**Diary Entry: No Wedding After All**
I’d always imagined my life differently. Charlotte—Charlie to her friends—had graduated from teaching college with honours, dreaming of university. But dreams have a way of slipping through your fingers. Dad was in a bad car crash, spent months in hospital. When he finally came home, Mum took leave to care for him while he adjusted to the wheelchair.
There was no university in our little town—I’d have to move to Manchester or London. I decided to wait another year. How could I leave them alone in all this? So I took a job at the local primary school.
The doctors said Dad might walk again with physio, exercises, medicine. Mum sold our holiday cottage in the Lake District to pay for it all—specialists, treatments. But Dad never stood up from that chair.
“Enough,” he snapped one day. “Stop wasting money. I’m not getting better.”
His temper soured. He grew bitter, snapping at everything, especially Mum. If he called, she had to drop whatever she was doing—usually while dinner burned on the hob.
“Rob, you could wheel yourself to the kitchen. Now the roast’s ruined,” she’d sigh.
*My* life’s ruined, and you’re worried about *dinner*? Easy for you—you’ve got working legs. Can’t you just bring me a glass of water?”
Sometimes he’d hurl a plate or glass in frustration. Worse, he started asking for whisky. When he drank, he took his rage out on Mum, as if the accident were her fault.
“Dad, don’t—it won’t help. Why not read? Play chess?” I’d plead.
“What do *you* know? Trying to take the one thing left? Books are rubbish—you read them. Life’s not like that. I’m useless now.”
“Mum, stop buying it for him,” I begged.
“If I don’t, he’ll scream. He’s suffering. What can we do?”
One evening, exhausted from school, throat raw, I snapped when he called *again*. “Enough! I’m on my feet all day. *You* have wheels—go to the kitchen yourself. Plenty of people live like you and still *work*, even compete in the Paralympics. But you can’t manage the kitchen? Do it. I’ve got lessons to plan.”
I heard the wheelchair creak past my door—hesitating—but he didn’t barge in. After that, he tried harder. On warm days, I left the patio doors open so he could “take the air,” though the threshold was too narrow for the chair. We couldn’t afford to fix it.
“Put me in a care home,” he’d slur after drinking.
“Don’t say that! You’re *alive*. That’s what matters,” Mum would whisper, but her hands shook.
Time blurred. Then, one rainy autumn afternoon, I got caught in a downpour after school. I huddled under the bus shelter, soaked, as cars splashed filthy water onto the pavement. Out of nowhere, a lorry pulled up.
A bloke jumped out, holding his jacket over his head. “Need a lift?”
Freezing, I scrambled in. The cab smelled of oil and petrol, but it was warm.
“Michael,” he said.
“Charlotte.”
He chatted the whole way—how he’d become a lorry driver to support his mum, took odd jobs for extra cash. “Call if you ever need help,” he said, grinning.
He started ringing every evening. Picked me up after school—always with tea and sandwiches his mum had packed. Easy company, at first.
“He’s keen,” Mum noted when his lorry idled outside. “Good prospect.”
“He’s *not* a prospect.”
But Michael kept bringing up marriage, boasting about money: “We’ll do it proper. Saving up—might even get a Audi by winter.” No flowers (“waste of money”), no restaurants (“my mum’s sandwiches are better”).
I didn’t love him. But where else would I meet someone? Then—*Tom*. Ran into him in our block of flats. My childhood best friend, now tall, broad-shouldered. His gran lived next door. We’d sworn at seven we’d marry someday.
“You’re *beautiful*,” he said.
My heart lurched. When he texted *Good morning* or left wildflowers by my door, I forgot Michael entirely.
Michael noticed. One night, after another ignored honk from his lorry, I stormed out in slippers. “*Stop* this. People are staring!”
He dragged me to his flat. When Mum collapsed—stroke—he *wouldn’t take me to the hospital*. “Doctors’ll handle it. Stay.”
I ran. Tom found me, sobbing in the street, drove me to Mum.
Next day, I ended it. Michael shouted, demanding the ring back. Mum fretted: “Tom will leave. You’ll be alone.”
But Tom came back. Arranged surgery for Dad. Six months later, at our wedding, Dad stood—on crutches, but *standing*—to give me away.
