The Betrayal
A guest post by Ariane Sherine
I’m having a break this week as I’m on holiday - I’m going to Rome for 48 hours, because I need my head examining - so I’ve brought in my old mucker Ariane Sherine to write a guest post for us this week. It’s a raw and unfiltered take on a break-up; plangent autumnal melancholy will be back next week.
The Betrayal: A true story
How a beautiful relationship ended up in ruins
We meet on Twitter, exchanging friendly, kind messages in that cesspit of hate and toxicity. We are divorced single parents with pre-teen children. We have both been burnt by our marriages; we are both excited by the future.
You confide your regrets: that you left school early; that you didn’t become a writer.
I confide my regrets: that I am unsuccessful and that, generally, writing means poverty.
I am worried about dating you, because I am obese and self-conscious about my body. You reassure me, saying you can’t imagine not finding me attractive.
You tell me I am extraordinary, and suggest a venue for our first date: under the clock at Waterloo Station, then coffee at the South Bank.
Lipsticked and full of nerves, I meet you at 2pm; you are clutching a bouquet of pink poppies wrapped in colourful paper. My family nickname is Poppy, but I haven’t told you. I am thrilled by the coincidence.
You are handsome, respectful and considerate. You kiss my mouth, hold my hand, buy me coffee. I explain that I’m not earning, but that I hope this will change.
We walk along the Thames, hand in hand. I ask you, if I fell in the river, whether you’d jump in and save me.
“I doubt it,” you say. “I can’t swim!”
We smile, and you squeeze my hand.
On our next few dates, we see a subtitled Korean film at an indie cinema, sit in an artisan coffee shop, visit the Tate Modern. There is so much warmth, so much laughter, so much generosity between us.
Before we make love for the first time, you tell me an intimate secret, full of shame. I reply that it doesn’t matter, that you are enough.
And that is the truth, or near enough.
After, we lie sprawled, limbs entwined, drunk on endearments. You murmur that you love me, and I wonder if it is even possible for me to be loved.
I say it back, and mean it.
The crinkled bedsheet has come loose; you casually say you hate flat sheets. I purchase fitted sheets, yet can’t prise their tautness over the stubborn corners.
You get up at 2am for work at the market, when it is silent and pitch black outside, and wake me by kissing me goodbye. I welcome this, though the intrusion into my sleep leaves me foggy the next day.
In the mornings, I wake to find vibrant Pantone postcards on the kitchen counter, each a different colour, all full of sweet promises, which you later whisper into my mouth as we kiss.
You reply to my messages instantly: two quick blue ticks, ‘typing…’, a blissful notification that you have answered. You are so attentive, so complimentary.
The house fills with your possessions. You bring me more cut flowers, cheerful pink hydrangeas. They brighten the kitchen, just as you brighten my life. When the delicate petals wilt, I replace them with a near-identical fake bouquet.
I decide I should give up writing, and do a skilled manual job to become more like you: that I should become the female equivalent. I purchase a course which will see me qualify as a nail technician. I buy endless nail polishes, in the same rich colours as your postcards.
On Mother’s Day, you secretly pass my eleven-year-old daughter an expensive Tom Dixon candle and Aesop hand wash to gift to me. I thank her. She smiles, and doesn’t reveal that you bought them.
Three weeks after we meet, you move in, filling our house with your designer clothes. An unremarkable blue shirt has a tag for £175 attached.
You offer to pay me rent. I tell you not to worry, and ask you to buy groceries instead. You get most of your groceries free from work.
I buy six cupboards for your shoes and belongings, and arty pictures for our bedroom wall, one of which says ‘LOVE’.
We visit IKEA, and jointly purchase a large wardrobe with brass handles, where I shall hang your garments neatly and tenderly.
You take me to an industrial-style coffee shop in Shoreditch and buy me lunch.
As we wait for the Tube train home, I realise in alarm that I desperately need the loo. We sprint out of the station hand in hand, to a nearby pub where you buy an espresso. I only just make it to the bathroom before I defecate uncontrollably.
Back at the pub table, I shudder and fret that, if I hadn't reached the toilet in time, it would have destroyed our romance.
You say it honestly wouldn't have mattered.
For my beloved daughter’s birthday, you pay for us to go on the London Eye, and we gaze out at the stunning cityscape. I am scared the capsule will fall into the Thames, but I am with the two people I love most in the world; if anything were to happen to them, I wouldn’t want to live anyway.
You take the week off for my birthday. You say you will take me shopping to choose my present. It has to be something I will love, which only I can select.
My female friends tell me it’s bound to be an engagement ring.
On one occasion, after sex, I bleed a lot, and it is not my period. You hold me as I cry from fear. You stroke my hair and tell me that we’re together now, and that you won’t let anything bad happen to me. You promise to visit the doctor with me.
The bleeding stops and doesn’t recur.
You have planned a two-day trip to Paris for us, to celebrate my turning 43. It will be a trip full of romance: we ask Twitter for Parisian recommendations for a couple in love.
