Love Me: The Manoir

Reasons Why Derrick Seemed Perfect

•    He actually liked books. I could have listened to him talk about the poetry he liked for as long as he wanted no matter how pretentious he sounded.

•    He was gorgeous. When my friend Rose came up halfway through term she got the pleasure of meeting him, and she decided he was definitely the best pull of anyone in our friendship group.

•    He was smart. He had only missed his Oxford offer because of a maths grade.

•    He was good at sex. Like really good.

•    He had quirky hobbies like his obsession with rollercoasters. I thought this was cute and unique.

•    He was so hot.

•    He did have amazing coats.

•    He could drive.

•    He was so pretty.

After maybe a week of hooking up a couple of times, things finally ran their course and seemed to go sour. When he used to reply to my messages almost instantly, he then took hours if not days to reply. He never wanted to seem to hang out.

I got a small glimmer of hope when he asked me to come to a scare maze with him (it was Halloween and they were another thing that he was weirdly obsessed with). I forgot about the gut feeling that something weird was happening as we sang the Beatles in his car, held hands while people wielding chainsaws attacked up, and the fact that he gave me his scarf made me smile too much.

And then he faded out again. He didn't speak to me for almost a week, until one day when he asked if I wanted to go to a lecture with him.

We sat holding hands subtly at the back of the room, and again I ignored the nagging feeling inside me that something was wrong. I invited myself back to his room in the hopes of maybe getting some kind of affection, but instead he spent the entire time I was there looking after and showing me his oddly large collection of plants that he had acquired since the last time I had seen him.

And then he fell of the face of the planet for good.

I tried to act like this didn't bother me. I said I was mad, pissed off, angry. But in reality, I went to my room and cried nearly every day that we didn't talk.

Of course he had gotten bored of me. Of course I had been fucked and chucked. People that look like Derrick didn't go for people like me. I had given up the happiness I had known at home for him. I had hoped we maybe had somewhat of a future together.

Then I found out something that would make me rage. I was standing at the bus stop with the people I was going out clubbing with (and someone slightly more important who I will go back in the chronology to explain soon), when people from Derrick's flat came up to me.

Christine was with them, and I was embarrassed at the fact that his flat knew me purely because they had seen Derrick shooing me into his room at weird times of the night.

"Look, just tell us," one of them asked me, "Did you sleep together?"

I nodded, quite intoxicated at this point and still curious about Derrick and his disappearance. My answer sparked chaos in his flatmates, and I would learn why.

Derrick did have a girlfriend. He had lied to me. Unknowingly, I had become the other woman.

I raged for that entire evening and most of the following week. Of course it had been too good to be true! Of course I couldn't have this amazing guy and it work out fine! There always had to be some kind of character flaw which explained why he would go for someone like me.

The only other time I spoke to Derrick was when I was nearly blackout drunk a few days later and I attempted to go to his flat to fight him. Finding him not there, I was hit by a stroke of luck when I saw him in the laundry room (ironic).

I pulled him for a chat where he still defended himself, saying that he didn't have a girlfriend but had begun speaking to his ex again and that was why he had been ignoring me. He couldn't look me in the eye as he said it. I told him I had moved on and found peace in this interaction.

As he was lying to my face, I realised that he did have what my flatmate described as a 'very punchable' face.

But he did also have really nice coats.