By Vandemonium1

Edited by CreativityTakesCourage

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WENDY

To this day, I don’t know if it was a sigh, a cough, a breath of air stirred up by my husband’s presence, or something on a more psychic level that made me open my eyes. I do recall having an inane, endorphin spurred goofy grin on my face attesting to the success of John’s recent efforts.

He’d taken longer than usual to get me into bed that afternoon; I’d been still worried. Once he overcame my objections and prised my legs apart, however, he’d been like a man possessed. Whether he was especially worked up by his efforts at seduction, or because he’d known we had less time than normal, he’d attacked me like a demon. The novelty of this approach had excited me like never before, and within what seemed like a mere minute or three, I’d had John’s cum running out of me and fading contractions from my own powerful orgasm.

However, after about a minute of John’s full, relaxed weight restricting my breathing, open my eyes I had.

Wendy, the happy housewife, the better than average mother, and, until recently, loyal wife, died right then and there as I looked across the room at the man standing in the doorway. Dave, my loving husband. The father of my children. Easily discernible in the mid-afternoon light slanting through the curtains of our marital bedroom.

One look at the devastated expression on his face sent my gaze inward, anywhere other than at the agony directly before me. Time slowed; my brain flitted from subject to subject. Anything was preferable to facing the realisation of the damage my actions had caused. No imagination was necessary on that front. Even if I was one of those people that struggled to recognise emotion in the demeanour of others, and I was far from one of those, the look on Dave’s face was pain personified. No tears; just extreme…, well, pain. Few of my thoughts from that moment were committed to long term memory, thanks to the human reflex of burying memories of extreme trauma, so I’ll recall them as best I can.

I do remember mentally kicking myself. After the incident the previous week, I knew I should have trusted my instincts and not met with John for a while, but after a week of observing Dave closely, lust convinced my logical mind that he remained clueless to my four-month affair with our next-door neighbour.

I was proud of my status as model wife and mother in our community of young families. I fully realised everyone we knew looked upon us as the perfect couple and I loved it. Unlike most of our female friends, I didn’t need to work. To play up to my image, four years prior, I started putting the kids in day care once a week and volunteered at a local charity shop. Life settled into a routine after that, until that fateful party, next door, at John’s house.

It was almost a perfect storm. The kids were at my Mum’s, I’d had a few wines, and I was horny. Very horny. I’d just slurred into Dave’s ear to take me home and have his wicked way with me when his damned phone rang. He was on call for his company that weekend, that’s why he wasn’t drinking. He left, leaving me swaying and dripping.

John, with whom I’d harmlessly flirted over the years, and who was also three sheets to the wind, volunteered to escort me home. His wife can’t have missed him for the ten or fifteen minutes it took to walk me home, then kiss and grope me, before taking me quickly and roughly on my own bed. The newness and sheer taboo naughtiness of the act made it explosively good for two long-married spouses.

When, several days later, John came over during a workday to discuss the incident, the conversation centred on how we could continue without being caught, rather than expressing regret or swearing to never repeat it.

By comparing notes, we quickly decided that Wednesday afternoons were the safest times. It was my volunteer day and the only day John could sneak off between meetings. I told the family I’d volunteered to work longer on Wednesdays. In reality, I took off an hour earlier, at 2:00 p.m. I arranged for Karen, a neighbourhood eighth grader, to take our two kids home with her after school and entertain them at her house until 5:00 p.m., before bringing them home. That gave me two and a half hours with John every week, before he had to leave for a regularly scheduled 5:00 p.m. meeting.

With our respective spouses still at work until after six, it was most convenient for John to hide his car up the street, sneak through our backyard fence, and meet me in my bedroom. That way, there were no motel bills to hide, or possibilities of our cars being seen somewhere they shouldn’t be.

The arrangement had worked flawlessly for months. So well, in fact, that the affair was getting a little routine and boring. I felt it, John felt it, and we both knew it was almost time to call it quits. The natural time to do that would have been after the terrifying events of the previous week.

That week, John and I had sex, talked, had sex again, then stupidly fell asleep. The sounds of children downstairs roused me. It was 4:45 and Karen had brought the kids home a little early. I woke John and told him I’d distract them, so he could sneak out the back door. He mumbled something incomprehensible back in his torpid state. Slipping on a dressing gown, I walked down the stairs, said hello to Karen and the kids and gently tried to steer them toward the kitchen. Karen was in a chatty mood and just wouldn’t co-operate. I had her in the entrance to the kitchen when she looked over my shoulder and abruptly stopped talking. Glancing the same way, my blood froze, then boiled. There was John, doing up the buttons on his jacket, walking down the stairs. He muttered something about being late for an important meeting and disappeared out the back door.

