FOUR STAGES (a short story inspired by Julian Sewell's photo)

So it started as revenge. He’d lied, cheated, and even worse than both of those, persuaded our friends to cover for him. I mean, did he really think I wouldn’t find out? How naive did he think I was? I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve experienced enough in my life to know when people are lying. It’s in the eyes. The eyes will always give you away.

Besides, in order to be a good liar, you have to remember what you’ve said. It’s all well and good starting off with a little fib, but little white lies will always lead to massive big whoppers. In order to maintain the fabrication, you have to remember each and every single thing you’ve said. Not easy for a person who’s IQ is double digit challenged.

Breaking up is like going in to mourning. It has stages. Denial, Depression, Anger, Acceptance. If any psychologists out there are telling me I’ve missed out a stage, or added one, I don’t care. My past tells me that I cope with mourning in those four stages. This whole situation with him, however, has hit a small snag. I’m struggling to get past Anger. Really struggling. Like, REALLY struggling.

The Denial stage was over very quickly. I found out about his cheating ways, said to myself, “No! He’d never cheat on me! He loves me!” Then I saw the evidence. I’d heard the rumours, followed him, saw him pick her up in his fancy BMW, then saw them make out in the car while it was still parked on the curb outside her parents’ house. Did I mention that she was so young she was still living at home? He’s 37. I don’t think she’s out of her teens yet. Could be younger. Teenage girls always look mature for their age. She was pretty, but the makeup was too thick, the skirt too short and the hair backcombed far too much. If the heels were higher, she’d make good money on a street corner somewhere.

I went home, drowned my sorrows in a bottle of whiskey, told myself that there was probably a perfectly simple explanation for it, and slept like a log. Perhaps the whiskey helped with that. It was more like a short course in death than a sleep.

Anyway, I woke up ready to face him and give him the chance to explain. I’d listen, be patient.

Of course I would!

That’s not exactly how it panned out, though. He appeared shocked that I knew, but the puppy dog eyes exploded on to his face with such speed I almost spat my coffee at him.  “You don’t understand,” he said, “She’s a client at work…” I swear if you water boarded me now, I’d not be able to tell you another word that came out of that tainted mouth. I zoned out completely. I could see his lips moving, but they moved in slow motion so I couldn’t follow. He reached out an took my hand at one stage, and I do remember looking down to it as if it were an alien that was sitting in my lap looking for a new home, big puppy dog eyes popping out of its fluffy cute exterior.

Yeah. Zoned out.

I zoned back in just in time to hear him say that he loved me.  “Love me?” I asked.

“Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve been saying to you?” he replied.

No. I hadn’t. Numb, I stood from my chair, took my coat and handbag, and walked slowly out of the café without turning around. He didn’t come after me, which was probably a good thing. If he had, he’d have seen me push and shove my makeup bag into the exhaust pipe of his fancy BMW.

I walked home not worrying about his fancy BMW, but whether I’d be able to replace the Chanel lipstick which I coveted. It was a limited edition shade, you see.

So that was it. My stage of Denial had taken precisely how long it took me to zone out and back in again. It was over when I kissed goodbye to that gorgeous lipstick. Stage one? Check.

Depression. I’m not even sure I went through that. After four years of my life devoted to our relationship, you’d think there’d be a period of missing him in my space. As it was, when I got home and stood in my lounge, surveying my space, I might have wondered, just for split second, what it would be like without him. That indentation on the couch that his cheating ass had imprinted; the silk tie that was draped over the end of the coffee table; the red wine stain on the rug that we’d made whilst getting carried away? They just seemed like inconsistencies in my life. So in order to put my life in order, I moved furniture around. Put the settee against a different wall, pushed the TV into the other corner, put the coffee table length wise (which conveniently hid the stain on the rug). The silk tie he’d left burnt very quickly on the BBQ when I fired it up that evening. Surprising how natural fibres burn. They actually burn. Not like polyester that kind of frazzles away – which his poly cotton shirt did after the tie.

The hangover from the previous night’s bottle of whiskey belatedly reared its grizzly head, so I quickly drowned it with 3 bottles of beer. They went down very well. In fact, that day was definitely proving to be a day of surprises.

