Guilt

The guilt is getting harder to manage. I didn't think it would, as long as I had my car, my iPod, a suitably convenient stack of imagined places to throw into texts to Bloke A, Bloke B, Bloke C, but this weekend, when QIE, who's rapidly becoming less Q and I and E, grinned at me and said,

'I'd have a child with you in a shot,' I, all hair and incredulous smile, felt the dam(n) inside me burst. Sure, he was a bastard the first time round, and even this time, he'd not shaved in 2 days leaving me with a prickle of stubble whenever he kissed me, but he'd let me drive his Audi, Goddamnit! And read to me in bed when I was too tired to fuck and simply wanted to be snuggled in someone's arms...he read me Enid Blyton, he read me The Faraway Tree (the original not the non-Fannied one). And then he folded the book back into its ragged, red covers and took me gently.

Afterwards, I cried. And he's too clever to think that he was simply bad in bed and so began an unravelling of my conscience, but only into the safety of another lie. I can blink back tears like Meryl Streep and even inside me, I can feel similar swathes of emotion to hide the real black churn of guilt and even possibly, self-loathing. Talk meandered into the evening, I calmed, he theorised and settled on a friend of his.

'Phil has such a capacity for self-deception,' he said, as he told me about this bloke's marriage, the sham that it is, the lack of sex and love and purpose that seemingly inevitably diminishes between two people over the years. And I nodded, ripping the skin from my fingers with increasing viciousness.

Sorry folks, the absence of a conscience may have proven entertaining for so long, but even this party is slowing down. But to be followed, no doubt, by drama of epic proportions. Stay tuned but perhaps, and for the right reasons this time, bring the Kleenex.....