CURIOSITY KILLED THE CATH

by Vandemonium1

I believe this one has an original discovery method and an unused response from the cheating wife. It has been independently rated at 3.5/5 pickaxe handles on the rating system that you can find via my and CreativityTakesCourage’s joint profile, SemperAmare.

A big thankyou to Charlie for the review and, of course, the love of my life, CTC, for translating my demented gibbering into English.

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IF YOU KNOW how to, all the technology available to the average Josie in the twenty-first century makes private investigators and high-priced surveillance equipment somewhat redundant, especially if your husband, like mine, still lives in the twentieth.

Why would I need surveillance, I hear you say? Why, to prevent my husband from discovering I’m not at a work seminar in Brisbane like I told him, but actually in New Zealand with my lover, of course.

Pete is in the bathroom right now and I’m lying on the bed in a five-star hotel awaiting him, wet with anticipation over our first lovemaking session not taking place in an empty office or storage room at work.

I won a week-long trip to the land of the long white cloud, including flights and accommodation, in a local competition, not that Dave, my husband, knows that. As far as he’s concerned, I’m at the aforementioned seminar in Brisbane. If he were to ring the hotel there and ask for me, the call would get put through to my friend, Betty, who’s booked in under my name. She is then under instruction to warn me. Pete and I have literally left no stone unturned to prevent our spouses finding out we aren’t where we’re supposed to be. That would be unthinkable.

Of course, I have to rely on a few things, like Dave not knowing how to use a find-a-phone app on my cell to show it’s not where it’s supposed to be, but that’s a certainty. Dave only got a smart phone two years ago. Prior to that he’d owned an ancient clam shell one and talking him into giving it up had been like trying to wean a toddler from a pacifier—a nightmare. Even then its replacement was only a second-hand, ancient iPhone 5 because he couldn’t see the point in spending a small fortune on a phone when he knew he’d hardly use any of the features. No chance.

I could rule out Dave jumping on a plane and surprising me in Brisbane. Well, not surprising me in Brisbane. I’d deliberately picked this week as he was wrapped up all week negotiating the sale of his business. We were retiring soon.

Could he find out I’d taken annual leave for the week rather than being on the clock? Again, no. For that he would have to have access to my electronic timesheet and he was computer illiterate. With the last of the kids having left the nest five years ago, and Dave being so busy growing the business to increase our retirement, we hadn’t been on more than a couple of long weekend breaks in years. I would get all my annual leave paid out when I retired soon. Dave would never realise I was paid out nine weeks instead of ten.

I was sure looking forward to Pete coming out of the bathroom. It had been a long day. Dave dropped me at the airport at 7a.m., flight to Sydney before a three hour wait in the international terminal and a four-hour flight to Auckland. Taxi to hotel, the check-in and handing over voucher for five nights accommodation and a quick shower to freshen up. Of course, Pete wanted a quickie before dinner but after I pointed out that with the time difference, we only had thirty-minutes before the restaurant closed, we headed straight there. In the end, the hotel restaurant was full so we went next door to a little seafood place.

After we’d eaten, we found out the restaurant didn’t take AMEX, which was the only credit card Pete carried. I was forced to use my Mastercard, which was linked to my main savings account. I shared the account with Dave and I knew the transaction would show on the statement, but as I handled all the family paperwork and finances, the risk was infinitesimally small. I paid and we returned to the room and the time this story started.

I lay there dripping with anticipation, reviewing my security arrangements for the umpteenth time and finding no flaws. All I had to do was call through the closed bathroom door for Pete to stay in there until I’d finished on the phone, then lie back and enjoy Pete’s attentions. He said he had a very talented tongue. I was curious to see if that were true.

I tried my phone but it didn’t work. Visions of Dave knowing about my affair and cancelling my phone plan flashed through my head, spurred by the innate guilt and deep worry about my activities, I suppose. Then I kicked myself. I’d forgotten to enable international roaming on my cell. Relieved, I fired up my laptop, went to my phone provider’s website and changed my status. Then rang and briefly told Dave that after the day of travel and seminar registration, I was bushed and going to bed early. Caring as always, he urged me to ensure I ate properly and asked what I’d had for dinner, I told him that Betty and I had eaten at a seafood restaurant.

I’m aware that liars need good memories and mine was as fallible as any late fifties woman, so I’d judged it good practice to stick as close to the truth as I could when lying to Dave. If he ever asked me again what I’d done for dinner that first night, I could just say I went to a seafood restaurant, and not have to memorise a lie. We exchanged ‘I love yous’ and both meant it. He was normal and I relaxed.

