The kind lady from Lloyds pulled up the mortgage account on her computer. Blinking at the screen, she went as white as a sheet; I could see her trying to compose herself enough to form a sentence.
‘What is it?’ I panicked, feeling the blood draining from me.
I’d gone into the branch after discovering the account I shared with my husband had been drained of funds, the overdraft maxed out.
Susie walked out of the bank branch in a daze, feeling as though life as she knew it was vanishing before her eyes
By the time she stepped off the train home an hour later, she was raging. By the time her husband walked in the door, she told him to get out
Two days earlier, my credit card, which I barely used, got declined. I called the bank, who said it had been taken to its limit by someone who knew my PIN and had been making regular £200 cash withdrawals at an ATM near my home for months now. Yet, as far as I knew, the card had remained safely tucked inside my purse. I certainly hadn’t withdrawn that cash.
Now, I had been ushered into a room, where this lady was busy freezing my accounts. And she was clearly about to deliver some very bad news about my mortgage.
If that wasn’t terrifying enough, it was looking more and more certain that I knew the culprit very well indeed. It was my husband. The same man I had met seven years before as a struggling single parent to my then four-year-old daughter Lily. The same man I hadn’t exactly been madly in love with but had believed would provide us with the stability we needed.
Susie Chan takes on the gruelling Marathon des Sables in Morocco in the heat and the dust of the desert
Proud but exhausted, Susie kisses her medal at the finish line of another Marathon des Sables event
Susie took up running regularly because it gave her a sense of calm, released her anger and made her feel back in control
After all, he’d always been good with Lily — got her packed lunch ready for school, pushed her on the swing and cleaned her shoes.
He’d moved into the small terraced house in Surrey with a nice sunny garden I’d bought with the help of my father. After we married, I’d put my partner’s name on the mortgage.
And yet here I was, my life spiralling out of control — all down to him.
The bank lady excused herself and left the room. I started sobbing, my brain spinning as I wept with frustration and helplessness.
She reappeared with the branch manager. ‘Ms Chan, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to tell you this… but there are a lot of second charges against your property.’
Second charges? I began crying hysterically, trying to speak between sobs as tears streamed down my face.
The kind lady hugged me. The branch manager knelt down to my level, talking gently, doing his best to reassure me. But the bottom line was that various loan companies now owned rights to my property.
Unbeknown to me, my husband had taken out multiple loans using the property as collateral. Added to the credit card debt and joint overdraft, it amounted to tens of thousands of pounds of debts.
I walked out of the branch in a daze, feeling as though my life as I knew it was vanishing before my eyes. By the time I stepped off the train home an hour later, I was raging.
When my husband walked in the door, I told him to get out. He simply turned around and left without a word. Days later he would admit everything, launching into an astonishing confession.
He was a gambling addict. Thousands and thousands frittered away on horses, football matches, fruit machines and more over the course of the relationship. I could not, still cannot, imagine anything so ludicrous as putting hundreds of pounds on a horse race, only to lose it in minutes, and repeating the same thing over and again.
I believe it had been going on the whole time we’d been together.
Lily was only 12 — too young to understand any of it, so I didn’t tell her anything.
Three days later, my brother came over. He didn’t know what had happened; I couldn’t bear to tell him yet. I felt ashamed, embarrassed and stupid, even though deep down I knew none of this was my fault.
In fact, beyond telling my closest family, I’ve kept all this a secret until now.
My brother and I were supposed to be running a half-marathon; part of my brother’s training for his first full marathon, and I’d agreed to do it with him. I had only signed up to the race as he had asked me, and barely knew anything about running.
With all the life-consuming turmoil of the previous days, I had completely forgotten about it. I’d barely slept, had drunk enough alcohol units to sink a ship in an attempt to drown my sorrows and really didn’t want to do this right now.
‘Don’t you dare bail on me,’ he said.
Half an hour later, we were standing in a field on the south side of Farnham, Surrey.
Everyone else wore thin fabric vests and shorts. I didn’t even have proper running shoes. I wore a tennis skirt and a cheap top from H&M. I didn’t have a water bottle — I couldn’t recall the last time I had even drunk plain old water.
I’m too hungover for this.
‘Come on!’ My brother encouraged me to the start and, before there was time for any more doubt or fear, we had started running.
I forced myself to forget about my hangover and focused on two simple things: not stopping and not falling over.
The next thing I knew I had passed a yellow sign that read ‘Mile 9’. Mile nine!
My legs and back hurt, sweat stung my eyes, but I was still running! My spirits lifted, knowing all I needed to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other and I would finish.
This somehow made my legs feel lighter. I smiled and waved at a group of people clapping.
‘Great running!’ one yelled. Me? They’re clapping me?
I had never experienced such feelings of accomplishment as I did crossing the finish line. A medal was placed around my neck. I felt pure, happy pride.
For nights after as I tried to sleep through the anxiety of my situation, I thought about that race and how running let me forget.