I looked at Karen and immediately experienced the deepest sense of shame I’d ever felt. My immediate thought was the harm it would do to my reputation, followed quite a while later by the devastation it could wreak within my marriage. I guess that tells you better than anything what an entitled bitch I’d become. I separated Karen from my kids and went into damage control. Karen was old enough to know exactly what John and I had been up to but also old enough to have seen the damage divorce did to other families in the neighbourhood. I had yet to extract a promise of silence from her when Dave also came home a little early, at 5:05 p.m. Before I could stop him, he’d offered to run Karen home as it was raining. I sweated the whole fifteen minutes he was gone, especially as it should have been a five-minute round trip.

I was mainly mollified when he returned acting as normal as ever. That didn’t stop me from observing and analysing his every word, action, and look for the next week. The lingering memory of that terrifying quarter hour was the reason I’d tried to cancel John’s visit that fateful week and why, when I finally allowed him to spread my legs, he’d been in such a hurry.

I’d just gone through many minutes of reminiscing, but logically only seconds could have passed since I’d opened my eyes. All I could think was, wow, is that what they mean by the prospect of imminent death slowing time down. Over John’s still heaving shoulder, I stared into Dave’s eyes and the look of utter devastation they portrayed.

The next few seconds were busy. I sucked in a huge breath. What I was going to use it for remains a mystery. Perhaps it’s an autonomous response connected to the flight-or-fight response. Regardless, it alerted John to something being wrong. He pulled his head up from the crook of my neck to look at my face, saw me staring over his shoulder, turned his head and followed my gaze, saw Dave’s face just as a single tear escaped his left eye, and croaked a heartfelt, “Fuck!”

That broke the spell.

With a shake of his head, Dave turned and disappeared from the bedroom doorway. With John’s weight still on me, all I could do was listen to Dave storm down the stairs and slam the front door behind himself.

In the months that followed, no amount of justification could assuage my conscience. I eventually, reluctantly, faced the fact I was quite a shallow person. Not surprising, really, after a childhood spent being spoiled by wealthy, doting parents plus the early attainment of puberty, which got me lots of attention when I was mentally ill-equipped to cope. I finished school as one of the best-looking girls in my year and the word ‘no’ was not one I heard often. In my limited experience of the world, I had already learned I could have any guy I liked, when I liked, and once caught I could manipulate him pretty much on demand.

I easily captured the heart of Dave in Year 12 after subtly pursuing him. Dave would say he chased me, but he was wrong. I just made him think he was doing all the work. I manipulated this big, handsome, ambitious, and talented guy until he proposed. Life continued to hand me gift after gift – a better than average house, zappy cars, two beautiful children, all the best people wanting to be in our group. All this fed my sense of entitlement. The world was my oyster and I had only to ask in order to receive. Funny, when I’d never worked a day in my life.

Thus, when John offered effortless great sex to augment sex with Dave, which, frankly, needed effort to keep exciting after years of marriage, the entitled bitch in me hesitated for not nearly long enough for rational thought.   

I don’t want you to get the impression I’m a brainless bimbo. My parents passed on more than their superior genes in the looks department. Of course, I’d considered the effects on my marriage if my affair came out. There was also a certain level of guilt, sure. Admittedly, it was mostly when Dave would do something sweet and loving like bring home some flowers or surprise me with an impromptu date night. Guilt was pushed into the background, with everything else that threatened my perfect world.

With guilt buried, the fear of getting caught was only relevant if I was discovered, wasn’t it? I never thought I’d be caught, so had no more than vague thoughts of the effect on Dave. It embarrasses me now, how I, as an intelligent woman, never for a moment thought about other ramifications Like the effect on my kids and my reputation; the friendship I shared with John’s wife, and the damage to his marriage. How I’d be viewed by other women in our large social group. Maybe I am a bimbo after all.

Perhaps, that is why, to distract myself from the pain on Dave’s face, my mind flitted through all those hitherto unthought thoughts and I caught a glimpse, just an instant’s view, of my future world. That glimpse was unacceptable. Damage control had to commence immediately. I remember the words, ‘RIGHT NOW’ screaming into my head. Anything to avoid facing the pain I could still see on Dave’s face, even when I closed my eyes.

JOHN

To my shame, the first thought that I remember going through my mind, when I saw Dave looking at us, was the effect it would have on my marriage. Sure, Jenny and I weren’t the perfect couple, like Dave and Wendy, but I loved her in my own way and the thought of losing access to my kids was mentally crippling. No, don’t go there, John.

I mentally kicked myself for not taking more care when Wendy told me about our close call after our stupid actions of the previous week. I’d still been half asleep when I walked down the stairs and thought a 14-year-old was no threat to me. It was now fairly obvious that Wendy’s fears had been grounded in fact. That damned girl who looked after Wendy and Dave’s kids on Wednesday afternoons had blabbed. My arrogance with respect to her, plus the fact that I was on shaky ground at work and couldn’t afford to be late to that meeting, made me stupid and in too much of a rush to escape the house. I should have waited for Wendy to distract the kid.