You might ask why I could do what I was doing and still love my husband to distraction. Why I was guilty and still cursed with a little deep-down worry? I put it down to my curious nature, or should I say, my natural curiosity. Dave was the only guy I’d ever slept with. I was curious what another guy would be like. I was curious if infidelity was as exciting as some of my acquaintances said it was. I knew that within a decade my libido would shrink and eventually die and I knew that once we retired and lived in each other’s pockets, the opportunities to experiment would be very limited. I was curious to know if men other than my husband still found me sexually attractive. That’s why I’d pursued Pete.

Ask Dave about my curiosity. He’d learnt over the years to only buy my Christmas and birthday presents at the last moment. Once I knew he’d bought them, I hounded and hounded him until he got sick of it and told me what it was. I was curious as to how things worked, where they went, why things were done a certain way. I must have been a horror of a child with my need to know everything. Oh yes, curiosity was a very powerful driver of my behaviour.

That night satisfied my curiosity. It was almost as good as I’d built it up in my head to be. Pete was an adequately endowered and considerate lover. He got me off on his tongue before entering me and didn’t stop until I was satisfied, as a gentleman shouldn’t. I did miss the emotional connection of cuddling afterwards, though. Neither Pete nor I had any delusions there was any romantic side to this trip. We made love again in the morning before heading out to see the sights. Later, we booked a bus trip for the next day to Rotorua at the hotel tour desk before showering. The same conference as the night before had the hotel restaurant booked out so we wandered along the street and found another nice place.

The problems began at the end of the meal. This place didn’t accept AMEX either, so, once again, I dragged out my Mastercard. Declined. What the hell? I’d paid the balance off in full just the week before so I knew the problem wasn’t a balance issue, and I’d used it last night, so I knew international transactions weren’t barred. It was embarrassing for Pete and I to have to dig through our wallets and purses to scrape together enough Australian currency to pay for the meal. We ended up paying the same amount in Ozzie dollars as the bill was in NZ dollars, even though the exchange rate had that well above the cost.

Only slightly worried, we hurried back to our hotel and as soon as we were in the room I tried to log onto the bank’s website. My password wouldn’t work. I had a sinking feeling about this. I was on hold with the bank’s third world call centre for over forty-five minutes and then another fifteen minutes to get the message from the non-English speaking drone. International transactions had been disabled on my account and, no, they wouldn’t allow me to change it over the phone.

Logic said there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. It certainly didn’t mean Dave knew I was playing around on him. He certainly hadn’t gone on any computer, changed the password, and disabled international transactions. The idea of him knowing how to do that was laughable.

When I glanced at the clock, I noticed that with the time difference it was almost too late to phone home for my nightly check-in. Pete had made his phone call while I was on hold with the bank before. Shushing him, I rang Dave.

After asking how he was and answering the same query from him, he asked how the weather was in Brisbane. I’d done my research beforehand, good old Weatherzone, and related what it had been like in that city that day. Then I dragged the subject to what was on my mind. He sounded his normal chirpy self which twinged my conscience when I thought of how I was deceiving him.

“Dave, do you have any idea why my credit card doesn’t work? Or why the password to online banking has been changed?”

There was perhaps ten seconds of silence before the line went dead. The worrying, no, terrifying, thing was that just before the link was cut, I thought I heard what sounded like a sob. Three attempts to ring back over the next five minutes went straight to message bank. The phone had been turned off.

Pete reported his phone call to his wife had been normal and, of course, wanted to make love again. I was worried sick and told him I was no longer in the mood.

The memory of that sob, the most heartrending sound I’d ever heard, was killing me. I tried trying to figure out if Dave could possibly have discovered where I was and what I was doing, but I couldn’t fathom it. A restless night’s unsleep, listening to the chainsaw snore of Pete and I was a mess in the morning. I was having trouble deluding myself that Dave’s refusal to turn his phone back on was anything but sinister. Suffice to say, we didn’t show for the bus trip to Rotorua. Instead, I called Dave’s phone every thirty minutes, to no avail, and went to a bank that had a reciprocal arrangement with mine to withdraw one grand of emergency money. Then just sat in the hotel room and worried. A fine, sexy holiday this was turning out to be—not.

Extreme worry turned to terror when Mary, our next-door neighbour, rang to say there was a removal truck in our driveway and asked if we were leaving. In my panic, I asked her to find Dave and give her phone to him so I could talk to him, but apparently he refused to accept it.

The game was up. Of that there was no longer any doubt.

Our son, Mike, lived nearby so I rang him to ask him to go and see his father. He answered my question with a question. “Where are you, Mum?”

When I replied, “Brisbane”, he hung up on me and now I had two family members with phones either turned off or blocking my calls.

