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I may never send this because I’m not really into drama or revenge. Or maybe I’ll send it as a sort of belated thank-you letter, for I still feel grateful to you for seven years of support, friendship and company, and what I thought was love. Do you think of me sometimes? I have thought of you, and I have tried to recapture some of the happiness by looking you up on the dating website and rereading your profile. You have not logged in for three years – indeed, I did think you had stopped your membership after we had known each other for a few months. I did – but it turns out that you went on paying your subscription.
You haven’t changed the photo. An earnest expression, balding but with some beautiful white hair, thin lips, a sharp chin, glasses … I remember thinking you were not handsome enough for me.
Yet when we met, I wanted you immediately. I think we both felt that way – it was what they call chemistry. I could hardly sit still in the restaurant, and when we parted that day, we just smiled at each other and you said: “Now what shall we do?” I almost said, “Don’t go”, but I tried to be demure and said: “Let’s meet next week.” When you got home, you sent a lovely email – I still have it.
Over those seven years, you gave me such a lot. You taught me to dance. You persuaded me to visit places that I had never dreamed of seeing and, best of all, you let me cook with you and garden with you and sit in front of the television with your cat. When I was resting on the sofa you would sometimes stroke my hair as you walked past.
When we met, you warned me of your wanderlust. Long journeys to inhospitable parts of the world. You were happy travelling alone and, anyway, I was not free to accompany you. When you were away, we wrote or phoned daily and I enjoyed your trips at secondhand. You came with me when I paid duty visits to elderly neighbours and relatives. You accompanied me to hospital appointments. When my mother died, you helped with the arrangements and emptying her flat, and you held me close when I cried.
I had never had this, and the day you told me it was over I wished I were dead. A cliche, I know, and until then I had not grasped what that feels like. As the years have passed I have tried to piece it all together. You said you loved me, but not enough. I have told myself that I very nearly gained the love of a truly kind and honourable man and had known seven years of happiness.
So reading your profile again on the website, I noticed with surprise that it had been modified in 2004 – three years into our time together. You had logged in and written: “I’m on my travels at present, but don’t let that put you off. I’ll be back in May so if you are interested, do please get in touch.”
Of course I don’t know whether any new woman did get in touch. But now I know that, even then, you were looking for someone else. For another four years you continued to be kind to me – but my memory of those years, as it turns out, is a false memory. Were you cynically staying with me till you found someone better? Or were you secretly struggling with yourself – not wanting to hurt me, waiting till you had supported me through some of the painful times I faced in those years?
What have I learned from all this? Not a lot. The past is not always what we think it is. But perhaps it is better not to know that.
One last thing. That huge vase you brought back from India for me. It is in the charity shop window now.
I wish you well, B
now that is genuinely sad..
but time to move forward, remember what was lovely, remember what hurt, but move forward.
Sad to read . You sound like u have moved on , but only in your mind …..
*wonders whether to point out that the letter isn’t Certs and that Cert is a man…
We didn’t like each other much at first, I think you’ll agree. You were a young mother, at home with a toddler and a baby. I was a student in her final year, your brother’s girlfriend. You told me you would have been scared to go to university in case you fell ill. I didn’t reflect on the illnesses you had already suffered, I just thought you were a bit pathetic. I told you brashly that I didn’t want to stay at home with kids: you’ve never said what you thought of that.
We became sisters-in-law, living near each other. You and your family had a converted Victorian terrace house: I thought it was terrible that you’d ripped out the fireplaces and replaced the stained glass in the hall door with reeded glass. My family lived not far away in another Victorian terrace: you couldn’t understand why we hung out in architectural salvage places looking for doors with mouldings.
At the same time, though I wouldn’t have admitted it, I was coming to recognise that you had a lot of experience and a really nice way of offering advice: tentatively, with a joke, not in a superior way. When our first son discovered at a year old that if he cried at night we would give him lots of attention, he gave us six months of hell. We played, we fed, we walked the moonlit streets pushing his pram. You were the one who helped me to stop it.
