Some of my proudest moments in those early months came when I introduced Stephen to my friends and family.
He had mastered the art of conversation.
He seemed genuinely interested in everyone he met and had an extraordinary ability to find common ground with people who, on the surface, were very different from him.
My sons liked him. Although they didn’t necessarily have much in common, they all enjoyed a good debate, and Stephen could talk about almost anything.
My parents liked him too.
More importantly, they could see how happy I was.
This was one of the many things I loved about him.
My previous boyfriend had struggled socially, so there was something wonderful about being with a man I could confidently take anywhere. I never worried that Stephen wouldn’t know what to say or wouldn’t make an effort.
Quite the opposite.
I was immensely proud of him.
Eventually, the time came to introduce him to my aunt and uncle.
My aunt is my father’s sister, and I was particularly excited about this visit because I knew Stephen would love their home.
Their house has always been an emporium of curiosities.
For as long as I can remember, my aunt and uncle have been passionate collectors. They have unusual interests, fascinating objects and endless stories about the things they’ve accumulated over a lifetime.
One evening, Stephen and I visited them with my mum and dad.
After a lovely meal, my uncle offered to give Stephen a tour of the house.
Every room of their old Victorian semi-detached seemed to contain another collection. In some ways, it was like wandering through an antique shop. There was militaria, maps, crockery, silverware, paintings and countless other objects, each with its own history.
And then there was my uncle’s extraordinary lifetime collection of Rupert Bear memorabilia, reputed to be the largest in the UK.
Stephen was completely in his element.
He wanted to know about everything.
Where had this come from?
What was the story behind that?
How old was it?
My uncle was delighted.
There are few things a passionate collector enjoys more than meeting someone who is genuinely fascinated by their collection, and Stephen gave him an enthusiastic audience.
The tour must have lasted well over an hour.
Strangely, Stephen’s enthusiasm made me look at the house differently too. I’d grown up around many of these things and barely noticed them anymore. Watching him discover everything for the first time reminded me how extraordinary it all was.
I loved seeing the world through Stephen’s eyes.
Eventually, we joined everyone else in the garden.
It was getting late.
My aunt had been drinking and was already quite tipsy. She had been considered a great beauty when she was younger and, even at seventy, remained a very attractive woman.
Stephen began talking to her with his usual enthusiasm.
She told him about her new interest in singing and shared some of her fascinating stories about paranormal experiences. Stephen was intrigued and responded with stories of his own.
Initially, it was a group conversation.
My mum was involved.
My dad was there.
I was there.
But gradually, something changed.
The conversation narrowed until it seemed to exist almost entirely between Stephen and my aunt.
I watched his body language change.
He repositioned himself in his chair so that he was facing her directly, his posture open towards her. His attention became completely focused on her.
He stopped looking back at me.
He stopped including me in the conversation.
Then the subject matter changed too.
Stephen began telling increasingly risqué stories, including one about a job he’d once had that involved quality-testing adult products.
My aunt was fascinated.
And Stephen seemed to be enjoying her fascination.
What had begun as ordinary conversation was becoming something else.
Flirtatious.
My aunt was responding to it too.
She was tipsy, starry-eyed and completely absorbed in him.
Then Stephen began making suggestive comments about her sensuality.
I was sitting barely a foot away.
And suddenly I felt invisible.
What made it worse was that my parents were sitting there witnessing it too.
I tried subtly to steer the conversation somewhere else.
Stephen didn’t follow.
The innuendo continued.
Eventually, I’d had enough.
“We should go now,” I said.
Nothing.
Stephen carried on talking to my aunt as though I hadn’t spoken.
Their chairs were angled towards each other, their knees almost touching, their attention completely fixed on one another.
My mum and I stood up and walked towards the French doors leading back into the house.
“Come on, Stephen. It’s time to go.”
Still nothing.
My mum, dad and I ended up standing in the doorway waiting.
And waiting.