Desperate calls to several airlines revealed that the Auckland airport was now closed due to their curfew and the earliest flight I could get was 10a.m. the next day. No sleep again and an annoying Pete, who refused to accept the gravity of the situation until I pointed out that if Dave knew, his wife might soon as well.

The drive to the airport and the long wait in the terminal were interminable. A call to Mary revealed that the removal truck was gone and Dave had driven off late the night before and hadn’t been seen since. The sleepless flight back to Sydney and the wait and flight to my home state passed at the speed of an asthmatic snail.

I tried composing my defence but it was useless. Without knowing what Dave knew it was impossible. The fact he knew I was away with a lover was a given, but how did he find out and when? Did he know Pete and I had hooked up on previous occasions? Would that make any difference? Had Dave suspected where I was going and arranged for a PI to follow us? I quaked at the possibility. Even as I was talking to Dave the last time we spoke, was he watching footage of Pete and I doing the nasty? That would certainly explain the sob. Just for a moment, the immensity of Dave’s pain at seeing something like that rocked my conscience, and it was horrible.

Or had the PI told him that they’d confirmed my unfaithfulness and had recorded proof but recommended he didn’t watch it. That made getting home quickly even more imperative.

How would Dave handle the confrontation? I knew him to be the strong silent type. He’d probably just sit there expecting me to confess all. But what would I say? There was a vast difference between, ‘Pete and I have been flirting for a while, but this was the first time we crossed the line’, and ‘we’ve been fucking at work for several months and decided to sneak away for the week so we could actually do it on a bed’. Dave would no doubt be expecting a full explanation, but what to admit to?

All the unknowns ate away at me. I needed information.

I explained my logic to Pete, along with the knowledge that Dave’s character meant he would certainly tell Pete’s wife. That finally made him as worried as I was and as soon as we were wheels down in Sydney, he rang his wife to tell her the conference he was allegedly on was cancelled due to a fire at the hotel and he was heading home. She acted normal so Dave hadn’t told her anything… yet.

Multiple calls to Dave’s cell still went unanswered, so just before the flight home from Sydney I sent him a text with my arrival time. I had an aisle seat and, as I stood to disembark the plane, I told Pete to wait until everyone else was off and to not even glance at me in the terminal or at baggage retrieval. Our affair was over forever. As I stood looking down at him, I tried to remember the satisfaction, pleasure, or orgasms this man had given me. My mind was blank. So much stress and pain… for what?

I’d decided on an aggressive but unscripted defence to Dave. I still didn’t have a clue what he knew so decided to offer no details until I’d dragged out of him what I needed to justify and apologise for. I took solace in the knowledge that he worshipped me. Yes, he may inflict some short-term pain, but our future was assured. Crossing the aerobridge, I plastered a fake smile on my face and stepped into the terminal.

I suppose some of the men waiting for offloading passengers might have been called Dave, but my Dave wasn’t amongst them. This wasn’t good. I’d hyped myself up for a confrontation that wasn’t going to happen just then. With a sigh, I waited for my luggage then caught a taxi home, increasingly worried about what I’d find there.

As part of my research on the signs that give cheating spouses away, I couldn’t help but read some of the consequences in the stories I’d read. I hadn’t taken that much notice of them because I would never be caught. Featuring highly in the cheating wife stories was the wife coming back from a trip away with her lover to find the locks changed on the house. If Dave had done that, I would have no choice but to go stay with my sister, who would not rest until she discovered why. She was almost as bad as me when it came to needing to know.

Then there was the other burning question. Whose stuff had been removed from our house? Mine or Daves?

Second only to my desire not to lose my husband was the wish for my transgression not to be made public. I enjoyed a high social status in my community, being on several church committees and in the local neighbourhood watch. I made a mental note to add swearing Mary to secrecy to the list of priority things to do. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to jump to the true conclusion about a scenario that included an absent wife, removal truck in the drive, and a husband’s refusal to talk to said wife when a phone was thrust at him.

Oh god, why hadn’t I given any thought to consequences BEFORE I strayed? Even if almost twenty-four hours of constant worry was all that happened, it wasn’t anywhere near worth it. Screw my curiosity about a different man and the excitement of infidelity. And double screw my curiosity about whether or not I still ‘had it’. What did that matter as long as my husband still desired me?

Lugging my suitcase to the front door, I pulled out my door keys, then stood there for a little while, praying the key worked and Dave was feeling reasonable. Something made me look around. Mary was watching me from her front yard, as was her neighbour and the nosy lady across the street. Two more curtains were twitching in the cul-de-sac. I guess they had a thing about curiosity too. I looked back at Mary, who looked away sheepishly. Oh well, there goes my reputation.

