• A web of lies catches up with Dr Tom at the worst possible moment
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Diary,
In case you’ve been absent from my wedding preparation drama, I’ll have you know that The Perpetual Bachelor has fallen on the sword and is geared to marry a beautiful daughter from the land (and home city, no less) of one Barack Obama. How did this happen? Why does the Bermuda Triangle swallow ships? Is the Loch Ness monster real? I mean, who knows?
All I know is that she hooked me.
But now things are beginning to take unexpected turns. First of all, she wishes to get married in a real castle. A real Harry-to-Megan-tooting castle.
But wait! There’s more. Only today did I learn how come we haven’t replaced the furniture I lost in the recent floods. For some reason, my fiancée Harper has been delaying the decision to get new stuff. Now I know why.
“We’ll have to move after the wedding,” she tells me.
“Why?” I ask.
“C’mon, Tom. This neighbourhood is no place to raise children.”
It felt like a slap to the face. “Did you say children?”
“I have a daughter back in the US, remember? And I assume you’ll want us to have more, don’t you?”
A blow to the stomach. “More?”
Harper glows. “I’m thinking five or six. Three boys and three girls. I always fancied a big family. Surely you can’t desire to marry several wives and have a small family.”
A kick to the gonads. “Several wives? You think I’m nuts? I never wanted to marry one wife, let alone more than one.”
“But… I met your other fiancée. The Kenyan one.”
“Oh, her? She wasn’t really my fiancée. She was…” I check myself just as I am to about to spill the beans and reveal that I had asked Shirley to play my fiancée so Harper would leave.
Now Harper holds her arms akimbo and screws her eyes at me. “She’s what, Tom?”
“She’s… more like a stalker. She wants to marry me bad and she threatened to do bad things to you if I didn’t introduce her to you as my fiancée. You handled it great, by the way. You two almost became friends.”
Harper’s mood darkens more, her eyes like two pools of lava about to erupt. “So, you lied to me?”
“No! I mean, not technically. I was…”
And so, fellas, Harper and I just had our first fight. And we aren’t even married yet. As I sit in my home office, drinking the last bit of my freedom away, Harper blows in and stares daggers at me, her arms across her bosom.
“So, Tom,” she smirks, “what other lies are you hiding from me?”