Was it because she was meaningless, or was it since Clarissa couldn’t look Amanda in the eyes and still say yes to spending a lifetime with Mark instead?
Mark couldn’t stop laughing. It was hysterically pathetic, and Amanda wordlessly listened, as she often did to Clarissa when she got particularly hard to respond to. There was simultaneously a palpable joy and a subtle manic quality to the sounds he made that didn’t sit right with her. “I feel faint.” he uttered in between cackles. “I’m going to be a father. Oh… I’m gonna be a dad. My dad’s going to find that hilarious. Me raising a kid of my own. Petunia- Margaret even, you’re sure, aren’t you? Really sure?”
“Very sure.”
Amanda tried to forget the sheer panic in her brain and focus on the facts. Obviously Mrs Jenkins wasn’t supposed to break it to them. The fact remained that Clarissa hadn’t got the chance. Which begged further questions: how would she have done it? Who would she have told first? Why wasn’t she telling them? “Margaret,” she spoke very slowly, trying not to enter troubled waters, “do you know why she told you and not Mark or I? Is there any reason?” She didn’t need to ask really. She knew Clarissa better than any family members. Maybe herself, on some level. Clarissa wasn’t okay.
“Now that you mention it, she was very troubled over the phone. Lost her temper, a little shaky if you ask me. Half the reason I told you two is because I trust you two to keep an eye on her whenever I can’t. You’re good kids, and you see facets of her she wouldn’t dare reveal to her old mother. Call it a favour.” Amanda nodded, despite the fact neither of them could see her. Clarissa was losing her fucking mind. When she was regularly upset, she cried and turned on herself. When she was in a crisis? She was far harder to predict.
Mark gulped. “Okay, I’ll call her. I just… I don't understand any of this. Why would she be freaked out? It's a baby. That’s gotta be a good thing. A little miracle. And I’m- we…We’re married!”
Amanda rolled her eyes so aggressively she worried they might cause her a migraine. It wasn’t like she was prejudiced against Mark or anything. Something was just… off about the guy. She couldn’t help but feel like he had a couple of screws loose. It was a small enough town for her to overhear some of his father’s worst blowouts. Living in a house with a man like that for two decades was bound to set you off psychologically. And it wasn’t like she didn’t feel for the guy. Everything he had going on was rough. But you didn’t see her complaining. Not once. He had the best girl in the world, and he still couldn’t make the effort to get her.
Amanda took a sip from her water bottle like it was fine wine and sighed. Maybe she was a bit prejudiced, sue her. No man was worthy of Clarissa. “It’s as if you’ve never spoken to a woman.”
Mark sighed deeply and swiped his tongue across his teeth in a boorish way. “Fine then. Speak to me, Amanda. Actually have a conversation with me. I dare you to hear me out.” At this, Amanda snorted derisively. Of course she’d already pissed off Mark. A pin dropping could set him off into a frenzy. How this marriage lasted a year was beyond her. She’d already planned half a DIY divorce, right down to a lawyer dressed up as a handyman. At least then she’d actually get to be in the party, instead of hastily being shoved in a seat because “I’m focusing Amanda, you’ve already given me the ring. You already did the maid of honor thing.”
“Okay, I’ll speak. First of all, don’t call her. She’s not gonna pick up if she’s actually frenzied. She turns her phone to silent mode if she thinks people are judging her. If you want to figure out what’s happened to her, she’s supposed to come home today. We’ll know she’s not coming back in a few hours- and I can almost guarantee you she won’t be. We’ve had location sharing apps ever since she got stalked by this one guy in eighth grade. I can just check her location and we’ll figure out where she’s really gone.”
Mark seemed to pause for a moment, taking all of this in. There was a palpable frustration, but maybe it wasn’t at Amanda. Perhaps he too realised what little of a grasp he had on his own wife and her psyche. All he’d ever said about her was how much he wanted things to work, blood sweat and tears (although they had to come from both ends). A slight tinkling sound came through the phone, and Amanda assumed he was cradling his cross necklace. “Okay. Can we be sure she’s not just staying a couple extra days in New York?”
