I’ve told this story more than 20 times over the last 2 weeks, so I thought it was about time I put it into words so that I can be a little lazier and refer anyone who wants to know to this site (its tricky being as wrecked as I am, so get a pillow and duvet, cup of tea and don’t make any plans as its going to be a long one). From the emails I’m still getting a lot people are still following this absurd saga of almost abject catastrophe even now. As Tom and Simon have written, people have followed my various antics for the best part of the last two decades and this last year has been no exception.

With wonderful and ironic timing, I’m writing this almost exactly a year to the day we first started talking. It’s been the most important and profound year of my life so far, for many reasons.

As per any great story, movie or screenplay, it’s being written using the traditional Three-Act Structure. One day someone will make this into a film, mark my words. Its here for historical purposes. I wrote a similar piece last summer called “The Tragic Tale of Emmalouisa and Alexander” but it got lost somewhere – if you have a copy somewhere let me know as I’d love to see it again to compare notes.

For impatient people, the shortened and cynical version:
I got involved and fell in love with a girl on MySpace who had been friends with for a long time. It turned out she had repetitively lied to me about almost everything and I was seeing someone other guy’s girlfriend. When they eventually split, she went totally cold on me because she was obsessed with me being horrible and still dealing with breaking up with him.

So if you want to tell someone or are interested, copy and paste this link:
http://www.azcameron.co.uk/2007/02/28/the-story-of-emma-brown-alex-cameron/

Act I – Earth & Fire Create Explosive Flames (Setup)

Early last year work was driving me slightly insane and I took the dubious step of joining friends and colleagues on the massive hype-train that was MySpace. For me I needed an outlet for silliness and some entertainment during downtime, and somewhere to experiment with meeting new people after breaking up with Amanda a few months before. I was curious and it was a real punt, but many a minute was spent yaddering away to random people and building a modest collection of feminine eye candy for when I felt the need to indulge my Neanderthal leching instincts.

And it gave me no end of hilarious opportunities for romantic adventures and testing out some writing ideas. My days off were sometimes utter madness and I got lost a lot of the time in pursuing amusing liaisons and frantic semi-relationships, with liberal does of poetic excess that ensured I always had a story to tell or a collection of people to talk to that complimented my existing personal life but allowed me to go that little step further I couldn’t in real life.

Around late March I got a message from a girl called Emmalouisa who was replying to a bulletin I posted for a PR event, saying she’d loved to go but was hundreds of miles away. A light conversation flowed, with me insisting she get MSN Messenger because I couldn’t be bothered to type on MySpace, with us eventually settling on AIM (AOL). We had a fascinatingly random chat about almost nothing at all, but I remember it being incredibly fast and intense, as well as very amusing. Hours went by quickly. I thought nothing of it as I didn’t have any plans to use that crappy software again and my interest in small stupid talk isn’t great, but her wit was brilliant.

She lived in her own flat in Scunthorpe, worked in a bar in the centre of the town and was just meeting new people as she’d broken up with her boyfriend of a few years (Dale, a 34 year old married man with a teenage daughter and military past) because he’d cheated on her with 2 girls. He’d recently moved out after they’d split up and she had developed somewhat of an obsession with him when they had first got together. Their relationship sounded like hell on earth – he had beaten her, abused her and cheated on her relentlessly. I was stunned someone could be that stupid when they had a girl that beautiful. From the sounds of things, she had had a pretty awful time and was almost childlike in some ways. She was studying web design and quite a webcam fan. Every message came over with a kiss (“x”) at the end in a very feminine way, which was highly charming.

Only things weren’t quite that way at all. Dale and her were still together and living in the flat together, and she’d lied. She also still loved him, despite saying she didn’t. In her anger she had cheated on him with an old friend and continuously taken revenge on him over a long time, doing little things to spite him every day.

At the same time, one of my adventures was an amusingly melodramatic friendship with a girl called Nadera, whom I hilariously and pointlessly pursued rather publicly on a whim, documenting the wonder and horror that came with it. Emma was convinced I was a player and a “serial Internet dater” and very wary of me. I was highly cynical of her emotional weakness when it came to Dale and I repetitively warned her about him when she told me how much pain he seemed to be in. She watched the romantic madness and built up a strange rivalry with Nads that meant a lot of my evenings were spent having 2 MSN windows open listening to them slag each other off. It was ridiculous, but fun. Emma was angry and thought Nadera was taking me fro a ride – she told me I was someone that should never be taken for granted, ever.

(What I later learned was that one of Emma’s kicks is to get one over on a girl that a guy she knows is really interested in, a form of relationship-wrecking. She’s even doing it again now as I write this with a guy called Gez).

We spent a lot of time talking. She would message me almost every time as I was usually pre-occupied. I thought very little of it as my interests lay elsewhere and strangely enough didn’t fancy her at all like all the other men in the world seemed to do. My own snobbishness about Scunthorpe and love of sophisticated women really didn’t help. As innocent as she seemed, I was fairly sure her head was planted firmly up her own ass like most pretty girls – she knew it and used it well. I never thought I’d have a chance, a relationship of any kind and essentially wrote her off an interesting Northern girl. She found me curious because I didn’t indulge in any crude sexual talk like other guys did for months and months – even innuendo was tame.

Time went by and we chatted almost every day. I noticed something in her which I don’t think anyone else did – potential and a bizarre “x-factor”. She was blunt and honest, speaking her mind and telling me the truth whether I wanted to hear it or not. We shared common interests and values even though we were so different – a love of the arts, fast-moving conversation, Internet addiction, passion of learning about how life worked, a goal to be incredibly successful in life, hidden sensitivity and vulnerability underneath a hardened front, a strangely abstract wit and many other small nuances. I warmed to her passion quickly and found that I was doing more and more with her in mind. She wanted to move to London, where I was.

The feelings got stronger, and she became a part of my daily life. She was different and we developed a bond from our natural chemistry that brought out an intensity in both of us that we hadn’t felt before. She wanted passion and romance, and was tired of the hellhole she lived in, as well as the ambitionless deadbeat losers she knew. I thought she was so much more than she thought she was. I saw amazing things in her, and I was different to anyone she’d ever met and stood out a mile from the rest. As the days went on, the conversations got longer and we were emotionally connected. MSN had led to our first phone conversation on a Friday night that lasted a few hours.

I noticed how much I cared for her when we were joking around about the last time we’d slept with someone. She said “8 days ago”, and by god did it take me by surprise when it hurt so much. It felt ridiculous. She told me later she said it to get a reaction out of me. It worked, and it unnerved me. I sent her flowers and software to cheer her up – not to her house but her stepdad’s. I decided to organise her a really lovely birthday surprise to make up for what a difficult year she’d had.

But in July, she suddenly disappeared, saying she was working all month and going completely cold. We went from talking every day for hours to nothing at all. It actually hurt a lot more than it should really have done. I missed her like crazy. After a week I’d got used to it, but there was a hole in my life. What I later found out was that she’d lied; she’d moved out of her flat back to her stepdad’s house and tried again with Dale, and was deliberately avoiding me. They’d tried to patch things together again but she moved back into the flat with him when it didn’t work. (No, I’ve never got how that worked either).

We’d got argumentative by then, as the emotions flowed and our relationship became more intense. The feelings were growing and not a day went past without us speaking in some way. We’d talked about meeting up for coffee, but every time we tried to arrange something, she’d get cold feet and have a breakdown of some kind at the last minute. There was always an excuse not to or why she couldn’t. She went hold, then cold, then hot, then cold, on and on forever. Every available minute of every day, she was there – an orange flashing button on MSN, a text message or a MySpace message. We talked into the early hours sometimes for more than 8 hours at a time. The things I were writing were increasingly about her, or for her. She was my best friend in the world despite being so far away. She told me I knew more about her than anyone else.

