Then it happens. Your heart misses a beat. Not the way it does when you see him but in a way that leaves you feeling nauseous, like you just got punched in the stomach. For a split second you wonder if this is how a heart attack begins. With a missing heartbeat, then two and after a while no heartbeat at all. 

The look she gives you as she comes towards you, pushing the pram, is so full hatred you could grasp it if it weren’t for the pain creeping up on you and making you walk on like the zombie you feel you are. The baby’s grown now. A year old. He looks at you with his big innocent eyes and gives you a wide toothless grin. It tears your heart apart and in this moment you know for sure that even though he keeps denying it, this really is his son. His third son to be specific. You knew about the “first” one. What you didn’t know was that he was the second one. You found out about the first one when he asked you to look for certain documents in his files. Why he did this, you’ll never know. At the time, you convinced yourself, it was because he wanted to come clean and didn’t know how to go about it. You realise now you’ve made so many excuses for him, you stopped counting and at some point you stopped caring. Your mouth’s gone dry and although your heartbeat is slowly returning to normal, you know you won’t be having that dinner you were so much looking forward to. Somehow the appetite’s gone.

It takes a huge feat to take your appetite away. It wasn’t without reason they all nicknamed you “Mc-Bonya”. You’re actually the only person your friends know who engages in sports so she that she can hog as much as she wants to, without fearing that the favourite jeans bought just recently won’t fit anymore. You have to watch that waistline now, don’t you? You ask yourself why you bother anyway... looking at his ex... or what exactly do you call her now, ex-current-ex? Is she your “co-wife”? When does he go there anyway? He spends most of his time with you, that is, when he’s not at work, or playing football.

You thought you’d accepted the fact that he has two and a half children as you always jokingly put it. You realise you haven’t really. A thousand and one questions run through a mind already in turmoil. Why do we say a thousand and one, a hundred and one… oh you always do this, get sidetracked to thinking of the most mundane things.

Tears start building up in your eyes. Damn... I thought we were through with that. Well, we aren’t. I need a tutorial on matters of the heart. I wish our mothers had one for each situation that gets your heart broken. It feels like he not only broke it, he trampled on it. You remember the fights. The times you got so fed up you decided to have an adventure or two yourself. When they say, a woman feels it when her man is cheating, they don’t exaggerate. You felt it, you knew it. You just didn’t have the strength to play Sherlock Holmes and honestly speaking you find Cheaters a bit extreme. Let me wallow alone in my self-pity. I don’t need the rest of the world patting my imaginative shoulder. You always felt sorry for the “victims” in that reality show but you knew you were in the same club, especially when you cried harder than the raving “victims.

You always felt sorry for the women who put up with men who cheat. You swore to yourself no man would do that to you. When you remember the heated discussions you had with older cousins narrating their ordeals, you can’t help but cringe in self-despise.

You’ve seen it all. From the woman who knocks at the door and bluntly says she’s his girlfriend leaving you speechless and wondering how fast you can boil the water (porridge takes too long and acid isn’t available at such short notice) to the one who sends you an sms asking for confirmation of the status of your relationship with him leaving you wondering just how she got your number (no, it’s not listed in the directory) to the one who writes him a love letter he recklessly leaves on the table, to the one who sends him a photo to his cell phone that he foolishly asks you to look up online as he cannot open the package directly, to the one who sends a “love” card asking him not to forget her as she’s moving to a different town… you’ve seen it all and bringing it all back now, you can’t help but feel sorry for yourself.

You actually begin to wonder about those love charms they talk about in the Nigerian movies you love so much. Is this a case of Hollywood missing out on one of the best actors ever to be born or does he really love you in his own perverse way. Is this love? Or is it just dependency? You’ve not built your life around him. You are independent but for some reason you can’t move on. When he cried and begged for forgiveness and despite his pride got on his knees for you, it tore you into pieces and left you more confused than ever. When your threats to move out left him shaking and sweating so bad, a malaria victim with high fever would have been left wondering who exactly was sicker, it got you so mixed up you just stared at him, your tear ducts drier than the Sahara during a drought.

How does he do it? Viagra? I mean, it’s not like you go for days, weeks, months on end without... you know. Three years down the road and you’re still at it like you just met. You still can’t keep your hands off each other and unlike the norm, it gets better with time. Has he ever heard of AIDS, you ask him? Does he realise the risks he’s exposing himself and you to? You’ve taken a test each year and with each negative result, you swore to leave only to come back and settle even deeper into a relationship any therapist would have problems sorting out.

Although you’re the woman in his life, you can’t help but feel like the other woman. For you know not, how many of you there are out there. Things are good for now. Life has never been sweeter. You’ve become the ideal small patchwork family with the kids coming over for the weekend and the neighbours getting irritated over the noise they bring along. Till the next phone call that will definitely put you in your place as the other woman.

Dear Dolly….