People talk about the value of truth all the time. The importance of it. They pursue it as though it is the elixir of eternal youth, as important as life itself. It is not. It’s just not. Often the truth is brutal, which is why most of us avoid telling it most of the time. I have regularly been more frightened by the truth than by a lie. A lie, undiscovered, keeps people safe. A lie can be quiet, non-violent.
You want the truth?
I could not walk away from him.
Every time my phone buzzed to say a message or email had arrived it was as though he had tugged on the rope that bound us. Pulled me back to him. Every moral code I had ever lived by told me not to reply and respond. Yet I did. Rational thought insisted I simply stop visiting his flat, stop agreeing to his dates and yet I didn’t. And instincts that normally facilitate my self-preservation demanded that I did not turn up at the register office; yet, something bigger overrode all that. Longing? Lust? Love? I don’t know. I just couldn’t stop myself.
I am addicted to him.
‘I didn’t plan to go through with the second wedding,’ I admit carefully. Even as I let Daan push his engagement ring onto my finger, I thought it was impossible, a game. A sick game, I suppose, but one I was somehow compelled to play, unable to quit. ‘I thought we might row and break up.’ We did sometimes row, but only as a precursor to a passionate making-up, we would bounce back together, iron filings clasped to a magnet. ‘I thought I could disappear before the wedding. Ghosting is cowardly, I know. Cruel. But I thought it was all I had the strength to try.’
I knew Daan wouldn’t be able to find me, to track me. I could disappear from his world, he would never be able to track down Kai Gillingham. There was no paper trail under that name. And he would never have been able to track down Leigh Fletcher, he didn’t know she existed. ‘Every day I woke up knowing I had to pull out, sooner or later, I had to call it off.’ I had to disappear back to my old life, my real life. I had got carried away, what I wanted was impossible. But God, how I wanted the impossible. I wanted them both.
Yet, at the same time I wanted it to stop. More contradictions. More paradoxes.
I didn’t know how to make it stop. I just could not walk away from him and know he was in the world, continuing. Seeing other women, speaking to them, favouring them, kissing them, fucking them, maybe ultimately even loving them. I couldn’t bear to think of that. I guess that was selfish of me. Well, it was, I know, but it was hard enough thinking about the life he’d had before me. The women he’d had before me. I couldn’t stand for there to be anyone after me. I just couldn’t give him up. Besides, then he got a job in the UK. He did so much to be with me. I didn’t know how to get myself out of it.
Daan keeps me busy and amused. He always has a bunch of ideas about what we could do, how we can spend our time. It stopped me thinking. I did things with Daan that I’d never have done with Mark. I don’t mean in bed, both men got fairly equal attention there. Or at least, both men got what they wanted there. I mean, I have had different experiences with Daan. I’ve been places, heard stories, met people, seen countries that were beyond Mark’s and my reach, or even imagination. Daan and I are a busy couple. Always occupied. It’s tricky to pin us down for a dinner or theatre date. Our schedules are booked up for weeks in advance. Maybe, if Daan’s personality type was closer to Mark’s, I might have had more time to think about what I was doing. To regret it. As it is I have been too busy for regrets. Being busy is a lot like being fulfilled.
Daan wanted a big wedding too, but his vision was nothing like Mark’s. It was impossible not to compare. Daan didn’t want a marquee in the garden, kids running around, wildflowers in jam jars, he wanted something sophisticated, oozing London chic. He had a number of friends who had married a year or so before we got engaged; the wives in those fresh couples rushed to give us recommendations on the hippest venues, the most sought-after florists, dress designers and pastry makers. Daan’s friends are all extremely stylish, they are the beautiful people that run the sort of Instagram accounts that terrify the rest of us. However, they were friendly enough with me from the off, they seemed delighted that Daan had finally found someone he wanted to marry. There is no doubt in my mind that before me, he’d been what my mother would call ‘quite a womaniser’, he’d never been in a relationship longer than six months. Daan’s friends gave me the impression that, before we met, he was the sort that bobbed and weaved in and out of many lives, avoiding the punches, leaving nothing worthwhile behind. He never wanted to be tied. He didn’t like to make plans that reached forward into the future, a future he wasn’t prepared to gift to anyone. But, by the time we met, that must have been quite exhausting for him and frustrating for his friends. Not to mention heartbreaking for all the women who had fallen in love with him and yearned for more. His intrinsic independence meant he didn’t want to be caught. I suppose that is why my repeated absences worked for him. He also didn’t want children.