The key turned in the lock and I escaped the smirks and disapproving looks by going inside. I could see from the view I had of the lounge from the front door that my life wasn’t going to be easy for a long time. Just that glimpse told me Dave was gone. I dropped my bags and raced through to the lounge, noting favourite pictures and knickknacks of Dave’s were absent. Room after room told the same story. I mean, hardly a trace of him remained in the entire house. The sight of his empty closet was bad enough, but when I dragged myself back downstairs and saw his wedding ring on an envelope in the middle of the kitchen table, I just sank to my knees and wept as I thought of the balance sheet.

On the debit side, I’d caused immense pain to my husband. A man that in no way deserved the knife I’d personally driven into his back. What relationship I’d have with him from here on was a total, terrifying unknown.

That went for my kids as well. They’d had twenty-four hours to hear and absorb Dave’s side of the story, possibly backed up with photographs and videos. We’d instilled both of them with keen senses of justice, after all. Years of lessons on honesty, morality, ethics… why had I stopped leading by example? Damn my curiosity.

With the juicy gossip Mary had unleashed, I knew I wouldn’t have the courage to attend church or any other neighbourhood function in the near future, possibly forever. And I really didn’t want to dwell on my job. My boss attended the same church as I did. If he found out what Pete and I had been up to, either from local gossip or from Dave telling all and sundry, I was out of a job. He wouldn’t do it for performance reasons or through any stupid morality clause in my employment contract, he’d just give me the boot and to hell with the legal consequences.

Balanced against this… oh god, this annihilation of the three pillars of my life; family, job, and social acceptance, there was what? Vague memories of some quick fumbles in the office after everyone else had left. Events where Pete just lifted my skirt, shoved my knickers aside, and deposited a load in me. Hell, I hadn’t even gotten off during those encounters. All they’d achieved was a mess between my thighs that necessitated me shoving a wad toilet paper in my panties to get me home and a race to the shower once there.

Yes, the trip to New Zealand had satisfied my curiosity as to my continuing appeal to the opposite sex and what sex would be like with another man. And, yes, I remembered having enjoyed our two couplings there but though I knew I’d actually orgasmed both times, those momentary, ethereal events were already fading fast from my memory.

Oh Christ! What had I done?

I staggered to the drinks cabinet and poured a glass full of something, anything, and gulped it. Almost automatically I dialled Dave’s cell and then my son’s. Both went straight to message bank. I then rang my daughter, praying Dave had been generous there at least. The conversation was short. Very short.

“Hi, Donna, it’s Mum.”

“Did you go to New Zealand with a lover, Mum?”

“…………………”

“I take it that means yes. Goodbye, Mum. I’m too angry to talk right now.”

Even the dial tone sounded angry, like a swarm of hornets.

All I had left was the envelope on the table, but the potential contents would take at least another glass full of, what was this shit? Oh, vodka.

I managed to delay opening the envelope for another quarter hour. Potentially, the envelope could contain horrible photographs, damning evidence of betrayal, and confirmation of the death of my marriage. But, after some semi-rational thought, it may also contain hope, outlines of a severe but temporary punishment, or, at the very least, some answers to burning questions that tortured me. How had Dave discovered the truth about me and Pete? How long had he known? Did he still have to imagine my adultery or had he seen it for himself in full, glorious colour?

Three vodkas turned out to be the magic number before curiosity won and I carefully put Dave’s ring on the shelf reserved for our special things, awaiting the time he would return to claim it, and gingerly opened the A4 envelope.

Which turned out to contain some stuff for Dave’s work. It was totally devoid of anything Dave. I realised he’d merely used it so the gold of his ring wasn’t visually lost against the background of the Mountain Ash dining table. I searched the house for something, anything Dave might have left with a clue. Nothing. Internally, I screamed with frustration. The not knowing was killing me. I dealt with it the only way I could think of; by finishing the vodka and starting on the tequila.

The next day was as physically painful as you’d expect. Oh, my head.

Just to confirm what I expected, I rang Dave, Donna, and my Mike several times. They all rang out every time, telling me they were either ignoring me or I was blocked. Dave had obviously filled our son in on what I’d done so I saw him as a potential window of information into my undoing. I still had no idea what to say to Dave when we finally did meet. With that in mind, I drove around to see my son at a time I knew he’d be back from work. My daughter lived several states away with her husband. The door was opened by Delia, my son’s fiancé. We’d always got along just fine, close almost. Unlike previous visits, she didn’t invite me in, just coldly told me she disapproved of what I’d done and fully supported my son’s decision to cut all ties with me. Mike had obviously confided in her so I pressed her on what she knew of what I’d done.

