Reflecting on the past now is like opening the door on a whole new reality, one that was right in front of me and available to me, but one I somehow convinced myself to ignore. So often, I thought I didn’t know what he was up to, but I now realise that I just didn’t want to know. I was actually too afraid to ask for fear of setting him off into a rage or because I might uncover a truth that would topple the house of cards. I soaked up his lies and repeated them to everyone we knew.  

 

According to his truth, and eventually mine, he was always looking for work, or working, or out meeting people who could potentially find him work, and he regularly complained to me about how exhausting it was, how unfair even, when all he really wanted to do was to spend time with his little boy. He would blame the state of the world for denying him this precious time. There were people out there far less skilled than him who were able to find jobs easily. What was it with him? What was it with people? 

 

Well, as it happens, one very particular reason for not being considered for some of the work he was applying for was the fact that some of his employers would check his DBS records - the ones that exposed incidents recorded by the police: cautions, arrests, charges, that sort of thing. He’d been turned down for a job in a local school as a Spanish teaching assistant

a few years back owing to a little matter of domestic abuse. A story which was not even mine to tell first hand!

 

You see, within just a few months of me, a love struck 19-year-old with little worldly experience, moving to London and moving in with him and his parents - they had moved to England a few years before - he started to become distant. While at the house, he would frequently be on his phone in other rooms reading and sending messages, or outside on the mobile speaking to someone. More and more often, he was doing his own thing with new friends who I didn’t know and wasn’t allowed to meet. I wanted to believe that he was doing the best for us both, immersing himself in the culture and the people and putting down roots. Those were words he used. And I trusted him unconditionally. From what I understood, the culture among his friends was fairly machismo and it wouldn’t look right to have me show up for drinks. Maybe an evening at someone’s house, but definitely not “down the pub”. I guess I just accepted that this was the way the world was. I was actually scared of the idea of going into a pub from the way he described it, the stories he would tell. Can you believe that I actually felt grateful for his efforts, appreciated him enduring these evenings out with these loud, drunken men as a way of getting in with the right people so that we could make our way in this new world. 

 

I’d gone to London to be with him, not for the bright lights. There’s no way I would have gone otherwise. In my head, the move seemed like this unreal, romantic adventure. He’d told me months and months before that his own move was proving to be the making of him: a new place, new friends, well-paid work opportunities. He talked of making it big in London. He wanted me to be there with him and I wanted to support him. I wanted to be there for it all. This was that young girl’s dream.

 

When I eventually arrived in London to stay for good, he was working for a removals company, but that job soon fizzled out. Problems with the owner who Richie complained was treating him disrespectfully. I had secured a transfer to the London offices of the Spanish marketing agency with whom I’d been working in Madrid, so I knew I’d be OK, but it was a junior position with a salary to match.  I certainly couldn’t support the two of us in our quest to move away from his parents’ house and into a place of our own. But following a chance conversation with the sister of a friend of mine, I was able to get him some shifts in a Spanish restaurant in Camden. As he was a keen cook, they even offered him a few trial shifts as a sous chef alongside his regular shifts working behind the bar, and though the work wasn’t quite full time, it would do for now. I was pleased for him when he started to work longer hours and take on extra shifts in the kitchen. A couple of times, he’d stayed late helping to close and cash up and missed the last train back so had slept on the sofa of one of the other staff and returned in the morning rather than waste money on a cab. Or at least that was what he told me. 

 

It was around this time that he’d started to become distant. I tried to rationalise and put it down to the long hours and the lack of consistency with regard to the weekly shifts he would get. I also started questioning myself and whether I needed to do more to support him, to make him feel special. Maybe I’d been neglecting him?

 

One weekend his cousin, Gabriella, and her boyfriend, Simon, came to stay. They’d arrived on the Thursday evening and he’d taken them out sightseeing for the day on the Friday. On Friday evening, the boys went out for a drink and I stayed in with Gabriella, his cousin. I was pleased to have the opportunity to talk to another woman about how I was feeling and told Gabriella about the difficulties I was having with Richie being distant and constantly distracted with messages on his phone and the frequent trips outside to take calls. I knew I was just overthinking things and I told her of my plan to get my hair and nails done during the day on Saturday and to wear a really pretty dress I’d bought before leaving for London, but hadn’t yet had the occasion to wear, for when we all went out to a restaurant I’d booked for the Saturday evening. I was going to inject a bit of life back into the relationship I told her. I was determined to do so. I was hoping that she would privately have a word with Richie, but I didn’t quite get the encouraging reaction I’d hoped from Gabriella, but put that down to her being a little exhausted from all the sightseeing, and thought nothing more of it.

 

Saturday went as planned, I was excited to be getting made up and dressed up for the evening at the restaurant and we had a really fun evening. Only, when we got back home, Richie seemed keen to avoid my advances and eventually stayed up drinking with Simon until the early hours. I tried to stay awake for when he eventually came to bed, but I’d drifted off before that. 

 

The following morning felt a little awkward for some reason. I made coffee and a large omelette for everyone and tried to initiate conversation, but they all  seemed subdued. Presumably they had heavy heads from the evening’s alcohol intake. A little later that morning, Richie drove them in his parents’ car to get a train and said he would be back briefly before his shift at the restaurant.

 

I couldn’t quite place my feeling of malaise as I cleared away the plates and cups and began washing the dishes. I put it down to my period coming on which I knew was due.

 

But when Richie arrived home, his face had a look of purpose about it and I was a little taken aback when he told me he needed to tell me something important. He sat me down at the kitchen table and, without delay, told me that he’d met someone else and that he was in love with her. She worked at the restaurant. He said he still loved me and couldn’t quite explain what was going on in his head, but that he needed to be with this girl. He was sorry, he said, and I realised at that moment that that was the first time I’d ever heard him say those words. Not just to me, but to anyone. I fixated on those words as I let the reality of the situation flush over me. 

 

What? Did I hear right? What was happening? What was he telling me? Was he leaving me? I wasn’t too sure. Did he just say he still loved me? But that there was someone else? 

 

My world stopped. 

 

“Look, I’ll be back tomorrow in the morning and we can talk about what we’re going to do then. I’ve got to go to work now”. He left the room and the house.

 

The sound of the door closing, that click of the latch slipping calmly and neatly into place as the momentum of the solid front door took it past the point of no return, a sound I so often found soothing and satisfying, now felt somehow final and fatal. I sank to my knees, then slumped to the stone floor, and began sobbing uncontrollably. 

 

He didn’t return for four days. I was heartbroken. I cried myself to sleep night after night. When he did return it was simply to pack some bags and head out once more, stopping only briefly to say that he had to go and that if it was any consolation, he still had feelings for me, still loved me in fact, but couldn’t be with me, as if it were out of his hands. Ridiculously, I believed him when he told me this, and in the ensuing days those words were all I thought about. I felt like I just needed to wait it out, wait for him to come to his senses.