My grandmother told me to always be careful with friends. She used to say that your enemies could never get close enough to you to do harm. But because you trust your friends, they are the ones who could hurt you.
Like the other numerous pieces of advice that my granny gave me, I filed that away in my head and gave it little thought until about two years ago when something happened to me that I would not have wished on even my worst enemy.
My man was involved for nearly four years with my best friend. So, all the while we were visiting each other, cooking for each other, going out together and sharing secrets, she was horning me. And the fact that he had her all the time along with me suggests that he might have enjoyed her more than me. That is not easy to take.
As far as I am concerned, women who do that are the lowest of the low; they are sneakier than the most poisonous snakes and deadlier than the most powerful gun. They are nothing more than rats who have no shame, no conscience, and no love for anybody else but themselves.
Women of that sort are like Judas – they would sell their own birthright to get whatever they want. And I pray to God that, like Judas, she gets repaid for her nastiness.
What hurts you most is the deceit. You feel that everything this man ever said to you was a lie, and he only said what he did to take advantage of you.
For me, too, it was the thought that everything your man did with you, he did with her. It eats me out to think of those intimate things he did to me, which I never allowed anyone to do before, yet they were not special to him as he was seeing someone else.
Imagine, we were friends from secondary school; we always used to be together and talk to one another about everything. Even when we became women, we remained close and continued to look out for one another.
I got my house, for example, when she was working at the credit union. I could not have gotten the mortgage based on my salary, so she put money into my account for seven months straight and made it seem that I had a second job – and that was more than enough to qualify me. And in the 90s when things got tough because of the eight per cent cut in salary, I used to eat at either her home or my mother’s.
So when it came to trust, I believed in her. I believed in her so much that anyone who did not like her instantly became my enemy. I even left out a guy I was talking to because he told me he did not like her – we were that tight.
I was like that because she was there for me through hard times and never once asked for anything in return. It was about friendship.
For that reason, she always knew who I was seeing and the state of my relationship. And as she told me her secrets too, we were always up to date on each other’s personal life.
When L and I started talking seriously, the three of us went out together so I could get her to tell me if she thought he would be good for me. And this was nothing strange as I did that for her too.
What I did not realise was that the two of them hit it off so well that he started seeing her behind my back, and she allowed him to have her. So he began sleeping with both of us weeks apart and that went on for nearly four years during the time she was studying for her professional qualifications.
They were so good at sneaking around behind my back that I never once suspected anything. Then one fateful evening I changed my mind about going to my mother’s and went by her house instead. It was her birthday and I decided that instead of waiting until the weekend as we planned to celebrate, I would go there – while she was supposed to be at classes and he at the gym – and begin cooking. I always had a key to her house and she had one to mine. So it was no problem.
But when I pushed the door and saw the two of them, I nearly dropped dead. They were naked; their clothes were on the ground in the living room, and they were in the settee making love. That is a sight I will never forget. My man and my best friend going at it. To tell you is one thing, but the sight of it . . . Lord!
What happened to me two years ago makes me trust no one. I have no man and I have no female friends. And given the humiliation and embarrassment I had to go through because of those two, I don’t miss either one.
