Dear Helen – younger, thinner (who knew my husband would be such a midlife crisis cliché?) Helen,
Earlier this year you slept with my husband. After your chats in the bar you knew I existed and that we had children but you didn’t care!
Until that moment Simon had only ever slept with me and our wedding vows were unbroken. Does that mean anything to you? Because it did to me! I had loved him since I was twenty-one and he was so very important to me. Not always a great husband, not always a great daddy, not always perfect but MINE! My best friend, my husband, my forever. For almost half our lives we had been together; it had always been just the two of us – our dreams, our family and our future.
I hope sleeping with him was worth it because in that moment, in that drunken, selfish moment, the first time you did it, you knew about me and yet you didn’t care. How nasty do you have to be? How narcissistic to think only of your gratification? To sleep with someone – not yours – and not care about my life, my family, my beautiful girls! Almost half our lives spent together, fifteen years, all gone just to have sex, all thrown away so easily. All meaning nothing for the pleasure of cumming!
And after that first night the two of you concocted your lies together, extending his trip to Washington – how clever you must have felt! How easy for you both it all was – just lie to me, I’m worthless, who cares about me? I am so stupid, so trusting, so unsuspecting. Who cares if I am left home, alone, to do EVERYTHING?!!!!! I’ll cope, I’ll get on – it’s what I do!
Did you enjoy your week with my husband? Sleeping with him again and again, holding him, kissing him, touching him, waking up with him? I hope it was truly worth it! And how truly nasty do you have to be to keep speaking to him, to text him, to call him after – once he was home – all the time knowing I was here and we had a life together?
I didn’t know it then of course but the countdown was on. It took me – stupid, loving, trusting me – a few weeks to realise, to put it all together, before I managed to actually catch him in our bed reading your text! To see it all so plainly, spelt out for me in your horrible I-love-and-miss-you-babe casual, uncaring, unthinking, selfish, stomach-churning text!
Nothing will ever be the same again. You broke my heart and destroyed my love and trust. You shattered our lives together. I hope it was worth it because now, months on, I still don’t know how to live with it. I think about it every hour of every day! Did you feel special? Did you feel like you were important having him lie, lie, lie, LIE for you? Changing his plans, missing work to spend time with you – just to fuck you?
What a horrible, nasty person you must be! You ripped our world apart. I hate you so much. I hate what you did. I hate the nasty lies. I hate you being in my life, the things you have done to me and the fact that the horrible, disgusting, selfish things you did are in MY FUCKING HEAD!!!!
Abby stopped. She put the lid on her pen. She didn’t read back over what she had put, but she looked across the page, enjoying the sight of her own words, her feelings, in her book. She hadn’t expected to get her homework done before the residential but her talk with Simon had inspired her; her head had been left reeling and she had to let it all out, let the rancour in her mind spill word by word onto the page. What Mallory would make of it Abby didn’t know but writing it had at least been a huge release!
Before going to bed Abby knew there was one more thing she must do. Opening her diary she sighed, removed the lid of her pen and made a note: Visit the clap clinic!
Eurgh! Simon had said they had been safe but hearing the sordid details made it all so horribly, disgustingly real. Abby had slept with Simon after his trip to Washington, before she knew, and she wanted to be sure she hadn’t caught anything. She looked at the words in her diary and wished she knew the proper name; she was sure ‘clap clinic’ wasn’t right. She would have to check the Embarrassing Bodies website to see if that enlightened her. It was all so horrible, another experience beyond her comfort zone that she had never expected to face – only this one she was pretty sure wouldn’t turn out to be enjoyable.