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Andrea "Small" was born in Novi Sad, in the former Yugoslavia in 1972. She was the only child of two professionals, and they doted on her.

I guess that being an only child and getting everythign your parents can provide either produces a well-balanceed adult, or doesn't.

I am an only child, and I care about others. Andrea only cared about herself.

Sadly, her parents knew this and hoped they would be around to "advise" when her instincts to be selfish took over.

Novi Sad is in the area of Yugoslavia, now Serbia, known as Vojvodina.

Although Serbian, Andrea was of ethinic Hungarian extractions, and so after a day n schools she would go to evening school to learn Hungarian. Ulike most of Serbia, which was Orthodox, she and her family were Catholics.

If Yugoslavia was complcated, then it was in individual areas too.

She went to school, was taught that Muslim men were lazy, sat around smoking while their women did all the work. THis was in school, remember!

At school, the class would go away together for two weeks holiday, from the age of 5! I saw the pictures. And once lder they did lessons in Marxism and so on, as Yugoslavia wasn't Warsaw Pact, it was aligned.

As her parents were professionals, her Mother worked in the Vojvodina Archive in Novi Sad, they had a summer house, grew their own fruit and vegetables, Bela made his own hooch: plum and pear bandy, and Piroska made a kind of apricot butter I will remember the taste of on fresh bread until the day I die.

And they used to go to the coast in Bosnia for their holidays, which is where they met my parents one year.

Yugoslavia was falling apart at the beginning of the 90s. Tito had kept the union of nations that made up Yugoslavia together with an iren fist, but also favoured Serbia. This bred ancient resentments and hatred.

Once he died, the country was up for grabs, and along came the nationalists.

Andrea's parents knew war was coming. They wanted the best for their daughter, and on the brink of war, she failed her exams in language, thus killing her ambition of becoming a tour guide for Brits.

Andrea had come to England in 1988, when on invitation of my parents she came to stay with us for two weeks.

None of us can imagine what life was like for her back home, I paint a middle clasy idyl, but shops were empty for weeks, then nothing but washing powder, or nutmeg would come, and people would have to queue to get what there was. Money was always tight. When she came over, she saw me, going to a cash machine and apparently getting free money to spend.

She wanted some of that.

So, her parents wanted her to come to the UK to learn English so she could retake her exams. Andrea wanted to come and never leave.

A letter arrived at my parent's house, Mum opened it and called to say Andrea could come to stay and study. She failed to mention this to Dad. Or me. I had just graduated from Cosford for the first time, and was working at RAF Marham, learning to be an armourer.

I got a call to say Andrea was coming Friday. I would have to register this with the RAF Police, and there was a chance that Andrea would be seen as a security risk, and I would be banned from going to my parent's house as long as she was there.

But the political world changes quickly. What was once communist was breaking down, and the RAF said she posed no security risk, though I would never be trusted with certain roles if I were to get to the heady heights.

I knew nothing of this.

Andrea had to learn, but she also wanted to stay. Forever. There were three choices. The young and handsome Jelltex, my friends James and Douglas.

It was close, but she chose me, and fell hook, line and copy of the Angling Times for her.

At first it was great, just weekends spent going out, drinking, dancing and then more.

But soon it bacame clear that her visa was going to run out and she would have to go home.

I proposed.

I told my parents and Dad was horrified, called me all sorts of names having, as hesaw it, betrayed the confidence of her parents.

Andrea was crafty. She played my parents off against me, sided with me at home, then once I left on Sunday nights to go back to base, she was sweetness and light once again.

I have no idea if this is true, it was piecing what she and Mum told me, and quite frankly they were as unreliable as each other.

When we got married, it created such bad feelings that Andrea and I walked out of our reception as Mum was causing such a scene, and when time came to move our stuff out of their house, Dad had cleared just about everything, it felt like I was being expelled.

I did not speak to my parents for nearly two years. Until we were in Germany, and Andrea wanted Sky TV. To get that, you needed a box and an address in the UK to register a smart card. She wanted my parents to do this for us. I said that if we do this, it meant a restoration of communication, we could not just use them and drop them.
She had no qualms.

THat last summer before coming to England, she did not finish with ehr then boyfriend as she did not want to spend the summer alone. THis was Andrea all over, all about her, not caring about anyone else.

I was blind to this at first. But years, even just three years, sharing the same house, you get to see. And one morning wake up and realise that you don't even like, let alone love, the person you married and share your hosue and life with.

The harder you try to make her happier, the worse she gets and the worse she treated me, as if she wanted to punish me as feeling as bad as she did. Had she kept quiet, and not made my life a misery, we might still be together.

As it was, we split and never got back together. And even if she was the richest person in the world, offered me all the gold in the world to go back, I wouldn't.

I have no idea if she ever loved me. She said once she had grown to love me. But as the same time tried to change me in so many ways it is hard to see what it was she could have fallen in love with in the first place.

I loved her like a person can only do so with their first love.

I have no idea what she told her parents, but I suspect they were not surpised, and I am sure they gave her hell.

And support.

She was their only child, after all.

I licked my wounds and jumped into a relationship with someone even more damaged. Oh dear.