It's official: Sarah Cosgrove is the Grinch that stole Christmas. From me. Dressed in a Santa hat and nothing else, she took the one time of the year where I can be truly happy, and obliterated any semblance of joy. At a little after 1:30pm on Christmas Eve, I walked into our bedroom to see Sarah, on her knees with my mate Alex fucking her from behind, while she relieved my other mate Alan with her mouth. I was just in time to see Alex pull out and shoot his load all over Sarah's arse.
Unbidden, the line "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" popped into my head. If I wasn't so catastrophically dumfounded by the scene unfolding before me, I may have found it funny. But there's nothing funny about heartbreak.
They hadn't even noticed me.
"You'll want to clean that up, Alex. Sarah doesn't like a mess on her bed. And Alan - not in the mouth, mate - she's not a swallower."
I was surprised to hear my voice - utterly devoid of emotion, and cold beyond words. It cut through the atmosphere immediately, and three sets of eyes were fixed on me. Shock, worry, embarrassment, even fear registered on the features of the misbehaving trio.
"You boys had better get your things and fuck off, I think." I said quietly. They did as they were told, in record time, not meeting my eye, leaving Sarah sitting demurely with her hands in her naked lap.
She finally looked up at me, her eyes red, her glossy dark hair messed up, her lipstick smeared. Such beauty. Such a slut.
"What do you want me to say, Ben?" She was way too centred for my liking.
"Um. Well, let me think - my girlfriend, who never likes sex with the lights on, who won't do oral and who won't refer to her "down there" as a cunt because it's just too vulgar - was just having her cunt fucked by one guy in broad daylight, as she deep throated another. You must have something to say." I ventured.
She looked at me for what felt like an eternity.
"I do have something to say, actually." She said quietly, but firmly. "He had finished fucking my cunt, and was instead fucking my arse."
So calm. So serene. In her well rounded, home counties accent, such terminology seemed to carry a touch more sting. Me? I was losing grip on reality. I was shaking, not with rage, but with the onset of the most immense grief. I looked away from her eyes that were seeming to challenge me. This was when I noticed the 50 pound note scrunched up on the dresser, next to the makings of a joint. She saw where I was looking.
"They bet me 50 quid that I wouldn't fuck them both. They got me stoned. I got their money."
"But Sarah, you don't do...weed, or drugs..."
"Yes I do, Ben. I just don't do it with you." She sighed, closed her eyes and leaned back on her hands, revealing her nakedness with a nonchalant confidence I had never seen before. She seemed unburdened, somehow. Even in my shock I noted her reserved beauty, the small swell of her breasts and the beautiful pink nipples. Her flat tummy leading down to a well-tended patch of hair, complete with the remnants of another man's seed.
"Ben, I love wild, wicked, sinful sex. Just not with you. I love being stoned, I love a line of charlie every now and then, I love being off my tits. I love people cumming on my tits, for that matter, and I would have let Alan come in my mouth if you hadn't interrupted us." She stared me down some more. "God, you have no idea how relieved I am that you found me out."
Somehow she knew what question was running through my mind, the one I dared not ask, for fear of hearing the wrong answer.
"And no, Ben, I do not love you. I love the idea of loving you, but in practise, it's just not for me."
"Sarah, how can you go from...who you were this morning, to being...this cheating whore?" As soon as I said it, I knew it was a mistake.
She chuckled quietly before saying "Oh this wasn't the first time, Ben. I've been a cheating whore for ages. It was my first time with the two Als though."
I walked into the kitchen and sat down, unsure as to what my next move should be. I didn't have to wait long, because Sarah came into the kitchen dressed for the cold weather outside, hair now tied neatly away, no sign of the rampant slut I had been unwittingly introduced to just minutes before.
"I'm sorry you found out this way, but it's for the best. I'll move out on Boxing day."
I looked at her and thought I could detect a flicker of shame in her eyes, but then I recognised it for what it was: pity.
"Anyway - for what it's worth, Merry Christmas, Ben." And then Sarah was gone.
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As a self-proclaimed romantic, Christmas is a big deal. I tried very hard to be that cynical guy that hates on the commercial fakery of the season, but at heart I'm just that kid from the Polar Express movie. I desperately love the spirit of Christmas, the essence of togetherness, and just that...feeling. Sarah, on the other hand, was always a pragmatist, and a tolerator of Christmas, rather than a willing participant.
Every year, when I hear Bing Crosby and David Bowie's Little Drummer Boy, I'm always stopped dead in my tracks. There's a longing, a yearning, and I'm seduced by the hope in the song. As I sat at my parents' house in Kent, listening to the Christmas songs with Mum and Dad, the lyric seemed to change.
"Peace on earth, can it be, a cheating whore, just for me."
