Chapter 6 #2
I’d never thought of it like that. Clearing the air is something we always do with others, isn’t it?
But she’s right, in a way– maybe it’s more important we do it with ourselves.
Face up to our fears, forgive ourselves for the things we are ashamed of.
Allow ourselves the same space and kindness as we allow others.
Sitting here, in this cosy room, with this ageless woman, it makes sense.
Going against a lifetime of self-conditioning, I decide to talk to someone about it all.
I nod abruptly and gulp down way too much Calvados at once.
I almost choke, and that wouldn’t be a bad way to go– killed by strong French liquor.
‘Um, well, there’s not that much to tell,’ I say slowly, trying to form my thoughts into an orderly queue.
‘His name was Martin. We met in the park, and he was walking his dog. I always trust people with dogs, but I later found out it wasn’t even his…
He was walking it for his boss. He didn’t tell me that.
I suppose maybe that was the first clue– fake dog ownership. ’
‘Definitely a red flag. Go on.’
‘Well, it was a cute dog, and we got chatting and he seemed very nice. Good-looking, but in an approachable way, you know. He told me he was a freelance web designer, divorced, in his early fifties. The only true part of any of that was his age. The rest was all made up. I still haven’t figured out why he’d go for those things, if he was going to lie.
I mean, why not say he was a retired astronaut or a Nobel prize winning poet or something? ’
‘I suppose,’ Cherie responds, frowning as she thinks about it, ‘that maybe you wouldn’t have believed him? Sounds like he was trying to be an everyman kind of guy?’
I nod. She’s probably right. I don’t like talking about this at all, but I notice that it is easier than I expected it to be.
‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, we started seeing each other. I’d been single for a very long time, and I suppose maybe I was a little lonely…
or maybe it’s just that I thought I should, you know, be with somebody.
It was nice, having a person to do things with, go out for dinners, go to galleries, meet up for coffees.
It was maybe a month or so into it that I started to notice a few strange things about him, stuff that didn’t add up.
Like he could never do Saturdays, which is odd when you’re a freelance web designer, isn’t it?
And that I could never go to his place, because it was being redecorated…
for a whole month. It’s not like I was ready for marriage or whatever, but I suppose I was ready to be more intimate. To see what would happen next.’
His face is still so vivid in my mind– brown eyes that at first I thought were kind. An easy smile. The way all of that kindness and ease could disappear in the blink of a brown eye, and turn to contempt. It was like he had two faces, and they were the complete opposites of each other.
‘What did happen?’ Cherie asks, grabbing the bottle and topping up my drink.
‘Nothing dramatic, nothing sudden. But I suppose I kept asking questions, and was getting increasingly confused by the answers. I had the opportunity to go on a work trip to Lisbon for a week, to meet my publishers there, and I asked him if he wanted to come. He said his passport was out of date, which again seemed odd. I asked him if he wanted to meet my twin sister, and he always cancelled– or sometimes found a way to make me cancel. Like not only didn’t he want to meet her, he also didn’t want me to see her either.
‘Then a few things happened that made me even more concerned… like messages disappearing from my phone, and people later asking me why I hadn’t replied; my old address book going missing.
Entries on my calendar being deleted. The doorman in my building greeting him like an old friend, even though as far as I knew, they’d only met a few times.
He was… creeping into my life, and very subtly trying to take it over.
It was happening so slowly I could almost convince myself I was imagining it. ’
Cherie makes a snorting noise, and shakes her head. ‘That’s what they do, isn’t it? Men like that? Make you think you’re going mad? I bet every time you talked to him about it, he looked all sad, like you’d hurt his precious feelings by daring to doubt him?’
‘Exactly that! Later, I asked the doorman, and he said he’d been around quite a bit.
He’d obviously somehow made a copy of my key and was letting himself in on days I wasn’t at home.
Which he knew because he’d also been rummaging around in my phone, and by extension, my life.
Amazing how much we put on those things. I don’t anymore.’