I was getting frustrated as I really didn’t understand who I was to her at all – the feelings were clearly romantic and getting way out of control. I’d shut her out of my life a few times in a weird form of emotional blackmail and her panicked terror-filled messages in reply softened me each time to let her back in. Our fights were passionate, painful and time-consuming. We trapped each other into each other’s hearts. We agreed to meet in Birmingham and it felt through because she wasn’t sure, but yet again it turned out to be a lie (an understandable and forgivable one) as she didn’t have the money to get there.

In the middle of August I had a very powerful moment when I saw a picture of her on a Gangster-themed night out, and realised she was the girl I’d seen in my head all throughout my life – the one beautiful, perfect girl I’d never seen but knew other girls were similar to when I saw them. It led to me giving her the moniker MBGITW (“most beautiful girl in the world”). Our conversations got a whole lot sexier and intimate as we were essentially getting as close to falling in love/lust/infatuation as you can in that situation. The feelings were as intense as they were because she was living in a situation where she was emotionally starved and desperate. I could have been anyone.

We arranged to meet in Newcastle when she went to see her Dad, but a day before I was due to fly up and had already booked the tickets, she angrily screamed at me down the phone that I’d been stupid and got the wrong week in the diary. Unfortunately I hadn’t – she’d lied again. She felt stupid meeting up with someone she’d met on the Internet and didn’t want to go. I went anyway and when I mentioned popping down on the Sunday, she adamantly refused. It was a very lonely visit despite all the meetings I’d arranged. When I travelled to Amsterdam, I walked into a fucking orgy in my hotel room and sat there at a desk talking to her whilst the most disgusting behaviour was going on behind me.

The pattern emerging was that arranging anything, talking about anything or trying to do anything was always a massive hassle and a wonderful illustration of the maxim about the horse not drinking from the water despite being led to it. Every time I had to cancel plans the night before when she inevitably freaked out. Whatever happened we were always right there waiting for each other no matter what happened. What I didn’t know is that all the nights we sat up talking, all the pictures I saw and everything we shared was a lie, as she was always going back to Dale afterwards.

Her birthday was approaching, and we began to build up the momentum and anticipation. She showed me a secret blog (Xanga) she’d been writing about how much she liked me and wanted to meet me – how she’d studied every part of me, how she was scared about not feeling the way she did when she was with me in some way, and how the butterflies were all over her. By now a very large community on MySpace were following our romance as it was being lived out publicly. Every time we talked we just couldn’t get close enough. Drama was following us everywhere. I had blocked her so many times it was getting ridiculous.

2 days after her birthday, we did her surprise and I met her in person at Forest Pines in Scunthorpe for the first time, which was so romantic and intricate that it prompted dozens of emails and gave me the title of “boyfriend of the year” and many other flattering terms. No-one had ever known anything like it and it had taken 3 months and 73 people to do. I’d expected a drink and maybe some dinner, and then I’d head off the next day, but she wanted to stay in the hotel room. The night was amazing and nether of us had been so violently attracted to anyone – the chemistry was so intense we felt we no control of our own senses and kissed for hours. I fell in love with her that night staring into her eyes. The day went flawlessly and I would argue that there was no more amazing, special and magical night had by anyone I know, ever. We just spent the time staring at each other in amazement.

Later on I realised that the reason we stayed in the room was she didn’t want anyone to know what she’d been up to or to see us (it didn’t matter as it was way better staying there anyway and the most perfect thing she could have suggested). She was making calls outside the room she didn’t want me to hear, and after she left at 3am, she was accosted by a very angry Dale arriving at the flat and demanding to know where she had been. The next few weeks would see her panicking, hesitating and worrying about us and taking anything further. She would carry on about “getting all this stuff sorted out first” without going into a whole lot of detail about what that “stuff” was. I was disturbed about how easily she lied to her friends and family as it seemed to be her first option, rather than the potentially awkward truth.

A week went by that lasted forever and we met again in Doncaster, which was a weirdly cold experience that left me thinking we’d never speak again (something I experienced a lot over the next few months). We were both very nervous and guarded around each other. A few weeks later in October she told me she’d fallen in love with me, and I confessed I’d fallen for her. Now that was very, very weird indeed, and very unexpected. But it was very natural – we both wanted to say “I love you”, so we just decided to say it instead of worrying whether we should. I randomly kissed her by surprise at 6 o’clock and it became our special time on the clock.

We spent as many weekends as we could together, booking into hotels in Doncaster, Newcastle and other places as we couldn’t go into Scunthorpe (guess why?) and she couldn’t get down to London. I discovered that I wanted to conquer the world for love and for us, not just for the sake of it. There was nowhere for us to stay and it meant we could only really see each other for one night at a time. Each time was lovely – passionate, intense, butterfly-ridden and wonderfully powerful feelings of deep love, explosive lust and intense infatuation. The first night was always insane, but we clearly got on much better in person than on MSN or the phone. She knew she didn’t love Dale anymore when she fell in love with me.

But something was very, very wrong. She would never tell me where she lived and got very angry when I asked. I was suspicious, as was everyone I knew. There was always an innocuous reason why she didn’t wanted to tell me, and I didn’t want to believe the only reason why anyone would ever do that, which is simply as they don’t want you turning up and seeing what was really going on. Every time our arguments ended with her finally saying “ok, the truth…” The sweet side was her remote controlling my laptop from the other side of the country and speaking every night.

In November, her and her best friend Ebony made their first trip to London and handled it impressively well. They met a lot of my friends in Mayfair and it was just amazing to see her on those streets as they were literally made for her. The chemistry between us in the room was so intense people commented on it. We secretly stood in front of each other in the club corridor and I saw her trembling with nerves as we kissed. I introduced her as “the girl I am in love with” and we had a lovely evening that was bittersweet as I wanted to break down the club bedroom doors and make love to her all night, but she had to go.

What I found out later was that 3 of them all pointed out the same thing – that she seemed nice but for some reason they really didn’t trust her at all and didn’t know why. How prescient of them. She did little romantic things for me, but in any big way as she always had the distance/disconnection people picked up on. She confessed she was an incredibly suspicious person, and to help her feel more reassured I gave her passwords and access to all my accounts.

I managed to steal her away for a day so she could come to Hampshire, driving up to pick her up from Wimbledon station when she’d been waiting in the cold for hours. We went out for the evening in Guildford with my sister and Marcos but she was exhausted from having no sleep and wracked with nerves from the overwhelmingly experience of meeting so many people I knew. My sister’s intuition was that she had a great “coldness” and “sadness” about her and was disappointed that her being so guarded meant they didn’t get the chance to get to know each other better. Both my mum and her thought she was very guarded and gently probed me about whether I trusted her. She was fed up with Ebony and it turned out she got stood up when meeting her on her way back.

But yet again, there was something underneath the surface. Ebony was getting phone calls from Dale asking where she was, as was she. She sneaked off to call him whilst we were at lunch, saying he called her when she was in the ladies toilet. Dale had allegedly gone to the flat when she was away and broken her laptop somehow, which made her furious (he lived there as it turned out). It ruined our stay. She quit her job at the bar she worked in the same month – I never knew the name as she wouldn’t tell me. We stayed in a gorgeous Lincolnshire village called Louth and I saw her for the first time without her make-up over 2 nights or so. I’ve never seen her look so beautiful – so much so that I’m surprised she even wears war paint. The weekend was as short as she could make it, arriving really late on the first night and going home as early as she could. Presumably so she wasn’t away long enough for Dale to be suspicious.

