Ah, so this is HOW IT ENDS.
Him: ‘Hi, what a week. Been very ill. Got some sort of flu-type thing which has left me a husk of my former self. I have had some time to think. You must know that I do love you and I want you to be happy, something I don’t seem to be able to do for you. I know you said that we should try again but are you sure. What if N**** contacts you and wants to meet? How am I supposed to feel about that situation? I also want to feel loved. X’
I forwarded his missive to Nic, who commented wryly, ‘He’s already a husk.’
Me: ‘Hi, sorry to hear you’ve not been well. I’ve had an awful week as well but far too boring to go into. You are right: my suggestion that we try again to mend things was ill judged, typed in the heat of the moment. I want to feel loved, too, and as I’ve said a million times before, it’s about actions, not words. Words are easy. I think you’d be happier with someone who is very laid back and with low standards. Not that mine have been crazily high – no sane woman would want to stay in your flat – but someone with the housekeeping skills of someone like Sonia [his ex, not her real name: she has the same hairstyle as the 80s pop star]. During the worst year of my life, I tried to remain cheerful and organise nice things – Marrakech, your birthday lunch at The River Cafe – but you kept moaning [in Marrakech he got sunburnt; I’m starting to think beneath the grey he is ginger; at the Michelin-starred River Cafe he got into a grump because they didn’t have any gluten-free bread: JUST GO WITHOUT BREAD FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE!!!!], even on a mini break in Devon. I need someone to look after me, nurture me and make me laugh. That’s all. Liz x.’
I asked Nic what his husk email meant and she said, ‘He’s worried about the other man; he loves you, he’s desperate.’ I have a different take. I think he’s packing me in, as we used to say in the 70s; he has had enough and can’t be bothered to change. I’m simply not worth the effort and, like all men, he thinks he is in the right.
I’ve not had my best week, mostly because men are continually rude to me. Take the manager of a ‘spa’ at a ‘country house with rooms’. I’d politely complained about a leg wax (took far too long, was left with huge chunks of wax on my legs the therapist couldn’t remove despite copious rubbing with lotion) and an eyelash tint (for the first time in 30 years no damp cotton wool semicircle was placed beneath my lashes which meant I had dye running down my face). And the pedicure left stray polish on my skin. I actually sent him annotated photos.
He replied with an attack: that I had been looking at my phone during the lash tint (impossible, due to the cotton-wool pad keeping my upper lids closed), and that the therapist had found the waxing difficult as I am, and I quote, ‘intimidating’. I would have thought any spa in an expensive country house with rooms worth its salt should be able to perform a Hollywood on Madonna without turning a hair (excuse the pun).
It reminds me of the time I still had my lovely four-storey Georgian house and was dropped off by a mini-cab driver with no teeth. ‘You live here?’ he asked. ‘Yes.’ ‘In the basement?’ ‘No.’ ‘You have the WHOLE HOUSE? Jesus. All right for some,’ he said, probably thinking I had a rich father or successful husband, when instead I had had no life for 30-odd years, and the only thing I was married to was my (stressful, no privacy, days off or pension) job.
Would the mini-cab driver have said that to a man? Would the spa manager have accused a male diner of being intimidating if the soup was spilled in his lap? No. He would have scraped and bowed and apologised, which is how it should be. It started to make me wonder why men treat girlfriends in a way they would never dream of behaving towards their male friends. David’s best mate who lives off his wife is a ‘polymath’, apparently, while he once described my job as being a ‘typist’.
Valentine’s Day dawned. We all say we hate it, that it means nothing, but I’m still sitting at my laptop, neck craned a little for the red post van or the Hermes driver. It’s now nearly 4pm. The postman has already been and gone, and I imagine even a flower delivery would have made it by now. I have to accept it. I am now resolutely, absolutely single. Again.
I started another email to the Hunk.