When her ex-husband died, Susan Shaw, 70, felt part of her history had been erased
WORDS: JOHANNA BELL
Hiding in my bedroom alone, I desperately fought back tears. I’d just got off the phone with my son, and the news he’d told me had hit me harder than I ever expected it would. His dad, my ex-husband, had passed away. I’d been separated from him for 18 years and had been happily married to someone else for 11. So why was I feeling such raw emotion, as though I’d lost a huge part of myself?
I first met Georges Kalaitzakis in 1973 when I was 20 years old and he was 27. I’d joined the ballet company where he was a stagehand and we got along brilliantly. We had our daughter Natalie in 1977. But when she was three she died in a car accident. Such a traumatic loss brought Georges and me even closer and over the next few years we married, had our two sons, Antony and Jon, and moved to Crete, where Georges was originally from. We were happy in Greece – despite being diagnosed with emphysema Georges took various tourism jobs and I set up a dance school.
Then in 2001, Antony, then 19, was showing promise in tennis and we needed more money for his training, so I returned to the UK to work over the summer holidays.
SEPARATE WAYS
After six months I realised I didn’t want to go back to Crete. I still don’t really know why it all fell apart, I just knew I needed to be back in the UK. Georges was working for a well established excursions company, which he didn’t want to give up. It was a really hard decision, but we agreed to separate and the boys stayed with Georges while I stayed in England.
A year later, I went to visit them, hoping we could try again. But it turned out Georges had started seeing someone else, and that cemented the end of anything romantic between us.
Our split wasn’t nasty, and I couldn’t blame Georges for moving on. Besides, I could never hate Georges after everything we’d been through together – he was my strongest link to Natalie.
I returned to the UK and the boys joined me in 2002. It wasn’t until 2005 that I felt brave enough to get back out on the dating scene. After a few failed attempts, I met Kevin Shaw, now 68, online. We went for coffee near my home in Guildford, which turned into lunch and then a cinema date – neither of us wanted to part.
By now, Antony had moved back to Crete, so I visited frequently and I’d often ask after Georges or even p