In my own reflections, later, I came to believe that my justification for seducing, then continuing an affair with Wendy, was to compete with Dave, the perfect husband. I was far from that. In a nutshell, I was jealous of him. He loved his wife, his kids, and his life in a very genuine way. That was obvious to everyone that met him. It wasn’t just an act, like Wendy’s. Now I realised that aside from wrecking my marriage, in the social fallout to come, if this got out, I would come out of this whole deal as the villain. Second best to Dave once again. In seconds, I realised that this couldn’t, under any circumstances, ever see the light of day.

That’s why, when Wendy tried to push me off her, I was slow to respond. By the time we dressed and were able to go after him, Dave would be long gone, which was what I wanted. No, the best action at that moment was planning. I gently restrained her until she gave up her efforts of escape.

“Wendy, you know him best; what will he do?”

She was having trouble understanding my words, so I gave her time to process them.

“He…, he’ll go somewhere quiet and get his head around this. Oh, John, what have I done?”

“Don’t worry about that, Wendy. We have to stop him telling Jenny.”

I saw anger flare in her eyes. So typical of the selfish bitch. She was an innocent, entitled victim in all this. It couldn’t possibly be her fault. Looking around for someone to blame, she chose the closest and easiest person to lay it on.

“You selfish prick. Typical of you to only think of the effect on you alone.”

I instinctively knew that the only slim chance of us getting through this with our marriages intact was if we approached the problem with a united front. I sat up, still gently but firmly holding her arms.

“Listen, Wendy, think this through. What is he going to conclude in all his soul searching? He won’t shout it to the world. That would rip his family apart. You know that whatever he proves will only result in him losing his kids. Plus, there’s his standing in the town to consider. Do you really think for a second that he will go nuclear and make himself the laughingstock of the town? You know how important his reputation is to him. Is he really going to tell the world he couldn’t even satisfy his perfect’ wife?”

I could see Wendy pushing her emotional reactions to the back and seeing the logic of my words. I forged on while the iron was hot.

“No, Wendy, he won’t do that. But he might strike out and try to hurt me. The easiest way for him to do that is to tell Jenny. Share his pain by causing me some. You know Jenny as well as anyone, you’ve been friends for years. Will she hesitate for a second lashing out at me and in the process, out us to the world?”

I could see I was getting through, so gave her time to think. It took half a minute before her relaxing told me she was following my thoughts.

“So, what we have to do is find him and convince him that it is in his best interest to not tell Jenny. With her removed as a threat, I’ll be able to help you bring him round. I’m sure there’s no limit to what he’ll accept to keep his kids and his reputation.”

Her next words proved she was not only understanding where I was coming from but much further along the road to rationalising her guilt than I thought.

“Maybe we’ve done him a favour. Women are always coming on to him. Maybe he’s had his own naughty moments and will see what we’ve done as a way of clearing his conscience a little.”

I thought back to the look I’d seen on her husband’s face, minutes ago. There wasn’t the slightest piece of relief in those eyes. Just pure pain. Besides, Dave just wasn’t capable of something like that. That’s one of the reasons I admired him so much. But, if it helped her follow my recovery plan, what could I lose by going along with her delusions?

“Very possibly. I think what we need to do is to find him before…”

“Wait, did you hear his car drive away?”

I thought back. Front door slamming but no sound of a car. Wherever he’d gone, he’d walked. To my house? God, no! That was bad. Worse was the possibility that he was still in the garage attaching a hose to his exhaust. I knew him well enough to know there was a possibility he would take it that badly. I leapt up and threw my boxers on, vaguely aware that Wendy was right behind me, unbuttoned dressing gown flapping behind her.

Reaching the back door, I mentally prepared myself for the potentially devastating emotional sight I might be faced with. Quickly thinking that if he wasn’t there, then it would take several valuable minutes to go back upstairs, get dressed and reach my house. Jenny wouldn’t be home but what would Dave do. Kick the door down and wreck the place? Whatever; I would be busted.

My quick mental preparation turned out to be woefully inadequate. What I saw, no amount of preparation could counter, and I knew my life would never be the same again.

One of my guesses was partly correct. Dave was in his car, but there was no life ending hose attached to the exhaust pipe. What there was, was much more devastating. Dave, the strong man, the role model for every father within ten blocks. A guy that I admired and looked up to, was sitting in his car staring straight ahead, with tears cascading down his cheeks.

As I watched this fine man behaving in such a broken way, it hit home like a rushing freight train. I caused this! Had my jealousy for this man, with talents I could never compete with, have really caused me to tear him down? Break him?

