Of Magnets and Men

Of Magnets and Men

We did have some good times. At the beginning. The problem was that I convinced myself we were still having them when everything had demonstrably gone to shit. I’d feel frustration bubbling up, irritation fuelling my itchy discontent. Then I’d look into those deep, calm brown eyes, and I’d think I was ‘being silly,’ imagining things.’ I’d agree with him when he said it was all in my head. But it wasn’t, was it? You see, Alex was so plausible, so beautiful, still is I suppose, although I haven’t seen him for a year. Exactly a year today. But those eyes seemed to be a window to his soul. I think now that they were more like Venetian blinds, covering his darkness. It’s the anniversary of my ‘freedom’ today, and I’m still putting myself back together again. It was all so dramatic, and I’m still angry. I don’t think I will ever not be angry, but I’m getting better at managing the hot spikes of rage. I don’t dream about him every night now, don’t start crying when I pass a place we used to go. I’m getting there. But the damage he did is going to take a little longer to heal.

I said he was beautiful, not handsome, because his beauty was softer than that. On the outside anyway. Imagine a young Omar Sharif, without the moustache (I don’t like facial hair.) See him in your mind, tall, gentle, sexy as hell. Hold that image and breathe in his scent of sandalwood and musk, stroke the lines of his cheek, feel his…. Actually, don’t do any of that. That’s what I did. That’s how I got caught. I thought he looked like an old time movie star, but real and way more casual. And he was funny and sweet. Then. Even with all this, it was his mind that I really fell for. His acute intelligence and lust for knowledge matched my own longing to understand the world, and we used to sit up late into the night, either huddled in blankets up a hill somewhere, looking through a telescope, or by a roaring fire, nursing large glasses of dark red wine. We talked and talked, and we laughed. And the sex was wonderful. 

So what happened? It reads like a perfect love affair, doesn’t it? That’s why I decided to write it down, to try and unpick the thread of us. And to set down his ultimate betrayal. I feel sad as I type, and angry, still angry. I may let the anger out later. Or maybe not. I want to warn other people to be careful. To listen to your friends. To look past the love, if you can, and find out who the person you love really is. Anyway, let’d have some facts:

Here’s me. To show you that I’m ordinary. Like you probably. We can all describe ourselves by the way we look and what we do. So here’s the short version of me. My name is Lucy Wilkinson and I’m thirty two years old. Old enough to have known better. I’m a researcher in the department of Astrophysics and Space Science at a good university. I live alone in a top floor flat in a house in Islington, not the posh bit. No kids, dogs or cats. I have a few good friends, who’ve been helping me put myself back together. I’m told I’m pretty. I have curly ginger hair and green eyes. Freckles that I’ve always wanted rid of, and I’m tall, five foot ten. I’ve already described Alex.

I love my work with a passion; which may make me different from you; I’m certainly lucky to have a job I love. I adore the sense of edging nearer to an understanding of how things work. It’s exhilarating. And for the past few years I’d been focussing on the chemistry of Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn. It’s an extraordinary moon, with jets of water vapour, molecular hydrogen and other elements erupting from it’s South Pole. It was when I was giving a presentation at a conference in Geneva that I met Alex Freeman. He came up to me at the drinks do in the evening and told me how fascinated he’d been by what I said. He told me he was a freelance journalist, based in London, and I don’t remember much more of what he said, I was high on the success of my paper and stunned by the attention of this gorgeous stranger. It’s not surprising that we ended up in bed together that night, although it did surprise me at the time. I’m not usually someone who gets that physical so quickly.

It seemed inevitable that we would become a couple, our connection felt immediate. We started seeing each other once a week, then twice a week, and by the time Christmas came around we were practically living together in my flat. I’d only been to his place a few times, and he’d never been keen for us to hang out there. I didn’t really notice how Alex never encouraged me to see my friends. I was surprised that he seemed indifferent to them when we met up, but I just didn’t think about it. Sophie and Jen both tried to talk to me about him, about how he was keeping me away from them. They didn’t like him, and I couldn’t understand it. Here we are in typical Chick-Lit territory, aren’t we? Handsome, manipulative boyfriend monopolises woman, keeps her away fro her true friends…. And so on. Well, maybe that’s why that kind of story sells well, because it happens. There were so many red flags, but I was blind to them all. It wasn’t only that he tried to keep me away from my friends, he didn’t seem to have any friends of his own. At least, I never met any of them. Not one.. Another strange thing, that I didn’t pay much attention to at the time, was that he never seemed to have any articles published. A little odd for a journalist. Yet he always had money. When I asked him about it he would say that something had been in a magazine in the States or Australia, but he never showed me a copy. He told me he had some inherited money, so wasn’t that concerned about work really. Then he’d put his arms around me, pull me close and kiss me. I think my brain went on holiday.

Alex liked visiting me at the University. He said he didn’t understand the science, or not most of it anyway. But he loved to ask about my work, and it was really flattering. I thought he genuinely wanted to understand the complex beauty that I could see in the strange geology of Enceladus and the fascinating chemical makeup of the plumes. He got on well with my colleagues and they all thought I’d hit the boyfriend jackpot and speculated about us walking down the aisle. I thought about that too, thought it would be wonderful to be Mrs Freeman, married to my lovely man. 