“Cath, you know what you’ve done.”

And then the door was closed in my face.

Talk about frustrating. I still had no clue what Dave knew, how long he’d known, what evidence he had. It was killing me.

Not knowing where the hell Dave was staying, I felt I had no choice but to revert to plan A – be sparing of admissions of my acts and probe what Dave knew. Therefore, when I felt human again, I doled myself up and went to his office. He’d had the same secretary-cum-receptionist for years and we’d always been amicable. Today, she was cold and condemning and told me in no uncertain terms that Dave was travelling for an indeterminate amount of time, and, no, I wasn’t welcome to check back every day.

I may not know what Dave knew, but it seemed every mutual acquaintance of ours did. It was so embarrassing. Several neighbours did call over, but it was obvious they were just fishing for gossip, not driven by any concern for me. It was by far the loneliest time in my life to date.

I was drunk by 10a.m. Friday but decided to stay sober on the weekend, just in case Dave came back and I needed a clear head. Drunk or sober, it made no difference. Not knowing what Dave knew and was telling my kids, his staff, possibly our friends and neighbours, even every second barman within an hour of our house, was just eating me up inside.

Going back to work on Monday was both a relief and terrifying. I tried to read the expression on my boss’s face for any clue he was going to fire Pete and I that day, but he simply enquired about my holiday week off.

I cornered Pete as soon as I could, and he reported that things at his home were normal. He was clearly very worried, though, thinking the axe could fall at any moment. From that I concluded that either Dave had hit the bottle like me and was not thinking rationally yet, or that he was deliberately making Pete sweat. His wanting to make the guy who’d damaged his marriage suffer was understandable. Well, one of the people who’d damaged his marriage. I was honest enough to accept my share of responsibility as well. I wished for the second reason. The first implied that he’d seen footage of my tryst in New Zealand and was trying to chemically erase the images.

By the end of the workday, I’d convinced myself that Dave was just punishing me and making me realise what I’d put in jeopardy by my actions. I would be more convinced if I knew exactly what my husband knew. Aaargghhhhhhhhh! Talk about frustrating.

The process server was waiting for me when I arrived home. Stunned, I grasped the big thick envelope I’d been given. How thick was a divorce application? Surely not the tome that seemed to be in the envelope I was clutching. Visions of a bunch of still shots from a video, included to put me on the back foot and let me know that fighting a charge of adultery was futile, seared across my brain.

I have no memory of how I came to be sitting at the dining table, but there I was staring at the envelope. For Dave to file without a word or giving me a chance to defend myself must mean what evidence he had was both damning and crippling. Enough that all attempts at forgiveness were non-starters.

Finally, my curiosity as to the extent of Dave’s evidence the envelope contained outweighed my cowardice and that was saying something as I’d rather have pulled out a Tiger Snake suffering from PMT than documents that spelled the end of my marriage. Throwing aside the cover letter and confirming the actual application was only seven pages long, I steeled myself to look at the photographs, of which there were a grand total of… none.

The bulk of the rest of the material was generic information on how to respond to the service of the application and what my rights were. Confusion battled with relief. Relief, if for no other reason, that I wouldn’t have evidence of my adultery rubbed in my face.

That relief was short lived though, as I read the cover letter. ‘Please find enclosed blah, blah, blah’, ‘irrevocable breakdown of blah, blah, blah’, ‘as a civil proceeding, the applicant intends to enforce the prenuptial agreement, signed and witnessed on the blah, blah, blah’.

Oh no! I’d forgotten all about the prenup. They’d kindly put in a copy after all the generic rubbish. With shaking hands, I read the simple agreement. Yes, I’d remembered right, in the case of adultery, the offending party walked away with practically nothing.

All of a sudden, the lack of photographs made sense. Why show all their cards at the outset?

With his actions, Dave was sending a message. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in my rationalisations and motives or, more importantly, forgiving me. He had the facts, nothing else was relevant. That was so Dave. And yet I couldn’t accept there was no hope. Surely there had to be more for me than just a wish for the opportunity to apologise to him and the chance of reconciling with my children someday.

And, dear Lord, please provide an answer to the burning question that was eating my curiosity. How had he found out? It must have been well before last week to have arranged to gather the evidence he possessed. I’d been so incredibly careful. Still, I’d destroyed a good man and that was eating me as well.

At work the next day, I confirmed Peter still had a happy marriage and, after quizzing the receptionist, no one had called to ask if I was at a conference. I also discovered that there was a minimal amount of money left in all our joint accounts. With that discovery I made an appointment with a lawyer for the next day.