My sudden pain was briefly distracted when I heard a groan of anguish and saw Wendy sinking to her knees beside me. I knew exactly how she felt.

How many minutes the three of us stayed in this tableau is anyone’s guess, but I was the first to recover. Forcing my devastation down, I reverted to my, no, our plan. I sidled to the open driver’s door and began tugging on Dave’s elbow. Wendy joined me. Like an automaton, Dave responded to my pulling and I eased him out of the car. His eyes were dull and staring; the tears still falling like a river. Wendy must have regained some of her composure because she helped me guide her stricken husband back through the door and seat him at the kitchen table. She and I took seats on the opposite side. I looked at her, noting the distraught look on her face that I was sure was mirrored on my own. Bizarrely, I noted how tawdry she looked with her make-up smeared by her copious tears. She gave me a tiny nod which I took to mean proceed with my plan. A plan I now knew had to include not only saving my marriage and reputation but assuaging my conscience as much as possible. I’ll tell you for nothing, at that moment I would have offered him my wife if it would erase even a tiny fraction of what I was feeling.

I’m not sure of the details of what I spoke about for the next however long. Not just me, Wendy added her two-cents-worth as well. There were apologies and justifications, of course, but mainly I tried to rationalise what would be in his best interests going forward. That, of course, included advice that it was in his best interests to tell no-one. It began to frustrate the hell out of me that none of my efforts appeared to be penetrating. Dave just sat there with a dead, teary stare.

I began clutching at straws as I exhausted all the obvious arguments. I noticed that the tears were finally starting to dry up when I began to point out what effect divorce would have on him. In our society, it was a given that a non-working mother would get custody of the children, no matter what she did pretty much. The reigning precedent was that he would get to see his kids one weekend every two weeks or so.

His eyes focused, the tears ceased and a determined look, like no other I’d ever seen, suffused his face. It became as implacable as an Easter Island head, as his chin lifted and his eyes ground around to Wendy. To say she wilted a little under this gaze would be like saying the Pope was a little catholic. Boy, was I glad I wasn’t the target of that stare.

Wendy responded by dropping her gaze to the floor and babbling. All sorts of shit came out of that quivering mouth. Dave just glared, giving no clue that any of the words were even penetrating. That is until:

“I’ll never do anything like this ever again, darling. I’ll be the model wife to you, you’ll see.”

I cringed at that. Until about thirty minutes ago, Dave thought he already had a model wife.  

At that point, even she saw the utter futility of her words. It was about the time Dave’s face hardened into a mask of, well, nothingness. Just bare, unemotional features. He stared at each of us in turn, several times, then slowly stood. Bracing his hands on the table he leaned toward us and spoke in what can only be described as a hiss.

“Do whatever you like for all I give a shit. Fuck each other to death as far as I care.”

Another hiss from the doorway alerted us we weren’t alone. I followed Wendy’s turned head and immediately knew that the impossible had happened. Life just became more complicated still. There, in the doorway, was Dave’s sister, flanked by their children and the eighth grader babysitter. I later learned she’d been coming to visit her favourite sister-in-law, saw the kids being escorted home and offered them a lift.

Not being able to face the implacable wronged husband, I stared at the silent group in the doorway. Little Karen broke the silence.

“That’s him, Mr. Brown, he’s the one I told you I saw here last week.”

Silence thundered back into the room as all involved stared at each other. Strangely enough, it was twelve-year-old Lisa that broke it first, quickly followed by eleven-year-old Michael. Their faces contorted, and they began sobbing until Michael followed Lisa on her run up to their bedrooms. I realised that they were both old enough and both knew enough children of divorced parents to know their idyllic life had just ended.

My conscience, that had recovered a little as my confidence grew since we’d entered the kitchen, was figuratively thrown against the wall and beaten to a pulp. With one act of supreme arrogance, I’d not only destroyed the finest man I knew but the model family as well. I think I was on the verge of passing out from the sheer shame of it all.

Thus, it was almost a blessed relief when Dave punched me across the table. His fist connected part on my cheek bone and part on my nose. All I knew was that I heard a crackling sound, as my nose was flattened, a brief stab of extreme pain and the sight of the ceiling flying across my vision before darkness consumed me.

I awoke, God only knows how long later, as I was being wheeled into the emergency department with Wendy stumbling alongside bleating about how I couldn’t press charges against Dave. The ER doctors fussed over me just long enough to re-set my nose and tape it when the wail of ambulance sirens heralded the arrival of multiple victims from a car crash. I was immediately abandoned. In a way it was a relief as it gave me the opportunity to convince Wendy to leave.

