Her birthday is 9th February. She travelled. She told me she was going to see her mom. On Val’s day too she travelled. I saw her days after Val’s Day. She didn’t have time to receive my gift, even when she returned. All of a sudden, she started working on weekends. She told me one colleague had resigned and she was taking her place. The changes kept coming. They were too fast and too sudden I struggled to keep up. I asked what was going on and her answer was, “Life is going on. We can’t control everything in life, we can only accept them when they come.”

Even the way she answered the question was one of the sudden changes. She had become more motivational than I knew her to be. Something was obviously wrong but I couldn’t lay a finger on what that was. We had dated for three years. I could beat my chest and say I knew her.

I knew her when she was going to school. I was her provider. I started dating her when she was in her final year. When she was doing her national service I was there. We planned to get married after her national service and she gladly accepted. After national service, she told me she would like to get a job before marriage. It made sense but all of a sudden, it felt like I didn’t know this girl again.

One night when she came over, I asked about the marriage plans. “You’re now working. What next? We planned marriage. Have you thought about it?”

She smiled and said, “I just started working. Give me a year to save something.”

All night she was on her phone. She was with me but having a good time with the person she was chatting with. I asked why she was smiling sheepishly. She told me a friend sent her a funny meme. In the night when she slept, I checked her phone. The last message she received was at 10 a.m. and that message was from her sister.

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Something didn’t look right. I wanted to see that meme that made her laugh. I wanted to see a lot of chat history on her phone because she was always on her phone. I didn’t see anything. Clearly, she was hiding something.

Before you catch a cheating girlfriend, there should be clear signs that she is cheating. The weekend work, the travels on her birthday and Val’s Day, the continuous phone chat even when she was with me, the deleting of messages. These were the signs. She told me it was life but in my mind, there was someone around she was not telling me about.

One weekend, I went to her office to see if she was indeed there. The office was closed. I called her and asked where she was. “Why are you asking me this question? Where are you too?”

I answered, “You told me you were going to work. I’m at your workplace. Where are you?” She answered, “I’m at your place. You told me you would be home so I came with food. What are you doing in my office?”

I rushed home and she was there. She told me there was little to do at the office so she closed after 12 p.m. And then asked me, “You didn’t believe me when I said I go to work on Weekends?” Do you suspect I’m lying to you?”

I used the opportunity to talk about all the changes I’d noticed in her. We had a lengthy conversation where she apologized; “I didn’t know I was hurting you. It won’t happen again.”

Everything became normal again. We revisited the marriage conversation. She told me, “If you marry me now you’ll suffer ooo. What do I have? Nothing. Let me save something small so I can support you, OK?”

One evening, after talking to her on the phone and saying goodnight, I later decided to call her and see if she was sleeping. It was call waiting but she quickly picked up my call and told me she was on a conference call with her girls so I should give her five minutes to call me back. She never called back. When I met her and checked her call log, there was no evidence of that conference call. The call history had been erased. Her chat history also had the last chat set in the morning with a colleague.

She was so smart she cleaned up traces before I could find them. I spent an evening with her one weekend. At 9 p.m., I said goodbye to her and left her place. When I got home, I called to inform her and said goodnight. In the morning she called me. She said, “You left your other phone here last night, haven’t you realized it’s not with you?”

What she didn’t know was that I intentionally left the phone there. I turned on the voice recorder, placed it close to her bed and left it there. She brought the phone to my place, cooked, cleaned and slept as if she hadn’t slept all her life. While she was sleeping, I charged my phone and started listening to what my phone recorded. At a certain point, I paused the audio and screamed, “Woow!”

The guy was in the UK. They had a video call late in the night when the world was snoring away. My girlfriend’s voice was louder. The guy’s voice wasn’t all that clear though he was on a loudspeaker. I could hear my girlfriend say, “Do you see it very well?” The guy responded, “It’s dark. Can’t you use the flash?”

“Is it clear now? Do you see how wet I am?”

“Hmmm, it’s driving me crazy. I wish I were next to you.”

“I know what you can do. I haven’t forgotten our last one. You nearly killed me.”

“I want to hear you moan. Play with yourself.”

For the next ten to fifteen minutes, my girlfriend gave a performance of her life. She was moaning and the guy was moaning along. After everything, she told the guy, “You better come and marry me before I fall for someone else. All this for you when you marry so you can imagine.”

My heart was breaking but I was smiling. I looked at her sleeping peacefully as if she wasn’t the devil in the night. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I had come to believe she was cheating and the recording was just a confirmation of what I’d been suspecting.

I waited until she woke up and played that part of the recording to her. She looked at me sternly for a second and buried her face in her palm. I said, “So you’re waiting for someone else to marry you while I’m here wasting my time with you?” She answered, “Why would you do that?” I asked, “Why shouldn’t I do that when you’ve given me a lot of reasons to? Who is he? Where did you meet him? How long have you been doing this with him?”

“I can’t answer any of those questions. Think whatever you want to think. Why would you even do that? If I leave my phone in your room to record you, do you think you’ll be innocent? If you didn’t believe me, you should have said it. What you did is illegal and I can sue you.”

When she was walking out of the door, I wished her well. She responded, “Please delete that recording unless you have plans to leak it.”

I Didn’t Tell Anybody Because I Enjoyed It

When she was walking out of my door, I knew it was going to be the last time I would see her around. I waited for an apology that never came. Instead, she blocked me at all the places she could. It was a message, that she was not sorry for anything that happened and had moved on so I should also move on. It’s hard to forget. It hurts to think of it. I’m caught in a trap of my own memory and left to die. But day by day, I make progress. Soon, all will be history I share and laugh about.

–Bra Kwesi

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