I didn’t retain the lawyer, just sought some advice. Expecting to be evicted from the family home at any moment, the possibility I might be fired for cause, and knowing that pennies would be short for the foreseeable future, I would need to hoard what I earned.

The lawyer confirmed that if my husband presented the evidence he possessed then the prenup, as old as it was, was very much enforceable.

There are drawbacks to tequila. One major one is that ideas that occur after three glasses, late at night, may not make sense in the morning. This particular idea was that I could find the answers to all my questions by asking Dave, and I could force that by using signing the papers as a bargaining chip. So, at 11.08p.m. I emailed the law firm Dave was using and asked them to pass a message to him. If Dave would sit and talk to me, I would sign the damned application. If not, I would drag my heels all along the process. Only to be firmly told, by return email the next day, that in Australia it didn’t matter a smeg if I signed or not, the process was set.

The lawyer had been so firm it came as a surprise when he rang back the next day and told me that Dave had indeed agreed to meet me. He was insisting on the conference occurring at the lawyer’s office, with witnesses, and was insisting on absolute honesty. One hint of a lie and he would walk out and I’d never see him again. I insisted that part of the conversation include Dave telling me how he’d found out about my taking a sabbatical from my marriage. There it was again; my insatiable curiosity. I had to know. He rang back an hour later with Dave’s agreement to my terms and a meeting was set for Thursday after lunch.

That gave me a day to prepare my game plan. The stipulation about honesty came as no surprise. I knew Dave’s stance on scrupulous honesty. I determined to give him absolutely everything, leaving no excuse to terminate the meeting. Hold back nothing and not even slightly flex the truth. As difficult as it would be for me personally to lay my deceit bare for all to witness, showing my honesty and remorse I figured would maximise my chances of reconciliation. Subsequent meetings and conversations could be used to convince him that despite my actions, I still loved him unconditionally.

I arrived at Dave’s lawyer’s office and was ushered straight into a conference room. Present were his lawyer and some sort of secretary. I blushed as I realised these two knew of my sordid behaviour, but that paled at the panic I felt when I saw Dave wasn’t there. Thankfully, he arrived soon after me, seating himself opposite. His face was scarily blank and he remained silent while his lawyer repeated what he’d said on the phone, that I really should have my own representation there and offered to postpone if I wanted that. I refused. He then reiterated why we were all present, repeated Dave’s threat to leave immediately if I wasn’t 100% honest, then offered me the opportunity to say my prepared piece. Despite all my preparations, I couldn’t remember where to start. The lawyer prompted me.

“Why don’t you begin with when you and your lover embarked on your affair?”

“I met Peter at my work, of course…”

The lawyer interrupted. “For completeness, that would be Peter…?”

“Wilson. Peter Wilson.”

I paused and looked at Dave, trying to beg with my eyes to be allowed to do this privately. He remained deadpan.

“We flirted for months then… for reasons I can’t justify now, we began a sexual relationship. Just a few quickies in the office, you understand, I never had any emotional relationship with him.”

If I was expecting any overt relief from Dave at this news I would have been disappointed. He showed nothing.

“After a few months, Peter began to nag me to go to a motel or pretend an overnight trip so we’d have more time. I gradually gave way and came up with the idea of the fake trip to Brisbane. I did that because I didn’t want to be caught and expose you to public humiliation, darling.”

I’d prepared that excuse which I was sure would score me a brownie point. It failed if Dave’s unchanging expression was anything to go by.

“It was always going to be a one-off thing and I would have broken it off with him when we came back, honestly.”

This was not true and a gamble. With communication only face-to-face at the office, Dave would have had to have had bugs there to prove me wrong. Again, nothing registered on his rugged face, but at least he hadn’t stormed out. That threw me to silence again, prompting the lawyer to prod me again.

“So, you arrived in Auckland, booked into a room at a hotel, then what? Had sex with this Peter Wilson?”

“No, it was late so we found a nice restaurant nearby and ate.”

“Then you went back to the hotel and had sex, yes?”

That made me drop my eyes and in a small voice reply, “Yes.”

“This is all after you rang my client and perpetuated the charade that you were in Brisbane, at a conference?”

“Yes,” again said while looking at my hands on the table.

“And I suppose you woke in the middle of the night and had sex again, slept late then had adulterous sex all the next day?”

This confused me. Why was Dave’s lawyer trying to get me to lie? He must have seen the same video that Dave had.

“NO! We made lo…, had sex again in the morning before looking around the city the next day. That was it. That was the extent of my cheating. When I spoke to Dave on the phone the next night and he hung up on me, I was too worried to have sex with Peter again. I focussed on getting home as soon as I could.”