As soon as I was sure Wendy was out of earshot, I gingerly eased my mobile phone from its pouch and called Jenny. It took me a minute to get her to accept that it was me, you try talking with a face full of tape. I told her I’d been mugged near work and where she could find me. I rang off knowing that not only had I covered my injuries but kept her out of Dave’s reach for the immediate future.

I relaxed into my drugged haze, knowing that my fate was now totally in Dave’s hands. I had to rely on his fundamental decency and trust he wouldn’t destroy my family.

Like I’d destroyed his, I couldn’t allow myself to think.

WENDY

From the time that Dave left the bedroom until John and I walked into the garage, my emotions were like one huge dip in the road. I know I was suffering severe emotional overload as all the unpredicted consequences of my choices slammed into my consciousness. Bang, bang, bang. I really thought I’d already hit rock bottom, so eagerly listened to John’s suggestions and predictions of the future. I clung to them as being likely, mainly, I think, because, if true, they would shield me from the worst of the fallout. I wouldn’t have my reputation shredded in the neighbourhood, lose one of my best friends in Jenny, or the respect of the people that mattered most; my parents. That meant earning my husband’s respect back was the only major issue.

So, I listened to John and contributed little as I allowed my confidence in his logic to claw me back from the depths of despair. I actually felt I might not lose everything. If only we followed the plan.

My resurgent confidence lasted until I walked into the garage. I didn’t see what John saw until I ran into his suddenly stopped back, then took a pace to the side. I felt I’d been poleaxed. Until that moment in time, I’d only seen tears of joy from David. A twinkle in his eye when I’d accepted his proposal. A glint when I presented each of his children to him. The quickly averted gaze when he’d heard the word, “Daddy”, for the first time.

The sight before me struck me like a physical blow. Here was devastation personified. And it was all my fault. You try standing up under those circumstances.

Honestly, I can’t remember much until John had extricated David from the car and led him to the kitchen. I certainly can’t remember anything I said. I was vaguely aware of John sticking to our recovery plan and am ashamed to say I was no help at all. I did try to catch David’s eye. Desperately looking for even a trace of love. A miniscule glimpse that my life wasn’t over. He just focused on John. That is until John stupidly told David that unless he toed the line, he would lose his kids. Dave, my Dave, turned on me a look of pure hatred. Honestly, I preferred that to his tears of before, but it still hurt like hell. I babbled. Saying anything to make that look go away or even just to temper it a little. I thought it would be reassuring for him to know I would never hurt him ever again. His words, telling me he didn’t care what I did from now on, were designed purely to hurt me as I’d hurt him, I’m sure.

I didn’t even realise our company had grown until I saw John and Dave turn toward the kitchen door. I saw four staring sets of eyes. I saw shock. I felt it when more than one of those shocked expressions turned to contempt and condemnation. The expressions on the faces of my children wounded me the deepest. Within seconds, their innocent little minds jumped to the conclusions that they were about to join that unhappy group of their classmates who were from broken homes. There was no doubt, no proof required at all on who had broken it. Me. I felt lower than bog slime and no-one had even uttered a word yet.

I think I must have still been transferring responsibility on to John because I was happy when David slugged him. From then on it was a hurricane of activity. Dave’s sister ushered Karen and the children out while Dave himself roughly rolled John into the recovery position then called an ambulance. I took no part, still stunned by the quantum of damage I’d caused. When the ambos asked if anyone was going to accompany John to the hospital, Dave just coldly looked at me and said, “Go.” I felt sorry for myself the entire trip and all I could articulate to John was that there was no way he could press charges against Dave and stick to his own plan.

I stayed with him while he was treated, mainly because I couldn’t stomach going home yet, until he urged me to leave. I knew he wanted me gone before he called Jenny. Made sense. I didn’t want any uncomfortable questions from her on why I was there any more than he did. I walked the five kilometres home as I’d left without my purse. I arrived home still no closer on what to say or do in the bomb crater that my life had become.

I half expected the door locks to have been changed, but the front door was unlocked. There were remains of a take-out meal in the kitchen. I snuck upstairs only to find the master bedroom door was locked. The children’s rooms were empty. My guess was Dave’s sister took them to her place. Exhausted, I went to the spare room to sleep. There, strewn on the bed and floor, were all my clothes and toiletries. I hadn’t even warranted a note to say Dave and I were no longer sharing a marital bed. With one shove I pushed everything onto the floor and crawled between the sheets. I must have slept deeply once I finally did nod off because Dave was gone the next morning without me noticing.

I knew it was a waste of time calling him. I could only wait until he came up with the same conclusions John had guessed he would. I waited until mid-morning to ring Jenny. Ostensibly to ask how John was, but surreptitiously to see if word was out. She behaved normally, thank God, and thanked me for calling.

