LIZ JONES’S DIARY: In which David wants me to say sorry

It was the first hot Sunday of the year. I was feeling optimistic. The puppies didn’t need their paws washing – yay! Then I got a text from David. Doooommmmm!!!!! Gaaaahhhh!

‘I didn’t leave you. You pushed me away. How can I, or anyone, be in a relationship with someone who cannot say sorry or admit when they are wrong.’

OK. Let me count the ways this is wrong. Why in God’s name should I say I’m sorry? I am so angry I can barely type. But I am a professional. I open a Word file, and I type*.

‘Who is this? Oh, David. Hi. When you met me for dinner at Mildreds the other week, you behaved abominably. First of all, you grew a beard. This is tantamount to laziness. Second of all, you were miserable and combative. Do you really think, with everything that has gone on in my life – I have just heard from the Official Receiver after numerous times of asking that the cottage I bought for my sister, and which I paid the mortgage on for six years, has been ‘formally transferred to her’; why is she not homeless when I am? – that I need a boyfriend to be yet another adversary? I needed you to be on my side! To be thinking of me, not you!

‘So, tell me exactly, how “wrong” am I? Your friends wrote on Mumsnet they saw me sniffing coke. You took me to Ramsgate for my birthday with the caveat that you “might not be able to pay for the hotel”. You bought me a Biro for my birthday. You were annoyed, chippy, when women, fans, came up to me over dinner.

‘Listen. You were the love of my life; note the past tense. When I met you in 1983, I would have died for you. I think I became a success – and I was a success, once; I’m award-winning – because I wanted to be the best I could be for you, should we ever cross paths again. I yearned for your small pale eyes and snaky body with every fibre of my being.

‘Yet you are the disappointment, not me. I am bloody fantastic. I am funny. I have taste. I am hard working. I am generous. My dogs love me. I remember, when I paid for my sister and her son to go to our niece’s wedding, and we arrived at the hotel – The Hempel in West London; no longer there, sadly – that my nephew piped up ironically to his mum, “I don’t think Aunty Liz has bothered to push the boat out this time, do you?” And yet later she still threw the Burberry bag and matching shoes and tweed Alberta Ferretti dress I’d gifted her in my face.

‘You see, the trouble is when you are nice and fantastic and funny and compassionate and clever, people see you as their lifeline. They simultaneously resent you. They hate you. And they want more. They want an easy ride.

‘I think you put me on a pedestal, then decided to hate me because I made you feel even smaller than you actually are. Like that time I asked you to mow the lawn (when I owned a lawn!), and you didn’t know how to start the mower. Like that time you went grocery shopping in St Tropez in my brand new Merc and got a speeding ticket and frightened the hell out of my friend Dawn. (Oh, and FYI, the pasta you made was soggy.)

‘What on earth makes you think that you can have me? With no effort. No poems. No jewellery. No fun. No colourful anecdotes. With nothing, nothing, nothing but a saggy bum and a wet-nappy expression.

‘Well, here’s a newsflash. You don’t get me. I am too valuable. I am precious. I am unique. I have finally woken up to the fact that I deserve better. I deserve to be courted, wooed and treated like a princess. You wanted me to make your life better. Trouble is, you brought nothing into mine. I am as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!

‘With no regrets. Regards. Liz Jones.’

I didn’t send any of this to him. He can read it all here.

*He also described my career as being ‘a typist’.

 

Advertisement



Read more at DailyMail.co.uk