The Awful Truth

It wasn’t about the sex, she didn’t care so much about the sex . Give him that if that’s what he wanted so badly. It was the betrayal. It was the betrayal that hurt so much. Like inviting a friend over for a cup of tea and then finding out that they’d stolen your purse. It wouldn’t be the money you’d care about. The other intimacies they'd shared, like the stories they'd told each other over meals in places like Frankie and Bennie’s (he really liked Frankie and Bennie's for some reason!), well they mattered more because they'd built up a trust, a belief that she knew this person. Like the story about Aloysius the cat and the night he’d seen the cat miles from home in the middle of the night and how he’d quietly whispered his name ‘Aloysius….Aloysius…’ and that had stopped the cat dead in his tracks but it must have freaked him out and he hadn’t dared to look back to see who was calling for him. The tale about his dad’s friend who’d died of a heart attack years back whilst having sex and he’d seemed so sincere and so upset as he’d related how sad it was and the fact that he’d had four kids that he’d left behind. And when she’d said ‘how awful... so how old was he?’ He replied ’in his seventies...’ and she’d had to stifle a laugh because he hadn’t meant it to be funny. He’d made her laugh an awful lot, though mostly unintentionally she’d have to admit. But somewhere in that laughter she’d warmed to him over the weeks, felt comfortable with him, let him get closer to her than she would have done if she’d known the truth.
Oh but the truth was always in there. It was hidden in the miasma of lies, facts and half truths but it was always there. It wanted to be found. It was waiting in the darkness, waiting for the light to shine on it to reflect back the thing she didn’t want to see. The illumination that would have left no doubt in her mind that any of it was real. That sky he was painting for her, that bright blue sky that seemed to stretch into the distance, into the future, that sky wasn't real. He’d sent her his hologram to play with. Nothing she could have said or done would have given flesh and blood to that empty version of him. It had no heart, no soul, no substance.
Nadia on the other hand had substance. Her voice cracked a little on the phone as she bravely asked the question she didn’t really want to hear the answer to. ‘I need to know, were you with my husband on Saturday night...?’