What it’s like to fall in love with a fake ...
Now this chapter of my life is playing out on TV, it’s the question everyone is asking me. The answer is complicated.
And here he is. The man I wrote about in my book, Fake, the man depicted in the television series based on my book which dropped last week on Paramount+. The man who took me on a 14-month ride which ended with me shattered, curled up in bed, pillow over head, unable to eat, sleep, move. See how happy I was before it all ended? See how I was basking in “love”? I don’t think I’ve smiled so broadly, so heartfully since.
On this day, the man, “Joe”, was taking me to see a grand property he claimed to have bought in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales (see episode 4 of the series – “Eldorado”). Over the course of months, Joe talked endlessly about the property, sharing minute and intricate details about it, the complexities of the sale, the multiple parties involved. It became the centrepiece of our relationship, a glorious, lofty idea, an idyll, more romantic than the romance itself. Kitchen, giant stone hearth, garden, bed, love. “Do you want the study next to mine or down the corridor?” he had asked me. “I’m putting the house in a trust,” he told me – so his ex-wife could not have a legal claim on it if I was living there with him. I felt wrapped up, after many years alone, nearly home at last.
Hope is powerful. Hope is stronger than doubt.
Much later, I learned that Joe had also convinced the property’s owner, a real estate agent, another buyer and a lawyer of his bona fides and capacity to spend a very large amount of money to secure the property. His meddling, tyre-kicking when all was said and done, had wasted swathes of their time too. The lawyer’s substantial bill was unpaid.
When shame about the relationship threatened to overwhelm me, I tried to remind myself that others were also taken in by Joe’s ridiculous fantastical story-weaving – and they were not blinded by love.
I know now from the thousands of messages I have received from women sharing their stories (a few men, but mainly women) that shame is the greatest residual emotion after relationships characterised by such extraordinary levels of deceit like these end. The sadness eventually goes, the anger subsides, but shame … it embeds itself. “How could I, an intelligent woman, have ended up in that situation?” Over and over again, women have written those words to me.
My best answer to that question – because we are human. Because it is absolutely and utterly normal to want to give and receive love. Because it is normal to seek touch. Because the decisions we make in love have absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. Because we live in a world where the uncoupled are outliers and the pressure to couple up is intense, invidious.
Some people questioned my decision to write an article about the story of my relationship with this man (and later the book), expressing concern about the implications for me in doing so/clutching their pearls at the public airing of my private story. The subtext, I believe, is about shame: a woman should never reveal her vulnerabilities, her sore spots; a woman’s dignity is at risk if she speaks up, especially about men’s bad behaviour; a woman should, no matter what, keep up a performative image of success and serenity.
But I did nothing wrong. I am not a lesser or inferior because I put my trust and hope in another human being. It is the man in the photograph above who should feel shame, not me. Such an assault on my trust and kindness and honesty. Unfathomable cruelty – and not just to me, but to multiple other people I know of. Perhaps I should not have scribbled out his face. He does not deserve such courtesy.
I know I don’t smile as much as I used to. This story has had a longer tail than I ever imagined it would. Perhaps now, I am at the end of it. Perhaps now I can start smiling again.
Me with actor Asher Keddie on location in Melbourne, 2023. (Photograph: Sarah Enticknap)
Vamp will, soon, be largely a Fake-free zone. But the series is fresh and the feedback is rolling in. And predictably, but sadly, I have had a flood of new messages from women sharing their stories. One wrote that, two weeks before her wedding, her fiancé told her that his divorce hadn’t come through and he couldn’t go through with the wedding. She was pregnant with his child. Another woman told me she was about to go into battle in the Family Court with her “Joe”.
But I have had hopeful messages too. Dannielle Miller, the founder of Enlighten Education, a provider of in-school workshops for teen girls, writes:
“I watched the first three episodes with my daughter (aged 25) last night. It was actually a fantastic series to watch together because it gave us an opportunity to discuss things like the pressure we feel to get coupled up, the vulnerability of online dating, how families can be both allies and causes of great pain etc. We felt incredible empathy for the main character.”