On one occasion Ebony and I secretly plotted to give her a surprise party with all her friends together to cheer her up, but she freaked out suspiciously and went mad. We had to explain what we had been talking about the idea was canned. She was more worried about how she felt being so suspicious that she managed to overlook the fact that we cared as much as we did and wanted to help.

Eventually I had enough of her refusing to tell me where she lived as the pressure from my friends and my own good sense was getting too much. As she was so naturally suspicious I’d given her all my passwords for her comfort. It was painful because I was so in love with her and yet she was hot-cold-hot-cold. I told her it was over at the end of the month and she was distraught. While I was at Beth’s house I gave in and sent her a message at 3am after the barrage of desperate emotional mails she had sent me. It was distressing enough that she moved out the flat and back to her mum’s house, and gave me the address a few days before all her things were transferred to the new house. Yet again the conversations ended with “ok, the truth…” She had lied about how much Dale lived there, amongst other things. I knew things weren’t as she said they were.

December was difficult as it was so busy and she needed to earn money to help pay off her debts. I’d got her a new CV, helped her set some goals for her life and make a plan for the future to help her make the best of herself. She’d stopped doing her course and was really disliking living at her mum’s. We didn’t see each other at all over the course of the month and I cancelled my MySpace account. By now all my friends were getting louder in their discontent and warning me I was being messed around and that it would all end in tears.

She had booked herself to work on my birthday and didn’t send me a card or present, which hurt because of all the effort I made for hers although she told me she was very ill with a kidney infection. Nothing for Christmas either, and I didn’t send anything. We were supposed to be having a 5 day break over New Year, but she didn’t bother planning it at all and avoided the subject whenever we talked. Her agenda was to spend it with her mum and to visit me in the first week of January. Dale was pursuing her and wanting to try again when she’d moved back to her mum’s.

Finally she introduced me to someone she knew in real life – her best friend and co-worker Ebony. I was only allowed to see one of Ebony’s 3 myspace profiles and she had briefed her on what she could and could not say, and that she was not to give me her address. On one occasion I deliberately deceived her saying I knew Dale and her were still together (and that I knew more than I actually did), and she responded in kind confirming everything I was worried about. She naturally denied all of it, saying Ebony had no idea and I was using her to suspiciously dig up information on her. I had started collecting and archiving all our conversations and gifts to each other for nostalgia, but she was later to throw it back and me saying it was so I could use it against her later.

I had been going at her campaigning to know when we would officially be boyfriend and girlfriend, and she responded by telling me I had been her boyfriend for months. It felt amazing, but it was very strange as I only saw as seeing each other until we had the chance to have a proper relationship.
Act II – The House of Lies Comes Crashing Down (Complication)

I thought January might make things very different, as she wanted to be in London by March. By now a plan was developing and an end to all the frustration of not being able to be together in a day-to-day relationship was in sight. The distance was driving us mad and making us argue all the time over MSN. She couldn’t get anywhere as she had no money, and my schedule was crowded and the commuting expensive. She would be moving to London anyway, and I was looking to move to a flat – we were on our way and it was exciting despite all the trouble and arguing. We could meet in the middle to get that relationship and her career underway. I gave it until Valentines Day before I finished things and put them behind me.

So on the first weekend, she managed to get £100 or so in her pocket to come and see me, which was no easy feat as she literally pennies to rub together. It was a huge endeavour and risk for her. Massive. It was a huge leap of faith and a scary thing to do. Unfortunately a few days earlier I’d been unable to resist temptation and logged into her MySpace account, finding a whole number of unsavoury flirtatious exchanges between her and other men, when she was violently sensitive to me doing the same.

One of many of those was from a man who liked sending her pictures of himself having sex with random girls, and she seemed to think it was naughty but fun. She deleted his contact details from everywhere after telling him that she couldn’t meet him for coffee (sex) because I’d be there – in other words that she’d like to, but couldn’t, There was another lie when she told him I’d been looking around her computer and found them when she’d sent them to me. Later she told me I was being possessive, despite knowing I didn’t order her to do it and doing it to prove to me he didn’t matter. I was angry at what a disrespectful little shit he was, not untrusting of her.

What was worse was the shock I got when I was looking at Ebony’s Faceparty profile – a link to another MySpace account Emma had. Not just any profile, but her real one. The one I had been chatting to her through was her fake one for meeting new people. She had 2, for 2 separate purposes- one for meeting new people (men), the second for her local friends, both oblivious to each other. I looked through the comments and read things she’d written in parallel to her conversations with me. Her idea was to keep it all separate. I had a choice to confront her there and then or wait for her to come to London.

Later on, I found that there were plenty more of those secret anonymous profiles, a lot more of the flirting and many other sites she frequented that were deliberately hidden from me. For the record I have no problem whatsoever with a girlfriend having male friends or flirting, I just get angry when there are different rules for each person.

I chose the latter and hid my anger as best I could. She arrived at Waterloo all wet behind the ears and having made such a huge effort. We travelled to Kerri’s flat in Richmond and she could sense all was not well as I was cold and indifferent. When we arrived, we sat down and I presented her with print-outs of the emails and comments on the real profile, saying “you lead a very active and interesting life”. She was silent. Furious. Surprised. Upset. She wanted to storm out the flat and decided to leave, but all along said nothing. I was very, very angry and upset, as you would be. I looked her in the eyes and told her that if there were any other secrets she had better tell me then and there.

She lied to my face again looking me right in the eyes, and said there were no more.

A long desperate cuddle and some tears later, she decided to stay and the weekend turned out to be one of the romantic and wonderful ones ever. We cooked together, watched movies at home together and were wonderfully in love (well I assume we were, but knowing Emma there was plenty more under the surface). For the first time we were in a normal, everyday setting and it worked so well. I understood that she wasn’t sure whether we’d work out and wanted to tell me for a long time, and she told me she wanted me to meet her family soon. I put her on the train at King’s Cross with a secret note for her to find in her bag.

When I got back, I had an email sitting in my inbox containing the password to her real/secret MySpace account. I tortured myself about whether to look inside. I was loved up and didn’t want to ruin such an amazing weekend. But I had to.

What I found hurt me more than anything else I can remember. More lies. But massive, damaging ones.

She had been together with Dale up until when she moved out in December, living with him in the flat. She was maintaining that they were just going through a “bad patch” and that he was her “fella” just 2 days after telling me she’d fallen in love with me. I’d been having an affair with another man’s girlfriend. They had been in a relationship together all the time we were together, although she maintained they hadn’t been together physically and she recoiled when he tried to kiss her. She had lied about almost everything. To him, they were together up until a few weeks ago but he knew she’d met someone else. If I had known they were together, I would never have got involved her with in any way in the first place.

Once the shock wore off and Kerri saw the pain in my face, I was furious like I had never been before. I send her a text message that caught her massively by surprise in her loved up state and changed everything. I was so hurt all I could do was lash out because I was feeling like a total fool who had been lied to, used and played with. I was so enraged and I had no idea what to do with the pent-up feelings that were swelling in my chest. She denied it all and went through her mailbox to delete everything she could as soon as she got access to her MySpace account, but I had already saved everything I needed as I know how good she is at covering her tracks when she is found out.

What happened next was extreme, and horrendous. I learnt a lot about my nature and what I’m capable of when I am hurt. I locked her out of both MySpace accounts and changed the one I had been talking to me on, writing a mock confession detailing how she had cheated on both me and Dale and had been living a secret double life. After that I invited all the local people she knew to the other profile, including coincidentally friends of her family. Angry text messages created more angry text messages.

