“Honestly, you’re trying!” Margaret threw her hands up in exasperation. “Forty years I’ve watched you *try*! Remember when you bought that summer cottage? Promised us a lovely little place by the sea, and what did we get? A leaky shed in the middle of nowhere!”
“How many times must we go over this?” Margaret huffed, slamming a pile of paperwork onto the kitchen table. “The pension office needs proof of your earnings from the last five years, and for three months, you’ve been handing me absolute nonsense!”
“Maggie, love, I explained,” Victor said with a helpless shrug. “The archives said the files from ’98 were lost when they moved offices. What else am I supposed to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know—*think*?” She marched across the room, arms folded. “Did you ask the old factory’s payroll office? Speak to the manager? Or is shrugging your shoulders your only skill these days?”
Victor winced. Retirement was supposed to be peaceful, but ever since he’d handed in his timecard, every day felt like an interrogation. Margaret had a knack for finding fault, and he was starting to feel like a schoolboy caught doodling in his exercise book.
“The factory shut down years ago,” he muttered. “And that manager? Dead since the early 2000s.”
“Exactly!” Margaret spun on her heel. “You should’ve sorted this *years* ago instead of waiting until the last minute. Now thanks to your dilly-dallying, we’ll miss out on that extra pension top-up.”
Victor stared at his slippers. She was right, as usual. He *had* put it off, assuming things would sort themselves out. But now, without proof of his hazardous work conditions, they’d lose nearly £300 a month.
“I’ll try the county archives,” he mumbled.
“Oh, *try*, will you?” Margaret snorted, shuffling papers. “Like you *tried* sorting out Sophie’s council tax when she moved out? Two years of you ‘looking into it,’ and in the end, she fixed it herself in a week.”
Victor sighed. That was still a sore spot. He’d made grand promises, only to deliver absolutely nothing.
“Maybe we should ask Sophie?” he ventured. “She works in the council offices now, she might know what to do.”
“Sophie has her own life,” Margaret snapped. “Stop relying on our daughter to adult for you. Sort your own messes!”
*Sort your own messes.* Victor gave a bitter smile. He’d spent his life being the reliable one—working the factory floor, bringing home his wages, never a drop of drink, never a late bill. Yet somehow, the older he got, the more he felt like a failure.
“Right. I’ll go to the county archives first thing,” he said, hauling himself off the sofa.
“Don’t forget your *bloody* passport this time,” Margaret called after him. “And write the address down properly, or you’ll end up in Wales again.”
Victor nodded and shuffled to the kitchen for a cuppa. Outside, the streetlights flickered on. He stared at the familiar view—neat hedges, Mrs. Thompson’s yappy terrier—and wondered when exactly his life had started slipping through his fingers.
Margaret hadn’t always been this sharp. When they’d married thirty years ago, she’d been all soft edges, quick to reassure him when things went pear-shaped. Now, every misstep was a lecture.
“Vic, you eating dinner or what?” she shouted from the living room.
“Yeah, course.”
“Then peel the potatoes. I’ll do the sausages.”
Victor set to work, the rhythmic scrape of the peeler oddly soothing. But then—
“Dad! Hi!” Sophie’s voice bubbled through the phone. “How’s things?”
“Sweetheart!” His mood lifted instantly. “How’s little Emily?”
“Thriving. Listen, Mum mentioned your pension paperwork nightmare. Still no luck?”
“None. Archives say the records are gone.”
“Right. Have you tried the pension service directly? They’ve got contribution records going back to ‘92.”
Victor paused. Why hadn’t *that* occurred to him?
“No, I… didn’t think of that.”
“Go tomorrow. Don’t dawdle.”
“I will.”
“And Dad?” Her voice softened. “Don’t fret. We’ll sort it.”
After hanging up, Victor felt lighter. Sophie always knew how to lift him—unlike Margaret, who specialised in pointing out exactly where he’d gone wrong.
Margaret’s response was predictable: “*Finally* a sensible idea! Wasted months faffing about with archives, didn’t you?”
Victor bit his tongue. Arguing was like trying to teach a cat to fetch—pointless and mildly humiliating.
The next morning, he queued at the pension office. The clerk, a young woman with a name badge reading *Jenny*, frowned at her screen.
“Contributions statement? Easy enough—oh. There’s a gap. ’98’s missing.”
“What d’you mean, *missing*?”
“Looks like your factory never forwarded that year’s records.”
Victor’s stomach dropped. Not this again.
“But the factory’s been closed for—”
“Then you’ll need their archived payroll records.” She scribbled an address. “Try here.”
He trudged home, deflated.
“Well?” Margaret demanded.
“Need records from the factory.”
“I *told* you this would happen! Useless, you are!”
“Maggie, I’m *trying*—”
“Trying!” She threw her hands up. “Forty years of watching you *try*! Remember that car you bought? ‘Reliable,’ you said. Died in a month!”
Victor sank onto the sofa, face in his hands. Every word landed like a slap. And the worst part? She wasn’t wrong.
Sophie called that evening. “Dad, let me help. I’ve a mate in law—we’ll draft an appeal.”
“Love, you’ve got enough on your plate—”
“Don’t be daft. You’re my dad. We’ll fix this.”
The next day, over tea in her flat, Sophie walked him through the paperwork. “You’ve got every right to that top-up. The records are lost, but *you* didn’t lose them.”
Victor left with a stack of forms and a flicker of hope.
A month later, in a near-empty courtroom, he stammered through his appeal. But as he spoke—about the factory, the missing records, forty years of honest work—his voice steadied.
The judge ruled in his favour.
Margaret blinked at the paperwork. “Huh. You actually managed it.”
Even now, she couldn’t resist a dig.
That night, Victor sat in his armchair, staring at the telly without seeing it. He’d won. So why did it feel so hollow?
Because the problem wasn’t the pension. It was him. He’d spent a lifetime avoiding conflict, letting chances slip by. And now, at long last, he’d taken a step—small, shaky, but *his*.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to stop being the weak link in his own story.
