I’d suspected it almost as soon as we’d got back to England, I guess. Because to say that Ant was difficult to live with would be a whole new crazy kind of understatement.
He complained, constantly, about everything. He’d kick off about my shoes in the middle of the room, or my handbag on the table. He’d complain about a coat on a chair back or a saucepan in the sink. He liked his dinner between six thirty and seven, and serving up at seven fifteen was enough to put him into a sulk for the entire evening.
My coping strategy, to begin with, had been to lie to myself. The flat was much too small, I admitted. We were, it was true, on top of each other.
I’d invested so much in the relationship already that, like an old car you just keep throwing money at, I continued to invest everything in Ant.
Just like a car, I would fix him, I decided. Hadn’t it been Ant himself who had said anything is possible, as long as you’re determined enough?
So, for a while, fixing Ant became my project. I’ve always been a bit obsessive, throwing myself into this thing or that, and now my obsession was making Ant whole again.
I managed to avoid getting angry when he was being difficult (read: being an asshole) by telling myself I was gathering data for my project. I needed to work out what had made him the way he was, and then I’d study it and find a cure. But staying calm was getting harder as time went by.
I didn’t like the way he treated me, and I didn’t much like the way he treated Ben. He was always pretty good with the girls, it has to be said, and when he was with them I’d kid myself that I’d got him all wrong. But then we’d go to a restaurant and he’d be rude to the waiter, or we’d be shopping and he’d insult the cashier. Of all of Ant’s quirks and foibles, which were many, I think that kind of embarrassment on his behalf, in public, was probably the hardest to bear.
After all, if someone’s rude to you personally, there’s a discussion to be had about just whose fault that might be. Maybe, just maybe, you’re the one at fault. And if you witness your partner being rude to a friend or a colleague, then there’s always the question of history. Because who knows what that person did to your beloved, a few days or even years ago? Who knows why your boyfriend has chosen to get his own back now?
But when you witness someone being mean to an absolute stranger, well, it’s really hard to ignore. Because the only thing that kind of behaviour reveals is the nature of the person being mean. And as I’m not Heather – as, unlike Heather, I’ve never been anybody’s doormat – we began to argue. And once we started arguing, we also stopped having sex.
Even then, I’d convince myself that our biggest problem was living in that flat. If we just had more space, then everything, just maybe, would be different.
But things got no better once we moved into the three-bedroom unit – in fact, if anything, they got worse. The flat needed to be sold soon, Ant reminded me. Not only was the place not ours, but it needed to be kept spotless for its new owners, who would only too soon be moving in.
When I looked around for the causes of Ant’s personality disorder, my gaze settled quite naturally on his mother. Because a sadder character I have never met. Just a few minutes in Marge’s presence was enough to make anyone feel depressed, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine how he’d coped growing up.
If you’ve ever seen the cult movie Barbarella, you may remember that, in it, the city is built on an evil sea of green slime called the Matmos. The defining characteristic of the Matmos, as I recall, is that it absorbs positive thoughts and replaces them with negative ones.
When I told Marge that I was a yoga teacher, she said, ‘Gosh, that’s got to be a hard job to do as you get older, hasn’t it? Do you think you’ll be able to carry on?’ If you pointed to a cute kid while you were out with her, she’d say, ‘It’s such a shame we ladies have the menopause, isn’t it? Otherwise you and Ant could still have kids.’ If you made Marge a lemon meringue pie, she’d say, ‘Now, my mother used to make an incredible lemon meringue pie. Far better than anything I’ve ever tasted since. People really used to know how to cook in the old days.’
So in my mind, I started calling her The Matmos. Because if there was one thing Marge knew how to do, it was to replace positive thoughts with negative ones. And if The Matmos had damaged my boyfriend, and she indisputably had, then all I had to do was find an antidote.
But Ant did not want to be saved. As utterly broken as he was, what saved him – the defining characteristic that enabled him to continue to function in life – was his belief that he wasn’t broken at all.
Actually, Ant’s armour was even thicker than that. He didn’t just think that he wasn’t broken, he believed that he was the only person who wasn’t. Ant knew best about everything; he was perfect in every way. And anyone who disagreed with him, about anything, ever, was just plain wrong.
Once I’d worked this out, I didn’t hate him so much. If anything, I felt compassion. I could see, suddenly, how fragile his ego was. I totally got how merely admitting that others could teach him something new – admitting he didn’t know best about everything – would bring the whole edifice
