As with each audit, there is lot of stress involved. You want to present the documentation flawlessly and you don’t want to have findings. My team spend two days making the final touches and then we faced the auditors. As they represented authority, there were no jokes, no discussion, neither brief explanations. The documents shall bear the answers and somehow, we did the job, but got few remarks. As usually we did not agree to all of them, but the viewpoint depends on the position, and authorities are very difficult to argue with. All this made me more focused on the job then Cherie. I believe she understood, but our conversations during those days became sparse. She was doing her own things, I was involved in the audit and training. The 15th November passed, and in the heat of the day, I forgot about our 3rd month passed today. She remained me late evening and I was ashamed. Some things you shall never forget. I did.
Of course, she was nasty with her comments “How is YOUR Banana?”, although she very well known that I tried to avoid her as much I could. She was pissed of me, because I was on the phone call with Cherie and when I arrived, back home I told her I have to quit, as I reached home. That was pretty stupid of me, as I could talk with her for another hour, independently of being driving or at home. At that particular moment I was more into thinking what will Banana say seeing me talking, then what Cherie will think, when I quit our conversation.
I always believed that Cherie is more mature and have a distance to herself and live and she would understand my position. From the day I told her about Banana, my main intention was to protect Cherie from gossips and somebody telling her incidentally about Banana. I believed that she will absorb it and take that as a good gesture from my side to tell her the true. Obviously, as I already admitted, I made a mistake there, but still I was very true and had nothing to hide. My intentions for Cherie were very pure and no agenda hidden. On the other hand, her earlier experience with not always faithful men put her guard up, being very sensitive to other women surrounding the men. She did not feel comfortable with it and even scary. When she wrote a comment to “My second mistake”, she was crying and was very sad she must to relight the memories from the dark days. I understood and ask her to stop commenting if she did not want to. Anyway, back in November I did not understand her worries and was confused about her way to pinch me each time I went back home.
At the end of my visit back home, we started to plan the Christmas time. I know Cherie wanted to visit home and her daughter and family. We discussed some options and agreed that she will fly back on December 12th and be back right after Christmas. She was happy that she would be able to go then. We would not spend the Christmas together, as I wanted to be with my daughter and rest from work as well. I did not plan to go with Cherie either. Anyway, I got her tickets and the plans were set. As she did not work presently, she was asking about sending some support back home, as even her present/ex-husband was not able to manage some money transfers to his daughter.
Following day, I went to the airport for my return journey, back to dessert. While in transit I send a short “Hello” at 11am, while she replied with “Good Morning” at 2pm. We had a conversation and once again it ended with a fight. She been buys, not talkative nor interested. Word to word, I got pissed off and she quit saying “Whatever”. In the last sentence I said, “Don’t pick me up from airport”. She arrived, while I was already on the way home with my friend Peter. At home I found some items packed in the boxes, so I questioned her if she was to move out. Don’t even remember what she replied. She arrived later from the airport and said she will sacrifice the dance lessons today, but the tension was in the air.