The lawyer looked at Dave, who nodded slightly, his cold eyes still boring into me.

“Thank you for your frankness, Mrs. Brown. Now, you had some questions?”

This was it. This was when my burning questions were answered. I’d thought of little else for days. My voice shook.

“Wh… when did you find out about Peter, Dave?”

Finally, Dave spoke. “If your question is actually, when did I find out you weren’t in Brisbane, at a conference, then the answer is last Tuesday night.”

The stress I was under stopped me realising the full significance of what those words meant at that point.

“Er, how?”

“I received a phone call from the credit card company on Monday night, asking if we were travelling overseas as they’d detected a transaction. They’d tried to ring you, as the primary card holder, but couldn’t get you, so they rang me on the secondary number.”

I cursed myself at this point. I’d forgotten to enable international roaming on my damn phone and international transactions on my credit card prior to departure.

“I said we weren’t overseas so they put a stop on all overseas transactions then changed the password on our account. I meant to ring you and tell you about it but was busy and forgot.”

That explained why the transaction was declined on the Tuesday.

“I thought nothing more about it until you rang me on the Tuesday night and said your card was declined in a restaurant. If the restaurant was in Brisbane then the card would have worked. It suddenly struck me that you were lying to me. Once I was off the phone, I checked that you’d told me you were going to Brisbane. I found the piece of paper you’d written your hotel name and room number on. Then, not believing you could be that deceptive, I checked the safe only to find your passport was missing. I still didn’t want to believe the evidence piling up against you so I rang Mike the next day and he logged onto the bank’s portal and looked at recent transactions. There was large cash withdrawal from a bank in Auckland. I didn’t know what you were doing there but had proof you’d lied about the Brisbane trip.”

I was as confused as all hell. He’d cut me off just because he’d caught me in a lie? Initially, that shocked me but later, when I thought about it, I recognised that was just like Dave. He was a very black and white person.

“So, when did you find out about Peter?”

“Well, the reasons you’d deceived me were few and the most compelling of them was that you were having an affair. When did I learn Peter’s name? That was about ten minutes ago, when you told me.”

What the f…? On the basis of one lie, he’d cut me out of his life, moved out, and petitioned for divorce?

Or had the whole serving me with divorce papers and demanding my honesty been a ploy to discover the truth of what I’d been up to?

“So, you didn’t have a private investigator following me in Auckland? You don’t have photos and videos of me and Peter?”

“Nope.”

This was good. With nothing visually concrete burnt into his soul, surely my chances of forgiveness and a continuing marriage were good. My musing was interrupted by his lawyer.

“So, Mrs. Brown, I think you will agree that my client has met your conditions. He’s listened to your story and told you how he discovered your breach of the marital contract, if you would just sign the divorce application, we don’t have to waste any more of everyone’s time. The conditions of the settlement are in accordance with your prenuptial contract.”

He pushed the pile of paper across at me. This meeting had gone so differently to what I’d expected, I was punch drunk. I looked at the papers. Dave hadn’t known Peter’s name until I blabbed it during this meeting. He didn’t know anything except that I’d lied. He didn’t have proof before this meeting, and he still didn’t. Not concrete proof. Stress caused my survival instinct to cut in. One glance at Dave told me we were finished as a couple. It was time to look after my future as a single woman.

I pushed the papers back across the table. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t think what?”

“I’m not signing those. You have no proof of infidelity and therefore the prenup doesn’t apply. I accept that the marriage is over and will die still apologising to Dave for lying to him. It was stupid and selfish of me. Change the agreement to a fairer split of our assets and I’ll sign it this afternoon.”

With that I leaned back and prepared to be stubborn. Again, the lawyer looked at Dave who nodded.

“But we do have proof of infidelity, Mrs. Brown, or will have in about thirty minutes time.”

“What, how?”

“When your husband, myself, and Julie here, who is also an officer of the court, that carries a lot of weight, you know, sign our statements where we attest to attending a meeting here today at which you admitted you’d conducted a sordid, disgusting affair with-”, at this point he consulted the notes he’d been writing during the meeting, “One Peter Wilson. Are you sure you won’t sign?”

Maybe I should have invested in a lawyer.

I sat there stunned. When had Dave gone from being a generous, honest, strait-laced, loving person into this cold, ruthless schemer? I knew he’d been merciless in the past with couples we’d been friends with where one had strayed. The wrongdoer had always been axed from our lives. But not with me. Not with his children. To us, he’d always been kind and understanding. 

