Heartbreak

I suppose my heart was broken the most when I was seven years old. My father had been away on business in Germany; well that’s what we had been told, after three months of living without him he came back. He’d bought my siblings and I these beautiful hand-made bears. Mine was absolutely exquisite, all of them where really, but at the time mine was the best. It was made from this soft blue satin material, with sparkled thread for detailing and the most beautiful buttons I’d ever seen for eyes. They had been made from a shimmering pearl material which when you moved the bear reflected all these different shades of blue. At the time, I believed it was magic.
I think even then, I knew that my father had bought them at duty-free on the flight home. A last minute panic buy, but even the fact that he’d remembered about his life at home had meant something to my seven year old self. In truth, I adored my father more than he was due. My mother had always been the one to be there, be the one to wipe away the tears that he’d leave me and my siblings in. She’d be the one by my side, yet I suppose I just took her love for advantage. She loved me, that was a given. However, I had to work for my fathers love. When he was home, when he was being a father, he was the greatest man I’d ever met. And I think that was how his marriage to my mother lasted as long as it did. Anyway, I would sleep with this satin bear every night, I couldn’t sleep without it.
Once, my mother and siblings went up to visit my aunt and uncle, and when we finally got there after a long four hour drive, it turns out that I’d forgotten this blue bear. I was inconsolable, and spent the entire weekend in tears. What annoyed me the most was that everyone just got on with things. My cousins and siblings played in the garden, without even bothering to try and console me. My mother had a quick look around the car, before saying that there was nothing she could do, and five minutes later I overheard her laughing about it with her sister. When we finally got home, I held on to my bear for the next few days, even taking it to school with me for fear of losing it. I never named the bear. I formed an intense attachment to the bear, but unlike most children, I never saw the bear as anything more than a piece of cloth. But I still loved this piece of cloth more than anything else in the world. This piece of cloth was the part of my father that never left me, and the part that loved me.
I was eleven years old when I lost the bear. I had returned from a friends party, to find it gone from my bed. My mother told me that I must have put it some where, and it would be where I’d left it. But despite my usual carelessness, I knew that I had left the bear in my bed. I didn’t speak to my mother for the next few days. I, to this day, believe that she threw it out. I had been eleven years old, and should have known better than to have had a satin blue bear. Secretly, I think that it was because she knew how much it reminded me of my father. And although she couldn’t save her own heart, she thought she could save mine.
But to this day, thirty years later, I’ve still never experienced heart-break like it.
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I had never really ever met anyone like Harry. I had grown up in a rather dull life. Well, not so much dull, more.. routine. Everything was how it should be. Girls grew up to get married, cook, clean and have children. And the men went out to make the money. The gardens were always immaculate and everyone was dressed perfectly. I remember as a child, I never saw my mother without the customary red lipstick, which even as she grew older, only got brighter. I was eighteen when my world seemed to shift. After being one of six children, I had constantly been surrounded in a bountiful amount of love. But I remember meeting this boy at a party, and after only a few minutes of talking to him, I felt like I was the only one who could ever be talked to in this way, I later discovered I was most certainly not. But for my naïve, innocent mind, this intriguing conversation which challenged how I thought coupled with his intense charm spelt love. We married six months later. I was aware that I had moved fast, but Harry’s charm was infectious, and I knew that I really had to get my claws into him, or he’d leave. Take off and fly away, like a bird. That’s a good way to describe him, like a bird. And stupidly, I believed I could pin him to the floor, and not expect him to want to break away. I pinned him to the floor with three perfect children, with a idyllic home, with a picture perfect life. But for him, it was never enough. I don’t think anything I had done would ever be. As I grew older, my abilility to entertain him waned, and he was away on work more and more often. I like to pretend that I didn’t know where he was, or what he was doing, but I think any woman in that situation knows.
Harry was a bird. A vicious, strong bird. Who could, overtime, break away from the pins and once he had, was very unlikely to return. Even his children weren’t enough to tempt him back. I think he probably was scared. The intensity of our relationship had got to him. Secretly, he was an insecure man, unsure of whom he really was. And I think his whole life he tried to figure it out. I could say it was in his nature that he would have to hurt several people in order to find this. He died three months after we divorced. I feel sorry for him in that respect. For decades and decades, he’d wanted to break away from the family life that he’d somehow wound up in, and when he eventually did, god only goes and kills him off. Just the way things work, I suppose.
Secretly, I hope that he was miserable for those three months without me.
Even more secretly, I hope that he was finally happy.

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It’s been a few years now, nearer ten now that I think about it. You don’t really realise how quickly it goes by. I’m now much older. Too old, really. For a fifty-six year old woman to be recounting her illicit love affairs seems slightly strange. I suppose if he met me now he’d be rather disappointed. He told me the thing he loved about me was my zest for life, my need to experience things to the best possible degree. Since his death, my life has rather stalled. For the first few years after, I was rather jaded, still in shock I suppose. And I think by the time I finally recovered, I didn’t want to meet anyone new. Of course I’ve been with other men, but never to the same extent. I was afraid of losing my memories of Harry, replacing them.
For most of my life, I have been completely absorbed by this man. This strange, abstract man. This man who puzzled me, who absorbed me, and was able to make my cold, unwilling heart to love.
That’s the tough part about being the other woman, you can fall in love just as easily, yet you know you can never really be completely theirs. They can never truly immerse themselves in you. There is always someone else there, and although this can be true for their wife or girlfriend or whatever. They’ll either be able to forget about their doubts, or be so lucky as so be oblivious. Being the other woman means you’re never able to enjoy time together completely, without suddenly feeling plagued with guilt with what you’re doing. I never told anyone I was in love with a married man. My mother still thinks I’m either a nun or a lesbian. My relationship with Harry was strictly secret, working together we could always cover it up with ‘business meetings’ and I think his dedication to his job meant that people never really doubted that he would go out of his way to make these extra business trips.
When I first met him, I was 20, and just out of university and working as a receptionist in his company. I could have gone onto something a lot better, I knew this at the time. But I’d needed to pay rent and just settled for the first job I came across in order to pay that months rent. It’s funny how life works. Had I been able to pay that months rent, had I not spent my money on that beautiful peach dress, I would have not gone to work at that company, and wouldn’t have met him.
How different would my life have been had that all have happened?
He was charismatic, there was no denying that. But he made no secret of his seemingly blissful married life. His wife had just given birth to his second child, a daughter, and he carried photos of his family with him at all times.
I can’t remember how it started, I just remember him waking up on morning in my bed. I had never set out to hurt anyone, but nor had I been under any illusion of what I was doing. Three years after our love affair started, his wife gave birth to a little boy. We’d fought then. I was foolish enough to forget about his beloved wife. I forgot that he’d be still sleeping with her, still be in love with her.
I was always surprised that he didn’t leave me. I was always surprised that I’d wake up next to him, that he’d still be there. I grew older. The twenty year old girl, who was smart enough to do much better things but stayed at the job she was in purely because of her infatuation with her boss, soon vanished.
I don’t know why I lied to his family, I was able to pull strings and at the time I thought I was saving them from the grief I felt. I think they do deserve to know the truth, but for them to believe he died simply in his sleep seemed like a peaceful, happier ending to his life. As I say, it’s been nearly ten years since he did it. I’m still waiting for the suicide note, I tell myself it got lost in the post because I can’t bear to think that he’d leave me without even saying goodbye.