"He ripped my heart out and stomped on it over and over again"

The first warning sign came as they were discussing their wedding plans and she handed him his BlackBerry to call his dad. Her eye was caught by an email from a woman. It was “fawning, flirtatious and very familiar”, she writes. He insisted it was “just a fan”. Because he was known for being a straight talker – to a fault – she believed him. But later, she would remember what he said to her right before she saw that email: “I’m broken and I need you to fix me.” Has she ever asked him what he meant?

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“Often I’ll raise things with Anthony, and I think there’s a lot he doesn’t remember. But I think, in hindsight, it really was a self-realisation that something didn’t feel right, and my guess is that committing to me, committing to being married, exposed those vulnerabilities: ‘Am I good enough to be in a relationship with somebody?’ That’s what a lot of people who have these insecurities feel,” she says.

Soon after, they got married and their wedding was officiated by none other than … Bill Clinton. “Every wedding is a wonder,” intoned the man who, just over a decade earlier, had been impeached for lying about infidelity. I tell Abedin that often when she describes Weiner in the book – “charming, charismatic and clearly attractive to lots of women” – it sounds like she could be describing Bill. Was that part of his appeal?

“No! Not at all!” she gasps.

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