Snuggled up in our Christmas jumpers, my three-year-old son James and I were reading The Snowman together when I heard my husband’s key in the door.
It was a Saturday lunchtime and the last time I’d seen Jeremy was the previous morning when he’d set off for work.
While he’d called later to tell me he’d been invited out for impromptu drinks after completing a big deal – he worked in banking – I had heard nothing from him since.
Moments later, Jeremy appeared at the doorway of our son’s playroom. Tie askew, no sign of his suit jacket and with a slither of red tinsel draped around his neck, he was red-nosed and sniffing.
For most of us, Christmas and New Year are a time for parties. Unfortunately, for Jeremy, that meant copious amounts of cocaine – his preferred ‘plus one’ on a night out.
James tried to wriggle off my lap to get to Daddy, but I held on to my tousled-haired boy tighter. I didn’t want him near his father in such a state. I knew perfectly well what Jeremy had been up to over the past 12 hours, snorting line after line.
Although I’ve never taken drugs and always been clear about my disapproval, I’d put up with this sort of behaviour for a decade at that point.
Why? Well, first of all, I kept deluding myself that soon he’d settle down, and learn to put his wife and child first. Looking back, I can’t imagine why I ever thought he’d change or that I could change him. But I did.
In the moneyed, upper-middle-class circles, many see cocaine as a bit of harmless fun – something to break the tedium of big, demanding jobs and intensive parentingÂ
I also can’t deny that I enjoyed being a banking executive’s other half – staying in fancy hotels and eating at Michelin-starred restaurants, all on endless expense accounts.
Jeremy’s high salary meant I was able to quit my job in beauty retail when we married, hoping children would soon come along.
In the moneyed, upper-middle-class circles we moved in, many people saw cocaine as a bit of harmless fun; something to break the tedium of big, demanding jobs and intensive parenting.
I get it to an extent – who wouldn’t like to feel invincible? But the truth of my life as a ‘cocaine widow’ was increasingly miserable.
Being married to someone who does cocaine means you will never come first. And even the most handsome and intelligent of men becomes an utter bore when they’re high, repeating themselves over and over again.
In the bedroom, things were disastrous. Cocaine constricts the blood vessels, reducing the flow of blood, so erections – or maintaining one – are pretty unlikely. And yet I know full well Jeremy managed to be unfaithful more than once.
It’s a very long way from my first, glamorous impression of my husband’s lifestyle.
We met when I was in my late 20s at a house party and there was instant chemistry. When Jeremy zeroed in on me he was magnetic, very talkative and full of bonhomie. In other words – I realise now – he was as high as a kite.
He lived a very privileged life and oozed the kind of confidence that my younger self found very attractive. Showering me with compliments, he took my number and called me the next day.
A couple of days later we went on a date to a local gastropub. Jeremy was more subdued and I can see now that sober he was less Alpha male. I liked this side of him: funny, self-deprecating.
Over the following months our relationship blossomed. I’d never met, let alone dated, anyone like him before. I had a decent, working-class upbringing – my dad’s a builder and my mother a hairdresser – and had never been around so much money, so much excess.
My parents are horrified by any hint of drug-taking, and I took care to hide any sign of Jeremy’s addiction from them. In any case, our lives were so far removed from anything they knew. Weekends for Jeremy were always about partying, and I confess I was happy to go along, sipping fizz and dancing.
I’d been crystal-clear with him that taking drugs wasn’t for me, and among our friends he reined it in. It was with colleagues that he took his foot off the pedal, sometimes going terrifyingly AWOL.
The first time it happened, a few months into our relationship, he didn’t come over to my place at the time we’d arranged one evening. He texted apologetically: ‘I’ll be there in an hour!’ And then a few hours later: ‘It’s going to be more like midnight – sorry.’ And then… nothing.
The following day I let him have it, demanding that he stop taking drugs. Jeremy was contrite, but maintained cocaine was essential for ‘networking’. Naive as I was, I believed he was only taking it for a professional leg-up.
I tried to show him how much I preferred the quiet, bookish man he became when he was sober. Yet Jeremy travelled abroad for work at least once a month, giving him ample opportunities for drug-fuelled blowouts.
He proposed two years after we started dating, and we married a year later, when I was 32 and he was 37.
You probably think I was off my rocker to marry a coke addict. But back then he was less Charlie Sheen and more Peter Pan.
And he could be very generous. Our wedding cost £30,000, which Jeremy paid for without asking my parents for a penny. The day was charming – but then his friends spent half the night in the toilets, snorting cocaine. My rather puritan family and friends were, thankfully, utterly clueless.
The next day, Jeremy lay passed out in our honeymoon suite, nose bleeding from overdoing things. Unbelievably, I told myself even then that now we were married, he’d stop taking drugs.
But I knew that within hours of arriving in any large city on one of his frequent work trips he’d be able to procure drugs.