And there was good news this week: dating app companies in Australia have agreed to a voluntary code of conduct under which if a user is banned on one app, they will be blocked on all of that company’s other dating apps. (The communications minister demanded that the companies step up after the Australian Institute of Criminology found that “three in four people using dating apps had experienced some form of sexual violence, including harassment, threatening language, image-based sexual abuse and stalking”. … surely the tip of the iceberg in terms of men’s bad behaviour? … When, in 2016, recovering from my relationship with “Joe”, I contacted the old RSVP dating site to tell them they needed to get the real Joe off their platform they couldn’t have been less interested.)
And, if you have a subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age and haven’t yet caught up on my story in yesterday’s Good Weekend magazine about the behind-the-scenes story of how the series unfolded, you can read it here. (There might still be a few copies of yesterday’s paper at newsagents today if you’re quick!)
An excerpt:
“Nice and quiet, please! someone shouts. And, action! Enter stage left into a warm glow of timber and leadlight: the bad guy, David Wenham, Joe! I watch his interaction with a salesperson and think of what Banks said during the drive here: “It’s going to be so hard for you because it’s going to be so similar, yet so different and there’ll be a collision of recognisable moments and complete departures.” Wenham is intensely recognisable and not just because he’s been a familiar face ever since he played that good guy, Diver Dan, in SeaChange in the late 1990s. In expression, mannerism and carriage, he is Joe. As though the temperature has plunged, I feel a chill; here in Wenham is the malevolence I saw too late in Joe – the minute flicker of cold eyes, a microshift in countenance, the calculating gaze.”
(FYI, dear readers: it has been a nutty few weeks, I’m still finding my Substack feet and rhythm and am hoping to get back to my old routine of sending my newsletter out Friday afternoons which seemed to work for most people. Bear with me while I get my head back!)
🎵Mood
Big deep feelings for Michelle Dockery’s mesmerising (and inebriated) performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow in BBC’s This Town (a “bold, brilliant television show”, according to The Guardian). Lady Mary doesn’t live here anymore.
Vamp view
The Pixar movie Inside Out 2 has arrived in cinemas and tapped into contemporary themes with three new characters – Embarrassment, Envy and Anxiety. Vamp film critic Joel Meares (former editor-in-chief of Rotten Tomatoes and a dear friend) notes: “It feels like a reflection of the therapy speak people increasingly use in everyday conversation and which is populating film and TV scripts, and our current obsession with – and recognition of the widespread nature of – anxiety. As a fellow sufferer, I felt seen … and I also fell a little in love with the character of Anxiety.” On Instagram Threads, one American physician notes: “The way that they conceptualised anxiety was masterful. They showed that anxiety is NOT this scary villain who needs to be shunned from the rest of your emotions. Instead, anxiety keeps us safe and pushes us to plan for the future. Problems can arise when anxiety takes the wheel for too long, just like with any other emotion.” Meanwhile, in The New York Times, one critic observes: “In the theatre, I whispered to my friend that I’d forgotten to bring my panic attack medication. I’d said it as a joke — but at the sight of this anxious animated teenager, my whole body’s choreography changed. My muscles tensed. I pressed my right palm down hard to my chest and took a few deep yoga breaths, trying to cut off the familiar beginnings of an attack.”
Reading
With a most excellent headline (“Rags to riches”) and a great illustration, this story in Mother Jones is the best: the possibly profitable secrets of period blood. “Period blood is the most overlooked opportunity in medical research.”
An important story from Sam Baker, English author and podcaster, in her Substack, “The Shift”. “I can’t help wondering how different life might have been if I’d listened to my body the first time I had a breakdown, not the third or fourth.”
Each of us needs to share this story with every young woman we know – the extreme danger of sexual choking. “Police, physicians and the researchers, led by Professor Heather Douglas, say there is no safe way to use choking during sex. They say understanding of the dangers is so lacking that even those who consent to it are not aware of the grave risks to their brain health and life.”
An extraordinary exploration in the Small Bow Substack of body dysmorphia and poor self-image. “I grew up fat, with all the insecurities fatness confers. My brain churned through feelings of ugliness, shame, inadequacy, desperation, and envy of thinner peers. I slimmed down in my early 20s and maintained a "proportionate" weight for my 6'3" frame until roughly age 40. The toxic emotions about my body never left, though. I am disgusting. I am undesirable. I can never change. Now, in my 40s, the pounds have crept back onto my frame.”
