If you have ever watched the 2006 reality television series The Real Hustle on BBC Three, you will remember the show’s notorious refrain ‘if it’s too good to be true, it probably is’. There is a common scam in retail where, after the cashier has scanned and handed over the items, the fraudster feigns payment with a faulty card then flees with the goods before the cashier has time to react. After falling victim to this hoax myself, I wondered whether I could do that to somebody; whether the monetary gain outweighs instilling such alarm and shock, such shame and humiliation, in another human being. What makes the encounter so chilling is that the swindler appears no different from any normal customer – in fact, he’s better: polite and charming; chatty but not overbearing. He asks you questions about yourself and is sensitive to your responses. He cares. Until it’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t care at all.

When a wolf in sheep’s clothing steals hundreds of pounds’ worth of merchandise from right under your nose, the shock reverberates throughout your body in such a way that you almost wish he had been wearing a bandana, or a mask, or tights over his head. Because then there would be a giveaway. Because then you would know what’s coming. But if he looked like a thief, if he looked like a cartoon bandit or a peg-legged pirate or a stripe-clad robber, then the con wouldn’t work. It doesn’t matter that I could draw his face and pick him out of a police line-up, because his visibility is, far from his downfall, the reason for his finesse.

*

A few weeks ago, I resumed my five-month hiatus when I plunged into an explosive whirlwind romance which saw all the highs and lows of a two-year relationship compressed into two weeks. I’ll spare you the details but the short version is this: a certain dating app rekindled the spark between myself and a sexual partner I hadn’t seen nor particularly thought about for almost three years. The original affair – about a month from start to finish – was sloppy and chaotic, hampered by various dealbreakers that I led slide because I knew its expiry date fell at the end of that August, when I would board a plane to Canada to undertake a year of study abroad. Though my memory of that summer was blurry (and more cynical than sentimental), seeing his photo all these years later ignited some kind of feeling, and it’s pretty rare I feel… well, anything. So I did what I do best and pushed the big red button, just to see what would happen.

This is what happened: we matched. He messaged. He double messaged. He arranges a date and we meet in a park the following day. We get on even better than I remember, and I am shocked but thrilled to learn he has ostensibly expunged the traits I found undesirable before: he’s quit smoking, cut down on drinking, got into exercise and left his dead-end job for a career he loves. He invites me back for dinner, which is when I also learn he has moved into an immaculate one-bedroom flat in a much nicer part of town than where he lived before. I sit on the kitchen counter whilst he cooks. When there is a natural lull in conversation, he stops stirring and kisses me over the countertop. Similarly cinematic, passionate gestures characterise the eighty or so hours we spend together in the week that follows. We go on dates and he pays for everything before I can reach for my purse. The back-and-forth is electric and palpable and my face hurts from smiling and my ribs hurt from laughing. He’s expressive and sensitive and intelligent and interesting. He is categorically unlike any boy – anyone – I have ever met in my entire life. That I ever settled for less than this before seems truly, legitimately, certifiably insane.

Naturally, I don’t trust him for a second.

If the world is getting ‘back to normal’, I was overdue a fling with a sociopath with a jawline sharper than a steak knife. Normal programming has certainly resumed because I got chewed up and spat out quicker than unwanted gristle.

One Monday I message asking if I can come round. Naturally, he dumps me over text.

‘It’s funny because–’

‘–I am aware–’

‘–that’s what you d–’

‘—of the irony–’

‘–I mean, even the last time I saw you, you were gloating, again, about binning someone off over WhatsApp, and now—’

‘–please stop.’

Pause.

‘It is quite funny though.’

The karma slaps me in the face like a rogue wave. The more I struggle, the harder it hits. Just when I think I’ve got a grip on some driftwood, it knocks me back down. Eventually I give up; it is easier to let it wash over me and accept my defeat at my own game.

‘He played me – ME!’

‘Oh, stop it—’

‘—like a fucking fiddle—’

Not for the first time, I got too excited, ran too fast and fell flat on my face. Now I’ve got a scrape on my knee, a cut on my palm and a bruise on my ego.

 ‘It’s okay—’

 ‘—left me for dead—’

‘You’re being dramatic—’

 ‘—hung me out to dry—’

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t shocked when I opened that text message. But the shock of him bursting into my life in the first place – and he knocked down the door with a fucking battering ram – had never fully subsided, so that it was over as quickly as it began left me less upset and more concerned for my sanity. The whole saga may well have been a COVID-induced fever dream that I’m still not entirely sure actually happened.

I’m not even angry or mad or sad because I’m so impressed, after so many months of feeling so disillusioned by dating I am sadistically delighted to be so completely dumbfounded, even after watching him tighten a noose around my neck and kick away the stool. He whisked me off my feet then pulled out the rug from underneath me. A D.E.N.N.I.S system executed so expertly— really, we should all be taking notes. He spoon-fed me bullshit, but we’re not talking about your standard, run-of-the-mill bullshit, oh no.

This is not just bullshit. This is M&S bullshit.

It’s laced with arsenic but it tastes like honey and I swallowed it whole and licked my lips afterwards.