It's an odd thing wearing a party hat, playing at being festive when inside you're falling apart. I spent many long moments just staring at nothing, all around the house, and Mum would find me, give me hot, sweet tea, say nice things and make sure I was as okay as I could be. Word got out incredibly quickly, friends were divided up - some of her friends consoled me via email and text, some showed their allegiances by unfriending me on social media.
In short order, I had gone from being a confident, happy writer in an ad agency to a crushed husk of a man with half as many friends, a whole list of places I could no longer go and a future I could no longer plan for.
Looking back, Sarah wasn't just reserved, she was cold. I now realise the relationship was one way traffic, but when I was in it, I felt it was perfectly fine. Now though, I doubted I could maintain my reputation as the guy that wrote the touchy-feely headlines and came up with the ideas that women in particular loved. I had grown up wanting desperately to be in love, to do the things that couples did in the movies - my imagination was a rom-com montage of delirious happiness and...sex. Lots and lots of sex. On tables, chairs, trains - and beds.
I went back to work, hoping that the busy world of an ad agency, deadlines, responsibility would drag me out of the blackness, but the decline had reached deep within me, into my very corners, and it turns out clients don't like their ads to be depressing. My Creative Director took me out for lunch and suggested I consider my options because my spark as a writer had disappeared. His broad cockney accent was in full flow as he gave me both barrels.
"You've lost your mojo Ben, mate! You were my best writer, the man with the quick headline, the ideas to make clients moist. You need to go away and lick your wounds, write a blog, write a book - I dunno - write a fucking recipe book for all I care, but you can't be this pathetic excuse for a man any more. We all knew Sarah was bad for you, but we had no idea how bad. But - Ben, you're simply not the man you once were!"
I sat and took it in, and found it hard to disagree.
"Listen, my mate in New Zealand runs an agency. He's in Auckland, and he needs a writer. I think I remember you telling me that you've got an uncle out there, right?"
I nodded.
"Go and live in Auckland, be a writer, and get over Sarah. Please. Fuck a load of girls. Fuck a load of guys, I don't care - just get that 'orrible little cunt out of your system."
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My friends who'd traveled around the world loved to talk about how terrible the long haul flights to Australia and New Zealand were. I wouldn't know - instead of a year out or a good look at the world before settling down, I was too busy building my career and planning to do things with Sarah Spitroast. But in my newfound relationship status, numb to much of the world, 27 hours sitting doing nothing suited me quite nicely. I watched bad movies, I ate tasteless food, I drank wine, and I slept.
I made several starts at a letter to Sarah, but in the end I never knew what I was trying to say.
"Too soon" I thought to myself, and went back to the wine. Being away from the routine, from the reminders, from the common ground Sarah and I had shared, it made things easier. So instead of experiencing several jolts of realisation per day, there was just a dull ache that I could manage.
When I arrived in New Zealand, the air, the sunshine and the relaxed people immediately improved my spirits, but I decided to keep myself to myself, do my time and get over Sarah. It turned out the agency was great, my salary was a good one, and I was in the middle of a hot, dry summer.
My "uncle" was actually Dad's cousin, one that he hardly knew, who had turned up at some wedding in England and by the end of the night of heavy drinking, had offered to play host to anyone prepared to make the southern pilgrimage. The great news for me was that Uncle Jon was a very wealthy man, and insisted that I pay nothing more than token rent. He and his new wife Angie had a beautiful house overlooking the harbour, so, with money coming in and nothing to spend it on, I bought the kind of car I never would have in London - an all wheel drive sports vehicle that chewed through petrol and went very fast. I began to clock up the miles as I learned to ski, walked around volcanoes and drove hours up north to beaches English people could only dream of. I also began to develop a reputation as a copywriter who could push the limits and bring some dark humour to my work.
One night Angie asked if she could have a moment of my time, and I wondered whether I'd outstayed my welcome. I already felt bad about how little I was paying for an amazing lifestyle, so I wasn't overly surprised to be called out on it.
"Angie - look, before you start, I just want to say how fantastic you and Uncle Jon have been to me, and I hate that you've felt it necessary to talk to me about the money - I should have done said something sooner."
Angie looked confused. "Ben - what are you talking about? What money? We wouldn't care if you paid nothing, it's lovely having you here."
"Oh" I responded.
"All I wanted to say is that my daughter Clarissa is moving in for a few months because everyone in her flat has gone their separate ways and she wants to cadge off us like you do."
My expression made her laugh out loud.
"Ben - you need to relax. Remember, you're not in London anymore, and we would love for you to use this as a time to get yourself back together."
She looked at me with a touching tenderness, and even though we hadn't talked openly about Sarah, the kindness in her eyes said it all.
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