**22nd April, 2024**
Life, as they say, has a wicked sense of humour—it throws curveballs no scriptwriter would dare put to paper. I never believed in that old chestnut about “first love never dying” until mine knocked on my door years later… and I let it in.
My name is Eleanor, from Manchester. This isn’t some glossy magazine romance. It’s life. Sometimes bitter, sometimes oddly fair. And yes—I went back to the man who once betrayed me. He left me for someone else. And I… forgave. Or lost my mind? You tell me.
**First Love: Bright as a Summer’s Day**
It began in secondary school. Me and William were *that* couple—the ones everyone whispered about. He was tall, fair-haired, captain of the football team. Handsome as a young Hugh Grant. All the girls sighed; I was the one he chose. I still remember the envy in my friends’ eyes, the lads muttering behind my back.
We didn’t part after graduation. He skipped National Service—sports scholarship—while I studied literature. Two years later, he enrolled too. We married young, certain we knew everything about love and life.
Three years later, we divorced.
**Broken Promises**
At first, he was tender, attentive. Then he changed. Stopped hiding his affairs. Turned cold. I lost two babies—both times, the doctor said it was stress. I begged, I raged, I scrubbed the windows of the flat we were meant to move into together. But he left. For *her*. One of his flings, yet somehow she convinced him to walk away.
I grieved for years. The cruelty of it—that flat *they* moved into, while I sat in my parents’ house, feeling like a used dishrag.
**Second Chance**
Then came Oliver. A colleague, older, quiet. He knew my pain, never pressed. His love didn’t need grand gestures; it was steady as rain. We fit together. No children—just never happened. Didn’t need them to be happy. After a decade, we married.
I thought it would last forever.
**The Blow**
Oliver died suddenly. A heart attack. No one knew he was ill. Only after the funeral did the solicitor tell me—he’d had a rare condition. He’d left everything to me: his father’s cottage in Cornwall, the flat in Bristol. No children because he wanted me free.
I tried to move on. Worked, volunteered, did what he’d have praised. But the house echoed.
**The Past Returns**
Nearly ten years passed. Then *William* called. Divorced, broke, asking me—not for coffee, not a chat—to meet him at the solicitor’s.
Turns out that flat he’d shared with *her* was still half mine. We’d bought it weeks before the divorce. I hadn’t noticed the paperwork. Now he needed my signature to sell.
Oh, how I relished this! My revenge. I could refuse. Make him suffer as I had. I *wanted* to.
Then I saw him.
Grey now. Thinner. Eyes less arrogant, voice hesitant. We had tea after the meeting. Talked. Laughed. He listened. A different man—humbled, quieter.
I signed. And then… we kept talking. No plans. Just two lonely souls who once knew every freckle on the other’s skin.
Months later, he suggested a weekend in the Lake District. Where we’d been happy. And—God help me—I said yes.
Now? We’re together. Again. Yes, *that* William. I hear my mates whisper, “She’s mad!” Maybe. But it’s my life. My first love became my last.
Perhaps it’s foolish. But only to those who’ve never searched for happiness in all the wrong faces. Even the one staring back from the past.
Sometimes the only way forward is a step back.
**—E.**