Panic hit me in the chest, hard and immediate, as though my body already knew what my mind was still refusing to understand.
I ran back inside for my phone.
“Where are you?”
For seven minutes, there was no answer.
Then Stephen replied.
“I’m walking her home.”
I stared at the message.
He had left my aunt’s house with M without even telling me.
“You didn’t think to say anything to me?”
“Stephen. I need to talk to you.”
“It’s important.”
I tried to call him several times.
Finally, I got through.
He told me M had become upset and run off. He had followed her and caught up with her. He had tried to persuade her to stay at her mum’s, but she was determined to walk home.
So he was walking her.
I told him this was ridiculous.
Come back.
Come back now.
He said he couldn’t leave her walking alone at night.
I couldn’t understand what I was hearing.
I was his partner.
I was alone in a foreign country, in my aunt’s house, devastated by something I had just witnessed between him and another woman.
And he was explaining to me why she needed him.
I needed him.
I told him that if he cared about me, he needed to turn around and come back.
He refused.
I became more upset, more frightened and more desperate to somehow reverse what was happening before whatever line was being crossed became impossible to uncross.
I was bargaining with him.
Pleading with him.
Trying to make him understand the enormity of what he was doing.
Just come back.
Please.
Come back now.
Eventually, I became desperate enough to give him an ultimatum.
“If you don’t come back now, our relationship is over.”
I didn’t say it because I wanted our relationship to end.
I said it because I needed those words to stop him.
I needed the possibility of losing me to be enough.
It wasn’t.
The call ended.
“You’ve made your priorities loud and clear,” I wrote.
“I mean so little to you.”
“I guess it’s over.”
“You are so cruel.”
“It will be hours until you’re back and leave me here suffering.”
“Leaving me guessing. Wondering.”
“I just can’t believe this.”
“Who the hell are you?”
For thirteen minutes, there was nothing.
Then Stephen finally replied.
“I thought you had already made up your mind.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” I wrote.
“So now you won’t tell me where you’re going or talk to me.”
“Was trying to persuade her to stay at her moms.”
“She wanted to walk home.”
“I am walking her home.”
“Please answer the phone,” I wrote.
“Why don’t you care about how I feel?”
“This is killing me.”
His response came back.
“You trashed tonight.”
I didn’t even know what that meant anymore.
“So you don’t want to talk to me anymore?”
Then I asked the question that frightened me most.
“Are you staying over there and not coming back?”
No answer.
Everything was suddenly beyond my control.
That’s when I unravelled.
I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t reason with him. I couldn’t persuade him to come back. I didn’t know exactly where he was, what he was doing or whether I would see him again that night.
Only hours earlier I had been at my grandmother’s party with the man I loved, surrounded by my family.
Now he had disappeared into the night with my cousin.
I felt more alone than I can remember ever feeling.
I called my eldest son.
I told him what was happening.
He listened and then told me he wasn’t surprised.
He had never trusted Stephen.
I checked on my aunt, perhaps hoping absurdly that someone older and wiser might wake up and somehow take control of this nightmare.
She was fast asleep, snoring loudly.
And I was alone again.
I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I was furious.
Terrified.
Humiliated.
Heartbroken.
But more than anything, I was in disbelief.
This couldn’t actually be happening.
Not after the year we’d just had.
Not after everything we had survived.
Not after I had forgiven him.
Not after I had given him another chance.
Not here.
Not with my cousin.
Eventually, the only thing I could think to do was leave.
I asked Stephen whether he wanted me to change my flight and go home that day.
There was no answer.
“Yes or no?”
Still nothing.
Eventually, I made the decision myself.
“I’m a broken woman and I can’t be here any longer than I have to,” I wrote to him.
A minute later:
“I’m leaving for Copenhagen first thing. This is the worse day of my life.”
Our flight home was supposed to be the following day, but I couldn’t imagine remaining there waiting for Stephen to return. I changed my flight, packed my suitcase and sent my aunt a message explaining what had happened.
Then, while it was still dark, I left her house.
I began walking towards town, pulling my suitcase behind me.
There is something very strange about walking alone through an unfamiliar place in the hours before dawn while your entire life seems to be collapsing somewhere behind you.
At 4:20 in the morning, my phone lit up.
Stephen.
“Tess, are you awake?”
I looked at the message.
I was already gone.
“I’m walking to town.”
Then we spoke.
He told me he was at M’s.
I told him to get in a taxi and come back.
He said he couldn’t. He was too tired. He was going to stay at M’s for the rest of the night.
I couldn’t understand what I was hearing.
He could have called a taxi and come back. I hadn’t slept either. I wasn’t asking him for anything complicated.
I just wanted him to come back.
“Where are you going to sleep?” I asked. “What’s M doing?”
He said he didn’t know. The flat was very small. M was in the toilet.
By then, I was pleading.
“Please, Stephen. Just get a taxi and come back. Please come back now.”
For the last time, I asked him to choose to come back to me.
His answer was firm.
“No.”
I was walking through Denmark in the early hours of the morning with nothing but my own thoughts for company.
I replayed everything.
The party.
The way Stephen had looked at M.
His attention towards her.
Her lying in his arms.
His face when I caught them.
My walking away.
His not following.
The empty conservatory.
The garden gate.
The unanswered calls.
Again and again I asked myself what I could have done differently.
Why hadn’t I stayed in the conservatory?
Why hadn’t I insisted he come to bed?
Why had I left them alone?
Why hadn’t I stopped him?
There was a terrible desperation in trying to find the precise moment when I might have changed the outcome.
And beneath all those questions was another one I simply couldn’t make sense of.
Why was Stephen willing to throw us away for a woman he had barely met?
Not just any woman.
My cousin.
After everything I had done to understand him, forgive him and believe in him, how could I possibly matter so little in that moment?
As the sun began to rise, I called my mum and dad.
I told them what had happened.
They were devastated for me and understood immediately why I needed to leave.
By the time I reached the station, daylight had arrived.
I stood there with my suitcase waiting for the train that would take me to the airport, utterly exhausted but far too distressed to feel tired.
The enormity of the night was beginning to sink in.
A year earlier, I had asked Stephen to leave my home because I believed that loving him did not mean protecting him from the consequences of his behaviour. I had given him another chance because I genuinely believed people could learn, grow and change.
And for almost a year, everything I saw seemed to tell me I had been right.
The alarm bells had become quieter.
And when they did sound, I had learned to question them.
Was I seeing something real, or was I allowing what had happened before to contaminate what was happening now?
I thought that was what learning to trust looked like.
Now I was standing alone on a railway platform in Denmark while the man I loved was somewhere else with my cousin.
Then, suddenly, my phone rang.
It was Stephen.
To be continued…
