'Win me over!'

We're still together. For our daughter's sake. I'm growing colder and more indifferent - which feels good 0- towards her by the week, by every date she secretl goes to.

Only now and then, a wave of emotions attacks me. Sometimes I give in.

Like on the day when she spent a lot of the day at home. I was there too, sending emails to do with my new venture. She looked beautiful and sweet. Good memories came back: the secondary school days, our first holidays together, her summery scent and more and more; guilty memories came back too: how could walk away from her without a word, how I left her in the rain with a cruel word, how I hit her, how I was stone-cold when she cried in front of me. I realised that whatever she does to me now pales into insignificance compared how I was killing her youthful love to me all those years ago. And I forgave her and I loved her again.

I held her in my arms, 'Whatever you do, I'm mad about you!'.

'Imagine I'm free now. Win me over!'

For a second I sense the potential excitement. Then I remember a text she sent me over Christmas. About her heart beating like mad at the thought of the old times. About her longing flying to all corners of the world... and another one I found a few days later in her mobile. To him. Saying the same.

I smile and leave the kitchen where - for fun - I ended on my knees before her.

Next day I have a feeling that she's texting him, meeting him and making love to him just as before. No proof but a feeling that on that front what changes is another of her private re-interpretations that she thinks are her private thing, and she doesn't owe it to anyone, even those involved, to share them. So he carries on thinking she loves him like crazy, and she loves him like crazy when she's with him. Only when she's away from him, her love-thoughts walk their own secret paths.

And something snaps inside me. Again. I go to her room. 'You bitch! How dare you play with me like that!'. I leave. And she hates me more than ever. I will never play her game. I wish she would never offer me to play it. All I want for us from this affair is truth. I'd rather meet her once a year in truth than have her every day in this painful fiction.