I spent a long, frustrating day wondering how fate would punish me. If Dave kept his mouth shut, then I had only the kids and him to worry about. Kids are resilient, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they were back to normal. That just left Dave as the great unknown. I began rehearsing apologies, still entertaining the idea that if he’d strayed himself in the past, part of his considered reaction might be relief.

I was a little worried when the kids weren’t home by 3.30 p.m. and in a panic by 3.45. I rang the school who told me Dave had picked them up. So, Dave was explaining the new reality to the kids was he? Good, I would get details off them later.

It was after six and I had dinner almost finished before they returned. I looked at their faces as they passed the kitchen, hoping for a clue on what they’d discussed. Lisa and Mikey just looked straight ahead as they headed up the stairs.

At my words of, “Dave, can we talk?” David turned a chilling look to me. Gone was the devastation of yesterday. I expected to see anger, but all I saw was cold, neutral nothingness. I’d managed to wipe all my husband’s emotions in just twenty-four hours.

With an abrupt, “Later,” he followed the children up the stairs.

It was then I noticed the paper bag under his arm, marked with the name of a franchise pharmacy. He followed Lisa and Mike into her room. Confused, I tiptoed up the stairs, fully intending to eavesdrop and get some notion of their plans.

With a need for stealth, it was perhaps a minute and a half after they’d entered that I was in audio range. I heard, “That’s it, Lis, rub it against the inside of your mouth.” Bemused, I risked a glimpse around the door frame. What I saw caused an involuntary gasp from me that resulted in three heads turning my way. I didn’t need to see the exposed box with ‘DNA Self-Test’ written on it to know what I was seeing.

I’d spent all day thinking of an approach method that would guarantee David that he could love, respect, and trust me again. The horrible sight in the bedroom made me abundantly aware that I was thinking way too small.

Take trust for example. I thought I’d dented Dave’s trust in me from here on in. The sight before me rudely impressed on me that, in fact, I’d totally destroyed his trust in me since we’d met.

The sheer scale of my problem forced me to my knees again. I stared imploringly from one to another of them. Lisa came toward me. Typical of her. Chock-a-block full of empathy and Mummy’s girl from head to toe. I reached out to take her in my arms. Too late, I saw the neutral expression in her eyes as well. The door closing in my face hit me harder than a slap. I crawled to the spare room, incapable of supporting myself on my legs.

In self-pity and self-loathing, I cried the night away, totally alone and totally isolated from my regular support network. Dave was my first choice of emotional support, normally. Gone! Parents and friends were my back-ups. None of them could know what I’d done. I’d never felt so alone in my entire life. I see now why people choose to end their lives. As an escape from the tremendous pain I was feeling, I felt the evil temptation.

Again, I was unconscious when Dave got the kids off to school. I awoke groggy and disorientated to a quiet house. There was a note slipped under the door.

Wendy,

Please do not attempt to speak to me, unless it relates to the children, until you’ve had a good think about the answer to the only question I have for you.

Why?

Think well as the answer will tell me whether I will ever trust you again.

I will always love you, to one degree or another. Respect will have to be earned back over time. Your motivation for doing what you did will tell me if I can ever trust you again. That is, if we can ever be a happy couple again. Think very well.

A quick inventory of possible motivations revealed nothing that would even come close to satisfying Dave. Even then I knew telling him, ‘because I could’, would be fatal. So, what I needed was a plausible excuse. Something that would allow him to forgive me, so we could resume our idyllic life. Until then, I would suck crow, work on getting the kids back on side, and minimise the damage to my social standing until this all blew over.

JOHN

Fuck, my face hurt. Jen arrived at the hospital just as I was finishing up giving the coppers a bullshit story of a random guy approaching me and smacking me for no reason I knew. They swallowed it. On the way home, I searched Jen’s face and behaviour for any clue she knew about me and Wendy. There was nothing.

Strangely, she did seem vaguely resentful that she’d had to leave work early to come and pick me up. My throbbing face distracted me from thinking too deeply on that one though. Jen was a successful businesswoman and I’d no doubt interrupted an important meeting or something.

Still, the pain and the worry did stop me from dwelling on Dave and what I’d done to him and his children. My conscience was having trouble handling the devastation I’d meted out so thoughtlessly.

That distraction lasted about sixty seconds into my return home. Jen parked out front, intending to go back to work after she’d retrieved something from the house. I grabbed the plastic bag, containing my bloodied shirt and trousers, from the trunk of her car, deliberately keeping my back to Dave’s house while I did so.

Therefore, when I heard the growled, “How did it feel to cuckold me, you lowlife prick”, from behind me, I spun quickly. I almost fainted from the pain.

Dave, with a neutral expression on his face, took a step toward me and raised a fist. Instinctively, I took one step backward and tripped over the tow bar on Jen’s car. Falling flat on my ass. Dave just looked down at me, shook his head, told me how pathetic I was and left.