‘Luckily, I barely know how to use mine,’ she answers, grimacing. ‘WhatsApp is the outer limit of my ability. But I know what you mean; it’s like your whole brain is downloaded into your phone these days.’
‘Absolutely, and it’s not good,’ I reply firmly.
‘It’s bad enough if you just lose it, never mind have it invaded.
Anyway. This dragged on for maybe another month, with me getting more and more paranoid, him getting more and more controlling.
Every time I got to the stage where I just wanted to end it, he somehow pulled it back.
There would be some grand romantic gesture, a night in a swish hotel, my favourite flowers, whatever.
He had some kind of sixth sense for when I was about to end it.
I felt like I couldn’t end it, like I was trapped.
Looking back, I’m so angry with myself.’
‘I don’t see why you should be,’ Cherie replies. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were just being a human. He was being a monster. How did it all work out? Obviously, not well, from the fact that you’ve moved hundreds of miles away.’
‘I didn’t just move because of him, Cherie.
I was ready for something new anyway, and I’ve always wanted to live by the sea.
But I can’t deny getting away from him was a real bonus– even though I still think about him way too often for my liking.
Eventually, I did something totally out of character– I hired a private investigator.
The way I saw it, either something was wrong, and I needed to know, or I was indeed just being paranoid and potentially ruining a good relationship with my own insecurities. Like he constantly told me I was.’
I had all kinds of pre-conceived ideas about what a P.I.
would be like, most of which turned out to be completely untrue.
For a start, mine was a woman in her thirties, fit and healthy and without any apparent tendencies towards alcoholism, depression, or wearing rumpled trench coats.
She listened to what I had to say and nodded in a way that seemed to imply she’d heard this kind of story a few times before.
She took some details and asked me what I was hoping to get out of this.
The truth, I said, no matter how boring or how ugly. Just the truth.
It didn’t actually take very long for it all to unravel.
I told her when he’d be at mine, and one morning she followed him when he left.
Cheryl, the P.I. is a very ordinary-looking lady, neither too big or too small or too pretty or too fashionable.
Not noticeable in any way at all. I’m guessing that must be an asset in her line of work.
She certainly seemed to have no problem trailing ‘Martin’ all the way back to a three-bedroomed semi- detached house in Wembley.
Once she had that address, she was easily able to discover the rest.
I explain some of this to Cherie, who shakes her head in astonishment.
His real name was Scott Jones and he actually worked in HR for an IT firm.
He was married, not divorced, and had three children– one of whom played tennis at county level, and who he had to take to matches most Saturdays.
He did not own a dog, or in fact even a cat.
Everything he had told me was a complete fabrication.
A little more digging by Cheryl revealed that his marriage wasn’t exactly on steady ground, and that the police had been called to the property on several occasions to deal with domestic disputes.
He had no criminal record, but her contact in the police force confided that they suspected there was more to him than met the eye.
I was horrified on so many levels. I felt like an idiot, for being taken in so easily.
I felt like a gullible, desperate fool, one so keen to find a man that she would fall for a pack of lies.
And I felt like a vile, morally bankrupt piece of trash for having slept with another woman’s husband.
No matter how many times I told myself that I hadn’t known he was married, I still felt dirty and soiled by it.
I would never, ever do that, not in a million years.
It’s one of the many things I will never forgive him for: making me break a deeply held rule, something that I was especially sensitive about since my husband was unfaithful to me.
While listening to Cheryl calmly present her report, I managed to hold myself together, at least on the surface. Inside, I was a mass of emotions– bitterness, self-pity, disappointment, fury, and good old-fashioned anxiety.
‘I’d change all your locks, your passwords, your phone number, and get all of your IT devices professionally checked if I were you,’ Cheryl had said, all business.
‘We can’t be sure what his motivation was, and you’ve said that there’s been no financial intrusion, but that doesn’t mean we can rule it out.
You also need to consider whether to file a police report or not.
The issue is, lying to a woman isn’t actually a crime– although personally I think it bloody well should be! ’