I meet your children, who are delightful. You beam with pride and gratitude that I could love them as my own.
We visit your mother, who does not like immigrants, even second-generation. I lean in to hug her. For her part, she extends a frosty white hand for me to shake in my warm brown palm.
You joke later, “Mum, she’s my girlfriend, not your bank manager!” But you don’t say this to her.
Your mother is looking after your ex-wife’s cat, a tiny friendly black-and-white kitten. You dislike the kitten intensely, and I wonder how it is possible to dislike a kitten.
Slender and hungry, it jumps up onto the kitchen counter, searching for food. You seize it angrily and hurl it to the floor.
On the way home, in the car, I say, “I saw a side of you I didn’t like today.”
You reply, “I never claimed to be perfect.”
Your voice is dull as you say it.
I glimpse, fleetingly, that you have searched for ‘Tiffany Leiddi’ on your phone. Excited, I wonder if this is a style of Tiffany engagement ring, so I search the name.
I discover that Tiffany Leiddi is a French porn model, a slim naked blonde with a perfect body. Your ex-wife was French too. When I accuse you, you tell me your male colleagues stole your phone and ogled her. I try to believe you, although your phone has a pass code.
I grow jealous and insecure. I push you away, then pull you back. I don’t even like it when you share posts on Twitter by pretty women.
I know I am destroying us.
For Father’s Day, I spend £150 I do not have on a Reiss jumper and aftershave for you, and ask your mother, who does not like me, to ask the children to give you the presents.
You say your mother doesn’t dislike me, exactly; she said she couldn’t make a judgement, as she doesn’t know me.
I say she could know me if she were to show the slightest interest in me, and actually ask me questions.
You say, reasonably, that you cannot help what your mother does or doesn’t do.
I resent being woken at 2am, and feeling bleary throughout the next day, though now it's your alarm that wakes me, not your kisses. I resent your ugly belongings cluttering my stylish house. I resent your clothes filling up the wardrobe, displacing some of mine, now inaccessible in the loft.
I begin training as a nail technician, and realise too late that I’m appalling at it. I superglue my finger to another woman’s nail extension. I quit the course.
During an argument, you tell me my birthday present was going to be an engagement ring, and you were planning to propose to me. I tell you that, if you had, I would have accepted.
You don’t give me flowers on my birthday, just a cheap coffee maker, a picture frame and an opaque vase. Your birthday card to me features a cartoon penis, and says, ‘Have a Willy Great Birthday.’
You take us to Caffe Concerto for lunch, and complain about the prices. I am still not earning, but offer to pay for my own birthday drinks; you accept.
We visit Paris. You have paid for the trip in vouchers and points: we have cattle-class Eurostar seats, then a tatty room in a two-star budget hotel, with broken aircon.
The sliding door between the bathroom and bedroom is so thin that we can hear every noise, every squelch and splash the other makes.
We traipse through the City of Romance. You do not hold my hand, nor do you kiss me. We visit the Pont des Arts, where lovers have padlocked hearts with their names on to the railings; and the Wall of Love, with ‘I love you’ written in 250 different languages.
You do not say “Je t’aime”.
I chatter to fill the chasm between us. You do not listen. You ignore me, interrupt me, meet my observations with silence.
There is no marriage proposal. If there were, I would not accept.
We trudge down Montmartre, view the Sacré-Cœur listlessly, eat crêpes as we stare at the table.
Paris is, most likely, the most beautiful city in the world. I cannot wait to return home.
My WhatsApp messages take hours to turn blue. Sometimes you take hours to reply.
As I wait for your messages, I sell all the nail polishes on Facebook.
I tell you that you interrupt me. You shrug.
I tell you that you don’t respond to my jokes. You say, “I’m sorry, I don’t find all your jokes funny.”
We eat dinner in silence at the kitchen table. I turn to you, and say, “I’m worried you don’t love me anymore.”
You shout, “How DARE you?!”
You do not say you love me.
I ask you to pack up your clothes and leave my house. We both begin crying, for dreams which will remain unrealised.
You have too many clothes to take and will need to return for the rest.
Two days later, you return in an icy fury.
“How are you?” I make the mistake of asking.
“How do you think I am?” you demand. “Everybody at work kept asking, ‘How was your holiday, how was your holiday?’ And I had to tell them that you’d dumped me!”
You ask for your money back for the wardrobe. I tell you I have no money left. You say that’s not your problem.
I point out that you haven’t paid rent. You say that doesn’t matter, that you want your money back.
I hurl your fancy clothes out of the house, onto the ground in the porch, and yell, “Damn you to hell!” as I slam the door in your face.
You accidentally leave possessions behind: coffee filters, a t-shirt, a pair of socks. I post them back to you at your mother’s house, scrawling a note on the blackest Pantone postcard.
I tell others your intimate secret.
Then I feel like a terrible person. The guilt has hurt me more than the reveal has hurt you, because you aren’t aware of my betrayal.
Now I sit here alone, among the hydrangeas, the candle and the vase, wishing you still loved me.
 | A guest post by
|