Chapter 3
I’m not sure what is the warmest – the sunny weather, my glass of prosecco that is heating up by the second or my blood, which is positively boiling.
My smile is in place, fixed so firmly it looks like it could be painted on.
It doesn’t move, not even a millimetre, not even when I drink.
I need to keep it together, for Hannah, but I also need answers for myself.
I want to confront Ben, and I won’t make a scene, it will simply look like the two of us are having a nice little chat – except he knows I want to talk to him, so he’s doing everything he can to prevent that from happening.
Surely he knows all he’s doing is buying himself time?
It’s a stupid strategy, because I’m only getting more annoyed by the second.
I have to hand it to him, he’s doing a great job. Using my parents as human shields is – wow – chef’s kiss.
‘Ben?’ I say, trying to intercept him outside the toilets. The outside area has its own toilet block so I’ve been hanging around outside it, like a weirdo, waiting for him to come back out. Impressive, really, that he’s managed to hide in there for eighteen minutes.
‘Ben, we need to talk,’ I say, walking alongside him, synchronising my steps with his, trying to match his pace.
‘Linda!’ Ben calls out, grabbing one of my distant cousins from seemingly nowhere. ‘Linda – Liberty was looking for you, she was just telling me how much she wanted to catch up with you.’
I mean, I absolutely wasn’t, but now I have to make small talk with Linda for long enough that she doesn’t feel bad, or like I don’t really want to talk to her.
My God, who knew this man was such a master of deception?
I’m always in awe of some of the tactics they use at work to try to get the information or evidence they need for various cases.
I always wish I could be all cool and secret agent-like, but I’m only an assistant, in the most admin-y way.
Ben has clearly been taking notes though.
Small talk suitably chatted, I make my excuses and set about looking for him again, scanning the crowd, eventually spotting him with my Uncle Clive.
I sidle up next to Ben and gently place a hand on his arm.
‘Can I borrow you, please?’ I ask him.
‘In a minute,’ Ben replies. ‘We’re having an important conversation.’
‘Give over, lad, we’re talking about water butts,’ Uncle Clive says with a snort. ‘It’ll keep.’
‘Canapé?’ a waiter asks, presenting us with a tray of incredibly fancy, super-tiny pieces of food. The kind where you can’t work out what they’re made of by simply looking at them.
Generously, I’d say Ben is only trying to get away from me but there’s a strong chance he did what he just did on purpose – he’s bumped into the waiter, sending the tray and its contents to the ground below.
It doesn’t make the loudest noise, it’s landed on the grass, but a nearby female guest screams – that’s the loudest noise, it turns out.
I notice Hannah staring at us, with a look on her face that says ‘how did I know Liberty would be at the centre of the chaos?’ but you can’t blame me for this one. Well, I guess you can, technically, but no jury in their right mind would convict me today, given the evidence.
‘I’ll go get someone to help you,’ Ben tells the waiter.
‘Ben, wait,’ I call after him, but he’s off.
I keep on his tail, trying to stay as chill as possible, but the more he avoids me, the worse he makes things for himself.
I’m going to be honest with you: as much as I would love to avoid the hassle of blowing my life up, I’m struggling to see a universe where I can forgive Ben for this.
Well, why would I? He’s a liar and a cheat – but I deserve an explanation.
I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to achieve by running from me.
Maybe he thinks I’ll get tired or I’ll calm down or I’ll forget? Is he crazy?
As he passes my parents, back over towards the toilet block (his tactic can’t surely be faking another wee, can it?), I notice my mum collar him. Yes, Mum, stop that man! Oh, and she’s hooking her arm with his. He’s not going anywhere for the moment.
‘Liberty!’ Mum says cheerily. ‘I was just saying to Ben, Dad and I wanted a photo together, and his phone has the best camera. He always gets the best pictures.’
Ben and I have the exact same phone, and therefore the exact same camera, but he does seem to take better photos. I guess I know what he’s been practising on.
‘Yes, of course,’ he tells them, taking a step back to get them in the frame.
They smile widely and obliviously as he snaps a few photos, and that’s when it hits me – I know exactly what I need to do. Well, Ben isn’t saying anything, and they do say a picture is worth a thousand words, don’t they?
‘I know, why don’t I take a photo of all three of you!’ I suggest with the most enthusiasm I think I’ve ever exhibited.
‘Oh, that would be wonderful,’ Mum replies.
I take Ben’s unlocked phone from his hand before he can so much as blink and then my mum and dad stand on either side of him, wedging him in. He’s trapped.
‘I need to move back a little, a little more, just to get all three of you in,’ I say as I edge away from them.
I can see Ben’s face on the screen and he looks terrified.
It kind of gives me the ick, seeing him look so pathetic, clearly feeling so sorry for himself, because he’s been caught out. Wah, wah, wah, etc.
‘There we go,’ I announce and then, without pausing for a second: ‘Oh my, I need the loo real bad, back in a sec…’
I dart away with Ben’s unlocked phone still in my hand, heading towards the toilet.
‘Wait, Liberty, you have my phone,’ he calls after me.
I pretend not to hear him and pick up the pace. There’s a single baby changing room, much closer than the ladies’, so I go in there and lock the door behind me.
‘Liberty,’ he calls out, banging on the door. ‘Liberty, please, I need my phone.’
I don’t reply. Instead I open up his camera roll and…
oh my God. There are so, so many dick pics in here.
