I found out last Wednesday that my husband hasn't paid the mortgage for a year, all the while assuring me he had. I know that I am responsible for this too, and should have been checking up on him.
I was numb Wednesday and Thursday, weepy on Friday, tired yesterday. Today I'm going to see him with my sister to find out if there are any more things I ought to know about, before I talk to the man from the mortgage company on Monday.
I don't know whether I can save us from having the house repossessed, it may be too late. I will have to take over everything to do with the finances on the house and organize accordingly.
I've been having a bit of an "It's a wonderful life" moment though. My friend Jane is coming to be with me for the interview on Monday, my son has given me his savings and offered to allow his salary to be taken into account, my friend and SL partner E is helping me financially, the doctors I work with have been very kind, and my mother is buying my food and helping too. My sister, with whom I haven't always seen eye-to-eye is coming with me to see my husband and has offered to get an estate agent round to value the house and tell me if it is worth spending money (if I can get hold of any!) to do it up. I'm lucky to have three gorgeous children, a family and friends who care for me.
My mother keeps asking if I am OK, and I suppose really I am, it's just still something I can't quite process in my head. But after nearly losing my son in 2005, material things going wrong have been less important to me, simply because the most important thing to me is that my children are healthy and happy. I don't want to lose the investment we have in the house though.
At present it looks likely that any money I have will be going to the mortgage company to pay the arrears, which should have been about £8000 but have inflated to £18,000 on a £100,000 mortgage. I don't know if I can negotiate that back down again.
I know now I should have insisted on taking control of everything, but I was already paying everything else, and I never thought that he'd do this again. He promised faithfully he wouldn't. And I believed him, which was a stupid thing to do without evidence. Anyway... it has distracted and held my attention since Wednesday and I don't think I will be able to do anything else but think about it until the meeting is over.
Wish me luck.
