WALKING into my flat six weeks after our big break-up, I couldn’t believe I’d ever given my ex-boyfriend keys.
What I was staring at was so disrespectful and so disgusting, I wondered later if I’d imagined the whole thing.
Writer Lucy Holden was left feeling sick to her stomach after finding out how her ex-boyfriend disrespected her in her own homeCredit: Andrew Barr
Lucy Holden pictured with her ex-boyfriend, who had broken her heart when he moved out with no explanationCredit: Supplied
Lily Allen’s savage new album West End Girl makes some shocking claims as it documents the unravelling of a relationshipCredit: Getty
Luckily, I’d taken photos of every awful thing he’d left for me to see – a state of utter disarray that were clues to an even bigger betrayal. That meant I could never persuade myself that I should, or could, ever forgive him.
Am I , I thought, because my ex seemed to have turned my flat into a P*ssy Palace – about discovering how a lover had created a secret den of sexual escapades.
There were the sex toys (mine), there were the condoms (he wishes he was Trojan), there was, yes – my – lube. Did this count as romance fraud? Because this Judas of a man seemed to have been living a double life whilst I was away grieving the relationship and he was supposedly looking after my flat.
I’d thought that nothing could hurt more than when Clay, 32, an out-of-work civil servant I’d met in , had broken my heart two months earlier.
He’d ghosted me the second I arrived in for work, alone, moving out with no explanation.
I wouldn’t even have known, had it not been for my Ring doorbell, which recorded the whole ordeal.
over the summer and no one I knew could believe it.
My neighbours, Jill and her team at Sainsbury’s who’d read my piece – even the difficult-to-crack one behind the till – and Fauzia who I saw every day in the had all known him too, and were as shocked as I was.
“He seemed so nice,” said all the women, horrified he’d been so duplicitous.
Even my postman, Pat (his real name) had some choice words about Clay, telling me he couldn’t believe I’d put up with him sitting, stone-faced and grumpy as hell on my sofa every day for so long.
A neighbour of mine Rose, 83, had been worried for months that he’d been taking advantage of me, because let’s face it, if you want a job, you get a job.
There were signs all over Glasgow for staff. “Good riddance,” they said. And: “You can never tell, can you?”
Now, standing in my flat and staring at the crumpled bedsheets he’d left behind, I knew how stupid I’d been for thinking things couldn’t get worse.
While I’d been at my parents’ house in trying to get over the breakup, he’d removed the battery of that Ring doorbell and brought the woman he’d obviously been cheating with to my home.
Meanwhile, I’d been messaging him to tell him I still loved him.
“Where are you staying?” I asked, hopefully.
He lied and said he was sleeping at his parents’ house, but while I was away in Tunisia, Clay had offered to let some bed delivery people into my flat so I didn’t have to fly home.
I’d foolishly thought he was trying to be nice after leaving me in such a horrible way.
Plus, he really owed me – he hadn’t worked the whole time we were together, so he’d lived with me, rent-free.
I’d fed him for a year, bought his cigarettes and taken him on half a dozen – including two cruises around the Mediterranean; two weeks in in a villa with its own pool and a fortnight in the most stereotypically romantic city in the world, , just so we could watch the Olympics from a bar close to the action, rather than my flat. I paid for everything, everywhere – of course – because I loved him and I thought we were it.
After returning to her home, which her ex-boyfriend had keys for, she found out that he had sex with a girl in her bedCredit: Unknown
The scene was so horrific and so obviously intended to floor me, writes LucyCredit: Unknown
In the crime scene I walked into, my sex toys lay strewn across the bed next to her cheap, dirty underwear. What tramps, writes LucyCredit: Unknown
I’d never supported someone else financially before, and if anything had been supported by boyfriends whose flats I lived at (paying rent to all but the practical millionaire). Did it make me feel like I was getting somewhere in life? I wondered. Did it make me feel less guilty for taking more than I gave in the past?
Turns out his offer to manage the delivery was just another despicable act. He’d wanted to christen my new bed himself – with a girl that thought it was ok to stay in the bed of someone who was clearly lying about who it belonged to. It’s a girly place without doubt.
