Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Some things happen in your life and change the projected course of your life in an instant. Some of them are big and attention worthy like an earthquake, or the death of your favourite pet, or a terminal illness diagnosis. Some of them are small and negligible like getting a pimple on picture day, forgetting your own birthday or not following the dress code for a high-end party. Some of them fall in between. I think mine is an ‘in between something’.

I am sitting in the airport, taking inventory of everything I have carried against everything I need for this trip. I am going backpacking through the Amazon jungle, hoping to get good photos for the magazine sponsoring my travel. I will be looking for animals close to extinction and I am looking forward to this trip. I can’t stress that enough. This is the biggest thing that has happened to me in three years. And yes, I don’t mind family portraits and wedding photos but I have always believed I was made for more. Countless organisations are going to see these pictures. It is my time to create a name for myself. This is my more.

I look at the clock. Only fifteen more minutes and I will be off to start making my mark in the world. I take out my camera to take a few photos before I set off. After my fifth photo, none of them are extremely exciting, I receive the phone call - the in between thing, from an unknown number.

I disregard good sense to ignore the call. I pick up.

‘Hel…’

‘Toro, I need help,’ she cuts off my greeting. I don’t need an introduction. I know exactly who I was talking to, my ex. My married ex. My happily married ex. My happily married ghosting ex. When did I last hear from her? I don’t have to think too hard, the day comes rushing back.

Seven years ago. Two days after her wedding. She sent me a thank you voice message for doing their wedding photography. She had received all the photos and I had surely outdone myself. They were off to their honeymoon. She hoped we’d stay on touch. We didn’t. I don’t think it’s my fault.

‘I desperately need help and you are the only person I could think of,’ she continues with the same line she had used to ensnare me into taking their wedding and engagement photos. It is refreshing to know I was not wrong. She was still as heartless as ever.

Seven years ago. Five months before her wedding. We were dating. As a young man deeply in love I couldn’t dare think that there was another man eating up all her attention. Did she seem distant when we were together? Why didn’t I see the signs, you may ask? There was no other couple more in love than we were. All our friends said so. Perhaps that was the sign, that we had no breathing space as though we knew, or at least one of us did, that we didn’t have forever and we had to savour this time together. But as the man in her life, I did the only next logical step. I purchased the ring, practised my lines every day, bought new clothes for the occasion, made the reservation and called them every day to make sure everything was in order.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she is crying now, ‘but I swear I had nothing to do with it. They are going to take them away. They are going to take me away. What do I do Toro, what do I do?!!!’ She is borderline hysterical.

The clock says I have only 7 minutes left. I sigh. She knows that I am the only one fool enough to throw myself under a bus for her.

‘Calm down Rema. Breathe in… breathe out. Now tell me everything from the very beginning.’

Seven years ago. Four and a half months before her wedding. She had not yet given me an answer to my proposal. I could barely think and function at work. Back then I worked with a newspaper, taking photos of only what I had been told too. Her answer came in the mail, a small blue envelope. The kind that you just know is for weddings with all its flowery and beautiful detail. I thought she had gone two weeks to prepare a sample card. I opened the envelope with glee, and then the card and my ring fell out. The card was for a wedding, her wedding, but I was not listed as the groom.

‘We were having one of those domestic quarrels, you know, the ones couples always have,’ she sniffs.

‘I need more details than domestic quarrel. What was it about?’ She usually talks round in circles before she gets to the point. I have to wait it out but I’m not sure that I have the time now.

‘Oh you know. You know!!!!’ She wails into the phone and has a full blown crying episode there and then.

Seven years ago. Four months and three days before her wedding. She was not answering any of my calls. But nobody does that. No sane person does that…send you a bomb then not give explanations. I was less than myself. I hadn’t been to work in two weeks now. My email was filled with warning notices from my editor-in-chief. I couldn’t eat. I could barely sleep. I didn’t want to breathe. So I made the stupid decision of going to her home. I was by the gate, banging and yelling myself hoarse for about two hours before they sought to grant me entrance. I met with her mother, who, like only parents can, tore me to shreds for even thinking I was worthy of her daughter. She was marrying an engineer, a man with a proper job who drove her round town in his Mercedes while I had her bus hopping to get to places. A man who, at the young age of 29, already had his own palatial house while I was still renting. With all our differences drawn up, she threw me out of her house and demanded I never see her daughter again.

‘Rema, listen. I want to help you. I really do but I can’t if you won’t say anything. Look, if it can wait, we can talk when I get back in three months. But right now, my flight is about to board and I have to go. I really have to go.’

‘No you can’t. Don’t leave me alone with this, Toro. Do you remember how you always said you’d be there for me? I need to cash in that promise today. I really need to cash in that promise today…’ She’s starting to sound desperate and a part of me is glad I get to witness this. She has no idea what she put me through. Or she does but can hardly consider anything beyond her long nose. I think strongly of hanging up on her. I have already lived a good number of years without her. I don’t need her now. This is nothing but bad luck and I have to stay clear of it.

