She feigned ignorance of the man she was flirting with
She looked me straight in the eye and told me she did not know any one called Thomas. Not even one person by that name, which would have been very amusing had the circumstances been less serious. As it were, I was not in the mood for jokes, for someone who could claim that in all their life, they had never come across anyone with the name Thomas. So, I rephrased the question: “there is this guy who has been calling you nonstop since last Friday, and his caller ID says Thomas. Do you want to tell me that you do not know the names in your phone?”
Then, her mind seemed to clear up for a moment because she said, oh, I think I have a Thomas in my phonebook. But I must have saved that a long time ago because I can’t seem to recall who he is. At least now she had admitted that indeed, she had at some point known a Thomas who had given her reason enough to get into her phonebook. Now we needed to establish the time frames she was operating on because it seemed like she was still confusing those. So, I asked her again: “could that Thomas, the long forgotten one, be the same Thomas that has been calling you nonstop since last Friday.”
And again, she seemed to go blank, as if trying to remember who had been calling her for the past three days. Finally, she came back to me; oh yes, I also noticed the name, but like I said, I do not know who that is. We had made more progress; she had admitted that the name was familiar, and it had in fact been appearing on her phone recently. Now, we needed to clear that part where she was lying that she did not know who it was. I had no idea how I was going to do this without causing a mini war, because she has a really short temper, and she sometimes uses that temper to avoid having to talk about unpleasant things. Like this one. But, we had to go past this, or I would never trust her again. You see, we had had that kind of relationship where we each minded our own business, and gave each other space to live our lives the way we wanted to. And for that reason, it was not uncommon for her to go out partying without me. Her phone was absolutely off grounds. But this particular case had raised a lot of suspicion, retarding the way she had behaved after that Friday.
As usual, she went out with her girls, but this time round, she was very evasive when I casually asked her the next day where they had gone. There were gaps in her story, plus, her phone kept ringing, and she kept switching it off. I would need to be really unobservant not to notice such obvious telltale signs of something not adding up here. But, I had held my peace for three days, by which time, she had managed to bring this errant new guy, Thomas under control. Which is exactly what I wanted; I have learned to take it easy when she is on the defensive, those sessions are never helpful.
So, to get her to come clean, I lied; I told her I had read her messages. Which she knows I would only do as a last resort. She looked like she would not believe me for a moment, then she opened up. Thomas was a really persistent guy she had met last Friday, a friend to one of her friends. He had promised to get her a better job, that’s how he had got into her phone book, but ever since, he has not talked about the job, he only wants to meet with her ‘to discuss’. So, she did know the guy. She had lied, and I had caught her at it. I did not know whether to believe this one, but I had nothing else to work with. So, I let her get away with it. But only for a while...
