Marianne was Jack’s first love, his “girl next door” and his high-school sweetheart. They were born and brought up on the same streets, riding their first bikes down their street and playing on the sands on the shores of Southsea together as children. Marianne’s mother being Irish Catholic Marianne attended a Catholic girls’ school two years behind him though she was three years younger; her school allowed advanced students to skip grades. After graduation Jack left for University of Bristol to read electrical engineering where Marianne followed him two years later to read Chemical Engineering. They found a flat in a house between Bristol and Bath on the banks of river Avon surrounded by hills and beautiful scenery and moved in together.
After graduating from Bristol, Jack left for London to read for his PhD at UCL and they parted for four years. Marianne came back to Portsmouth after her undergraduate degree to take up a biochemical research position at Portsmouth and the research out of the project earned her a Master’s degree in biochemistry two years later. After securing her Master if Science degree Marianne moved out of her parents’ home, buying a two bedroom property just a few streets away, and continued her research and teaching position at the university. By then she was dating a computer network administrator who worked at the university.
Jack came home to Portsmouth after four years of postgraduate studies and work in London only to find Marianne and fall in love all over again. He had carried memories of bliss living with her in the idyllic surrounding on the banks of river Avon winding through the valley between the hills. He had remembered their long walks down the winding footpath that ran along river Avon’s banks for miles and miles, taking in the scenes of a living river with its barges, boats, and canoes, the lives of people and animals on the opposite bank on one side; and the foothills, the woods, and the grassland on the other. He had remembered Marianne and himself on the horses they had rented from the stables of a nearby farm to ride down the footpath, in the woods, and through the grassland, the wind in her long straight honey brown hair falling all the way down her back to almost touch the horse and the saddle, her brown eyes dancing with happiness, illuminating her fine features. He had remembered racing her on his own horse over the grassland along river Avon, her slender frame flying off the saddle with every beat of the horse’s cantor, and always letting her win.
Jack swept Marianne off her feet and proposed to her.
Peter was born a year and five months later, just in time to stop Marianne converting her degree to a PhD. A dutiful mother and wife, she resigned from her position at the University to look after her baby and her husband. Marianne wanted to go back to part time work and to complete her degree when Peter was three years old and started attending nursery school. However, Jack’s mother suddenly suffered a heart attack and, at Jack’s urging, Marianne spent the next two years as Mrs. Mary Connor’s care giver, walking down to her mother-in-law’s house while Peter was at school and nursing her back to health.
Marianne gave up dreams of her career when she then found herself pregnant again with Marc. Jack’s career was going well by then and he had moved his growing little family to a new home – a large detached three bedroom house with a double garage, and large front and back gardens, just a five minute walk from the sea front and only a few streets away from their former home.
When Marianne had been pregnant with Peter other things had been foremost on her mind; she had loved the fresh and new relationship with Jack, and she had loved her research work that had continued to the last week of her pregnancy. She had secretly resented the baby for having to leave her work. Her highly intellectual research must have affected the fetus because Peter was born a super bright child hitting every milestone months and sometimes years in advance. Jack had loved and reveled in being Peter’s father, taking time off work and taking on contracts that allowed him to work from home some days just to be with Peter and Marianne.