The next day I demanded she confess everything to Dale or I would tell him myself. A series of very nasty and forceful text messages followed, and she duly went to his flat and explained. His reaction was to forgive and forget because he already knew. In the evening she went so desperately crazy asking me to take the profile down that she threatened to run away, kill herself and apparently stabbed herself in the leg with a pair of scissors in frustration. Ebony joined in to back her up and coerce me. I punished her as badly as I could and tortured her mentally, forcing her to confess every lie she’d ever told me and swear to never doing it again. There was no pleasure in it. Later in the night, the profile came down as I finally relented. She told me afterwards that she would have done 100x worse and would have given me a nervous breakdown.

The days after were incredibly painful and a lot of extreme feelings came out. I could barely function for being so hurt, and so many other stressed in my life were bearing down on me at the same time. I ran up a massive hotel phone bill in a night of paranoia and desperation where I needed to speak to her. On the Thursday I came back from giving a speech to 3000 people in Manchester and got a text from her late at night saying she was off to a party, which pushed some painful buttons of mine and proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was on my knees on the pavement, crying passionately, talking at the sky to say I couldn’t do it anymore. I was suicidal. Everything that had come to bear on me took me right to the precipice and made me a broken man.

I was so lost I couldn’t care if anyone missed me. The darkness was just too much. I woke up the next morning and decided I had to leave. I packed my bags, sent a message to my mum, my sis and Emma, and told them I was going away. Emma freaked out asking me if It was space or whether we were breaking up, and I told her to stop badgering me. I couldn’t take any more. I left for the airport, leaving my mobile, laptop and usual belongings behind and got on a plane, so I could get to the secret special place I run to when life is too hard to carry on with it. It’s a spiritual place with no worldly pleasures.

The weekend was so incredibly difficult and the whole world turned upside down worrying about me and trying to find out where I was. She’s like a drug that I had to go through withdrawal with – 24 hours away was torture. I rested and learnt wisdom, and consulted those who know better than I do. On the Saturday I decided to sit down and write her a letter. I only had candlelight; there was no TV, no Internet, no radio, no disturbances, nothing. Only me with my pen and paper, with no other people around. I didn’t know what to say as I didn’t know what I was feeling.

But something amazing happened. I had an epiphany.

All I could feel was love. There was no anger, no resentment, no hurt and no bad feeling at all. All I could write about was how much I loved her despite all that had happened, how much she’d hurt me or what she’d done. Without all the distractions and pressures there was only love in my heart, and I poured it out on the page under the candles. It was pure and whole, and so strange to me. When I walked back to my room, I had the burning urge to take it to her in person. My body was so fragile from not connecting with her. I decided to go to Scunthorpe the next day and find her.

Dawn came and i told the people I was with that I was leaving immediately. The response was wonderful as they all thought it was the most romantic thing they’d ever seen. I flew back into the south of the UK, travelled up to London and made my way to Scunthorpe through engineering work and more obstacles than you could count. It took me 9 hours to get there and I got to Doncaster in the late afternoon. Because I didn’t have my phone I had no way to contact anyone. I rang my sister and my dad and asked them to give me phone numbers and send messages on so she knew when I’d be there. I couldn’t get through to anyone and there was no response.

I got to Scunthorpe at 6, absolutely terrified and not knowing what the hell I was going to do. When I called her, there was no response. After a frantic whirlwind of phone calls and desperate attempts trying to reach her, my sister finally got her on MSN.

She couldn’t make it.

I had to call her back as she finally found her way to the station where I was waiting. I heard her heels from a long way off and I was shaking. She was furious, and on her way to see Dale that evening. I stumbled as I gave her the letter and she was cold. As the minutes went on, the conversation was warmer. She said she was pleased to see me and thought she’d never hear from me again. She also dropped the bomb – she had done a pregnancy test and a faint blue line had appeared. I was going to be a dad and had been trying to reach me all weekend. She hugged me and told me she couldn’t tell me to go home having travelled all that way. I told her I’d get some dinner and wait for her as she went off to see Dale.

I waited all evening in a pub on the edge of the town. I didn’t have a phone so there was no way to get hold of me. I had to text and call her from the barmaid’s phone but there was no response. I had no idea where she was or what was going on. I gave her until 11 or so until I booked into the nearby hotel and left. 11pm came and went, and I walked out the door. As I took my steps the barmaid screamed at me that she was on the phone. She’d gone out and got drunk in the town and was walking to me on her own in the dark late at night along a main road. We frantically tried to organise taxis and couldn’t figure out how to meet. Waiting for one was agony. The mother of my child was on her own in the dark somewhere.

The taxi couldn’t go fast enough and the driver thought I was completely neurotic. Eventually we saw her, and she’d been walking for miles. She sat opposite me and kissed me. I told her that if anything had happened to her I don’t know what I would have done. We drove to the hotel and booked in. I had to go back to get cash, and she wrote me a note in the room telling me how much she loved me. When I got back to pulled me close to her and was crying. Dale had been denying all the lies and cheating he had been up to and she was incredibly hurt. It was the first time I’d seen her really cry and my heart just broke again. The feel of her skin when I got under the duvet was heaven.

The following weeks were amazing, although she missed a lot of shifts at work. I decided to follow up her birthday extravaganza with day no 2 for valentines, and wanted it to be her best ever as every one before had been crap. We saw each other every weekend and became so close. I would ring her every night and she’d wait for my call, eventually whispering because she couldn’t wake her mum up next door. We stayed together in our 4-poster obsession and spent nights laying together naked and being drunk in love. She loved talking like we “just knew”. I learnt she was a hugely spiritual person who was interested in the paranormal. After one weekend she emailed me saying she’d never missed me so much, ever. I brought her a rose every time we met. We wrote notes together. We were perfect for a while.

In the last week of January, I left to go to Ireland on business. The first thing I did was get connected to the net so I could speak to her. I missed her so much it was killing me, and she wanted me to come back as I soon as I got on the plane. The days went by and we spent forever talking as soon as I got a free moment. I ran up phone bill after phone bill calling her internationally. She told me she daydreamed about marrying me, and I said I did the same.

We set a date for a wedding (20th August 2011), in a castle, with roses, her grandfather, and she picked out her dress. Her daughter Louisa would be in her belly as she walked up the aisle. I told her I’d propose when our Prophecy system made its billionth transaction, but refused to let her know how. One weekend she got the worst flu she’d ever had, but still wanted to see me regardless. We just “fit” together and “just knew”. Life was really tough for her and I probably didn’t realise how bad. She re-created my MySpace page because she missed me went she went online.

She set herself a deadline of the end of April to have everything in place for her to move to London. Before it had been March, but the new one was certain. Later she would extend it further because of a lot of things that were holding her back. Everything was in place for us to be able to have a relationship together.

I saw something that worried me but I ignored it. Dale was still pursuing her, turning up at her house in her car that he still drove despite her family hating him and him being asked to give it back. She lied to me about blocking him on MSN during a conversation about how he she had an argument with him on it one afternoon. While we were in the pub he was calling and texting her incessantly, she wrote him a text to tell him to leave her alone and that she didn’t want him at all which I insisted she didn’t send as it would make him worse. His texts were asking her to respect his feelings, and yet again she snuck out to the toilet to call him when he wouldn’t stop, playing innocent when she came back.

Around then, something went very wrong. It was already wrong, but at the back of her head. For me, the world was looking really wonderful despite all the pain of the previous weeks. I had forgiven the unforgivable and survived it. She told me she needed space, and Dale had gone mysteriously quiet. I let her know that I’d promised myself that if I was ever suspicious again on gut instinct, I’d end things without getting involved in any more conversation. I told her I wasn’t doing it again. She went crazy and fell to pieces, not knowing why and desperately telling me how much she loved me and was in unbelievable pain. Somehow we smoothed things over but she still wanted space without explaining why at all.