Food
Out
Great Sydney meals out … contemporary Korean at Sáng by Mabasa … the pancakes, the bibimbap, the saam, very fine. Also, celebrations at the ever-brilliant Fratelli Paradiso. (Exceptional carpaccio … raw beef, anchovy aioli, rocket, parmesan; exceptional negroni.)
In
Saganaki, cheddar, Comté … a three-cheese mac ‘n’ cheese, a very aristocratic mac ‘n’ cheese from cheese maestro Will Studd. Pantry: macaroni, butter, plain flour, (full-cream) milk, Dijon mustard, panko crumbs. Shopping: leek, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, saganaki, cheddar, Comté.
I’m thinking fresh rice noodle sheets might fly well here – 10-minute chilli garlic prawn noodles. (Pantry: butter, light soy, dark soy, Chinese black vinegar, garlic, chilli flakes. Shopping: prawns, noodles, green onions, coriander. Consider throwing in some blanched, chopped greens, boy choy, gai lan or the like.)
Plus: From Hetty Lui McKinnon’s “To Vegetables With Love” Substack, mushroom and tofu bánh xèo (Vietnamese crepes). (Pantry: rice flour, ground turmeric, sugar, coconut milk, chilli crisp, rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce. Shopping: shiitake mushrooms, firm tofu, bean sprouts, green onions, lettuce, coriander, red onion, maybe mint.)
Plus:
I missed the boat on it but elsewhere, there are people doing Dry July. For those of you in the midst of that madness and for my upcoming (maybe) Abstemious August, Broadsheet offers a list of all the non-alcoholic spritzes, lagers and cocktails your heart could dream of. And, essential information for the sleep-challenged: the “sleepy girl mocktail” that’s taking over TikTok.
Plus:
This guy, wow, love his fire grilling … the greens, the corn, the burnt eggplant, the flatbread. My sort of food!
Travel
LONDON In East London, the Dalston Curve Garden … a green community space with bar and cafe.
PARIS Dropping this, Eater’s “Culinary Guide to the 20 Arrondissements in Paris”, into my “Paris” doc in Google Drive … one day I’ll return. (With bonus pronunciation guide.) Take me straight to Le Bon Georges and its cheese plateau in Le neuvième.
NORWAY Could settle in here happily for quite some time. The Roys did, not so happily.
Home and garden
A farmhouse in Brittany … what absolute heaven … the fireplace, the pink roses, its higgledy-piggledy happy quality. (Also featured in The World of Interiors.)
Wonderful before-and-after video of the six-month transformation of an unused allotment into a thriving and biodiverse ecological vegetable garden – with a “wildlife mansion”. (It’s that time of the year … I’m swooning at all the lush northern hemisphere gardens, like this one.)
Fashion
In Germany, a Holocaust survivor features on the cover of Vogue.
Socials
(New Australian “Governor-General Sam Mostyn AC wore a custom-made The Social Outfit suit at her Swearing-in Ceremony [July 1]. Made for and paid for by Sam Mostyn, the making of the suit has supported the upskilling of our team of refugee women. Bianca Spender @biancaspender … donated one of her designs for the suit. The suit was made from fabric donated by @becandbridge by Xiuyan Han, … a Senior Sewing Technician at The Social Outfit.” via Instagram)
(via X; from the story: “All around you, family members are screaming, people grieving, bystanders shouting. Staff, though clearly traumatised, continue working.”)
(via X; story from Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor here; The Guardian’s story on the biggest political story in Australia this week here.)
(via Instagram Threads, and from MSNBC, why Kamala Harris is a stronger candidate than people think: “Her best moments … have come when she’s acting as the prosecutor she once was. And prosecuting the case against Donald Trump is the singular task of the Democratic nominee.”)
(via X)
Plus: for anyone with even the most passing interest in UK politics, this is just gloriously, gloriously, gloriously funny (I’ve posted links to the superb work of Jonathan Pie before. … just what is to become of him now, now that Sunak, Truss, Johnson, May and that execrable Rees-Mogg are gone?)
Stolen words
“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about.”–Joseph Campbell (from Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, via the Joseph Campbell Foundation.)
Over the Rainbow was Neill's mum's favourite song. He played it at her funeral and his sister played it at his. Thanks lovely, and thank you for reminding everybody that the shame is not theirs.
So much of interest here, thank you. The Rags to Riches article about research into menstrual blood is fascinating.
Sorry about the fake. Glad you’ve told the story.