Seeing that I had made up my mind, Fiona knew there was no point in saying anything else.
After hesitating for a while, Fiona asked me again, "Victoria, why did you break up with Mr. Joseph?"
Afraid that I would be sad after breaking up, Fiona didn't dare to mention Daniel Joseph in front of me, let alone the cause of our break-up. She couldn't seem to hold back her curiosity.
I lowered my eyes and said sullenly, "He didn't love me at all."
"How could that be!" Fiona jumped up from the sofa when she heard this.
"We all could see how good Mr. Joseph was to you. How could he not love you? Are you overthinking too much?"
Yes, in our relationship, he had always been the one who tolerated me more. It was understandable that Fiona couldn't believe it for a while.
I remembered the small wooden box I had inadvertently rummaged through in his house that day, which contained some small objects belonging to a woman, necklaces and hairpins.
There was also a photo of a woman who looked somewhat like me, or rather, I looked somewhat like her.
Her name was written on the back of the photo: Vicky.
This meant not only did we look somewhat similar, but we even had the same nickname.
Then when I thought about he never called me Victoria like everyone else but Vic instead, I felt as if a huge stone was pressing on my heart and I couldn't catch my breath.
How in the world could there be such a coincidence?
How could I have ever imagined that Daniel treating me so well was only because he thought of me as a stand-in for that woman called Vicky?
Fiona was surprised to hear that, "So that Vicky is Mr. Joseph's ex-girlfriend? He couldn't get her out of his mind, that's why he found a woman like her as a substitute?"
"I don't know, maybe." Whatever, it didn’t matter to me whether she was his ex-girlfriend or his dream lover.
"So you didn't even ask him?"
"Did I need to ask? He kept all those worthless little items in an exquisite wooden box, so that woman must be very important to him." Even if I liked him, I still had my self-respect, and it would be embarrassing for me to reveal it all.
My words choked Fiona, because she had to admit that if she were in my shoes, she would think the same way.
"If that was really the case, then he was really good at pretending, fooling all of us."