I was meant to understand and just walk away. She was drowning in debt and the part-time work she was doing at the bar wasn’t providing enough money. She was incredibly unhappy. She was continually furious that she had no privacy and I gave away our most intimate memories for public consumption. Her secretiveness was a warning sign to me but was something she had developed from years of having her own privacy brutally violated since she was a child by her family.

I was going to visit her the next weekend, the first in February, and she couldn’t wait to see me but had come down with an incredibly evil bout of food poisoning the night before. Her first comment to me was that she thought I wouldn’t believe her, as she wouldn’t believe it either. I visited Scunthorpe properly and got to see where she worked and the place she lived as I walked around. Before I called her, I secretly met her friend Ebony and gave her an envelope for her Valentines Day surprise. I spent the weeks before planning it all and had massive problems being paid on time by clients, resulting in me throwing a chair across the room in frustration. I gave everything I had to it and wanted it to be the best she’d ever had. Everything fell to bits when it was supposed to go right, and it all went down to the last cliffhanger minute. I was so excited to see her again after I’d fought so hard.

What I didn’t know was how desperately she needed space and what was going through her mind. She was lying to herself and had put all the things she needed to deal with away somewhere else behind what was in front of her. The good times were over but I didn’t know. Biology says that in the first few months men are too fired up on testosterone to have the same awareness of their relationship than women are. I was supposed to walk away peacefully, understand without her saying anything or me questioning her and let her be to come back to me later. I was meant to do what she would do in the same situation.

When I met her in Costa she seemed strange and slightly cold, and it had taken her a long time to find her way down to town. I sat there with butterflies, which freaked me out as it was always her that suffered them a lot more than me. Our evening was unbelievably horrid. She didn’t want me anywhere near her. Everything I did was invading her personal space. She lay on the edge of the bed furthest away from me and I didn’t know what to do. She occasionally reached out to me but I pushed her away. When we were eating, she was more interested in the couple opposite who seemed to be both checking her out. She wouldn’t eat. Conversation was impossible.

I eventually left her in the room and went downstairs because I couldn’t take the atmosphere and rejection. When I came back she was awake and reading a magazine like nothing was wrong and I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. When we tried to sleep I lost my temper and we argued badly. I couldn’t understand why she was being so cold and she lashed out at me as well. I promised her at her bedside that I would never leave or abandon her, and that she would never be cheated on or have to cry herself to sleep again. We didn’t get a whole load of rest and I felt like death from the emotional juggernaut that was trampling over me. Somehow we made it up in the morning before I left to go back to London. She didn’t want to be with me the next day over lunch, but I did notice her thyroid was massively swollen, which it had been for years.

The next week got worse. I sent her a message in a bottle with an old English oath document committing to her. Her craving for space became more apparent and my tolerance for it weaker. I was emotionally starving, and I tried to tell her. We were both trying to tell each other things but neither could get through. She couldn’t explain why she was feeling so resistant and I couldn’t explain why it was so difficult to let her go, as much as I tried. Conversations got more and more painful, with us splitting up to be just friends, then pausing, then agreeing Valentines would be our last night together. It was virtually impossible to get her to come out for the day, even though she said she wanted to. I didn’t want her to be there out of obligation.

The morning came and I was up at 5am to do all my travelling. Her family were all around her and I’d told her to expect flowers in the morning. She wasn’t happy because she didn’t want them to see. I’d mentioned that if they didn’t arrive before 11 she should go out anyway so she’d arranged a lift from her dad into town. When I called to check half an hour or so beforehand, she angrily snarled at me down the phone and made it clear how pissed off and fed up she was. In my despair I told he to just get the local paper as it had an ad for her in it. I just wanted to give up and really didn’t know why I’d bothered.

The 12 red roses did turn up however just before she left, along with a bottle of champagne with a teddy bear. She sent me a text saying sorry for being so horrid when I had called. I had asked her if she was near a newsagent she could do the next thing which was buy the local paper to see the ad I had put in there telling her how much I loved her and to go to a secret website I had made. On the website she would press a button and be told that her friend Ebony would have something for her at the bar she was working in. She just went into town directly. The envelope had a map to a place she had to go, and train tickets to Durham.

The map was to a local beauty parlour where she had a full body massage, something she’d always wanted but never had. She sent me a text to say thanks and that it was amazing. I was on the train, stuck in engineering works problems, sitting next to the fattest person I’d seen in months, wondering why the hell I was even bothering. The next thing was for her to get ready and get on the train to Durham, where she would meet me at 6pm, our special time. I did something very stupid in my boredom, which was to text a set of my girl friends what I thought was a sweet Valentines text message, kind of like what you’d say at Christmas. It was a very bad idea and changed everything.

When I arrived I spent hours getting the last things done, which proved to be an absolute nightmare. I had to organise taxis to and from, get cards, presents and food shopping, and get ready. There were no taxis available so I had to ask a favour of one, there were no roses in the whole city and I couldn’t carry what I had with me. She missed the train that was specified on the tickets, which meant I had to re-book over the phone. I arrived at the place earlier, setting everything up and speaking to the staff who worked there to make sure everything was in place.

The taxi driver picked her up on time and him and I called and texted each other for the duration of the journey so I knew exactly where they were. As the sun went down, he drove her to the beautifully lit up 13th century Durham castle. When she arrived all the staff knew who she was and had specific instructions to tell me when she got there, lead her around the long way and tell her I was downstairs. Everyone was waiting to see what would happen when she walked in. When she went to the room she found a massive 3ft Valentines card, a rose, and a hand-made book of memories with a postcard on each page, for each month we’d been together and the months coming up. I also hid secret notes all over the room. The plan was also for us to have breakfast with her dad who lives nearby and she never gets to see.

I was hiding in the bar with a rose in my hand and an order of her favourite drink but she took forever to come down after being in the room and checking it thoroughly for surprises. When she did appear, she was shaking, nervous as anything and all over the place. The first thing she told was that she had forgotten my card. Unfortunately it turned out later that she hadn’t got me one at all, despite telling me after the day it was in her room un-posted. She doesn’t believe in them and only gets them for family. We went out into the courtyard and kissed, both of us shaking away nervously from all the excitement and tension. It was Valentines Day and we were in a castle – it doesn’t get more romantic and amazing than that.

As we sat drinking in the bar I told her we had one more thing to do before dinner, but I had to go back up to the room to sort it out. I left her there and went upstairs to unpack all the food and accessories I had bought in Durham and laid them out. She was texting me saying I had been there forever but finally I led her upstairs and told her to wait whilst I went inside again. After I came back out I confessed that we were actually having dinner in the room, and she walked in to see dozens of candles and a picnic laid out on the floor stuffed with food. She hadn’t eaten all day and we tucked in whilst dressed in dressing gowns. She looked so beautiful in the candlelight that I could barely keep my eyes off her.

Then something went very wrong again. When I went out to have a crafty cigarette out of the bathroom window, it turned out she went searching through my mobile phone and found the text I had sent to friends earlier in the day (“Be my valentine?”). One of the recipients was a girl I’d had lunch with recently who I found out had wanted a little more than friendship, although I couldn’t be sure. The others knew exactly what I meant and sent texts back in the jokey spirit it was intended.

Only she didn’t tell me at all, and just put it to the back of her mind.