I don’t know what’s funnier – that they all pretty much look the same, so why even bother taking a new photo, or the fact that he has more pictures of his knob than he does of me, his girlfriend.
So, who is the lucky lady, huh? The recipient of alllll these photos – presumably she’s the one who forwarded the photo to me, I’d imagine to tip me off.
‘Liberty, Liberty, please,’ Ben continues.
‘You can use my phone,’ I hear my mum tell him.
‘I need mine,’ he insists as he carries on banging on the door – it sounds like he’s hitting it even harder now.
I close his camera roll and I’m just about to check his messages when I notice something where the frequently used apps pop up. It’s Matcher – a dating app.
Oh, that bastard. I know it wouldn’t make a difference if he’d met someone and started swapping pics with them, but to download and use a dating app is so cold and calculated. It’s cheating with intent. There’s no other reason for having it.
I open it up and head straight to his inbox. Wow, he must have swiped right on every girl within a fifty-mile radius. So many chats, so many dick pics being pinged out into the network.
I fling open the door and press his phone into his chest.
‘You’re disgusting,’ I tell him.
‘What?’ he replies defensively.
‘What?’ I reply, mocking his voice.
‘Liberty, Ben, please, can we not do this at my engagement party?’ Hannah says through gritted teeth – and with the scariest fake smile I’ve ever seen. She looks like a shark.
‘Sorry, it’s his fault,’ I say.
‘Liberty, nothing he has done can be more important than my day,’ she says confidently.
Is she serious? Nothing at all?
‘What about sending photos of his dick to everyone on Matcher?’ I ask her, just loud enough for everyone around us to hear, because I want Ben to feel as mortified as I do.
‘He’s being doing what?’ my mum squeaks.
I notice the tension building in my dad’s jaw.
Okay, fair enough, I shouldn’t have done this here.
I grab Ben by the arm and drag him away from our audience.
‘Okay, let’s talk.’ He finally gives in. ‘I can explain – I promise I can, but you have to hear me out. Let me finish, okay?’
I have to say, if I could pretend for a moment that the decisions I made now wouldn’t shape the rest of my life, I would be fascinated to hear what sort of explanation he thinks he can give me that I will accept.
But this is real, and it’s happening to me, and only I know whether or not I can forgive him.
I remember, years ago, when my mum’s friend’s husband had cheated on her, and she was trying to decide what to do, my mum would talk to me about it.
I was probably in my late teens, so my mum took the opportunity to share with me just how horrible men could be.
I remember her saying that men did things that hurt, but that hurt could be recovered from, if you wanted to.
She said the real worst thing a man could ever do to you was embarrass you, because that was something impossible to get over.
Now, more than ever, I know that she was right.
Well, they say time heals all wounds, but embarrassment is something else – I can still remember, clear as day, saying ‘yes, mum’ instead of ‘yes, miss’ during a Year 2 registration, along with every other time I’ve embarrassed myself ever since.
No matter how many times Ben apologises, and even if he never does it again, I’ll still remember every excruciating detail, every pitying look, every uncomfortable moment from today, and from all the days to come, because I can’t make everyone here forget this, and I can’t make myself forget it either.
‘I don’t want to hear it, Ben,’ I tell him plainly. ‘It’s over. Can you just leave, please?’
‘But we live together,’ he reminds me. ‘And we work together.’
‘And I will figure all of that out,’ I reply. ‘Without you.’
‘Liberty, you’re making a huge mistake,’ he says. ‘You’ll miss me – you can’t live without me.’
‘I’ll miss you? I can’t live without you?’ I repeat back to him. ‘Oh, yeah, how will I live without a dick-pic-sending, trainer-wearing, hair bomb of a man who thinks it’s a perfectly normal thing to leave his retainer in my drink?’
‘I explained that,’ he replies. ‘Come on. Who will do all the blue jobs, huh?’
Oh, look at him, trying to be cute. Pink and blue jobs were our fun little way of sharing out the household chores in our new flat.
For example, taking the bins out, which I hate doing, we would joke was a blue job, whereas things like cooking and cleaning were pink jobs.
Now that I think about it, basically every other chore was a pink job.
‘Who will take the bins out?’ he says, half joking, as he reaches out to take my hands in his.
I quickly pull back, so he can’t get hold of me.
‘Oh, no, not my bin man,’ I say sarcastically. ‘If the main thing you think I’ll be missing is someone to take the bins out, then I guess I’ll find a different one who knows how to keep his dick in his pants. Now just go, please.’
I can see from the sad look in his eyes and the droop of his shoulders that he knows he’s fighting a losing battle, so he gives up and walks away, looking at his feet like a naughty little kid.
Because of course he gave up without a fight.
But did I want him to fight for me? Not really, because it wouldn’t have worked, but seeing him give up only goes to show how little he cared about me.
He’s right about something though – we do live together and we do work together.
I guess I’ll have to figure out what we do about that but, for now, I just need to exhale, try to calm down, and focus on the positive things.
What positive thing? I hear you ask – the fact that I found out.
Imagine if I hadn’t, if I’d kept living with him, sleeping with him, all while he was up to God knows what behind my back.
The best time to see Ben’s true colours would have been before I moved in with him. The second-best time is today.
And everything else, well, I suppose I’ll figure that out tomorrow. But right now I need a drink.