When our best friends got divorced, it was horrible.
I’ll never forget the day that she called me.
My husband’s best friend’s wife, Megan, called me which was unusual, because my husband and his best friend Tim normally organised everything. They’ve been friends since high school and while Megan and I would chat in the lead up to our regular dinners and movie nights and days at the park, the husbands were the ones who got it all happening.
She sounded terrible. At first I thought something had happened to Tim. He was dead or he’d had an accident and Megan was telling me first so I could break it to Ben.
“What’s wrong Megan?”
“Tim left me. He’s been having an affair. He left two weeks ago.”
Silence…
I just didn’t know what to say. I had nothing. Nothing.
But I was devastated.
I felt terrible for her but all I could think about was my kids. They were best friends with Megan’s and Tim’s kids. We did everything together, not exaggerating. How would this affect them? How would this affect us?
Tim was having an affair? What? How?
I said some things, none of which I think she really registered.
"Can you get Ben to call him," she begged. "I'm really worried about him."
You're worried about him? After what he's done?
I rang Ben.
He was absolutely gobsmacked, called Tim and got the whole story. Details aside, Megan and Tim were at the beginning of an incredibly devastating breakup that was not at all amicable and Ben and I were caught in the middle.
Tim was calling Ben and Megan was calling me. The kids just wanted to see their friends.
Megan questioned me endlessly about Tim, about what he'd told Ben, asking what the other woman was like because we'd met her by then and boy was that awkward. But Tim and Ben were friends first. Megan and I only became friends through them.
But the kids. What about the kids, their friendships?
A few months into the breakup, it became unbearable for me. I didn't want to talk to Megan because she was so distressed and distraught. It was impossible to get the kids together without her begging for information about Tim and my children were affected, as were her own.
When it became apparent they wouldn't reunite, ever, I allowed my friendship with Megan to drift.