I’d assume she was a hooker if Clay had any money. But he wouldn’t be able to afford one.
In the crime scene I walked into, my toys lay strewn across the bed next to her cheap, dirty underwear. What tramps.
“Get a hotel room. Oh no, wait – you don’t have a job, you cheap f***,” I thought.
What a way to be insulted. He’d swapped silk for nylon trash.
The whole situation was a tragic window into the state of modern – too fickle to be beneficial to anyone. People get hurt and hurt in return and around we go in a dreadful, sexy, tearful catch 22.
In the crime scene I walked into, my sex toys lay strewn across the bed next to her cheap, dirty underwear. What tramps
I didn’t know how long it had been going on, but I now knew he’d possibly given me an STD as well as a terrible goodbye.
On my bedside table stood a lid-less bottle of lube. My lube. And in the kitchen next to the bin, but not in the bin, was another used bottle of blue Durex lube.
The scene was so horrific and so obviously intended to floor me (why not hide the evidence, at least?) that it was difficult to understand what to feel.
My brain couldn’t compute that Clay would have done this to me.
“I must be wrong,” I thought, still desperately trying to make excuses for him.
“Maybe he just had a night in… by himself,” a friend suggested.
“What, and decided to buy – and then wear – the cheapest, most basic underwear and style his hair with kirby grips?”
“Hmm…” they replied, unable to buy their own theory.
Good luck to the new girl… I hope you know what you’re in for, says LucyCredit: Andrew Barr
We’d been fine. And now he’d left me via doorbell footage. What on earth had gone wrong?
He’d blanked every single message I’d sent, pleading to be let into some kind of light. Light that would enable me to move on.
But he was spineless from beginning to end, and a compulsive liar to top it off.
I’d continued to ignore all sorts of red flags – the photos of topless exes he said he’d deleted, lying that they were ‘influencers’ he’d saved from – and this was how he’d repaid me.
“There’s got to be someone else,” friends had said when I’d told them about his cowardly exit.
That sentence ripped through my core like a bayonet, dragging out with it all our happy memories.
Because the scene I was looking at ruined everything that came before.
He’d also drunk every bottle of booze I had, and even left his and hers dirty dinner plates and glasses.
I felt an idiot not to have picked up quicker on Matador-sized red flags.
MATADOR-SIZED RED FLAGS
He’d been lying to me from the moment we met about how he’d left his previous job and where he was now living. I knew I’d been far too understanding and forgiving – but did that mean I’d been asking for it?
Did no one have any respect for anyone else anymore? Even after sleeping next to them every night for a year?
I felt a fool but I wondered also if I’d ever be able to change. That might sound beyond stupid, because of the hurt it caused me but it was making myself vulnerable enough to love someone and trust them that got me here in the first place. I never wanted to become one of those people so burnt that they can only live in the past. I didn’t want him or my pain to ruin my future.
Having said that, I knew I’d ignored far too many red flags. The truth is it’s really hard to walk away from love, despite the warnings.
Because, in short, I thought he was safe. He was very different from all the other fiery men I’d dated and it felt like grown up love.
He promised he’d never leave me, carry the medication I sometimes needed for stress in his wallet and loved cooking me dinner.
Lucy spoke to Fab Daily earlier this year about the heartbreaking splitCredit: Refer to Source
He was so caring and I needed that and so despite the lies, I stayed with him thinking the good outstripped the bad because he’d never hurt me like he knew I’d been hurt before.
I’d been with violent men, and shouters, and he was the opposite: tactile and calm.
So to anyone thinking I’d been far too foolish, I’d say simply this: does love and a desire for it not change everything? I’d always been confused about how much to put up with – what should be forgiven and what never should.
I’ve learnt the hard way – not for the first time – but in a different way – that gut feelings are everything and telling yourself someone will stop lying to you, if they have again and again, only wastes your own time in the end.
Good luck to the new girl… I hope you know what you’re in for.