Here’s the thing: there is a game. You’re playing it, I’m playing it; we’re all playing it. You might not even know you’re playing it, until you get played. Maybe you played a little before but now you’ve found a league that suits you and stuck to it. Maybe one game was enough. Maybe you’ve thrown in the towel all together. But if you play the game well, the leagues only get bigger. The stakes only get higher. But the more you win, the more meaningless the wins become. You need more wins to get the same hit. If you know you’re going to win every time, it stops being about winning. You know how cats chase mice, round and round, up and down — I mean they don’t take their eyes off the damn thing; once they’ve picked their target they don’t stop until they’ve killed it. But then what? The game is over. The mouse is useless. So the cat chucks it aside and looks for another.

And we’re not talking about any old cat here. We’re talking about a lion. A fucking tiger. Joe Exotic couldn’t lock this cat up. It’s got opposable thumbs and it can walk on its hind legs and it can talk. It can shoot lightning bolts from its paws and have any mouse at its mercy in seconds. Most dangerous of all, this cat knows it’s special. It knows how low the bar is (but that’s another blog) and it knows it’s a cut above the rest. This cat knows exactly what it wants and exactly how to get it. How can you hate the player when they’re that good at the game?

And in our increasingly globalised world, where dating apps enable you to deliver prey to your doorstep quicker than Deliveroo, why settle for one mouse when you could have hundreds? Why tolerate the monotony of monogamy when you could just start again, and again, and again? If you could relive the flurry of excitement and have those first-time feelings every time, wouldn’t you? If your meal went cold and you could have another fresh off the stove, why would you finish the first?

It would be a lie to say I hadn’t noticed the food had cooled down. But this was my first dinner in a long time and I didn’t know when my next one would be so I was politely ignoring the temperature change, forcing down tepid soup and pretending, mostly to myself, that the last spoonful tasted just as good as the first. But he’d already moved on to the next course.

With hindsight, what I could kind of see at the time is now crystal clear. It’s the same thing that happens every time, only it happened faster than usual because all of it happened faster than usual, and if something moves at two hundred miles an hour, it’s going to crash and burn.

The shine wore off. What was kinetic became stagnant. What felt so vast and illimitable only days before suddenly feels cramped and suffocating. It’s that all-too familiar feeling when the rose tint fades: you can act out the bullshit fairytale and pretend you’re still in Oz but you know you’re only playing a role. You can say the right things, as if wishing them true makes them so, but you’re still reading from a script (and I should know by now that mine is directed by Tarantino, not Anderson). It was a Mexican stand-off and he pulled the trigger before I’d loaded my gun. Because if you end it before it begins, you’re always the victor.

That we were up talking until 3am every night made it easy to overlook the fact we had nothing in common. If all you share is a habit of wearing your heart on your sleeve, it won’t be long before you realise you’ve already scraped the barrel.

Am I too emotionally available? I remember the thought creeping in under the moonlight (again) after having overshared (again) and I wonder (again) why baring your naked body comes with the added side effect of baring your naked soul. But sexual deviance and minor drug use are neither noteworthy nor even particularly interesting – in actual fact, I have a very nice, normal life – so I’m clutching at straws for a bomb to drop; grasping for depth that isn’t there, and it is not long before I have (again) exhausted all my me.

Phone in hand, I swallow my shock and slump onto the stairs at the bottom of the landing and wait for the tears to fall. But they don’t. I’m ducking for a bomb that doesn’t explode. I endeavour to coax some kind of physiological reaction by playing ‘Back to Black’ on the loudspeakers, but it doesn’t fit, because there’s no black to go back to. The feelings I was just days ago so relieved to learn I was still capable of having are extinguished as quickly as they were incited.

I am frustrated and embarrassed that I let myself, however momentarily, lose sight of number one to pancakes and spooning and boring sex. My jaw is agape with disbelief that I let Project Me get sidetracked for one second; that I let a boy con me into playing house by smothering me with kisses and suffocating me with flattery. Cuddles and compliments are a nice addendum to my already-excellent life but I don’t need someone to tell me I’m pretty and smart and have a smashing ass when I damn well know that already.

So the phoenix rises from the ashes. Harder, better, faster, blonder. I pick my jaw up from the floor and, when I click it back into place, I am relieved to find that the words ‘He dumped me’ come out of my mouth with the same demoniac smile and accompanying surge of unrepentant mania as ‘I dumped him’.

I’d like to say I’ll learn, but I won’t. It’s happened before and it will happen again, and again, and again. Because even if it’s an illusion, didn’t you love the show? Because even though you held your breath, didn’t you enjoy the ride? You know the fate you resign yourself to when you board Stealth but you still let them tighten the straps.

I put the phone down, rejuvenated. For the first time in a long time, this tiny island is my playground again.

*

Tuesday

I march into Marks & Spencer and deposit a dozen teeny tiny panties in an assortment of different colours onto the till of the bemused cashier behind the returns desk.

‘Is… is there anything wrong with them?’

I shake my head, sighing.

‘It’s just like I’ve always said, Brenda’ – I take off my sunglasses and clasp them shut with one hand – ‘Men don’t deserve lingerie.’

Then I went out for some very hot dinner.