I thought about how free and joyful and proud it made me feel.
I needed another race.
Meanwhile, though, there was more music to face. The second charges, the overdrafts, the credit card and so much deception.
I struggled to find even a tiny shred of empathy or sympathy for my husband. All I had was burning anger and shame.
He admitted intercepting my bills, disposing of them before I saw the increasing debt.
He spied my credit card PIN over my shoulder, waiting until I was busy in the evenings to take the card out of my purse, go to the cashpoint and withdraw the highest amount possible, then replace it again.
I listened in shocked disbelief, distraught that someone I trusted could have done this to me.
The only way I could write off some of the debt and stop the credit card companies coming to me for repayments was to report him for theft. In a fit of rage, I went to the police station, wrote my statement and handed it to the policemen behind the counter.
He read it in silence, then looked at me with the resigned look of someone who has seen it all. He offered to arrest him.
Yes. I would like nothing more than for you to walk into his work, arrest him and drag him out into the street.
But I said no. The truth was, he was not really a bad person; he didn’t deserve to lose his job, have nothing.
Anyway, how could he pay me back if that happened?
But because I didn’t prosecute him, none of the lenders would write off the debts. I was financially screwed; repaying the credit cards meant I couldn’t afford the mortgage on my own.
He vowed to pay everything back, that it would never happen again. That he was committed to fighting his addiction.
I realised the easiest way out was to stay together, absorb the debts as a couple and try to pay it all off. But it would take years.
And so he moved back in, to my enduring regret. To his credit, he got a second job and threw every spare penny at paying it back. And, as far as I know, he didn’t gamble again while we were together. He also got the charges against the property removed, so that element of the debt became his alone.
But I hated myself for the sham state of it.
My feelings towards him changed constantly — one day I’d feel pity for him and the next sorry only for myself. Sometimes I felt indifferent towards him; others, utter fury. I doubted I would ever be able to forgive him.
I started to go out running in the evenings after Lily was in bed, and at the weekends, to escape.
Running became the thing I did for calm, to release the anger, to feel back in control, to stop myself opening the wine bottle, to help me ignore how I was stuck in this pointless marriage.
I was running from feeling utterly trapped. If pretending everything is fine were an Olympic sport, I would be an elite. Sitting round dinner tables; chatting to school mums; small talk with colleagues — yes, the family are fine.
Then, one day, I picked up Runner’s World, and saw an advert for the Marathon des Sables, a week-long endurance race in Southern Morocco, near the border with Algeria. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I desperately wanted to see this place, which felt a world away from my life.
Experiencing that race became an itch I longed to scratch. So, two years after that terrible day when I found out what my husband had done, I went back to the bank to ask if they would lend me the £2,000 I needed to enter.
By this point, we were on first name terms. The branch manager would phone to check in on me occasionally. The bank lent me the money but cancelled my life insurance — theirs didn’t cover things like this.
But I was off to run the Marathon des Sables. Lily stayed with family and she backed me all the way. It was 2013, and the Sahara Desert dazzled me with its beauty.
Expecting nothing but curving golden dunes, I saw signs of life I hadn’t expected: small patches of dry-looking trees, wispy grasses sprouting out of shallow dunes, thorny bushes with lethally sharp spikes.
The sun was relentless, the heat oppressive. When the wind struck up, it skimmed along the top of the dunes.
I was half-blind by day two. Too much sand got in one contact lens and it ripped, meaning I had to close one eye so I could focus through my only good lens while I ran.
One day was nothing but rocks to get up and over, pulling on a rope tethered to a mountain top.
I felt the blood drain from my face, dizziness and anxiety rising in its place. In a convoy of single-file runners, I tried to stay in step. The drop to my left looked deathly.
At the top, I fell to my knees. I could feel myself quivering with the fear, the effort — and the triumph.
That was the moment when I knew I would finish the race.
On the final day, weary but determined, I ran straining ahead for the finish line. Suddenly, rising out of the heat haze in the far distance, I could see it.
As I approached, a runner behind me collapsed.
Running as fast as my bleeding feet would take me, I headed for the finish line, thinking about the man who had fallen. Imagine being that close.
People cheered. I felt nauseous and hungry in equal measure. This was it. A medal was placed around my neck. I touched it with one hand and looked up to the sky.
Rather than experiencing extreme joy, I felt a mixture of relief and a strange sense of knowing this moment was always going to be mine.
I was stronger than I had allowed myself to believe.
I flew back from the Sahara a different person. I got home and told my husband it was over. And so was my old life.
Lily is 22 now and studying for a degree. I’ve become an endurance runner, running influencer and Peloton instructor. I feel like a new person as a result of my struggles, rather than in spite of them.
Adapted from Trails And Tribulations by Susie Chan (£18.99, Bloomsbury). ©Susie Chan 2024. To order a copy for £17.09 (offer valid to 26/06/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.