It’s a romantic notion, isn’t it? Throwing caution to the wind, seeing where life takes you. Taking a chance. And most of the time I’m completely in favour of it. Most of the time.
I was feeling very carefree in early
2008. Engaged to be married, planning a great honeymoon in the US. Then, in
case we didn’t have enough on our plate myself and my husband-to-be decided to
sell our house too. Oh we liked our current place, it had been a wreck when we
bought it and we’d done a lot of the work ourselves, stripping walls and
painting skirting boards like a couple in one of those ads for home loans. But
we wanted to make one more move. There were a lot of those mortgage ads on TV
that year and it was all anyone could talk about, buying and selling houses,
trading up. Taking a chance on the market. Everybody else was doing it, why
couldn’t we?
A month before the wedding we found
the perfect place. Just a mile down the road from our own home but with the ‘dream
address’. It needed a lot of work but we had done it before, we could do it
again. So we put our house up for sale and sat back and watched the offers roll
in. Everything was going according to plan. Until one day, I got scared. We
were hoping to start a family so I made a few calls, found out the price of
child care in the area. Shuddered. Worked out what the mortgage on the new
house would be. Shuddered again. But still. House prices were only going one
way. It was a dead cert. The dream was within our grasp. We just needed to take
the chance, that was all.
And then one day after a long day in
work I came back to our house, back to our home. Looked around the walls we had
so lovingly painted. Flopped on the sofa that fitted the sitting room perfectly
and wondered if I really had the energy to do it all again. And then there was
that childcare figure… I had a chat with the other half and we made our
decision. I rang the estate agent the next day and told him we were pulling out
of the purchase. He was horrified. What were we thinking? So, in order to
soften the blow, I told him a white lie, that I wasn’t happy with the price we
were getting for our own place.
“Ah then” he answered, dismissively.
“Sure why would you sell your own? Keep the two.”
He sounded matter of fact but
couldn’t quite keep the tinge of desperation out of his voice, and I ended the
call. Grabbed another piece of paper, totted up how much it would cost to keep
the two houses, and pay creche fees and, I don’t know, eat? Buy new clothes the
odd time? Looked at the massive
telephone number written in front of me and realised that this was a chance not
worth taking. So, we changed our minds and took down the For Sale sign. Drove
past the ‘new’ house the odd time, but with no regrets.
That September we went on a delayed
honeymoon to the US and, pre smart phone, logged into an Irish news site from
the hotel lobby to check the news from back home. Discovered a couple of new
phrases, ‘bank guarantee scheme’ and ‘property price collapse’ that everyone
seemed to be talking about. By the time our plane home touched down, Ireland
was a changed place. The boom was over and those people who had stopped on the
wrong square on the monopoly board had learned a tough lesson. Thanks to not
taking a chance that day, we had been spared. However when it came to writing
‘One Bad Turn’, almost a decade later it turned out the memory of that time was
closer to the surface than I realised. My book tells the story of a woman who
was not as lucky as we were. Eileen takes a chance on the property market and
ends up losing everything. She blames her former friend for the desperate
situation she finds herself in, and this leads to the tragic situation at the
heart of the novel. The story is fictional, but it didn’t take too much
imagination to come up with it. Chances are fine things. Just not all of the
time.
Thank you so much Sinead for this great post about Chances, and Happy Publication Day for One Bad Turn, that is out today.
Thank you so much Sinead for this great post about Chances, and Happy Publication Day for One Bad Turn, that is out today.
Giveaway to Win paperback copies of Can Anybody Help Me? and Are You Watching Me? (Open Internationally)
Sinead Crowley is very kindly giving my followers a chance to win copies of her first two books Can Anybody Help Me? and Are You Watching Me?Giveaway open internationally, all options are voluntary, but please do what they ask, as I will be verifying the winner. Giveaway closes 23:59 15/06/2017. Winner will be announced on twitter and emailed, and they will need to reply within 7 days, or forfeit the prize, and I will re-draw for a new winner. Good luck everyone.
Win a PB copy of Are You Watching Me? (Open INT)
Author Bio
Journalist by day, crime writer by night, Sinéad Crowley is arts and media correspondent with RTE News, and the author of the DS Claire Boyle series, crime fiction set in Ireland. The first two books in the series, 'Can Anybody Help Me?' and 'Are You Watching Me?' were shortlisted for Crime Book of the Year awards at the BGE Irish book awards and the third, 'One Bad Turn' is released this June.
Sinéad was also a contributor to 'Trouble is our Business', a collection of new Irish crime writing published by New Island in 2016.
Sinead Crowley on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sin%C3%A9ad-Crowley/e/B00JBAKBS6/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
Facebook - facebook.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/SCrowleyAuthor
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