I wanted to shout after him; tell him that for me it wasn’t about cuckolding him. I’d just seized an opportunity and kept going with it. However, I’m fundamentally an honest guy. Even at that early stage, I suspected my motivation may have been to wipe the smile off Mr Goody-Goody-two-shoes-perfect-husband. So, I kept silent, looked around to see if my humiliation was public, got up and followed Jen into the house.

I was very distracted that night. I’d never looked on it as cuckolding my friend, David. That wasn’t what it was about. I had though, hadn’t I? Treated him with contempt. Made him into that most pathetic of creatures. Believe it or not, these thoughts were easier than thinking back to the looks on his children’s faces when they thought their family was destroyed. Just another casualty in the divorce stakes. Both those distracted me from the real terror. What if my logic was wrong and either Dave or his kids let Jen know? I’d been wiped out financially once. Bad investments. We were only just getting back on our feet. To be taken to the cleaners and have to start again, for a third time was unthinkable.

Pretty much nothing happened for the next month. We didn’t see Dave or Wendy, socially. They avoided neighbourhood parties or other social interactions. Whenever I saw either them or their kids, they were solemn and unsmiling. It was hard to take, knowing I’d destroyed the happiness of one of the most complete families I’d ever known.

Jen was her normal self, thank God. It took me the whole of the first week for my face to stop aching to the point I could even kiss her. I knew all was good with her when she tried to initiate sex the following weekend. All might have been good with her, but not good with me. For the first time in my life, I had erectile disfunction. I couldn’t get it up. Jen tried for a few minutes then gave up. Relieved, I spent a restless night in worry. Thoughts of Dave and his kids, their total lack of smiles now, and the empathy I had with him. Yes, I said empathy. I could imagine how life was, in his shoes. I’d pulled the rug from under his happy life. Made him question everything he was comfortable with for years. Scarred him with that most humiliating of male titles: cuckold.

A month later and I was still flaccid. I suspect Jen knew I was having problems and didn’t push me. After two weeks of avoiding her I went to the doctor. He prescribed me Viagra and I tried one pill an hour before bed. It gave me a headache that was crippling. So, back to the doctor I went. This time it was Cialis. That didn’t work at all. This was getting embarrassing and eating into my very soul as a male.

After a further two weeks of worry, I hit upon the solution. Wendy had been the cause of the problem; she could help me fix it. If I could talk her into stimulating me with that talented tongue, then I could perform with her and regain my confidence. Dave said he didn’t give a shit if we kept screwing each other, so my conscience was clear there. I could tell from the frosty atmosphere next door that all was not well there. Surely Wendy would help me out.

WENDY

The first month after D-day was just hell. At first, Dave came home as usual but that was all the normality involved. True to his word, he practically ignored me. Only addressing me directly when it involved the kids. Most weekends, he and the kids disappeared all day.

The kids, seeing their parent’s behaviour, just sank further and further into their shells. It wrenched my conscience every minute I saw their depressed little faces. I know Dave tried to cheer them up and keep them occupied but any effect was temporary.

Dave refused to go to any social events with me and soon all our friends and acquaintances sensed all was not well. Before too long, it became apparent that people that used to bask in our presence were avoiding us. I was too embarrassed to tell my parents the real story and I believe Dave was silent as well. Maybe John was right. Dave didn’t want to admit the affair to the world. His only way forward, apart from losing his kids by disappearing, was to accept me back. That gave me the courage to take my time with his request.

I admit that I did try an underhand tactic once, about two weeks into the situation. Dave went to his room and found me in my sexiest outfit reclined seductively on the top of his bed. He unceremoniously threw me out. When I asked him if he didn’t still find me beautiful, he replied, “Only on the outside, Wendy.” That hurt and cut into the confidence that I’d carried all my adult life. I didn’t try to win him back via seduction again.

I spent many days and even more sleepless nights trying to come up with a worthy reason why I’d done what I did. It took a whole month to arrive at a horrible conclusion. There wasn’t one. I even spent hours on the net investigating the most common reasons, trying to identify with them, or even trying to build a plausible fake reason from them.

It wasn’t lack of attention from my husband, or poor sex. I was satisfied, if a little bored with Dave’s efforts in the bedroom. He’d mixed it up pretty well with a variety of long sensual sessions and quickies. It wasn’t revenge on my part. It was obvious from the depth of Dave’s pain that my desperate hope he’d strayed as well, wasn’t true. Nor did I feel I was better than he and lost respect for him. It definitely wasn’t an exit affair.

