Still Guilty After All Those Years

 

I felt guilty about dumping Tom all those years ago and I still feel guilty now but there was no other way. He had asked me to marry him and I had agreed but as we were fixing the day I realised I could not go through with it. At the start I had high hopes of marriage, a home and even a family but then I began to have those doubts; I knew by now we were unsuited and needed to call it off while I could. 

We had known each other for a few months having met through mutual friends but had taken little notice of each other. Then at a birthday bash meal out with the same friends we found ourselves quite by chance sitting together. We started talking and talked all through the meal and rather ignored the others and then there was that mutual attraction. We sipped away and probably raised a few eyebrows but I lived nearby and he had asked if he could walk me home; I agreed but I suspect we both guessed where it was heading and sure enough after a couple of glasses of wine we tumbled into bed. Then before we went to sleep I explained I needed to get up for the train to work and set the alarm. In the morning after a hasty shower and a hurried breakfast he walked me to the station for my early train and his train home.

“May I see you again?” he asked cautiously. I smiled.

“Yes that would be nice,” I said. At least it wasn’t going to be just a one-nighter and then he asked to meet my evening train. And that became the pattern for the next few weeks. He would be at the station waiting for me two or three nights a week and stay over and then we would spend most of the weekend together. 

 

We found that we both had a love of walking and soon were taking long treks into the countryside and in those first carefree joyous days when in the woods and when the coast was clear we would sneak off the path by 20 meters or so and make love there in the open. And life seemed so good. I wanted so much, more than anything in the world for this to work. When we met I was recovering from a very nasty and messy divorce and in a state of shock and despair.  I don’t know; perhaps that clouded my judgement and perhaps I got carried away before I knew it and before I could pause and step back to see what was happening and view it rationally. Suddenly we were almost inseparable but before we really knew each other and that was the problem; we didn’t. 

You only know each other when you have shared for a while the routine and minutiae of everyday. Soon I found that Tom lived in some disarray and squalor in his house which I assumed we would share in preference to my small flat and I feared that would never change. Then he started going out for a beer with his mates twice a week as he always used to whereas I hoped he would want to stay at home with me. He had no interest in sharing my love of theatre, reading and music. I wanted us to be best friends and soul mates as well as lovers and that wasn’t going to happen; I could see that our relationship was slipping away from us. And yet I am sure that Tom, a sad and lonely man wanted this to work just as much as I did.

 

I will always remember that night. I was going to tell him but he caught the look in my eyes before I spoke and he knew what was coming.  

 Tony Roberts

 

 

 

 

 

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