I'll tell you a story about my ex-girlfriend Karen. She was my first real love and was twenty years old when this happened. God! I still can't believe what she did.
We first met when she came to work in the offices of the Super-League rugby club where I was an up and coming young player. I'd just turned nineteen and thought I had a long career in the game ahead of me. That was before the accident; the one in which my new motor failed to negotiate a country bend and ended up wrapped around a tree at the side of the road with me encased in metal. Fire and Rescue cut me out; badly mangled, my career snuffed out.
Karen had a thing about Rugby players. It was the reason she had come to work at the club and why we were an item. She used to tell me how special it was to have landed me as her man.
Two years after the crash I was no longer in the game, but Karen and I were still on course to be married. Knowing she was still by my side meant everything to me. She said she still loved me, told me so every day, even though I walked with a stick and would do so for another year. Even now, all these years later, you can detect a limp if you look hard, so I was hardly her dream man anymore. And I realise now I still had issues; and they surfaced in our relationship, though I would have denied it at the time.
I began to suspect things between us were not right when she failed to mention the big party, the one due to be held at the home of the club's new owner.
Russian billionaire Uri Chominski had developed an obsession for Rugby Union and was determined to bag a Super-League club of his own. He paid a mind-numbing amount to secure my old team, Newton Falcons. He planned to stay up north while he oversaw things, and so as well as the club Uri purchased an ancient manor house up on the Pennine Moors, a half-hour drive from the stadium. The house had previously belonged to club chairman Abel Holderness, the media tycoon. Rumour had it Uri got it at a knockdown price.
I no longer had much to do with the club but one night in town I ran into my old friend Karl. He casually asked if Karen and I were going to be at Uri's party on the 18th.
I said, "Yeah, sure we are," even though Karen had not said a word about it to me.
Back home I asked her why she hadn't mentioned the party. She got flustered, said she hadn't told me because she thought seeing some of the players again would open old wounds.
Looking at the calendar in the kitchen of our apartment, I saw that the day of Uri's party, Saturday the 18th, was marked as "Wendy's Birthday".
Then I remembered. Karen had told me about her planned night out a few weeks ago and had mentioned it a couple of times since. Even though she seemed very keen, I had not given the matter much thought. The name Wendy meant nothing to me. It was then I began to doubt Karen's intentions.
Something started to niggle at the back of my mind. The more I thought about I became convinced something was going on. And so I pushed the matter, said I really would like to go to the party, that I would welcome the chance to catch up with old friends.
"I can't let Wendy down. It means so much to her that I'm going to be there," she said.
"You never said exactly who Wendy is," I said.
"NO! I've mentioned Wendy loads of times,"
"I don't think so - not until the other week."
She was trying to sound natural, but her slightly flushed face did not back up her words, "She was my bessie mate in college. I've not seen her since ages - but we were on Facebook, and she asked if I wanted to come out and celebrate with her and her friends."
"Oh," I said sensing the lies twist into shape even before the words left her lips.
"Twenty-firsts are special, you know?" her words morphing into statement as question.
I remembered my own twenty-first, spent in traction in the City General Hospital. "Yeah. So they say," I muttered.
By Friday she'd still not committed, and I was getting sick of her messing me around. At first, she said she still planned going out with Wendy and the girls. A little later she told me she wasn't. She also emphasised how the only reason she had not mentioned Uri's party was that she was afraid I'd be envious of the other guys who'd be there, those that had made it as players and were living the dream.
"Unlike me," she said.
That stung. I could not believe her attitude. She knew damned well I was always glad to meet up with old friends and that I'd long got over the depression I'd suffered over my ruined career. The Thursday night before the party I said if she preferred to go out with her friends, I'd go to the party on my own
"You won't get in without an invite," she said.
"Everyone knows me at the club," I said.
"Uri doesn't - or his security people."
"Security?"
"They say he's upset folk back in Russia. Wherever he goes he has a couple of minders with him."
"Tell me the real reason you don't want me to go. Who will be there? Is Jake back?"
"What do you mean by that, Martin? Jake is in New Zealand. Why would he come back to this shit-hole."
I knew she hated me bringing Jake up. He'd been sniffing around when I was in traction. Used to run her to the hospital when she visited. She used to tell me what a good friend he had been. I knew Jake: the only reason he would play taxi to a girl is if he wanted to get in her knickers.
She went on. " - all I'm saying is they won't let you in unless you are my guest."