LIZZIE'S WORLD: In for a big surprise

It’s a quiet day at work the next day – until I get a WhatsApp message from Joseph right around lunch time.

I roll my eyes when I see his name on my notifications screen. When I open the message, my eyes roll even harder.

“Hello?” he says. It feels a little bit like I might have a stalker. I sigh and push my phone away. It’s no use replying to that; his message is neither here nor there.

I look up and give a wistful look in the direction of Chris’ office. We were supposed to firm up plans for our meet-up today, but I have neither seen him nor heard from him.

Not feeling inclined to get in touch with him first, I pick up my phone to call my favourite nearest restaurant, a nice little local foods place, to ask them to deliver some pilau and beef stew to my desk.

As I hang up I notice the Tinder app on my phone; yes, I did set up an account last night while I was waiting for Joseph to show up. I never did get to use it though; it might be interesting to distract myself by looking through it.

A LITTLE TINDER ACTION

The instructions say to swipe right on pictures of men I’d like to get to know, and swipe left on the ones I don’t like.

If one of the men I like also swipes right on me then it will be ‘a match’ and either one of us can start a conversation. And so I proceed to scan the pictures.

The first five or so are Caucasian men who live on other continents; I have never fancied myself a long-distance-relationship kind of girl, and so I swipe left on those ones.

A man who is five kilometres away from me – which could be anywhere, really, as I can’t tell which direction those five kilometres are – crops up, but his profile description indicates that he can’t spell, so I swipe left on him too.

The next one who comes on has a conspicuous ring on his wedding finger. I chuckle a little bit, and wonder if his wife might also be trying to get a little Tinder action on the side, and what would happen if they both ‘bumped’ into each other in the process.

I am still idly swiping through the pictures as I wait for my lunch when the next picture I come across makes my jaw drop. It’s Steve! Steve, formerly of Fatma and now of Louise’s! What is he doing here?! It would seem even his new baby has not stopped him from being a cheater – it’s just taken his shenanigans high-tech!

I click on his profile to swipe through his pictures. There’s a picture of him at his desk at work. And a picture of him in his car. Fairly innocuous.

But the next picture makes my jaw drop; it’s him and his child – Louise’s child! And there is a picture of him and Louise, smiling and posing for this picture!

It takes me a few long seconds to get over my shock. I don’t know what to do. Should I ignore this piece of information? But if I do Louise will still get hurt because she will eventually find out about his philandering, one way or another.

Should I tell her? How could I, when I know how delicate she’s been since the birth of her child? Might it not be better to wait until she’s feeling stronger? But then again, what if Steve does something to let the cat out of the bag before I have a chance to intervene?

Should I call Steve directly and ask him what’s going, just to let him know that I know and I will not tolerate it?

Yes, I think that’s the best course of action. I so I log out of Tinder with every intention of calling him – and just when I am about to swipe through my phone book to fetch his number, my cell phone starts to ring.

It’s Chris. “I haven’t forgotten that we were to meet today,” he says. “Can I buy you lunch?”