Of course, she went cold again. She wouldn’t touch me and just wanted to watch TV as I was there confused and frustrated. I went to go downstairs again after an angry pillow fight, and she wanted to come with me. Eventually we just went to sleep. In the morning, she kissed me incredibly passionately but I was too tired to even think straight, and after a long chat she told me that she wasn’t in love with me. She didn’t know herself and as we touched our heads together we made the connection again. The pain was unbearable, and the day was completely ruined. We talked in the bar and I told her I didn’t want to wait around to have my heart broken into a million pieces. We left to go back to the train station. Everything was awkward.

On the train, we cuddled and read The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy together, kissing and being sensually intimate in a loving haze. I found out later that she was battling her anger and resentment and trying to put it all to the back of her mind. As she left on her connecting train to go back to Scunthorpe, I left her a note in her pocket saying “Even if I never see you again, you will always be the most beautiful girl in the world and I will always love you”. I just somehow knew I would never see her again and I fell to pieces. As I went back on the tube I kept thinking and thinking about what could have gone wrong, and I came up with the answer of guilt. She didn’t know why she was feeling the way she was. We had gone from being love of the century to a dreadful train wreck within weeks.

She got further away, and always angrier. The days after got worse and worse and more painful. They were soon to become some of the worst of my life. One moment she loved me, the next she didn’t. What I later realised was that she was actually doing exactly what you do after you’ve broken up with someone, although that someone wasn’t me, it was her ex. She was out seeing old friends, sorting out her life, changing her appearance, socialising constantly with friends, wanting to be on her own and dealing with all the things that hadn’t been dealt with when she stopped living with the last guy. I didn’t see simply because I was too emotionally involved. It hurt too much and she said nothing, just expecting me to know and quietly walk away.

My heart broke every day, over and over again as she rejected me time and time again without being able to explain why and getting angry that I wouldn’t just shut up and understand. One evening she told me she had had a very awful day whilst I was on my way to see Amanda for the first time in a year, when she was having radiotherapy. At Heathrow airport she rang to tell me she was pregnant but wasn’t getting a test and didn’t want me to come up to talk about it. Later she backtracked and said she wasn’t sure she was, and that I was being secretive. I was bombarded by missed calls and frantic text messages that I ignored because I was so angry and Amanda saw as unbelievable. She felt betrayed and wanted to confide in me because she was scared, but I was talking with someone who will in all likelihood never be able to have the gift of a child and would never use it in the way she had.

She broke down on a Sunday after we hadn’t spoken and told me she wanted to show me a secret she kept that would illustrate how little self-worth she had and how desperately she needed help. It was a secret MySpace profile for her to meet other people suffering from eating disorders. She had anorexia nervosa, and I remember she had hinted it before. She didn’t know if she needed help but it ruled her life completely. She needed someone, and that someone was me. I grew increasingly worried about her, including when she told me she was on the verge of a breakdown. Her response to me after was anger, saying I’d made her feel like she was going insane when she was perfectly ok.

There were days when the pain was so intense I could barely feel anything or function. Nothing was right and I couldn’t concentrate. At times I was curled up in a ball and spent from morning to night with heavy burning in my chest that wouldn’t go no matter how many tears I cried. I destroyed the punch bag in my gym after going at for an hour straight. I cried out, and cried more. I tried to rationalise the irrational as she couldn’t care at all and didn’t know why she was doing any of it. I was intent on turning our relationship into a fairytale and it was driving her mad. Whenever she wanted to ask me for space, I would bring up how many other girls were out there to reel her back in so she was trapped.

We had gone weeks without seeing each other and I wanted to get back on track. Every time I brought it up I was met with anger and frustration. She needed to work to make money because she had none and the bank were eating up everything she earned in charges. I suggested we see each other a little and often in the week instead of the weekends so she could get her hours in as I didn’t want to get in the way of what she needed to do. No matter what I suggested it was wrong and she didn’t want it at all.

I made a new friend in a girl called Jo, who she hated passionately and suspected of foul play because she’d entered my life around the time we were having so many problems. She felt pushed out and that I hadn’t made her feel like my number one girl, despite of what she’d put me through. Her answer was to push me out with another guy and make it clear she didn’t need me at all.

But the worst was yet to come.

On a lonesome evening in the Fox Club the night before I was due to come and see her, she went crazy at me on MSN as snapped and needed space so desperately that she affected an emergency stop out of frustration because I wouldn’t separate from her. She didn’t want to be with me, didn’t love me, didn’t fancy me, hated me and didn’t care at all. We screamed at each other down the phone as I stood in the middle of Mayfair shouting in frustration to give us a chance as we hadn’t even had the chance to have a relationship yet. Everything fell apart as she was so certain and do categorical that it left no room for doubt. It was over. She messaged me later to say she was sorry, just needed thinking space and not to come up to her.

A wealthy friend who had been talking at me for 4 hours offered me the entire £5M investment I was looking for on the spot if I stopped talking to her because he said I had nearly lost everything sacrificing for her and getting nothing in return. What happened next has turned into legend.

I contacted her ex, Dale, via email and MSN and got no response. I was suspicious he had gone so quiet despite her telling me he was seeing someone else. I got back to Hampshire and received an email from Dale saying “final warning”. It explained that he and Emma were back together, she had made a mistake in being anywhere near me and there was nothing I could do to break them apart. I was too numb to respond and couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked on the net and anything to do with her had gone – she had deleted it all and then told Dale it was OK to tell me once that was done. The betrayal slowly spread over as I became enraged. In one way I was happy as it gave me the definite closure I needed and answered the hanging pain I’d been feeling. But I was murderous. It was the worst and most terrible thing she could be done.

But it wasn’t Dale, it was her hacking into his account and sending me an email purporting to be from him. He wasn’t too happy and changed his password as she didn’t cover her tracks. It was the only thing she felt she could throw at me, but also was the trigger for all the events she feared would happen. She was terrified of telling me she didn’t feel the same way. Petrified, apparently. She was totally fed up of going over the same things from the past, despite always bringing mine back up again and again.

I thought about them together, and how they must have been with each other for weeks when he went quiet. I lost control and emailed him back telling him everything she’d done and that he was welcome to her. Afterwards I wrote her an email that was so horrendous and horrific that even now I’m ashamed to even think about it – I threw the worst things I could imagine right back at her and it was designed to destroy everything inside her. I’m an accomplished expert at poison pen letters and it was an exceptionally evil thing to do but the only way I could get across how hurt I was. I attached a list of pros and cons I’d put together about her and knew once I’d sent it the damage would be extreme. Part of me hoped she’d delete it without reading it. No such luck.

It was time for nuclear action and to get her for what she’d done. She was expecting me to publicly humiliate her and do something awful in return for her not wanting to be with me. I was only angry at the betrayal, so she became dead to me. I created a new myspace for her, took over her websites and added a blog network of pages that were titled “Emma Louise Brown – Compulsive and cowardly liar, user and manipulator”, with all the emails she had sent me and downloads of all the things between us she tried to destroy. An abusive text or two also flew, as well as me killing off all contact with my friends. I wanted Dale to see and for everyone to know the truth. I blocked her from contacting me in any way, invited all her friends and family to the sites, and made sure she came up in Google at the top.

There was one more complication which really wasn’t needed. In my anger I kissed a girl I knew was interested in me. She herself had a boyfriend, but I didn’t care. I knew it could lead to somewhere else and we would probably start seeing each other. So I made sure Emma knew I could move on pretty quick and that if she was sleeping with Dale as she said she was, I would do exactly the same. I was supposed to have talked to her and found out it wasn’t Dale, not gone off the deep end. Little did I know that she hadn’t done anything with anyone else.