Seven years ago. Three weeks before the wedding. I had gone through the necessary phases of a bad breakup. I quit my job and decided I wanted to be a freelance. I moved out of the little apartment and back into my parents’ house. I took out a loan to buy a car but I didn’t go through with it. Instead my father bought me a studio space and new equipment. What other dumb decisions did I make then, my necessary phases? I decided I was going to attend her wedding, wearing the same clothes I had proposed to her in. Not malice, they were just my best clothes.

She quiets down a little and says, ‘We’ve been having money issues. Especially with three children, two cats and just…this neighbourhood. This neighbourhood! There are expectations on us. Expectations we have to meet to fit in. And the pressure is always so crushing. I didn’t know what to do.’

‘What to do about what?’ I can feel my patience wearing thin.

‘His yelling of course,’ she scoffs. ‘And I always let him get away with everything, everything. My goodness, everything.’ She breaks down again. ‘Nobody has any idea what I have been putting up with in this marriage.’ And I painfully wonder who forced her to marry him.

Seven years ago. Two days before her wedding. I tried her phone again. One last chance to talk her out of this nonsense, to pledge my love anew, to win her back. She didn’t answer. My parents came in to talk me out of my obsession. If she could do that, she wasn’t the right one for me. I couldn’t waste away pining for a lost cause. They made me promise to leave her in the past. I promised. They walked out. She called. She pleaded with me to do her wedding photos. She had no one else. Like the fool I have always been, I agreed.

My flight is boarding. They announce the last call for the flight over the speakers. There is always that one person you would take a bullet for in a heartbeat. Rema seems to be mine.

I sit tight and say, ‘It’s OK. We’ll figure this out together. So…he’s shouting. What was he shouting about?’

‘How I’m the reason our lives are falling apart. He throws all sorts of accusations against me. How I’m using his money carelessly, shopping here and there…'

‘Are you?

‘I have expectations to meet!’ She sounds tired, like this is logical and she has been through it one too many times. ‘Then he refused housekeeping services to save money and had the nerve to call me lazy.’

‘Are you?’

‘Well I signed on for another sort of life. There is no way you purchase a Ferrari and accept it when it turns into a truck overnight. I didn’t know how to start. Then he had the audacity to say I was cheating on him.’

‘Were you?’ Clearly all she wants is someone to complain to and I am the idiot who fell for the ‘emergency’ talk.

‘Well, he had paternity tests run behind my back. Why am I responsible for something I didn’t instigate?’

Seven years ago. Her wedding day. I took photos of the venues without them first. Went to her dressing room second but they wouldn’t let me in. Went to his and he seemed like a solid man. Not that we would have been friends but we could have developed a deep respect for each other in our various fields. He probably had no idea I, as Rema’s ex, existed like I had had no idea he had existed. She was more than an hour late for her own wedding. I deduced she was not in her dressing room when I passed by. He took it calmly and the wedding happened. Nothing spectacular aside from the pity stares our friends threw my way. I worked all night on having those pictures ready and out of my hands in two days. I worked on getting Rema out of my head and heart.

‘What did the test say? I say, logging online to find another flight out.

‘The only thing they could say. None of them is his.’ And I feel incredibly sad for the man. 'But then he threatened to call my parents, have this published in the gossip column every wife in this neighbourhood reads and I just couldn’t have that. I just couldn’t. He made me angry you know…and I just went off like a wrecking ball but I didn’t mean to. You have to believe me. You have to believe me.’

‘Of course, like you said. It was a domestic quarrel. So what did you do? Throw him out of the house?'

‘I killed him,’ she answers so softly I don’t think I hear her clearly.

‘Come again?’

‘I killed him. I killed him. I stabbed him, about ten times. But it was the anger. I could never do something like that. You know me. And I didn’t think he would die. I just wanted him to stop.’ Well, he has stopped alright.

‘Where are the children?’ I ask closing my laptop.

‘At the neighbour’s. They didn’t see anything. Please Toro, come over and help me get rid of the body and the evidence.’

The plan is complete in my head.

‘No…you have to do it yourself. I'm too far off now and you can't afford to waste any time. You have to do something before the children come home.’ I say packing up all my equipment. ‘Quickly wrap him in a sheet, throw the knife in and drag him outside. When the children are asleep go outside and start digging, keep the cats locked up far away. Send emails to his colleagues and family explaining that he’ll be away for a long period of time. Start calling up divorce attorneys. Clean out all the blood though, get every single bit. Make sure you use the right cleaner. I’m on my way. OK? I’ll see you soon but you should clean up some of your mess and I’ll be there to fix the rest. What’s your address?’

‘OK…OK.’ She is calmer now that there is a plan. ‘You’ll be here soon though, yes?’ she laughs, ‘I always only ever loved you, you know. You are my true love. I’ll see you in a few.’ I can hear her getting up to start working on fixing whatever she had done. Then she gives me her address. And I hang up.

I call the police from the airport phone booths and relay the bits of the story I can as a concerned neighbour and give in her address.

We are all bound by our choices. I can’t start making the wrong ones when life is finally looking up for me.

‘I’m sorry; I missed my flight earlier but booked for one leaving in twenty minutes. I would like to check in for that one.’