D was a man who moulded himself into situations and relationships so that nobody who knew him knew him.

He was fond of te.lling he that he was the “victim” of post war rationing but it ended when he was three years old. It was his first fantasy life.

He got a scholarship to a public school where he decided, had he not been as good as he was at cricket and rugby, he would have been ostracised as the poor boy. As if any middle class boy is poor.

He went to university where he met the first woman of his three relationships. He didn’t do casual encounters, each of us were big deals.

With her he was the tortured academic who nobody could understand. If he’d ever been sober then perhaps people would have understood him.

He dropped out of university for heaven knows what reason and began to play rugby for a rag tag team after they bumped into him when he was making a phone call one day and asked him if he fancied a game. The rest of his time with them is a long and despairing history of his alcoholism and subsequent death as a result of the effects of it.

His mother died and he was in debt so he moved up North to live with his brother. I met him in one of my locals. He was the worst barman I’d ever seen or subsequently worked with in 20 years.

We got married for reasons I won’t go into but none of them were love and we moved to the West Country which is where he moved from 18 months previously.

The open armed welcome he expected and thought that he deserved didn’t happen. The promises he gave me of staying with friends until we sorted out our own place were, like everything else in his life, a fantasy.

After a couple of years and several addresses we ran a pub for his rugby club. All I can say is never work for a committee and never work in the licensing trade if either of you or both of you are alcoholic.

His imaginary life with me was that he was working class and didn’t want to bring children into the world. Despite him not really wanting to have a vasectomy he heroically saved me from sterilisation because women always change their minds. Apparently.

Almost two years into running the pub for his rugby pals he had a massive bleed in his stomach and was taken to hospital and not expected to live. The bastard lived and had no memory of the six months that led up to his bleed. He had no idea we were divorcing or why.

He lived with me for a while before taking our dog (I kept the cats) to a shared house then abandoning it there when he moved in with Number Three who became wife Number Two.

He was quite open in calling her awful names before realising she was quite well off and had a child. He became a Christian, wanted children, tried to get his vasectomy reversed and returned to university. On being refused teacher training (his ideas were considered outdated and out of touch) he became an over educated shelf stacker in a supermarket.

He died on Christmas 2024 as a direct result of his alcoholism even though he hadn’t drank for many years. He had been on home dialysis and had had a degree of liver failure. His death seemed staged an unreal.

The one constant through his life was his taste in women. None of us looked alike but we were all strong. Neither myself nor Number One played the role that allowed him to be the downtrodden martyr grateful to be loved but perhaps he got there in the end.

Note – the ex (sort of) husband refers to the fact that there is a mistake on our divorce absolutely papers and we were still married until his death. He knew about the mistake and the need to have it rectified but chose not to. I couldn’t be arsed to do it for me let alone him. I let him be a bigamist; one more thing for the poor misunderstood wretch to suffer.