Over the years, every now and again I would google Mark just to see what he was up to. Not in a creepy, obsessive way. I often wonder what exes are up to. Most I parted with on good terms and they were reasonable, decent people. Mark seemed to be on the surface but was abusive in private. Nothing ever really showed up. He must be using a new moniker online.
Then something happened in around 2013. I found a blog post by an old girlfriend of his written about him. I'd found a few of these before, mostly saying how much they hated him. That was extremely validating but I mostly took it with a pinch of salt. Exes don't usually speak very fondly of each other. This blog was different though. It took every weak, selfish and nasty impulse of his I knew about multiplied it by a thousand.
I don't know the timeline for this, and Mark was pretty shifty and often an outright liar about his past. Mark was seeing a local girl I'll call Claire. He never mentioned her to me at all. She had a toddler already which I knew Mark would have hated. One thing we bonded over was our dislike of children and never wanting any. Claire's best friend was a Welsh lad I'll call Evan. I know this will have driven Mark insane with jealousy, there's no way he would have been able to handle that. He would have said he was ok with it whilst acting incredibly petulantly to punish her for upsetting him. He tried to stop her having other friends because, 'I don't want you to need anybody else but me.' When you're young and foolish that can seem romantic in a dramatic way, but it is such a warning sign of being with an abuser. He tried to separate me from friends too. I used to post on a music website a lot and he didn't like it. He said he didn't want to go on there anymore as the people on the're were all arseholes. He said if I kept posting on this music website he wouldn't show me his artwork anymore. I told him I wouldn't be manipulated like that and I could go on whatever websites I pleased. Fucking websites! True to his word he never showed me any of his artwork again.
Claire said she looked in his sketchbook which was like his diary. She said he wrote about wanting to kick her small son down the stairs and how easy it would be. I did wonder why she didn't leave him then. He wouldn't leave her of course, he needed someone to cling to, to suck the life out of. Mark can't be alone, he'd rather be dead. He told me he always contemplated suicide at the end of relationships even though he spoke extremely negatively about every girlfriend he'd ever had.
Mark doesn't like condoms. I had an IUD when we met so I gave him the choice. Neither of us wanted children. Of course he opted to go bareback like he always did. Claire found out she was pregnant. When she told Mark his reaction was spectacularly awful. He held a knife to her throat and accused her of cheating. Claire was terrified. She had a small child already and a baby in her belly and the father is holding a knife to her throat. She said his eyes looked blank and empty. She screamed to Evan who lived next door to help her. She didn't even know if he was there or not. Mark continued to hold the knife to her neck and she decided to stare him down. She looked him in the eye and defiantly told him to slit her throat if he wanted to .
Evan burst into the room and got her away from Mark and they fled from the house. When they returned later there was an ambulance at the house. Mark was on the grass outside retching and cutting his wrists. His mother saw Claire and shouted, 'Stay away from us!'
That was the last time she saw Mark. A few weeks later a social worker came to her door with a copy of Mark's sperm count. Mark has spina bifida and had many surgeries as a child which resulted in nerve damage in his genital region. It never affected sexual performance but he knew it could affect his fertility. Spina bifida can leave people seriously disabled but Mark was lucky and came through it with only a slight limp and some urinary tract issues. Without knowing about the whole business with Claire I asked Mark if he knew if he was fertile or not. I had known a man with spina bifida before and it was an issue for him too. He gave a completely noncommittal grunt which did not answer the question. I let it go as I had an IUD anyway. His reticence did not go unnoticed.
Claire has been trying to contact Mark for years about their daughter. She is met with a brick wall every time. Mark's mother died without meeting her granddaughter. She was growing up without knowing her father and Claire did not know what to tell her about her father.
I wont lie, I gobbled up all this gossip. I felt so validated and vindicated. Mark really was a huge prick and not the nice gentle boy he had tricked everyone into believing he was. I wanted to tell all his friends who he really was. He gleefully told me all his friends hated me, despite them never having met me. In fact, Mark never met most of his friends as they were mostly online. You can be who you want online and cultivate a personality. They were never pinned to the floor and berated by him. They never had a knife held to their throat by him. They would never believe he could possibly do such a thing. They only knew what he told them, that the girls he went out with were all monsters and he was a hapless victim. At some point you have to realise, when everyone around you is an arsehole, you are the arsehole.
I chatted back and forth with Claire for a while, added her on the short lived Google+ social media site. I was so happy to have some dirt on Mark and it was really good dirt too. I wanted her to contact his family and let them know they had a granddaughter/niece/cousin, though I never told her this. I just wanted Mark to face the consequences of his actions and also the fireworks would be spectacular. We both agreed Mark was full of more sob stories than one person could possibly have and was abusive behind closed doors whilst maintaining an image of sensitive woke artist. I quickly realised my motivation for staying in touch with her was purely to stir shit up and that made me a crappy person. I dropped out of her life as quickly as I appeared in it and haven't spoken to her since. It's none of my business.
So, here is what I think happened..
I may be wildly wrong here. Maybe he and Fran did get married. Maybe she did die a horrible untimely death from cancer that I wouldn't wish on anyone. I am so terribly sorry if I am wrong.
Fran always wanted children. Mark absolutely did not. I have had relationships end for that reason. It doesn't matter how compatible you are or how much you love each other, there's some things love cannot get you through and going your separate ways is all you can do. Not long after they got together one of Mark's SG blog post's said, 'My girlfriend and I are thinking about having children. It's something we both really want.' Uh no. I had to stop myself from responding, 'You hate children.' It was none of my business. Mark will tell you anything to make you stay with him. Looking back on the stupid lies he told me, to mould his personality to fit mine. He told Fran what she wanted to hear assuming it would never happen.
Imagine being Fran, together with the man she loved for a long time, with the issue of children always hanging over you. That puts a strain on a relationship. Imagine wanting children for so many years and he's pretty wishy washy about it but he's said yes to keep you happy. Then a teenage girl turns up on your doorstep looking for her dad. Or your partner gets a request for a DNA sample to prove paternity. Or you get a letter from the Child Support Agency for the daughter he's been denying. Somehow the truth comes out.
How would you feel?
Could you ever look at that man the same way again?
I think my love would curdle and die inside me instantly. It would be poisoned. I would be devastated. Not only the egregious betrayal and abandonment of Claire and their daughter, but hiding a secret so huge from Fran. She has wanted a family of her own for so long. Then she finds out Mark had a daughter all along but would not even acknowledge her existence.
Oh god, I can't even imagine a gut punch that huge.
I have found Claire's daughter's birth certificate online. I cannot find Mark and Fran's wedding certificate or Fran's death certificate.
I may be wrong, but something just doesn't feel right about this at all.