I was interested to see that more commenters on the super-popular site of a charming bi-sexual are questioning whether she is 'real' or not. I started reading her about eight months ago and was struck almost immediately by various discrepancies. One regular commenter recently said that he wondered if she was 'mad' and wished that he could actually meet her because then it would be instantly apparent.

I was struck by this because mild schizophrenics are often exceptionally charismatic and also have a propensity to exaggerate and embellish accounts of their life. I had personal experience of this when one of my early boyfriends, who I was hoping to marry, left me for a strange girl who had appeared out of nowhere in our relatively static University community. She was older than us and had been roaming Europe living off her trust fund. I had been in Paris on a 'break' while we thought through the getting married idea, although I was sure that the boyfriend would agree in the end. I came back to find that she had moved into his flat and he was totally bewitched by her. She said that she was a serious artist who had had many exhibitions abroad and set up a vast easel in the middle of his sitting room. She didn't seem to do much work but she said she was exhausted from painting so much in Spain and was concentrating on her 'stock portfolio'. She spent hours on the phone talking to her broker, which we found incredibly exotic.

In spite of my feelings of rage and jealousy she was so empathetic that I was totally drawn to her and spent hours talking to her. Everything was definitely my boyfriend's fault and anyway, who could fail to fall in love with someone as fascinating as she was? She set up a little court of acolytes including some younger girls who were obsessed with her in an obviously lesbian way although they had been straight up until then. At the time, my boyfriend had just finished university and as he couldn't think what to do next, his father, a property developer, had lent him the money to buy a big run-down house in the centre of Cambridge to run as student lodgings. I had set the whole thing up with him and it had been massive fun and the house had turned into a commune-like group of friends. So it was especially awful to come back and not be able to live there anymore.

I was so sad and low that when the Summer holidays started and most of the rooms emptied he said that I could move back into his flat while he was away abroad and collect the remaining rents for him and generally run the place. She was also away in London doing something mysterious and glamorous. A couple of weeks later I had collected quite a lot of money and, in those innocent days, put it into a drawer. She suddenly appeared on a flying visit to collect some of her things. The next day, when I was about to take the money to the bank, the drawer was empty. Never, for a single mini-second, did I think it was her. For a start she was really rich. My boyfriend gave me hell by phone and our thread-like relationship was practically over.

The weather was hot and thundery and none of my friends were about except for one close and sympathetic girlfriend. My life had become crap. Resentment began to bubble. Why should I sit there while this bitch took everything that had made me happy? For many years I had had a keen interest (mental only) in witchcraft and had a small library of spell and text books. The centre piece of my boyfriend's flat was a huge stuffed albatross, which we had bought as part of a mixed lot when furnishing the house. Killing an albatross is one of the stupidest things you can do (see 'Ancient Mariner') and I had always felt that its presence was a mistake. But now.......


As the dawn broke we placed the albatross on a rough pedestal in the garden; garlanded it with flowers and laid out offerings of cake and wine. Then we danced round it, chanting spells of banishment taken from my books and starting, 'Oh Great Bird of Ill-Omen, take, we pray you, the woman Margot (her real name) and banish her into outer darkness......'.


A week later Margot returned from London and my boyfriend from abroad and I went home to my parents in despair. Three days after that, the police arrived at the flat and took Margot away.

Apparently there had been a warrant out for her arrest for several years as she was a notorious cheque-forger. She was not rich; did not have a trust fund, (all the calls to her 'broker' had been to the speaking clock); was not an established artist and had never had an exhibition. In fact just about every single thing she had ever said had been a lie. All her amazing 'foreign' clothes had been shop-lifted as had all the food and presents etc. she had brought home over the months. But everyone still adored her. After the first shock, it just added to her mystique. Even I felt sorry for what I had 'done' and kept very quiet about albatrosses.

She was quite a serious criminal and was sentenced to two years in prison. It was an open prison and after a couple of months of model behaviour she walked to the station one day and took a train to London. She arrived at a friend's flat for the night. She was annoyed as she had found a girl on the train who looked about her size, waited for her to go to the lavatory, and then stolen her suitcase and got off at the next station. The clothes turned out to be one size too small - how irritating is that? She charmed the Passport Office into issuing her a temporary passport as she had 'lost' hers and had a family emergency and flew away to America. Where I assume she still is.

My boyfriend and I got back together but it wasn't the same. Eventually he got heavily into drugs and Buddhism, was forced into a shot-gun marriage with a really dreary girl and now lives in the wilds of Scotland.
- posted by Iris @ 11/15/2003 01:31:00 PM comment