This week, I flew back briefly from LA to London to
attend the launch of women-scorned.co.uk was at the Ritz. This is just one of
many things to feature on the site.
My mother knew
I was drunk because I was arguing with the Dyson.
It was Boxing
Day 1999 and I was clearing up after guests had departed but bemoaning the fact
that I would be spending Millennium Eve without my boyfriend of seven months.
On December
10th, it had all ended when I discovered he had been unfaithful.
I had, however,
always doubted Ian's commitment, not least because he never unpacked his
rucksack. Although we were not living together, he spent a lot of time at my
place in central London, and the rucksack took up residence in my wardrobe,
stuffed with papers, railway tickets and bills dating back years. When Ian
finished his morning wash and shave, the foams and potions would be returned to
the rucksack and tied up. That doubt about commitment intensified during what
was to be the last month of the relationship, because Ian's behaviour changed
dramatically. One night, we were in Hung's, a Chinese restaurant in London’s
Wardour Street in Soho, and he said: "I don't think we've got a
future."
I hadn't even
rolled my first duck pancake. He had said the same
thing one morning after our first two months together, too, only on that
occasion I didn't have a duck pancake for comfort. He then telephoned me at
four in the afternoon, crying and saying he was sorry. This time, in Hung’s, it
sounded more sinister. When we left the
restaurant and reached Brewer Street, he pushed
me against the wall and said “F*** off, you know
where you live."
"Ian?"
I said, mystified at the transformation.
"F*** OFF! YOU KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!"
Something's not
quite right here, I thought. I could be
perceptive like that. Then he started coming
in later and
later until, on the night of 8th December,
he didn't come in at all. I waited until
mid-day and
rang him at work, an office in Golden Square
that he shared with his business partner.
"Where
were you last night?"
"I stayed
with a friend."
"Which
one?"
"My
singing friend."
"Your
female singing friend?"
I had first
heard of the singing friend when we were on a
luxury holiday in Aix en Provence (paid for
by me), shortly after I had extended my overdraft to
put money into Ian’s French bank account to keep it in credit. She rang him on his mobile, shortly
before I walked in the square, failed to
notice the pavement rising in the middle,
and fell flat on my face on the other side.
Three Frenchmen had rushed to my aid, followed a long way behind by Ian, who
put an arm round me and said: "Aah.
I've never seen you hurt before."
He sounded
disappointed and smiled, as if in the hope
of more, possibly life-threatening injuries to
come. Now, he was non-committal. "Umm."
"I think
we need to talk."
I said that we
needed to talk, because that was what they
always said in EastEnders and, being a
television
critic and writing a soap column, I learned about
the language of relationships mostly second hand.
I continued our conversation in soap language of the
"We need to talk right now, so will you come to a
totally inappropriate public place where you can
humiliate me and everyone will be able to see me cry" variety, and, within half an hour he was at the Groucho
Club.
"So, your
singing friend. Did you sleep with her?"
"No, of
course not."
"You've
been totally faithful to me since I met your
parents at Cambridge?" - the time we had always
said our relationship started "properly".
Ian looked me straight in the eye
and did not blink: "Yes."
I knew he had
something to hide because he wasn't blinking.
Months previous, I had told him that I knew he
was lying because he was blinking; but now his trying
not to blink in order not to give himself away was
even more of a giveaway than his blinking had been.
"I think
you're lying. Can you look me straight in the
eye and tell me that you have not been unfaithful to
me?"
He
didn't blink. "All right, I tried to sleep with
her but she said no and I slept the night on the
sofa."
"What colour
was it?"
"Brown."
I wasn't sure
whether I was supposed to feel better, and
when he left, I rang my mother, sobbing,
and related the
story.
She was, as
ever, where her children's feelings are concerned,
fair: "Get him out of the flat now."
And so it was,
two days later, I sat with Ian in Soho
Pizzeria in Beak Street, having ignored my
mother's
advice, still believing that there was hope for the relationship.
I had a vegetarian pizza with chillies;
Ian had something with a runny egg on top.
Whatever pizza he chose, he always asked for
a runny egg on top. Suddenly, I hated his rusk
mentality. I half expected him to ask for
the pizza to be cut into soldiers. Neither
of us spoke. Then:
"I know
there's something wrong," I said. "Have you
met someone else?"
"No."
Several blinks, followed by a sustained period
of unblinking.
"I think
you have."
Blinking that fanned the air and nearly lifted the hair
from my scalp.
"You have,
haven't you?"
He
nodded. "She's a nurse . . . She's in Boston at
the moment."
"I don't
give a damn (well, it was a bit stronger than that) where she is. Where did you
meet her?" "In a pub."
"How old
is she?"
"She's
older than you," he said, as if this would, with
my having just completed my 40th year, been of some comfort.
"Have you
slept with her?"
"Yes."
Yes. There it
was. The admittance. The evidence. The confirmation.
I took one look at his ginger hair, stood up
and, taking my coat from the back of the chair,
said: "I'm not going to cry. I'm going to Bath (where I was living)
tomorrow and I want your stuff out of the flat over
the weekend." And I left. Dignified. Assured. In some part of me, relieved: that I was not mad, even
though the unfaithful creep had made me feel
I was.
I walked along
Beak Street, the pain in my chest strong, my
breathing short, but holding back the
tears. I
started to make my way back to the flat, but after
five minutes turned around and walked back an into the restaurant.
"HOW COULD
YOU DO THIS TO ME, YOU B******?" I cried.
Ian was still sitting there; so were both pizzas.
"Is she
funny?"
"No."
"Is she
intelligent?"
"Yes, Bonnie's
very intelligent."
"Bonnie?
Bonnie the nurse from Boston?" I started to
laugh hysterically. "Bonnie the unfunny nurse from
Boston, who you sleep with after one meeting in a pub?"
I left again. I
came back once again. "BONNIE!" Then
I left and never saw him again. Back at home, I piled
all his stuff into the middle of the room and left a note. I told him I didn't
deserve this
treatment and
that I expected repayment of the money (now well
in excess of £3,000) that he owed me. When I returned
to London on Monday morning, the flat was empty
of his stuff. The only memory was an egg-cup in the shape of a sheep I bought
him in Aix en Provence. I sat on the floor
and used my fists to try to beat the pain in my stomach that was the absence of
him.
The truth is,
he was never right for me, and I knew it. Shortly after I met him, I told a
friend: “He’s not that attractive, he’s overweight, short, he has ginger hair,
he’s boring, he doesn’t make me laugh and the sex is crap.”
“Then dump
him,” said my friend, Simon.
“But he’s 37
and single.”
“But it doesn’t
mean he’s the right 37 and single.”
It didn’t. And
he wasn’t. But that still didn’t stop it hurting.
I never made
the same mistake again. I made different mistakes.
Because that’s
what we do.
Women united!
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