For what felt like nearly ten minutes, the three of us simply watched Stephen and my aunt continue their conversation as though they were the only two people in the garden.
Eventually, we practically had to drag him away.
I was furious.
But beneath the anger was something more unsettling.
Alarm.
Until then, one of the things I’d admired about Stephen was his openness about finding beauty in different kinds of women. I’d interpreted it as a lack of superficial judgement.
But I’d never seen this side of him before.
Stephen was an enormous flirt.
And if he was capable of becoming so absorbed in another woman while I was sitting beside him — with my mother and father watching too — what was he like when I wasn’t there?
That question disturbed me.
Especially because the incident with his ex had happened only weeks earlier.
I drove us home frostily.
Stephen seemed slightly drunk and, more surprisingly, completely oblivious to why I was upset.
We made the short fifteen-minute journey back to my parents’ flat and, because it was so late, everyone went to bed.
Stephen and I climbed into bed in my tiny childhood bedroom.
Then I confronted him.
We argued in whispers so my parents wouldn’t hear.
I told him how uncomfortable his behaviour with my aunt had made me.
Stephen didn’t understand.
Or said he didn’t.
He became defensive and denied that he’d been flirting at all.
He explained that because the tour of the house with my uncle had taken so long, he’d felt obliged to give my aunt his full attention afterwards. He’d spent all that time talking to my uncle, so now he was making an effort with her.
Then he said something that left me completely baffled.
“Besides, I don’t even know how to flirt.”
I couldn’t reconcile that statement with what I’d just witnessed.
Stephen also explained that he’d quickly drunk a couple of drinks to catch up with everyone else and that the alcohol had gone straight to his head.
He was clearly still tipsy.
He was also exhausted.
Before long, Stephen fell asleep.
I couldn’t.
I have never been good at sleeping after an argument.
So while Stephen snored beside me, I sat on the windowsill of my childhood bedroom, smoking cigarettes out of the third-floor window.
The rest of the flat was silent.
In the distance, I could see Greater London. Cars continued moving along the roads below as the darkness gradually began giving way to morning.
And I thought about what I’d witnessed.
My boyfriend has a way with women.
There seemed little point denying that.
But this was the same man who had presented himself to me as inexperienced with women.
The same man who now insisted he didn’t even know how to flirt.
And only weeks earlier, he’d disappeared while staying with his ex and subsequently admitted sharing her bed.
I found myself returning to that night.
Had everything happened exactly as Stephen had told me?
Was I joining together two completely unrelated incidents because I was frightened?
Or was I beginning to notice something about the man I was falling in love with that I hadn’t seen before?
I didn’t know.
Over the following days, Stephen and I talked extensively about flirting.
Strangely, the conversation gradually became less about what had happened with my aunt and more about what flirting actually was.
Stephen gave me the impression that he genuinely didn’t understand the distinction between being charming and being flirtatious.
So I tried to explain it.
To me, flirting involved verbal or non-verbal signals that introduced an element of romantic or sexual interest into an interaction, even if everything remained playful and ambiguous.
Charm was different.
Stephen was naturally charming.
That was one of the things I loved about him.
And I didn’t expect either of us to go through life never enjoying playful interactions with other people.
What mattered to me was context.
If you’re in a committed relationship, your partner shouldn’t be made to feel invisible while you direct sexual energy towards somebody else.
Their comfort should matter.
The relationship should still feel secure.
And loyalty should never be in question.
Stephen seemed receptive.
Part of me even enjoyed believing that perhaps I was teaching him something he genuinely hadn’t understood before.
I wasn’t considering ending the relationship over what had happened.
I loved him.
Most of our relationship was still extraordinarily happy, and this seemed like something we could resolve by communicating more clearly and establishing what was and wasn’t acceptable to us.
But something had shifted again.
After the night with his ex, I’d started wondering whether I could trust Stephen.
Now another question had joined it.
If this was how Stephen behaved with another woman while I was sitting right beside him, how did he behave when I wasn’t there to see it?
