My new flatmate seemed friendly enough on our first few meetings so my boyfriend Tom and I were happy to invite him into our home. We were under the false impression that Mark was a decent, honest and respectful person. As it turned out, we were very wrong. Our flatmate Mark was selfish and without an ounce of respect. He broke things often without replacing them or admitting he had, let alone apologising. He smoked in the house even though our house was a smoke-free environment and played loud music at all hours, which was not only annoying for me and Tom but for the neighbours as well. We would have loved to ask him to leave but he always paid the rent on time so we felt we didn’t really have grounds to kick him out.
The more we got to know him, the more he revealed about his shady past. One of the aspects of this past was his drink driving offences. He had, on two separate occasions in two separate states, lost his driver’s licence for drink driving. Sure enough, within weeks of Mark moving in with us he had been caught drink driving again and was due in court two months later. He was sure he was going to jail after all these offences (I secretly hoped he would).
When he came back from court he informed Tom and I that he got off with another loss of licence and a small fine because he lied and told the judge that he had no prior convictions. Being in a separate state the court had not checked these details properly.
Days went by and Mark became unbearable to live with, despite many discussions with him on how Tom and I preferred to live. Tom and I were at our wits end and had a nice friend looking for somewhere to live. So we devised a plan.
I rang Crime Stoppers and dobbed Mark in anonymously for lying in court. The police did a back check and told Mark that they had found out by routine check (not because I informed them). Consequently, Mark was sent to jail for perjury for nine months, which was excuse enough to ask him to leave and for our friend Tash to move in. The reward money helped replace everything that Mark had broken. Tash, our new flatmate, is a dream compared to Mark.
The main thing I feel guilty about is Mark’s mother. When she came to pick up Mark’s belongings, she confided to me how she had always thought her son was a good, decent boy and how broken-hearted she felt.