Her response was to go to the police station with Dale and report me for harassment, which meant I got phone calls ignorant officers warning me not to have any more contact with her. Every time I called back, no-one returned my call. I made my own complaint and spoke to all 3 police forces that were near to me explaining her and Dale had threatened me. Somehow she managed to hack my MSN and unblock herself, and we had what can only be described as the worst, most awful and most appalling conversation two people could ever have. I blocked her again as she taunted me to and hinted that she knew Dale’s password.

Within days, she had control back over her websites and a new myspace profile for herself which all the other friends were invited back to. The page was kitted out to make me out a deranged Fatal Attraction-style stalker and cult leader– possessive, obsessive and weird and who couldn’t take being let go by her, complete with excerpts from emails and texts I’d sent and denouncements of my friends as “followers”. Her family got to see everything, as she feared, so the maximum damage was done. The portrayal of me as a dangerous obsessive got worse by the day as she gathered support for her cause and was planning to disseminate corporate information to damage me financially. We battled daily, tit for tat, backwards and forwards. To this day all her friends think I am a mentally-disturbed nutcase. What I did was based on truth, whereas she based hers on false lies.

But despite everything, we still kept emailing each other in the background. On Saturday came a strange breakthrough when she told me she didn’t know what was happening with Dale. For the days preceding it, she had carried on giving me the impression they were together as I thought, but suddenly things changed when she wrote to me with her kisses and said she’d try to talk to me when she got back from work. I finally took down the websites and put a letter to her up that is still there today. I decided it was time to lay my anger and need for revenge down because the damage I wanted had already been done and it was time to let go and move on.

Monday came after a week from her taking her space, and she sent me a message on MySpace asking me to come on MSN and then block her again. She told me she had sent the emails that appeared to have come from Dale because she was angry I had contacted him and that they weren’t together anymore. I was in too much shock to know what else to do. She wanted to be single for a while and maybe we’d be more someday. She just wanted to be on her own but wasn’t really too interested in how I felt knowing she’d heaped lie on top of lie, again and again. I told her I’d said all the things I’d said in anger, and she said she hadn’t meant what she’d said about not wanting to be with me. I’d thrown back everything personal she’d told me in her face.

What I didn’t notice at this point was how things were escalating. She was getting worse and worse and more dramatic by the day. I had written so many long letters to her and got nothing back at all. Writing is her love but none of what she wrote made it to me – all the letters that supposedly got written were never actually sent. Just like the cards.

Our friendly tones were over. No more I miss you’s, no more I love you’s, no more kisses or “baby”. She steered well clear and every mention of love was met with a sarcastic “eugh”. Every attempt I made to try to repair the gulf between us was met with frozen contempt and avoidance. Although we somehow managed to contact each other every day, conversation became sparser as the defensive walls went up. I sent her flowers and she told me she wanted to be back together soon, and that she needed to better herself to keep up with all the beautiful and successful women I apparently surround myself with. Jealousy was in full effect – every time I mentioned the girl or Jo I was met with madness and her hurt at the situation. In her eyes I had been with someone else and disloyal. I told her I’d never felt pain like it, and she said the same. It was the first time I knew she even cared.

Through the difficulties she helped me realised I can be two people and have an unpredictable nature, which was a massive discovery for me that I am eternally grateful for. For me to be an unregulated force indiscriminately targeting people I love when I’m hurt is wrong and I had to change. I told her that I’d give up all my bad habits for her, but I knew I’d never get the same in return, which was the basic rule for everything as she would never give back and wouldn’t share. Our relationship was one-sided from the beginning and was lost when she didn’t know how to carry it on after the honeymoon, the cessation of which she was always waiting for, being so cynical about love.

I had to live my life like normal and put it all behind me. She saw everything I did as a hurtful gesture and a scorecard point to upset her, eventually saying I “couldn’t be any worse” and was kicking her in the teeth out of spite. When a girl messaged me, it was me getting back at her. When I didn’t respond, I was upsetting her, of course she didn’t care when I asked her. For me, I was just living my life and trying to get on with things because her and I were too painful to think about. Nothing was a gesture and I did my best to forget about her and not upset myself by spending any time thinking about her. Over the weeks, she had developed a semblance of a religious faith, which was the most wonderful thing I could think of as spirituality is such an important personal journey for all of us.

She kept all the bad text messages and emails and obsessively re-read them to remind herself of how hurtful I can be, presumably in some strange self-preservation routine. I was damned regardless. All she fixated on was how evil I could be, the words I had written in anger. Nothing good in me, or any forgiveness mattered. She became obsessed with me always needing revenge. The person in her head slowly bore no resemblance to who I actually was. Her suspiciousness and pre-occupation with me being a hurtful monster that only wanted to get her guard down and rip her to pieces destroyed everything we had. I asked her to delete them but she held onto them. She had no idea how she had created the situation she was obsessively worrying about.

On a mid-March weekend, I went out on the Friday to meet up with friends and she was convinced I was sneaking around to meet other girls and sent me a frantic and highly distressed text saying how paranoid and lonely she was. I responded by saying I would drive to her if she wanted to, but she didn’t want that. The next night she sent me a text at 3am when I was out drinking with Jo, and another the next morning when I was flying off from Heathrow to LA. I didn’t respond to either as I just didn’t know what to say, didn’t have the capacity to and had no idea what she wanted. She never responded to any of my texts or emails and I was tired of giving to be spat at in return. My friends were getting even more irate and insisting I have nothing more to do with her. All of them were in agreement and heavily frustrated with me.

I spent a week in LA and kept away from her in any way I could, knowing I had to finish our business plan and hoping it would give her time to relax and think. I planned to send her a text saying “I miss you” and call her from the plane to tell her I loved her, but I went on to her myspace profile to see her opening courting a guy she hated a matter of months before and parading her sexual appetite to the world. We argued over MSN at the airport and she was furious I hadn’t even told her I was going away and would be out of contact. I didn’t think she’d notice or even care. I got the job offer of a lifetime that would mean I would be a millionaire in days and would have to move to LA, and she was only interested in what order she came in on the email distribution list. I was just weary of the confusion and chaos.

The world started to come to a halt a week or so later when I tried to be friendly with her and all I got in return was abuse, anger and her doing her best to show me how happy she was without me, how indifferent she was to me and what an obsessive nutcase I was for being frustrated she was giving me the cold shoulder and being incredibly cold and rude to someone she allegedly wanted to be friends with. Her flirty friend had been using her to make his girlfriend jealous and she was all too happy to play along, talking to him all the time like she had with me, as my replacement. Any mention of Jo and she was violently insulting and nasty. One evening she told me she was not moving to London anymore but going to Leeds instead. The next time it was Peterborough – I had wrecked her confidence and she was too scared to move to London, where she wouldn’t be welcome.

One night the light bulb in my head switched on. She wanted me to see and feel that, and I cut off her oxygen by blocking her on MSN and on MySpace. There was no more she would hold over my head. I wouldn’t be abused any more and there wasn’t any chance of us being friends with her anger as it was.

The crash was spectacular, in our true and inimitable style. She woke up and sent me a text as soon as she woke up, asking me for my address because she wanted to send me something. I asked her what she wanted to send, and she answered by telling me to forget it. A few days later I asked her to send it, and she said she would but it was very delicate and didn’t know if it should see the light of day. I wrote a blog explaining how grateful I was to her for all the wonderful things I had learnt with her, and she told me she was about to send me something similar on the same day. It never appeared, like all the other things she promised.

