It started in January 2016. He’d just arrived from Greece having spent a year there, but he hailed from Portugal with his beautiful olive skin and refined accent. He’d moved to be with his girlfriend, Hullina. She was a bit of a rough northerner, no one in school had ever paid her much attention (then again no one has ever paid me much attention either).

They were written off before they’d even started, but what a whirlwind they had; passionate love weekends at Manchester and Liverpool, and oh how jealous I was. My boyfriend at the time was an Italian; he couldn’t really speak English but we had a few decent one night stands and sort of ended up in this trapped relationship.

Against everyone’s predictions Hullina and Marco looked to be blossoming into a near miracle, only to fall at the last hurdle. She couldn’t handle the intensity, and moved back up north along with her mates Sund’land and Boro, but most people were glad to see the back of them anyway. And then came the competition: suddenly Marco was single and every girl wanted him. I decided to end it with my Italian boyfriend, there had never really been any chemistry, plus his breath always stank of Marlboro reds and all in all he was just a bit of a dick.

I never fancied my chances much with Marco, especially with the school slag Palace dropping her knickers every time he was around, but Marco was a classy man (at least I thought so) and he was after something more. Palace threw an end of year house party that I decided to crash with some dutch courage from my mum’s bottle of Portuguese wine (I’d chosen it because of Marco). Upon rejecting Palace for the 4th time that night, Marco turned away and trapped me with his eyes; those beautiful dark eyes. “Porta 6?” he asked; I didn’t know what it meant. He pointed to the wine label ‘Porta 6’ that I was swigging from. “Oh, yeah…I love it, Portuguese wine is my favourite”. And that was how Marco and I became one.

We first made love in Liverpool, and what an occasion it was. I’d made him cum twice early on, but as we went on I could feel his erection fading. I was starting to panic, was it me? Did he actually fancy me or was it just a drunken thing? The more he tried the more it seemed to flop, until suddenly, out of nowhere…he was throbbing. Pounding and pounding and like no tomorrow, I could feel the orgasm rising inside me; “MIGUEL BRITOS!!!” he cried as the two of us climaxed in perfect synchronisation. I never did understand what a Miguel Britos was; I once read about a man called Miguel Britos who tried to kill another man called Anthony Knockaert but I don’t know if they’re related.

For the next few weeks we had many sessions like that, all over the country: Swansea, West Brom, Arsenal; relentless euphoric fucking. I was especially excited about our returning to Liverpool given how amazing it was last time. It was for some girl called Evertony’s house party. Marco had met her on a night out and she’d invited him up, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to rekindle the reminiscence of our first time.

Evertony was a bit weird; she kept bragging about these beauty pageants she won when she was younger, the last one coming in 1995, as if it was still relevant 23 years on; it was a lot of misplaced arrogance in my opinion but Marco really liked her so I thought I would try to as well. But things got weird, especially when I suggested going back to the hotel — he suddenly really wanted to stay at the house even though we’d already paid for the room and it was really late. We ended up staying as it seemed easier than to keep arguing, where I got trapped in a conversation with Evertony’s boyfriend Sam, some arrogant fat twat. He was telling me about how they were constantly on and off and how she never knows what she wants and has a terrible habit of spunking silly amounts of money on useless things or things that don’t work anymore, even if they have sentimental value.

I pretended to need the toilet to get out of the conversation and hurried up to the bathroom where I stumbled in on Marco and Evertony having a ‘deep chat’, their faces no more than 3 inches apart. I noticed she suddenly had her hair up in a top knot too. He quickly jumped up and put his arm around me, telling me he’d been looking for me for ages, ushering me downstairs as she gargled mouthwash.

We drove home in silence the next day, my mind running wild with what could have happened between them. It got too much, I had to ask him: “did anything happen between you two?”. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember that he wouldn’t give me a straight answer; refused to just give me a simple “no”. How it broke my heart.

I kept trying to make it work but it seemed hopeless. Against my better judgement, I checked his messages and was horrified to discover she was the first name there. I confronted him but he still denied it, “you’re just speculating”, and “I don’t want to talk about this” were spouted out like a dirty circus carousel. And then one fateful night, it wasn’t Miguel Britos he shouted as he climaxed, it was Evertony. And it was the end of Marco and I.

People criticised me for doing it, “you’ll never get better than him”, “you were lucky to have him in the first place”, but I knew he would only drag me down further, just like he did to Hullina. I had some anxiety ridden months, checking social media to see if him and Evertony finally got together. The way they were constantly openly flirting, especially in front of fat Sam bless him, it made me feel bad for him, even if he was a cunt. Inevitably, Marco and Evertony finally got together, and fat Sam went in the bin along with all her other failed relationships.

My new man Javi is really nice. He treats me well, he always smiles and he never complains, even if he is a little bit boring. He has trouble getting it up sometimes too, especially when we go away.

I would never wish anything so horrible as death or terminal cancer on someone, and certainly wouldn’t do the same for Marco. But I hope he at least gets the clap or something, especially if it’s from her flirting with another, better looking bloke (rumour has it she has a mega crash on some nutter called Diego). Yeah, that would make me happy, if Marco gets Diego fuelled gonorrhoea.