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I’d sat back and waited for something to happen, and now that it had, I wished it hadn’t. Really, really, pathetic.

The days after she’d left had been easy to fill with pig-headed self-righteousness. I knew that she would have to come back. She couldn’t just walk away from a house that she owned jointly. So, it wasn’t a surprise when she rang later in the week, but it was a surprise when she said that she would come around on the Saturday to collect her things, and that she had a proposal to settle our finances. The letter arrived the following morning and confirmed that our four-year relationship was over.

She detailed her claim to half the increased value of the house since she had joined me on the mortgage, and to balance this, she’d put a price on every major item that we owned. The sum of these, when added to our total savings, was equal to what she felt she was owed. This was very convenient and, when I was in need of sympathy, these were the facts that I told people. But, they are not the full facts. Yes, one person was hard-done-by, but it wasn’t me. She’d deliberately over-estimated the effect of the economic downturn on the value of the house and again over-estimated the value of our possessions.

She could have made life impossible for me. She could have made me sell the house at the worst possible time in the history of mankind. But she didn’t. She made it easy. She knew that I could afford our tracker mortgage (that she had carefully selected and that was now almost paying me money), and by using her calculations, she was able to leave with a clear conscience. Instead of kicking me in the teeth, she’d carefully tucked me in to bed. And, when she was sure that I was safe, she’d turned off the light and walked away.

In some ways I was grateful to her for doing this. In other ways I disliked her for it. Why could we not have parted with acrimony? I could have grown to despise and resent her, and then laugh at my own foolishness for ever having loved her. That would have been better. But, the way that she left me was a reminder of one of the many reasons that I had loved her: She was kind.