He often got into scrapes and lost more phones and sets of car keys than I care to remember over the eight years of our marriage.
He’d try to hide his use from me. But what else could explain £300 cash withdrawals from our account every Friday night?
When his colleagues reached their early 40s and began to bail out of night-long benders, Jeremy just found a younger set to go out with. I spent more and more time alone.
I was 35 and Jeremy was 42 when I found out I was expecting our son. One night when I was six months pregnant he brought colleagues back to do lines on the coffee table in the sitting room of our four-bedroom house in Hertfordshire.
At 5am, in my pyjamas, I found myself helping a young woman being sick in the cloakroom, clipping her hair back and getting her glass after glass of water. They were still going strong at 7am when I finally kicked everyone out.
In fairness to Jeremy, he felt some shame after that and spent his nights home with me for the rest of the pregnancy. And when James arrived I was sure – again, with breathtaking naivety – that becoming a father would change things for good.
For 12 months Jeremy claimed he was clean and I felt so relieved. I will never forget how much James loved bath-time with Daddy, his giggles as Jeremy splish-splashed with his rubber duck.
But after James turned one, Jeremy drifted back into old habits. Soon he was taking coke one Friday evening in two.
The comedowns meant I’d tip-toe around him, or take James to my mum’s while he slept it off. He looked awful after a bender, hollow-eyed with sallow skin. There were memory lapses – he’d forget we’d arranged a playdate or drinks with friends.
His drug use became one of those arguments we had over and over again. I’d tackle him about it sporadically – but by now I knew, just knew, he wasn’t going to change his ways. His office never seemed to care. I’m sure the bosses knew, but turned a blind eye.
Why did I put up with it? Part of me still loved Jeremy. But it’s also true that I had a lovely life I didn’t want to destroy, and a gorgeous son whom I feared would be worse off if his parents split.
I know I should have wanted better for both James and myself, but I felt stuck.
It was around this time that my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She and James became my absolute priority.
Mum died when I was 40 and James was four. I was devastated – but as my grief eased, I was able to think clearly for the first time.
James was getting older, and I didn’t want our son to grow up asking questions about his father’s dishevelled appearance after wild nights out, learning to avoid his comedown mood swings.
On the first anniversary of my mother’s death, a Friday night just after Christmas, Jeremy returned home early for once. It was the opportunity I needed to deliver an ultimatum: he needed to choose me and James, or his drug habit.
I told him that our son would be starting school soon, and Jerremy needed to clean up his act. That meant him following a proper withdrawal programme and going to counselling.
I said I was more than happy for us to move to a smaller house, and for Jeremy to get a less well-paid job if it allowed him to overcome his addiction.
I pointed out that cocaine is one of the leading causes of heart attacks in men in their 40s. I didn’t want our son to grow up fatherless.
Jeremy responded with fury – perhaps he felt ashamed, or perhaps he was deep in denial.
I told him I didn’t want our son turning into a version of his father, as he was now. I said that at some point soon, James would notice the ‘deliveries’ that regularly came to our front door. Was Jeremy going to explain to his son that they contained illegal drugs for Daddy, or should I do the honours?
Eventually, I took James and walked out. I went to stay with my father, desperately hoping it would only be for a short time, that Jeremy would come to his senses.
Humiliatingly, he never did.
It was difficult starting again, of course. Initially I rented a house in the same area, which Jeremy paid for, and got a part-time job back on a beauty counter. I now work from home as a virtual assistant, allowing me to be there for my son.
I’ve just turned 50 and I’m living with a lovely, caring man who works in mental health for vulnerable people – the only drug he takes is paracetamol for the odd headache.
We live much more simply, in a terraced two-bedroom cottage and share a car.
Fancy holidays and turning left on planes into first class are very much a thing of the past, but I am convinced that my divorce saved my son from growing up believing his father’s lifestyle is one to covet.
James is 15 now and knows perfectly well what his father gets up to. I told him a couple of years ago when he asked me about why we split.
I don’t feel guilty – and it turned out he already had an inkling, because appallingly Jeremy had occasionally left drug paraphernalia out in the bathroom when James went to visit.
Jeremy is still working in banking and is still taking drugs. He has found a partner in crime, five years ago marrying a younger woman who is happy to take cocaine alongside him.
As far as I know the consequences of his lifestyle have yet to catch up with him, in terms of health consequences or trouble at work.
Yet I see the impact of 30 years of drug abuse clearly. Jeremy is even more mercurial nowadays and can be very snappy towards his son, which is why James only sees his dad once a month. He keeps him at arm’s length, preferring a WhatsApp relationship to an in-person one.
It’s terribly sad that even after all these years, Jeremy is still choosing his addiction over his only child – but at long last, I have accepted that he will never change.
- Poppy Williamson is a pseudonym. All names and identifying details have been changed.
- As told to Samantha BrickÂ