The next evening she led me into an MSN conversation where she told me she was 12 weeks pregnant and was having an abortion whether I liked it or not. She didn’t want me to come up to see her because she wanted to deal with it on her own. She told me she had a new number and asked me if I wanted to call her. Not only that, but she’d slept with an old friend, didn’t love me anymore at all and was moving away. It was a hilarious joke wind-up to her that left me deeply worried for her because she couldn’t see how sick it was. Every one I told said it was the same thing – “disgusting”, and the universal consensus that I should get a paternity test. I couldn’t tell if it was a malicious act of revenge or a desperate cry for help.

With my sadness, I blocked her from everything and emailed her to tell her I loved her and to contact me when she had got herself together and got help. Nobody I knew could understand how I could entertain even having a conversation with her or how we could even speak considering what we’d done to each other. I included a post from my secret Emma blog explaining what is inside her and wished her well, accepting that I could do nothing with her the way she was, even if she was the other half of me.
Act III - Maybe love lasts forever (Resolution)

Emma and I are soulmates. We always have been, and always will be, whether we like it or not. She is my muse. We drive each other to madness and are both explosive and obsessive. In person we actually get on very well, but when it comes to having to talk on the phone or MSN, we just can’t cope and attack each other.

Nobody knows what the resolution will be, or even if there will be one. Things between the two of us have disintegrated so badly that we can barely talk to each other. When we think about us, both of us suffer a lot of pain. There’s a lot of water under the bridge and a lot of stress in the background. Both of us have dug our heels in and are incredibly stubborn and proud. So many things have been said and done that it’s impossible for either of us to drop our guard and open up to each other. For her, the last 6 months have been the whole relationship, but for me it was the precursor.

She thinks I only care a little and think the worst of her, and that I tell her off, patronise her, rant at her all the time and behave like a parent. I have rejected her continually and pushed her away when she’s tried to reach out. The problem has always been of her timing and approach – you can’t talk to someone when they are furious and hurt, or expect them to react to your games when they realise it’s a game and will only talk when they are talked to like an adult. I was supposed to go quietly and express how much I loved her by still being obsessed as she hurt me again and again. No deal on that.

But we met our deadlines and goals. She has everything she needed to move in time, and I am making my own plans that are slightly overdue, but on track. We made it to the window we originally set so that we could come together and have the relationship we wanted to have at the beginning but couldn’t. We’re in the place we always wanted to be. She wants to be single and keep me hanging, but I won’t, and have moved on to be with someone else. She wants me but doesn’t want me, as the crazy girl thing goes. She doesn’t know what she wants and is numb. I have to remind myself that she’s not breaking up with me, but with Dale. I won’t be lied to, abused or manipulated. I believe anything is possible, but she believes nothing is.

Dealing with her can sometimes be like dealing with a child. When she tells me she doesn’t love me every time she speaks to me I find myself wondering why she feels the need to scream it at me all the time and I’m reminded of a hurt and tantruming teenager shouting it at his/her parents. Maybe she doesn’t, but the actions are still the same. A lot of the things she gets angry about are very little to do with me or any partner she might have or have had – they are things that need to be thrown at the people who caused the hurt in the first place.

I worry about her all the time. The latest photos are doll-like and she looks gaunt and ill. She’s done the pregnancy trip on me a few times now, and each time when she was desperate in some way, telling me she wouldn’t grovel. I think back to when we first talk and all the things she said to me now ring true. I wonder how many of the problems in her relationship with Dale were her doing and when she first went crazy at him like she did with me. She won’t get help, and I’m not her doctor.

She wants a secure relationship, but she’ll never have one as long as she plays her games, is always trying to get the upper hand, is suspicious of anyone and anything and builds the foundation of one on lies. One has to give to get. She plays her games because she knows no better, and no-one can be damned for that. She doesn’t know what the alternative is, and won’t go and find out. I’m similar. She holds onto her pain like its some kind of shield against further hurt. We are actually amazingly good for each other as we challenge each other and force growth and accommodation. I’m proud of her independence.

She will do what she usually does, which is push the painful things to the back of her mind until they get so loud she’s desperate. And spite me whenever she can. Her pride won’t allow her to reach out any further because she’ll believe she’s already given too much and is fed up of being rejected, not realising that she’s made it impossible to have any kind of relationship with her. On the outside she’ll maintain the impression she doesn’t care and is wonderfully happy, but on the inside she’ll be just like me – missing her best friend and feeling lost. Her anger and resentment will brew and she won’t know what to do about it at all, when reading and learning about it from other people or a book will be too much for her as it will mean admitting there is something wrong. She’ll want me to come up and to call, but I won’t because I know she’s hot/cold and playing games. Days will be lifetimes and will mean months become a very long time.

She will flirt and get her attention fix from boys wherever they are, but she’ll always be empty and short-lived because the attention is about her looks, not who she is. The looks will disappear in time and she will be left with what’s underneath. The pain inside is spiritual and about wanting to be loved, and the vicious cycle will continue. She’ll try to get what she needs from relationships when it needs to come from other parts of her life. She will attack anyone who cares for her to test them and always try to destabilise anyone who she sees as cocky, or a threat to her emotionally. She will blow hot and cold schizophrenically until she learns to let go of the past and give in a way that’s healthy. She’ll continue to re-create me as a monster in her head because it’s easier for her to deal with.

But where does that leave me in all this? I would be lying if I said I didn’t love her madness. To me, nothing is ever impossible. There’s no finishing line and no wounds that can’t be healed with enough intimacy. I’m tough but I’m reasonable I think. I’ve tried to be friends with her but she always ends up punishing me or messing with my head. I’ve acted in self-preservation and done all I can, so the ball is firmly in her court. It’ll almost certainly stay there as she will never have the courage, spontaneity or passion to do anything about it. There are other people’s feeling involved now in my own love life, so whatever happens it will be complicated. She needs time to build up her social circle and stop blaming me for everything bad in her life. I can’t be the source of unconditional love that withstands everything she says and does because I’m a human being with thoughts and feelings that are precious.

We could do something about it, but whether it would happen is questionable. I know I could, as my heart and shoulders are big enough to do it. I throw myself in the deep end again and again because life for me is something to be lived violently and energetically. We are always connected, but like magnets that attract each other only to repel each other. It would mean we would need to moderate each other, open up in the face of massive risks have a lot of faith. That’s pretty easy for me, but not so for her. We could be the most powerful source of healing for each other or a massively destructive force. She’ll be waiting for me to do a massive attention-seeking act because it is what she’d do to get mine. I’ll be waiting for her to break through the minefield in her head and talk to me calmly and rationally. Neither of us will be able to approach each other out of fear of being hurt.

So we leave the story where it began. We are on the edge of precipice, more scared than ever, with us deciding whether to let love in.

Your playlist for background music should include:
• Angel – Massive Attack
• Stand - Rascall Flatts
• For You I Will – Teddy Geiger
• Hungry Eyes – Dirty Dancing
• You’re All I Have – Snow Patrol
• Why Can’t I – Liz Phair
• Breath – Breaking Benjamin
• Push – Matchbox Twenty
• Stay With You Til Dawn
• Let Love In – Goo Goo Dolls
• Nothing But Love – Trading Yesterday
• Something’s Missing – John Mayer
• The Beauty & The Tragedy – Trading Yesterday
• Everything – Lifehouse
• You & Me – Lifehouse
• Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley
• Far Away – Nickelback
• Don’t Go Away – Oasis
• Weakness – Forty Foot Echo
• Crazy Bitch - Buckcherry
• Down in a hole – Alice In Chains
• Weight Of The World – Saliva
• Let Her Cry – Hootie & The Blowfish
• With or without you – U2
• Tomorrow – Avril Lavigne
• This Love – Craig Armstrong