Ch. 4: The Breakup - Part Two

Home, and as expected she hasn't changed her mind one iota. Somehow I'm the villian in this, as far as she's concerned.

"I won't be told what to do, by you or anyone else". Since when was a present a direct order? I still can't get a handle on it. . .

I try. I plead, and explain how hurt this has made me feel. I point out that this is a gift of love, and how I wanted us to have a romantic time together. Her view, unfortunately, is that it is an obligation.

"You can't make me go. I've never fancied Paris, and I won't be told what to do. That's just the way I am, and you have to live with that."

No I fucking don't.

It's not a knife in my heart now, but all the arrows of Agincourt that have found their mark there. It's out of the door again, and a night on the futon at Nicks. Maybe him buying that beer was a good idea, after all.

I lie awake and, for the first time since my last breakup, I experience The Silence.

It's 4am, and I'm lying on the futon in Nick's spare room - cum - office, trying to think of a resolution to this and feeling my heart shred. I've met several women over the years who believe that men don't feel emotion or hurt - wrong. Totally wrong. We just do it differently, but we suffer just the same.

I'm torn between disbelief (this woman said she loved me, she asked ME to marry her, not the other way round, I can't believe she could hurt me this way), anger, grief (rationally I know it's the end of the relationship, but I don't want to face it) and, strangely, elation. A tiny, tiny part of me feels free, and is joyously examining the future for potential. Sex features largely in the assessment.

By 5, the decision is made, and that's when my tears start. I let them come, wondering who - and what - I'm crying for. I can't define whether it's the loss of the relationship, the damage she's done to my heart or the fact that a woman has managed to do this to me yet again.

So all you women out there reading this - we men do cry when you hurt us. We aren't impervious to pain - we just internalise it, suppress it, staunch it with a bandage of macho bullshit until we can get alone. Then we unpack our pain, and let our wounds bleed in The Silence.

When I return home, she's gone to work. I read the letter she's left for me, which is in its way an apology but less for her actions than for her personality. The gist is that she can't change her emotional makeup, and doesn't want to try. The letter is almost - but not quite - formal, and for a few minutes I again find myself adrift in an ocean of indecision.

But only for a few minutes.

I make the call. Better to do it now than tonight. Better on the phone than face-to-face. Coward. I tell her, impressing myself with my apparent impassivity and my ability to remain icily calm and aloof, I even find the strength to speak to the landlord and letting agent, and am able to handle her father when he comes round in the afternoon to try and talk things through.

"She does have emotional issues, Neil and she needs you to help her through them." If that's supposed to be a good tack, it bounces off the breastplate of my self-righteous armour. She had four chances to reconsider, and now only wants to when the situation has gone beyond salvage - at least in my mind.

But he doesn't force the issue, and leaves with a handshake. I offer a silent prayer of thanks to whichever deity is watching over me that it wasn't her mother - she would have been a bit more forceful and, despite appearances, I'm too fragile to deal with that sort of pressure.

By six, Dad is on the phone again, and he's as utterly supportive as he's always been. His words buoy me, bringing the elation I felt early this morning back to the fore.

In fact, he buoys me so much that at half-past-eight I'm on the plane to Paris.