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| Honest and True | |
| By AnnieSeed | ||||||||||||||||||
| 17 May 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||
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I wrote this a few weeks ago but I'm really not sure about it, so I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks. Honest and True By Elizabeth Phillips I didn’t even notice her when she first arrived. I wasn’t even sure how long she’d been around when I realised what a threat she was to my happiness and peace of mind. Not that I ever had a great deal of either – I was too taken up with Tim. I fell in love with Tim Lockwood over twenty-five years ago. I was twenty-five and he was nineteen. He was shy, quiet, intelligent and the more I knew him the more I worshipped him. I had no illusions about myself – to say I was plain would be putting it kindly. But I’d never been interested in clothes and make-up, always wore practical trousers, jumpers and flat, sensible shoes. I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think Tim would care. I was sure he would appreciate the real me – my intelligence, honesty, the courage I knew I had. We were meant for each other, Tim and me. I was sure of it, quietly certain that before long I would walk up the aisle in something white but sensible, Tim would turn and smile at me and less than an hour later I would be Mrs Tim Lockwood, walking out of church on my new husband’s arm. You can imagine how I felt when I saw him with his new girlfriend. I hated her so much. You see, Tim was mine and she had no right to him. No other woman had any right to him. They were together three years and everyone was talking about them getting engaged. Then a close friend had a discreet word with Tim and it was all over. She made out she was devastated but it was easy to see she was just a tart who didn’t deserve my Tim. I could see her for what she was a mile off, with her make up and her high heels. I was certain it was true what Tim had been told about her, and I was sure that now he’d see sense, see how much more important it was to be with someone who was honest and true. Someone just like me. But my thirtieth birthday came and went and still we weren’t a couple. I tried hard to make it look as if we were though. We’d been friends now for almost a decade and I was able to take up pretty much all of his spare time. Most evenings we were getting a takeaway or going out somewhere and it was bliss to hear people refer to us as “TimandCarol” just like a real couple. Occasionally though, some other woman would come along and he’d take a shine to her. I hated that. Women like that deserve to be punished. The sight of him talking to any woman who wasn’t teetering on the edge of the grave brought a lump of pure, choking panic into my throat and I’d rush over and drag him away on some pretext like needing his help with something. I was sure that if only I could keep other women away, keep him lonely and miserable, eventually he’d see where his true love lay, and I’d become his wife. Another decade rolled on by, uncaring, with its usual toll of marriages, births and deaths, summer fetes and Christmas fayres at church, and I was on the wrong side of forty. I wasn’t stupid and I knew the whole town was laughing at my crazy obsession with Tim Lockwood. But I couldn’t help it. I was sure that sheer determination would win the day. I took every opportunity to be near him all day, every day. He took to flirting with other women in front of me, and that hurt. I was sure he didn’t mean anything by it. They were only tarts, after all, with their make up, their long legs and their thick, shiny hair that they tossed. I knew he was really laughing at them. He never flirted with me – we were too close for that. He teased me a lot and even laughed at me about getting old. On my forty-fifth birthday he joked about how I had no need to worry about losing my looks, since I’d never had any. I knew he didn’t know how much it hurt me, how I cried myself to sleep every night, praying that he’d marry me soon before it was too late for me to have his children. And then she came along. She was the first one he really fell in love with. And she felt the same about him. Everyone could see how much in love they were. I was his friend. I couldn’t escape hearing all about her, all about his passion for her. He talked to me as if I’d been a man, or some kind of counsellor, about how much he wanted her, how thinking about her was affecting his work, his dreams, his whole life. He told me everything he felt for that awful woman. It was the death blow to all my hopes. He felt for her what I felt for him. I could see the day coming when I’d have to see my Tim with her. I couldn’t stand the sight of her, and I couldn’t help being nasty to her in any little way I could. She deserved it, the way she made my Tim want her instead of me. But I had a better right to him than anyone. I’d loved him for nearly twenty-five years. I’d given up those years, when I could have got married and had children. Tim Lockwood owed me his heart and his very soul and I meant to have them both. Tim was not a confident man. He had very little belief in himself but I was his friend, honest and true, and he trusted me. That made it easy to undermine his confidence so that he couldn’t bolster the nerve to ask her out. And yet still she hung around, chatting to him, smiling at him invitingly, and the danger seemed all too real. Until someone he trusted had a word in his ear about her. Something she’d said about him, apparently. Tim was devastated and turned cold towards her. I knew I hated her but even so I was surprised at the pleasure I took in seeing her so upset. I knew she’d had the same hopes of Tim that I’d had. Well she’d had no right to think about him like that. He was mine, and she deserved everything she got. After a little while she seemed to disappear and I knew I’d been right. Tim and I were closer than ever and I really thought the happy ending was going to happen for us – although I knew at nearly fifty, I’d never be able to have a baby. Even so I was looking forward to being Tim’s wife at last. Then she came back, radiant with happiness, and was married in our church to her new love. Tim was shattered and I heard all over again how much he’d loved her. I’d never seen him so miserable. We were sitting in the church together one evening. We’d finished tidying up after some fund-raising event. I remember the dying light streaming softly through the plain window, and Tim studying my face intently. And then he asked me the question that made me go cold all through. “When you told me - what you told me – about her –“ I tried to look compassionate and sympathetic. “Yes?” “How did you know? Who told you?” I hesitated, unsure what to say. I looked him in the eye, all sincerity, and answered “She told me herself.” “Carol,” he said softly, “Tell me the truth." Loving Tim Lockwood had made me a liar and a betrayer of my own integrity and faith. I didn’t want him to lose faith in me, to lose the image of me as the one person, honest and true, that he could rely on. “She did tell me, Tim, I promise.” I was sinking deeper into perjury with every word. “I know you lied, Carol,” he insisted, “I just want to know why you’d do that to me. I thought you were my friend.” I sat back, feigning honest despair. “I don’t know what to tell you, Tim,” I said gently, “I know it must have hurt but it was true.” “It wasn’t true, Carol. You said you were at her flat when she told you. But the other day you said you’d never been to her flat. And you said you and she had never been close. So why would she tell you something like that?” I see now that I should have lied again. I should have said I’d just forgotten I’d been to her flat, or I’d made a mistake. Anything but suddenly blurt out the truth. “You’re right, Tim,” I admitted, “I did lie to you. I love you and I didn’t want to lose you to her. I made it up to keep you from being with her.” “She never said it?” Tim’s voice had dropped, quieter than ever. “Well, no, but look how soon she went off with that man!” I protested, “I’ve loved you for twenty-five years and never looked at another man.” “I can't believe this!” Tim suddenly laughed and hope surged in my heart. Maybe I’d only needed to tell him – but suddenly he was up and walking awy from me, back to me, back and forth, agitated and very, very angry. I’d never seen him like this. “I had the chance to be happy but you took that away. And you call that love? You were meant to be my friend and you stabbed me in the back. You only care about yourself!” I was frozen with shock and disbelief. All my illusions lay shattered about my feet. I watched Tim Lockwood walk out of the door with long, angry strides, and I knew he would never be my friend again, much less love me. Tim had lost the one person who loved him, honest and true. And it was all her fault.
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