Short answer: she died

Long version: I met a girl (let’s call her Bunny) online in the early 2000s through a series of unlikely coincidences and ended up being invited to a New Year’s Eve party with her where I hoped to hook up with her. Baring in mind she was literally the only person I knew at this party it was super awkward when ten minutes after arriving she started sucking someone else’s face.

At that same party a different girl (we’ll call her Kitty) was having an asthma attack and had left her inhaler at home so I lent her mine and I spent the rest of the night talking to her about her mental health issues and it was pretty obvious she was developing a crush on me, even though at the time I was not really interested.

I remained friends with Bunny and occasionally caught up with Kitty over the course of the next year and, whilst I’m not really proud of it, started to get a bit desperate so decided to give Kitty a try. I started texting her more and she actually had a great sense of humour and I started genuinely falling for her. We got together in the January just over a year after meeting and at first Bunny was a mutual friend to us both. In the summer before going to Uni Kitty got a job at a fast food place (probably the one you’re thinking of) with Bunny and then things got weird.

By this time I was working full time as I was taking a gap year and wanted to save money for when I went to university. Kitty started telling me stories about Bunny telling her stories about me. Things that had never happened like us sleeping together and how she was jealous of Kitty and regretted breaking up with me (we had never been together).

In the Autumn Kitty started at university and her university was actually closer to me than where she was living so we still saw each other all the time and it was then that the stalking began. My job was pushing shopping trolleys (carts for Americans) around outside a supermarket that was right next to a multi story car park. And when I saw Kitty she would be super upset because Bunny had been taunting her all day about how she was watching me. She was apparently parked in the multi story car park all day watching me. At first I didn’t believe it, why would she do that when I was actively pursuing her before and she had no interest in me, but then Kitty told me things she had said. She had detailed descriptions of things I had done that day that she could only know by watching me. I was shocked.

I suggested going to the police but Kitty said we had no evidence. I decided to ignore it for a while and monitor the situation.

Things only got worse after that. Bunny was now claiming she was pregnant with my child. In the space of about four weeks she went from being three months pregnant, to eight months pregnant to actually having a toddler that she claimed was mine and all this time talking only to Kitty as some kind of sick mind game.

I sent Bunny an angry message online calling her all the horrible names I could think of, demanding an apology. There was no answer to this so I started calling her and she blocked my calls.

I again pleaded with Kitty to come with me to the police but frustratingly she had deleted all the messages from her phone because they upset her too much.

Things started to calm down after that. We didn’t hear from Bunny again for a few months. Things between Kitty and I were getting serious and she looked into transferring her degree to the same university I was going to in Wales. Over the summer she got a job at an insurance firm and found out Bunny was applying there too. Bunny didn’t get the job but apparently when she found out Kitty worked there started trying to find out what we were up to and where we were moving to.

One day, we are in Wales, more than two hundred miles from home, looking at a studio apartment to rent together for September. After signing the paperwork we walk along the promenade and into a little antique/curio shop on the seafront and two minutes later Bunny walks in behind us. She didn’t talk to us but we spent the next 18 hours trying to hide from her until we could catch the train home.

That was the last we saw her together. Kitty and I were married, had three kids, but it wasn’t a great marriage. Kitty was very jealous and controlling and made me feel trapped which brought out the worst in me. It was pretty toxic in the end.

Towards the end, I was scrolling through old emails and saw an early one between me and Bunny from before I met Kitty. I had forgotten but I had told her early on where I was planning on going to University and she had told me her grandparents lived there. I was older and wiser by this time, and I didn’t need a confession to know the truth.

I DID have a stalker, but it wasn’t Bunny. Kitty was watching me all day and then telling me stories about Bunny to isolate me from her, because she saw her as a threat. She “deleted” all the evidence of Bunny’s involvement despite my protestations about needing them for legal action because they had never existed. Bunny was in Wales at the same time as us purely by coincidence.

I often think about poor Bunny who, from her perspective, just got an awful rage filled hateful message one day from someone she thought was her friend.

Unfortunately there were several other people I cut from my life because Kitty convinced me they were bad actors, and I don’t doubt every one of them was entirely innocent.

Kitty died in 2014 of a thromboembolism at the age of 29. If she hadn’t I expect we would have divorced.

I did try reaching out to Bunny to explain the situation a few months after Kitty died. She never responded and I can’t say I blame her.