AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The doorbell rings and I groan, burying my head under the pillows. Who the fuck is it? Has to be some little twats messing about.
However, the doorbell is pressed again and knocking follows. Whoever is out there is persistent.
Ten minutes later, I still haven’t left my bed to go downstairs. My mobile phone is off but the house phone has been ringing and the ASBO outside has even resorted to clanging the letterbox in a bid to get my attention.
When stones are thrown at my window, that’s when I really can’t ignore it any longer. If they don’t fuck off soon, I’m calling the police.
Leaping out of bed, I drag on my fluffy robe and slippers and storm downstairs.
“I’m calling the police you ASBO cunt!” I yell, rushing at the front door, my only intention to shout at whoever is behind it.
“For god’s sake, it’s ME!” he yells through the letterbox, his shadow looming on the other side of the glass door.
I take a deep breath and try to breathe as the weight of all this drags me down even more, my shoulders sagging.
“Please, leave me alone,” I shout, hoping he’ll just go.
“I am gonna get arrested if you don’t let me in, Lily. The neighbours are peering through the curtains.”
Great, another reason for me to feel guilty…
Instead of letting him potentially get arrested, I fling open the door for him, not even hanging around to lock the door behind him once he’s inside. He can do as he pleases, so long as there are no arrests involved. I storm upstairs, throw myself back into bed and pull the covers up around my ears.
I hear the front door close shut and him turning the key in the lock, then place it back on the hook on the wall. Great, he plans to stay. Great. Then there are the expected heavy footsteps on the stairs and then I hear him breathing, in the same room as me.
“God, you’re so fucking noisy. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Yeah, and you’re antisocial when you want to be. Everyone was asking where the bloody hell you are tonight. You never miss New Year’s Eve.”
The other night, after what happened with Ian, I deleted all my social media accounts and switched off my phone, put a snooty out-of-office on my emails and bedded down. Fuck them all.
I don’t have any words for Paul today. He can go screw himself, too.
“What happened with Ian? Your sister was the one who said you’d moved home, by the way.”
Good old Lauren, dobbing me in yet again.
“You can go now. You’ve checked I’m alive. Now go.”
“I’m going nowhere.”
I bury myself almost fully beneath the covers, leaving just my nose poking out for air.
He sits on the edge of the bed, his weight dipping the mattress.
“I’m not going back to the party. I can’t even enjoy myself thinking about it all,” he continues. “The way he looked so dead inside. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
I don’t know what’s worse really – that they all hated Ian and never properly warned me about him, or that I was too stupid to recognise what a bastard he was.
“I spent Christmas here like I said I was going to and went back to the flat on Boxing Day. When I got there, I saw he’d piled all my shit outside the door of the flat. In the corridor, for anybody to pick at or pilfer. All of it. Like I meant nothing to him. Never had done. He’d also changed the locks. Even wrote me a note sayingFuck you, bitch. Like a note made it all legit or something. Like he had a real reason to treat me like that, even before I ever slept with you, because he was doing little things like that even before… and I wrote it off as him being stressed or whatever, but he was a dick… and I lived with him. I used to love him!”
I bury my face against my pillow and cry. The worst thing about all this is the wasted time and the dreams I had… dashed. I’ve always been one of those girls who’s wanted to get married, have kids. I thought with Ian I might have that sooner rather than later, him being an older guy and all. I’d hoped he would be ready for all that and I wouldn’t have to wait years. Turns out he never intended to propose, never would’ve given me kids…
A man who could chuck out the possessions of someone he was meant to have loved… that’s not a man with the potential to become a father, a husband…
That’s a squalid degenerate.
And I was his girlfriend… for over three years.
