'The issue of your ex'

February 2003

The next days conversation was fairly ordinary, and so left me feeling disappointed. I asked about the flowers, hoping to hear how happy they made her feel and how impressed her colleagues were. But all I got was ‘I took some pictures, I will show you next time we meet’

So, just as we were saying good bye, I reminded her that I still had something on my mind that I wanted to talk to her about. ‘Tell you what’ I said, ‘I have to go now, and it’s late, so I will send you an email tonight, and then we will talk tomorrow’
‘I’m ok to talk now honey’
‘Yes but I have to go’
‘Why? What do you have to do?’
‘I have to do some shopping’ I was sat in the car, in a supermarket car park.

Without further questions, we said good bye. I was left with the feeling that she wasn’t very happy. It was a recurring thought, but so far I had failed to find out if anything was bothering her. I wanted to stir things up, to find out, to frighten her. I wanted to hear my favourite words; ‘Honey, I love you’ and ‘Honey, I don’t want to lose you’.

Then I could tell her that everything was alright.

So late that night I wrote ‘The thing that has been upsetting me is to do with my ex’

This was a gamble, I had no idea how she would react. We had talked about ‘my ex’ before, on a few occasions. I’d given her a long story to explain why we’d broken up. At the end of which she’d asked ‘why were you so patient with her? and ‘why did you stay with her so long?’

The next morning I looked at my email, and read ‘honey, I will work late tonight, although is Sunday, as my boss will travel to Delhi tonight, then we will talk about the issue of your ex’