AMANDA ABBINGTON

Last year, Sherlock actor Amanda Abbington, 44, parted ways with her husband Martin Freeman. Here she reflects on single parenting, the power of laughter and strawberry trifle, and new beginnings

Her second chapter starts here

The week after my 16-year relationship ended, I would wake every morning with a sudden lurch. ‘Why do I feel sick?’ I’d ask myself, in the darkness of the bedroom I no longer shared with my partner. And then, a split-second later, I’d remember what had happened. ‘Oh,’ I thought, as the tears started to fall. ‘That’s why.’ During that long, lonely week, I had to keep things together for the sake of our children, Joe and Gracie, who were then 10 and eight. They needed to be looked after. I had to wake them up and make them breakfast and take them to school and, in a way, the normality of that routine kept me going. It got me up in the mornings.

My partner, the actor Martin Freeman, was away filming and we’d agreed not to tell the children we were splitting until he was back, in 10 days’ time. It meant that I existed in a strange limbo. I hardly slept. I couldn’t eat. When I was on my own and the kids were safely at school, I did a lot of crying. I drank endless cups of tea with my girlfriends. I have a coven of brilliant women who are amazing. If you don’t have one, I’d advise you get one.

‘You need to take it minute by minute,’ they said. ‘Who knows what will happen further down the line? All you need to worry about is right now, the present. That’s it.’

One of my friends told me to blow up a balloon and, with every breath, to blow all my anger and resentment and pain into it. Then she told me to take it outside and pop it. I know it sounds silly, but I did this several times and it really worked as a way of releasing pent-up emotion.

But in my darker moments, when I was grieving for the death of my relationship, I asked myself again and again what I was doing. I was terrified at the thought of starting over as a single mother of two in her 40s. Would anyone want to be with me? Would I be able to cope on my own? I had thought Martin was the love of my life. This wasn’t meant to happen to us.

In the evenings, the kids would come home from school and I’d have to put on a happy face and be their mother again and say, ‘Hey!’ as they walked through the door. At the weekend, we did all the usual things, like going to the cinema or trips to the swimming pool.

The mundanity of it all helped me to function. The days passed and then Martin came back, and we sat the children down and told them we still loved each other but could no longer be together and that it wasn’t a failure, after 16 years together, it was simply that we’d grown apart. We told them we loved them very, very much, and that would never change.

How had it come to this? It was no one’s fault, not really. Martin and I are both actors, and he worked away a lot. That means one of you always has to compromise, to stay at home with the kids and to make an effort to travel to see your partner. That’s just the way it is. We realised we had been papering over the cracks for a long time.

It came to a head when the kids and I visited him on set in Puerto Rico in February 2016. Martin had been filming the financial crime drama Start Up. By the end of the trip, we’d decided we could make it work but when I got back to our house in Hertfordshire, something shifted. I had a startling moment of clarity. I remember it vividly: I was wearing a navy blue jumpsuit with a white T-shirt and I was standing on the doorstep with our cases. My friend Sue had been house-sitting and as she opened the door, she could tell immediately something was wrong.

‘THIS DARK MOMENT IN MY LIFE MARKED THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY’

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘I’m splitting up with Martin,’ I said, and it was the first time I’d said it out loud.

I was numb and in a state of shock. Sue made me a cup of tea and then I called Martin and told him I couldn’t do this anymore.

‘We’re not making each other happy,’ I said. He agreed to talk about it when he got home. It was one of the darkest moments of my life but, although I didn’t know it then, it was also to mark the beginning of an extraordinary journey of self-discovery.

Over the following weeks and months, I leaned on my closest female friends. I talked to them a lot, and they listened with compassion and support. A few of

them were angry on my behalf. Others would offer me Buddhist meditations on the power of letting go. Some just made me laugh. The laughter was the greatest healer.

During that time, I thought a lot about who I was, and I didn’t like who I’d become. I’d lost a lot of confidence. I hated the way I looked. I wasn’t depressed, but I was really down. For so long, like so many women, I’d mothered and nurtured my family, and along the way, I’d ended up sacrificing some of my own happiness in order to try to make everything okay for everyone else. Women do that, I think. I felt I had no identity other than being Martin’s partner or Joe and Gracie’s mother.

