I used to think betrayal had to look dramatic. A suitcase by the door. A lipstick mark. A phone lighting up at midnight. Mine came in plain white envelopes from the bank, stacked behind the cereal boxes in our flat in Rathmines, where my wife kept the good tea for visitors.
Aoife and I were married for six years. We met outside Whelan’s on a wet Thursday, both pretending we didn’t mind the rain. She was clever in a way that made people stand straighter around her, and kind in a way she tried to hide. When we got engaged, we used to walk along the canal and point at houses we couldn’t afford, laughing as if money was a joke we were both in on.
The secret began after I lost my job. I told her my hours had been cut, not that I’d been let go completely. It was pride at first, that stupid old thing. I would leave the flat every morning in my work shoes and sit in the Central Library, sending applications, drinking cheap coffee, coming home with the tired face of a man who had earned his dinner.
Then the rent was due. Then her mother got sick. Then our little dream of buying a place somewhere near Terenure started to look like a boat drifting away without us. I took out a small loan, telling myself it was temporary. I would fix it before she noticed. But temporary things have a way of growing roots.
I started betting on matches. Not because I was reckless, or at least that is what I told myself, but because I needed a miracle that could be explained on a bank statement. A win here and there made me feel like I was steering again. A loss made me chase the next one. By Christmas, I owed more than we had saved. By spring, I had opened a credit card in my name and used it for groceries, bills, anything that kept the shape of our life standing.
Aoife knew something was wrong. Of course she did. Love notices the change in a person’s breathing. She asked me one evening in St Stephen’s Green, while we sat on a bench eating sandwiches, if I was unhappy with her. I nearly told her then. The pigeons were moving around our feet, bold as landlords, and her hand was warm in mine. I looked at the woman I loved and said no, I was only tired.
The end came on a Tuesday. I remember because the bins were out on the street and it had that damp Dublin smell of rain on concrete. Aoife was making pasta when I came in. She had three envelopes on the kitchen table and my laptop open beside them. She didn’t shout. That was the worst of it. She looked at me as if I had become someone she might have passed on the Luas and never trusted with her bag.
“How long?” she asked.
I said, “A while.”
She said, “How much?”
I told her. Not all of it at first. Then she asked again, and the rest came out in pieces, ugly and small. The lost job. The loan. The betting account. The money from our savings. I watched each sentence land on her face. It was like dropping stones into clear water and seeing how deep the damage went.
She cried only when I said I had lied because I didn’t want her to worry. She laughed then, not because anything was funny, but because the sentence was too cruel to accept plainly.
“You didn’t spare me worry,” she said. “You took away my right to stand beside you.”
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