As my boys grew up, you were there. They went away with your children – their cousins – in your caravan. They played at your house. They wore your boys’ cast-off clothes. And we talked, more and more often, through those teenage years.
You had your own problems: you and your husband split up. You went back to work: such a hard few years you had, managing on your own with two teenagers, building up your life again. And then the great love of your life died, unexpectedly. You had to start over again, caring on your own for your ageing father. But what a great group of friends you’d collected by then: bright, hard-working women who really supported each other.
During those years we grew closer and closer. We’d both mellowed, I like to think. Not that you needed to much. I was the one who needed to get real.
And when disaster struck for me, you were the one I wanted. I shall never forget how, when I learned that my elder son had killed himself after years of terrifying and ever-increasing paranoia, and friends and family were offering to come, it was you I needed. You came. You supported me as no one else could have done. Who else had I grown to know and love so well?
Since then, whatever’s happened, we’ve been there for each other. At your last birthday, I sent you a card saying “Happy birthday, Sister”, and you rang me and told me you’d always wanted a sister and now you had one. Who would have thought, all those years ago, that you and I would end up as loving sisters? With my love, Clare
Was Whitney Housten reading these letters in the bath?
:shock: :lol:
have wanted to write you this letter for quite some time, P, but somehow wasn’t quite ready to express my thoughts and feelings until now. Not since you last wrote to me over 10 years ago, that is. It’s all about the memories that keep coming to mind, which I wanted to share with you. So here goes!
When I think back to the “Memories of happier times” card you pinned on the huge bouquet of flowers you sent me for my birthday in 1995 – the year we broke up – I remember how I felt when opened the card and read the poignant words you had written. I could not stop myself from crying as I sat on the stairs with the bouquet strewn in my arms. I felt gutted! Fortunately, both the boys were at school. How I longed for a hug from them at that most unexpected moment.
What were you thinking? “No chance of reconciliation,” you said before you left. Were you in your right mind? Wasn’t there enough pain for us to suffer? Did you still care at that point?
It was after that moment that I started to pull myself together, take hold of my life and become much stronger. Because, yes, P, our 19 years of marriage was coloured with many bright and wonderful moments: the launch of the Apollo rocket was particularly poignant for us both, as I am sure you will recall. Nine months after lift-off our first son, A, was born! Another glowing memory was the creation of our “Menorca” baby, our second darling son, P, in just as exciting and exuberant a moment of marital bliss.
Are these some of the memories that bring pictures to life in your mind too, as they do for me? Do you also remember, that summer’s morning in June 1976, as we were ready to make our marriage vows? Did you feel as hopeful and full of expectation as I did, looking forward to a lifetime together?
I am writing to you, P, not to look back to ask why and what really went wrong for us, because that doesn’t do any good. No, the fates decided our time was up and our relationship was over. You were destined to go south … well, quite a bit further south, really. Life in South Africa still OK, is it?
This is to just touch base, to ask if you are still keeping well. Still growing flowers for export, making home brew as you once did? Did the woman you left me for turn out to be the woman of your dreams? I remember when I met her outside The Castle Pub she reminded me a little bit of your mother. I got on very well with your mum, as you know.
You don’t have to answer these questions. The fates were certainly very kind to me, though it didn’t feel like it at the time. If it hadn’t have been for such an abrupt ending then there would not have been this amazing new me still punching at life. I might just have ended up being a boring old lady in a track suit, playing Derby and Joan with you (G** forbid!) rather than emerging as this phoenix force I am today.
Funny, P, how life turns things around most unexpectedly, isn’t it? I wonder if your new missus has evolved into the woman I was then, “track-suit-woman”? Because (you might like to know) I have become the woman in the power-suit with the smart briefcase – just like the woman you left me for I believe! How ironic, my ex-darling.
You might like to know that my life continues to change each day for the better. So, bon voyage, I wish you well. Love, V
Has someone being reading The People’s Friend ? :(
Honestly … A certain … This can’t all be about you ? Can it ? :shock:
I’ve gone through two large boxes of mansize kleenex reading these
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