I thought of us as a pair of magnets, pulled together by some vast internal force. Kept there by love. I thought all kinds of stupid things, back then.

It took me a long time to realise that some of his behaviour was a bit off. It started to dawn on me when he tried to stop me going to Sophie’s birthday party. He was invited too but, even though it seemed like his kind of evening out; drinks and dinner at one of the ‘in’ places in Kensington, followed by a club, he refused point blank to go. Then he said he didn’t want me to go either. I was amazed that he could even think I wouldn’t turn up at my best friend’s party! That’s when we had our first row, and it was a bad one. I went to the party, of course I did. But I spent the whole evening feeling guilty and went home early. When I got back to the flat he wasn’t there, and I didn’t see him for two days. He didn’t answer his phone, texts or What’s App. He’d just vanished. I was beside myself with worry, convinced he’d had an accident; phoned round hospitals to see if anyone of his description had been admitted. He eventually turned up, refusing to tell me where he’d been, turning those deceiving brown eyes on me like a puppy, saying he’d been hurt when I went out without him. The magnetic force that held us together was weakened, but still held, as I tried to make him feel better, poor Alex, hurt by my selfishness. Can you believe it? No? Nor can I, looking back. But it’s how it was. I was an idiot. And I carried on being an idiot for another few months, even as the cracks in our relationship grew bigger. Even when I started to realise how little I actually knew about the man who shared my bed nearly every night. 

The end came unexpectedly, one Monday evening in June. I was on a high from work, having finished the most important paper I’d ever written. I’d discovered two new elements in Enceladus’s plumes and was a step nearer to real recognition in my field. Was excited about publishing. I’d bought a bottle of champagne on the way home, and couldn’t wait to share the news with Alex. But he wasn’t there. I waited, calling him and texting. But he didn’t arrive until almost midnight. I was beside myself with worry. He walked through the door, looking sad, and I stupidly went to hold him and ask what the matter was. He stepped back from me and said - I remember it word for word - ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do this any more. We’re just too different.’ Different? I’d thought we were alike. Alike in our sense of wonder at the universe. Alike in our love for each other. Oh.

After that my recollection of the evening is a bit unclear. I remember total shock, I remember begging, sobbing, collapsing on the floor as he went into the bedroom to collect the few things he’d left there. Then he just walked out of the door. Gone. Our magnets had swivelled round to repulse each other, and I had no idea why.

I didn’t go to work in the morning. Didn’t get out of bed. I think my boss assumed I had a hangover from celebrating my paper being finished. I phoned in the next day to say I was ill, and wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. He was really understanding. But three days later he phoned. And it wasn’t about my ‘illness’. He told me that the paper I was so proud of; the paper that I’d been researching, writing, rewriting and polishing for months and months, had been published in a respected science journal. Under a different name. He’d looked in my work computer and it had been deleted, along with all the research that led up to the finished article. I was so broken by Alex’s desertion that I couldn’t concentrate. There must have been some mistake. There were some pieces of my research on the shared system, but I’d kept almost all of it on my laptop alone. My work had been stolen. Months of my life had been stolen. Alex had disappeared.  

The police came round later that day, thank; goodness I’d phoned Sophie is a panic of grief and disbelief. She rushed round and just held me while I sobbed and tried to piece things together. The plain clothed female officer was patient and kind. She asked all 

sorts of questions that seemed to have no relevance to the theft of my work, about people I’d been spending time with, about any enemies I might have. She asked a lot of questions about Alex, after Sophie told her that my boyfriend had disappeared. She asked me for a photo of him, and I sent her my favourite one from my phone. When she left she spoke to Sophie by the door. I didn't’ hear what they said.

So, you’ve no doubt guessed by now, if you’re reading this. Alex stole my work. Alex wasn’t even called Alex. His photo matched that of a man wanted for fraud and, yes, for stealing scientific research and selling it for profit. His name was really George Alexander. And I was a colossal fool. 

I’d had no idea that something as obscure as work on the chemistry of a far distant moon could be financially valuable. Apparently it could be. Had been. The Space Race had many players, and plans to harvest riches from regions of the outer solar system are seen as realistic. In the long run. The gasses I’d identified in the plumes were valuable. Harvestable. Or so someone, or some country, believed. The prestige of being the first to discover and publish was worth not only acknowledgement, but a lot of money. A lot. I had never thought of it like that. I just wanted to know. To learn and know. And Alex had stolen and sold it all. 

That is the end of this sorry tale for now. ‘Alex’ has not been traced, and the person whose name was on my stolen article had done a good job of making it look as though the research was his. A lone researcher. A young Chinese man from a wealthy family. Of course, my university knows full well that the work was mine, and they have been really supportive. They gave me as much time off as I needed to recover, and welcomed me back a few weeks ago. They still think that it may be possible to prove the article. and all my notes, were stolen. I don’t think that will happen. But I live in hope, my lone magnet unaffected by any other force, my curiosity about the universe undimmed. When I feel really down I get Spotify to play Gloria Gaynor and dance round the kitchen to I Will Survive. Corny but effective. Because it’s true.