“I mean, we can’t be sure until we check. But… she’s not the type to linger. You have to at least know that about her.”
“I’ll leave the pair of you to it.” Margaret abruptly left the call, abandoning the two of them to their unspoken distaste for one another. Amanda opened her phone and checked Clarissa’s iPhone. By the looks of it, she was in Airplane mode. Soon enough it would become clear where she was off to. It was an insidious, encroaching feeling rising in her chest that she’d follow her best friend. Anywhere. Alongside Mark… not exactly her ideal vacation. But for Clarissa she’d put up with practically anything.
The two of them spent the next two hours on the phone in dead silence, Amanda pretending to do more paperwork and Mark feigning sending out emails to clients. In reality, Amanda was staring at the little dot that represented Clarissa, and Mark was watching her boots on the shoe rack, imagining them hopping off and running away from him, leaving him alone in his humble home he’d added an extension to recently with children in mind (not that he’d expressly told her that- he thought she’d assume).
“Wait- the dot’s disappeared. She’s definitely not in New York.” Amanda furiously zoomed out, not seeing Clarissa’s icon anywhere in the United States. Trying not to bury her head in her hands, she pinched more, waiting to see the map of the entire world. Once she had done so, she let out an enormous groan. It wasn’t the first time Clarissa had gone cross-continental. She’d been to Europe a good few times to cover things of significance. It was just… what was wrong with her?
“Well, Mark… she’s in Somerset.”
“Where’s Somerset?”
“England. Near the bottom, not that far from Wales. Bristol Airport.”
Amanda racked her brain for conversations she’d had. Clarissa tended not to discuss work with her unless something ridiculous happened. About six months back she’d had to go to Texas due to some kind of a cubic civil war, and she’d spoken endlessly about getting to meet the President and bonding with “a charming, slightly crude gay couple” during her visit. The article had been her biggest at the time too- a big career highlight. Somerset was a little more random. There had been an article she’d done about the anniversary of a tragic fire, that happened to cross over with the premiere of a Somerset-born footballer in the Champion’s league. Just maybe she was following up with them?
Amanda knew one thing above all else. “We have to follow her.”
Mark scoffed. “We? Amanda… She’s carrying my child! This is my responsibility.”
“I’m the one with the tracking device. And if what’s happened so far has proven anything, it’s that I have a better catalogued set of information about your wife. So you’ll need to follow my lead. You can trust me…I have her safety and happiness in mind just as much as you do.” If not more. She decided not to say that part aloud, instead letting the idea linger in his brain. Whilst his brain was already attached to the baby, Amanda was looking out for one thing and one thing only, and that was the girl she loved.
Not the man the girl she loved claimed to love, and especially not the clump of cells that had gotten them into this mess.
“I’m following you?”
“Yes, Mark.” she felt her voice growing into a slight disconcerting bark, “What, are you beginning to feel insecure about the idea of a woman being better at something than you?”
“What? No. No. Don’t make it be like that. I can follow you… on one condition.” Amanda said nothing, so he continued. “When we do find her, and it better be quickly, you step aside and let me speak to her first. I don’t want you getting into her head and making a narrative. I want to speak to my wife, not you using her as a mouthpiece. Do we have a deal, Amanda?”
Amanda was almost impressed by the sheer bitchiness that had slipped into Mark’s tone. Even she struggled to harbour that much resentment. It caused her to consider that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t the only one jealous of someone else’s bond with Clarissa. The thought brought the ghost of a smile to her face she was relieved Mark couldn’t see. She didn’t want him to know they were on almost equal footing. It did amuse her. She had a profound effect on Clarissa. Clarissa trusted her, and Mark resented her for it. She was petty. So was he. “Fine. Deal.”
Amanda and Mark were about to embark on the biggest disaster of their lives, and they knew it.