Deceit(Kristin Dockar) Deceit

Deceit is a strange thing. You can deceive yourself or others. You can slide into deceit without ever meaning to.
So here’s how my route to deceit evolved.
I have been having a relationship with two men who will have their birthday on the same day, 20th November. They will be the same age, 22.
Fortunately, they live in different countries, and it only gets difficult when the chap from Belgium comes over to England to visit. I try to put him off but he likes it over here. For me, the best way of juggling the two relationships is to cross the channel.
I met Marcus when he came over to study English. My family was the host family. I had been partying all over the weekend, and was walking down our street, coming home after being up all night, just as my dad was bringing him out to the car.
Well, it was instant attraction. Marcus was drop dead gorgeous, and he fell so in love with me. It all happened in April of that year. He had come over to England for the Easter break and was going to stay for 6 weeks. I was working, he was a student. His family lived in Brazil but had come over to Europe so that their sons could study.
My goodness we had fun. I was able to show him London and when he had to go back to Belguim, we were both heart- broken.
We arranged that I would go over to Brussels for a couple of weeks to meet his family when his stint of learning English was over. His mother loathed me on first sight. That was fine because I literally couldn’t bear her either.

All was fine until August of that year. I had been working for a year in the local library. One Monday morning I was standing at the counter checking books when a policewoman approached me. She checked my name and asked if I had lost anything. I replied that I wasn’t aware of losing anything, and she said: ‘How about your wage packet?’
I was completely shocked. I hadn’t realised that my wage packet had fallen out of the back pocket of my jeans. This is hardly believable, but two boys had found it and handed it into the police station. Never become cynical. There are good deeds done every day. I was so grateful.
As I walked out of the police station, I noticed a green van parked and the driver checking papers. He looked up and to my utter astonishment I saw it was Conor, my very first boyfriend, who I met when I was 15 years old. He was a really bad boy but I loved him. We had the most fabulous six months of dating, and then he dumped me. He said he wasn’t getting enough time to go out with his friends. I was broken hearted. Thank goodness for my lovely parents who helped me through my first heart ache.
And here he was five years later, leaning out of the van, saying ‘Hi, I thought I recognised you’.
We had a quick chat, and then I said I had to get back to work.
‘Where’s that?’ he said casually. ‘Do you still live at the same address?’
I answered both questions, said goodbye and went back to work. But I knew what I felt. Excited, amazed and just knowing that wasn’t the end of it. My sensible self said ‘don’t go there. He was not good for you’. But the attraction was still there. I just hoped that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t.
Two weeks later, I had a call from him saying he was just round the corner at an old friend’s house. Would I like to join them? I couldn’t resist and of course I went. That was the start of relationship number two.

To be back with Conor was as intense as anything I had known. Yes there was guilt but overriding everything was the sheer delight of getting to know each other again.
But I was planning to go back over to Belgium and work as an Au Pair, and of course to be nearer to Marcus. Now, what to do?
Conor was distraught that I was even thinking of going abroad to work, and that flattered me. I decided to postpone the idea and keep on working in the library. But I knew trouble was brewing because Christmas was coming up. I had promised Marcus that I would spend Christmas with him in Br.
As December progressed, I booked my ticket to fly to Brussels where Marcus would meet me. I told Conor I was going on a trip with a friend. We had always fancied the Christmas market in Brussels but oh the lying, the deceit of it all. I felt I might implode.

But payback is always around the corner. The works Christmas do was held in a pub I didn’t usually go to, and who should I see there but Conor with a girl who was not me. Seeing him the phrase a ‘leopard never changes its spots’ came to me. I walked out of the pub and thought ‘well that solves that’.
Except a few days later I received a letter from Marcus telling me he had just returned from Spain and had met someone else. So he thought perhaps it was better, and fairer, to end things.
So this Christmas I will be a single person who has learnt that lying and cheating are not the way forward and the best present I can give myself is to be my own person and not to be defined by having a boyfriend. Oh, and I am going to the Christmas market in Brussels but I’m going alone and who knows what might happen and who I might meet.

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