The 80’s music I then played exceptionally loudly in the lounge made my cool and groovy neighbours think I was having a party, so they came around with 2 bottles of wine and a grin. Somewhat shocked to realise that I was alone in the house singing my heart out without the aid of a karaoke machine, they soon came around to the idea that parties didn’t necessarily need a house full of people to be bloody good fun.

So I was depressed for exactly the same amount of time it took me to decide to rearrange furniture. Stage two? Check.

Anger. You may think that burning his stuff on my BBQ had solved this stage. It hadn’t. Stuffing my prized makeup case in the exhaust of his fancy BMW also wasn’t enough. I’d love to be able to say that I wanted him to suffer the same pain and sense of loss that I was feeling. But seeing that I wasn’t feeling anything, that would be inaccurate. Neither did I want to hurt him like he hurt me. I just suddenly thought how much fun it would be to make his life a misery.

I just had to be patient and calculating.

A week later, I heard that the exhaust of his fancy BMW had mysteriously blown up on the M1, making him late for a very important client deal. The man from the RAC had no idea what had happened, but suspected that the exhaust had been blocked with something. I suspected that my makeup bag was a few miles up the M1 getting squished by a 4 ton lorry. He’d had a bollocking from the boss for that. Ha ha.

The prized automobile was duly fixed and was back on the road in just a few days. I’d always hated the thing. The doors were too big for someone my height. Getting out of it in Tesco’s car park was like trying to step out of the depths of a pit of despair. It was all image to him, with only a reasonable amount of German engineering. He’d had ‘adjustments’ done to it. Souped up the engine so it sounded louder. He thought it made him look good. The poor bloody car had become a genetically altered beast when all it wanted to be was a reliable well engineered car with a lot of power. Poor bloody thing. It needed to be put out of its misery.

I don’t know where the idea came from. I suppose I’d read it or seen it somewhere and my unconscious mind had filed it under ‘useful ways for revenge’ in my brain. For 69p, I wrote off a £24,000 car. Can of kippers. They slip into the vents of a car as if the slits had been designed especially for them. And the damage is a slow process. It takes days, then weeks before the smell becomes so bad that even the mechanics don’t want to take the engine apart in fear of what they’ll find. I will admit that the unusual scorching March temperatures probably didn’t help.

Hearing the news that the fancy BMW had finally bitten the dust was sort of sad. For the car. But the good news came when I heard that his insurance company wouldn’t pay out because there was nothing wrong, mechanically, with the car.

He had come to my place to pick up his stuff, and had got really angry when he’d heard that I’d burnt it all. I did, however, still have his hairbrush, toothbrush and shampoo. When I gave the brushes back to him, I failed to tell him that I had been cleaning the toilet with them for the past week. I also failed to tell him that I’d emptied out the contents of a pink hair dye into his shampoo. The photos on Facebook were brilliant. It was a permanent dye. Ha ha.

It was five months after the break up that I found myself face to face with him for the first time since the split. I was out on a Friday night with the girls. We’d already drunk far too many cocktails and shots, and were causing a bit of a riot on the dance floor when he walked in. With her. He was obviously uncomfortable, but I was too drunk to care. I hugged him hello with a massive grin on my face, introduced myself to her and proceeded to launch a full blown conversation on the state of the nation’s political parties. He was always a good debater and I knew that he wouldn’t resist the opportunity to have a grown up conversation. After all, I doubted that she was even old enough to vote.

When my friends found me later, sitting on the loo with a forlorn and brooding expression on my face, they probably thought that seeing him had been too much for me, and that I was still raw from the break up.

Stage four. Acceptance.

You may also conclude, like my friends, that stage four was proving difficult for me. But alas, I had not yet finished with stage three, Anger. I’ve not reached Acceptance yet. I was actually pondering on how strange life can be sometimes. You see, earlier that day, I’d considered taking the pack of extra strong laxatives out of my bag, as I’d not had the opportunity to use them on him. But in a moment of madness, I’d thought, ‘it would be sod’s law that he’ll be out tonight and I’ll have left these at home,’ so duly dropped them back into my handbag.

I was sat on the loo pondering whether fourteen tablets each was tantamount to attempted murder…


Thanks to Julian Sewell for the use of his amazing photographs. You can see more of his work on Black Factory Arts Facebook page.