Becoming single again in my 40s meant that I had to get to know myself again. After the immediate shock had dissipated and Martin had come back from Puerto Rico and moved out into a flat in London, I found myself spreading out around the house. I slept diagonally across what had been our double bed. One night, I ate an entire Marks & Spencer strawberry trifle while sitting on the sofa watching Celebrity Big Brother. There was no one asking me, ‘What are you doing?’ It felt liberating and however silly it was to do that, it was wonderful.

When we were together, I was so unsure of myself that I questioned all my choices. As women, we often second-guess ourselves and believe we’re not good enough. But the more I was on my own, the more I was able to dial down the volume of that critical internal voice.

I started to dress differently, taking more risks. I wore skirts and dresses, which I’d never really done before. I began to buy clothes from ‘cooler’ shops, like Zadig & Voltaire or The Kooples. I lost weight because I hadn’t been able to eat properly, but then I found I liked being a little bit slimmer, healthier, so I joined a gym and now I start every morning with a 5km bike ride, a 5km run and then a swim. I began to get stronger, both physically and mentally. I decided to cut my hair short and dye it dark. I got my ears pierced. Then, in September, I got my first tattoo.

My granddad used to tell me a love story about two magpies, so I decided to use that as inspiration. I showed my kids what I was thinking of getting done

– a picture of two magpies on a telegraph wire. Gracie said, ‘Oh, that’s so pretty. Can I come with you?’

‘I AM HAPPIER AND LESS FRIGHTENED OF LIFE NOW’

I thought, ‘Why not?’ My children are amazing. They have been through a lot. I thought it might be fun for them, so the two of them came with me to the tattoo parlour and sat there as the magpies were inked on to my left forearm. It was a bit painful but, weirdly, I quite liked the pain. It felt cleansing. Afterwards, we went for burgers and Gracie said I was cool, which made me laugh. Every time I look at that tattoo now, I am reminded of my own strength.

And I’m proud of that strength. Martin and I now have a great friendship. We still love each other – even if we’re not in love with each other – and neither of us sees our relationship as a failure. We had 16 great years together and have two fantastic kids. We still talk and we still give each other advice. The break-up was incredibly hard, but it taught me so much about myself because I was forced to confront my worst fears – the fear of being not good enough, the fear of having to do the bulk of the childcare, the fear of having to earn enough to keep everything together – and once I faced them, I realised they no longer had any power over me. I realised I could do it because I was already doing it.

If I had to describe myself now,

I’d say I am happier, lighter, more energetic, more open, more confident and less frightened of life. I have love in my life that I’m careful to protect and nurture and I feel more myself than ever. I spent the last six months of 2017 working on a Netflix show called Safe, which I am incredibly proud of. It was so nice to feel part of a filming community again, and Michael C Hall, who stars in it, is just the nicest guy you can imagine – a world away from the serial killer he portrays in Dexter. In real life, he’s actually a vegan! Getting back on set and doing something I’m passionate about was a great confidence boost. I love being a mother, but work is a huge part of my identity and now I can balance the two, without having to compromise on who I am. It’s still hard. I still have massive wobbles but that’s understandable I think. I’m human. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody.

I still firmly believe in love. I’m a hopeless romantic. I could shut myself off from that part of life and try never getting hurt again, but the point of living is to put yourself out there and embrace all the ups and downs. Open yourself up to everything the world has to offer, warts and all. Without allowing yourself to get hurt, you’d never experience the laughter and joy, the happiness and freedom. There is nothing wrong with feeling sadness, anger, frustration. They aren’t bad emotions, they are different and need to be looked after accordingly. It’s, again, finding that balance.

As women, I think we often worry too much about what other people think of us, which is so detrimental. We shrink to fit in with someone else’s narrative. I’ve realised I don’t have to do that to myself anymore. I feel free and empowered because I’m finally able to look at myself in the mirror and say ‘Okay, this is who I am – and if you don’t like it, you don’t need to be around me.’

It might sound strange, but I’m so grateful to my break-up for that.

Safe, starring Amanda Abbington and Michael C Hall, will be released on Netflix in May 2018