I am in Istanbul, Turkey. Despite him saying, ‘Let me come to Istanbul. Happy to pay for whatever.
So at least you could see I mean it’, I haven’t heard from him for two weeks. His last text said, ‘I feel so low, stressed and depressed I am just trying to get my head sorted.’
I replied: ‘You and me both. Am f***ing devastated.’
I have received no reply. What about me? No thought to how I’m feeling. And I did nothing wrong!
I’m in a gorgeous five-star hotel with a heated pool (but, of course, you know I am too nervous to go in it).
My friend Andrea texts me: ‘Are you having cheap plastic surgery?’ The mood I am in, having lost all self-confidence, that could well be the truth.
But no, I am here to get Margot Robbie’s teeth. I have already asked reception if I can have my hair dyed, be waxed and get a pedicure in between being sedated for the teeth work, just in case he turns up.
I have lovely teeth, but they were ruined by anorexia (a diet made up exclusively of Cox’s apples and Diet Coke). I had veneers cemented on in Harley Street, but that was 20 years ago. My gums are receding. I’m here to make them grow again. I need young teeth. Perfect teeth.
Anyway, hiding away in my lovely room, I cannot help but scroll through the surveillance photos again.
I know I shouldn’t do this to myself, but I am trying to make sense of what happened. Him out with a blonde on New Year’s Eve when he’d told me he was too sick to see me.
Another woman at his flat all day the following Saturday (in surveillance, it’s called ‘entering the plot’), when he emerged freshly showered, before jumping into an Uber with her to visit a bar, heading to a crummy Odeon to see a cartoon when he could have been in front of a roaring log fire with me, surrounded by dogs and racehorses.
I pause at a video, one of hundreds sent to me by the two female ex-Met coppers. And there is the brunette midget, taking an hour to put on her leather gloves, as though she is in the Arctic, not bleeding London. And there, there, I see it. A sparkle. A flash. Or at least I think I see it.
I send the clip to Nic. She isolates two screengrabs. She is very good at all the tech stuff; her other name is Siri. She sends the screengrabs to me.
And there it is. A huge diamond engagement ring.
He is engaged to the foetus.
Oh. My. God.
As if it could get any worse.
I imagine he met the blonde online. He says she is ‘gone’. She isn’t really any competition, given the hair, the coat, the palazzo pants, the staggering back to his flat. But the brunette is young, if short. Lots of men like little women. They can move them around in bed easily, it makes them feel powerful. She has a Louis Vuitton handbag.
The sort of extended lips you see on Love Island or Grand Designs. He says she is blackmailing him, is ‘dangerous’, so he has to keep her happy; and indeed, in the footage of their date they do look miserable.
But there is no mistaking the ring the size of a hippo on her left hand, glinting menacingly above her fake nails. I can tell she is high maintenance, entitled, trouble.
I had asked him, in the giant bed in my £1,500 suite at Soho House, if he would ever get married again. (He’s been married twice.) ‘I think I would, yes.’ But he did look sheepish.
Why don’t we trust our gut more? Why didn’t I interrogate him more deeply? And if he is engaged, why have sex with me just before Christmas, several times? Why have the horror blonde to stay at his flat on New Year’s Eve?
I notice something else. They head back to his attic flat in an Uber after watching Mufasa, FFS. He goes in first, then lets the door swing against her. Bang! What man doesn’t let a woman go first, hold the door open? She pauses, then follows him inside.
I wonder if he told her he was being filmed with another woman on NYE. That they have also been filmed, just now. That he told me he wanted us to live together. Soon after we met, he sent me a beautiful video, him on the balcony of his old flat, overlooking the Thames. ‘So lovely here, beautiful. You’re the only thing missing! But we will find our own place. I know.’
Jones Moans… What Liz loathes this week
- Hotels. There is a flashing green light in the middle of the ceiling in my room. By 3am I am at my wits’ end, trying to get to sleep in a disco. A bellboy comes to my door: ‘There is nothing I can do. It is policy.’