Then I remembered whispered tales from acquaintances over the years that in his business life, Dave was pretty tough. It looks like he’d changed my status from being his loving wife to a business deal gone sour, a speedbump in the road to be eliminated.

No, that wasn’t right.

It was me. I’d changed my status, not him.

EPILOGUE

Despite my promise to sign, I didn’t, of course. I heard Dave say as I stormed out, “Are you seeing the same pattern of broken promises that I am?”

I could tell from Dave’s expression and the low trick of entrapping me, that there was zero chance of reconciliation. That, as much as anything else, was a shock to the system. It was every woman for herself now.

A trip back to the same lawyers as before earned me an admonishment that if I’d engaged him, this wouldn’t have happened. He advised me that if we fought it, there was a small chance of overturning the trickery. So, belatedly, I engaged him.

In the end, he neither slowed the process down nor changed the outcome. All he did was ensure that we arrived at the end of the process with him slightly richer and me even more broke. His promises of getting me a slice of Dave’s cash from the sale of the business turned out to be as good as mine to Dave on our wedding day. He said it was because the prenup was so simple and effective, but I suspect it was because he was a crap lawyer.

Talking of broke. One evening not long after my defeat in the courts, I’d consumed half a bottle of something when the doorbell rang. There stood a crying and ranting Peter, bleating something about his wife kicking him out and changing the locks. She’d received a visit from Dave it seemed, and Peter was blaming me. Typical. Like he’d had nothing to do with falling into an affair?

Here, at last, was a focus for my frustration. I sent him packing with a few choice words but that wasn’t enough to satisfy my anger. I picked up the earthenware pot that lived by the front door. It was filled with artificial sunflowers. Such happy flowers, sunflowers. Nothing says have a happy, sunny day quite like a sunflower. I hurled it at Peter’s head while yelling, “Have a great life, you lousy son-of-a-bitch.”

He didn’t take any evasive action and it struck him full on between his shoulder blades. He went down like a bag of potatoes. He’s lucky I wasn’t strong enough to get more lift in my toss or I might have taken off his head.

I closed the door on him thinking he got what he deserved. A little unfair you might think, I’d pursued him, remember? But he didn’t have to succumb to my seduction and, besides, rational thinking obviously wasn’t a strong point of mine. At least, not anymore. Mary witnessed the whole thing and initiated the call that led to Peter being taken away in an ambulance and me away in the back of a police car.

I guess Peter blamed me as much as I blamed him, he pressed full charges for assault.

Peter took to drinking and ended up being fired for it. I was initially fired but then re-instated by a boss who explained, through gritted teeth, that our priest had lectured him about forgiveness. The happy atmosphere at work was over for me, though. My female colleagues treated me like I would steal their husbands and clung to them like limpets at the only work social function I attended after that.

The women in the neighbourhood were the same.

So, here I am. A man came round one day and asked for the keys to my BMW, it was one of the chattels from the business, now sold. I told him to fuck off but he showed up an hour later with a cop. Great. My sister begged Dave and he allowed me an extra month to vacate the house. Which is where I sit now, looking around the empty, echoing rooms. Rooms that used to ring with the sound of children laughing, Dave pretending to be a monster while playing hide and seek, and bedsprings squeaking. All memories that I’d killed with my curiosity like a vampire slayer with a stake.

Dave had removed the furniture he wanted, which wasn’t much, and my stuff was in storage until I decided which third of it would fit in my new, tiny apartment.

Neither of my children were answering my calls yet. I could only hope that would change one day. After they judged I’d suffered enough for hurting their father, I suppose. I thought that day was today but they can’t have agreed with me. Truth be told, I was a little afraid to face them. How could the person who had instilled them with the values of loyalty, justice, honesty and integrity they were now demonstrating, look them in the eye?

With one last sob, I walked out of the echoing house, closing the door behind me. I looked down. There lay the newspaper. No one, it seemed, had cancelled the subscription. It was Saturday, the day that jobs were advertised. A move to somewhere my colleagues didn’t look on me warily would be nice, so I sat on the front step – no hurry, after all, to get to my lonely apartment – and glanced through it on my way to the positions vacant pages.

Could life kick me in the teeth any more? Page six held an article about local businessman, David Brown selling his business for an undisclosed but speculated eight figure sum. The accompanying photograph showed him looking good at a recent local chamber of commerce function, smiling down at a beautiful companion. My tears made the print smudge. I cursed myself for succumbing to my curiosity, but for it, it would have been me in the photograph with Dave.

My old beater car started, eventually, and I drove slowly away through a mist of tears. The curtains twitched all the way to the end of the street.

The End

Now lighten the fuck up with some philosophy.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.