No, the only conclusion I could come up with was that I cheated because I could. I felt entitled and invulnerable and seized an opportunity for excitement on the side. As hard as I looked, I couldn’t find a more plausible reason. Finally, after more than a month, I requested a sit down with him. It was the night before he left for a week-long trip. I hoped he would spend the week assessing his options and conclude that the status quo was the better choice than losing everything he held dear. The audience lasted all of ten minutes. I looked him in the eye and told him that I had no excuse. Better that than the real reason. Trouble is that I’d forgotten Dave’s instruction to me. He was looking for a reason so he could trust me going forward. I remembered only when he shook his head and walked away. He was gone on his trip when I got up the next day.

JOHN

With a plan to resurrect my flagging libido, I snuck over to Wendy’s house during a workday. She was horrified that I would risk Dave’s wrath by being there but ushered me quickly inside. I spent an hour begging and pleading my case, but she flatly refused. She felt confident that Dave would come around eventually but if he caught a sniff of further cheating then all bets were off.

She even stuck to her guns after admitting she was horny due to her longest drought in years. That gave me the seed of a plan. After she told me Dave was away for the rest of the week, I guilted her into going to dinner the following night. Just to ‘talk’. That night I talked quietly to some of the seedier guys at work and left with two ecstasy tablets. If I could relax her enough to remove her inhibitions, then I could still have my therapy session.

She arranged for a babysitter. I gave Jen an excuse and Wendy and I met at a restaurant across town. Wendy dressed as she always did when going out. Sexy and revealing. I could feel my excitement growing and at the first opportunity, slipped a tab into her wine. It took a couple of minutes but soon she was visibly relaxed and didn’t object when I held her hand across the table. I was glad I’d booked a room in the motel across the street. Just to be on the safe side, I excused myself to go to the bathroom and once there, popped a Cialis myself.

On the way back to the table, I grinned as I saw a couple in a booth at the back. Tucked away in a hard to see position, they were taking full advantage of the arrangement. Their lips were locked together, and the guy had one hand under the table. No prizes for guessing what it was doing there. Just as I turned the corner to my table, the woman broke lips and looked furtively over her shoulder. I stopped dead.

It was Jen. My Jen.

Completely on autopilot, I stormed over and said, “What the fuck!”

Jen just smiled at me, the bitch, and said, “What’s the problem? Don’t we have an open marriage anymore, limp dick?”

In humiliated rage, I reached over and hauled the guy to his feet, throwing a punch at his face. In slow motion I saw him turn his head, causing my punch to glance harmlessly off. Too late, I saw his height and his muscles. The last thing I saw, before waking in an ambulance, was a huge fist coming straight towards my eyes. The policeman who read me my rights in the hospital bed was the same one who took my statement the last time I was there.

They kept me overnight in case of concussion, then I was escorted to the police station and formally charged with assault. It was late afternoon when I finally made it home, only to find my key didn’t fit the locks anymore. I shouted and threatened Jenny through the keyhole but all she did was slip a large envelope under the door at me. Soon after, the large guy from the previous night arrived, so I ran like hell. He followed me to my car and threw the envelope in after me.

I’d never felt so humiliated in my life. Not just by the ease with which I’d been totally defeated by this guy, but by the fact that Jenny had given herself so totally to him. That much was obvious from the restaurant.

When I finally opened the envelope, I found the divorce petition charging adultery. Evidence? A signed statement from Dave Brown. I tried to be angry at him but just couldn’t do it. If this was anything like he felt, then I deserved everything I got.

WENDY

When John came to the back door, I was terrified that someone would see him and let Dave know. I shuffled him inside, then immediately worried how I would get rid of him. I listened to his tale of erectile disfunction with some sympathy but mainly with amazement. As a woman, I hadn’t really grasped the damage I’d done to my husband’s ego with my actions. John did. It was eating him up from the inside, clearly. John filling that knowledge gap showed me I had an even bigger job of reconciliation than I thought.

I did want to help him, sure, and not just from empathy. I was feeling horny from the enforced abstinence and Dave’s implication that I was ugly on the inside had cut me to the quick. Still, I was strong and resisted John’s advances. I got him to leave well before the kids were due home by promising to go out with him the next night. After a month of extreme pressure, I needed to relax anyway. I enlisted my sister as a babysitter, she and Dave never talked, then headed out to meet John on the other side of town. To boost my confidence, I’d chosen a dress I knew made me look good. Not being stupid, I wore a coat over it until I was well away from the house. I carefully scanned the restaurant for familiar faces. I had a clear view of all but a couple of cosy corners right at the back.

It was actually fun, and I eventually relaxed. I’d vowed to only have one glass of wine, but when I returned from the bathroom to find John had ordered a refill, I went for it. Within ten minutes, a warm glow was suffusing my body and I found myself grinding my legs together. John reached across the table and took my hand. The human contact felt electric. Relaxing further by the minute, I finished the glass when John excused himself to go to the bathroom. I realised much later that John must have spiked my drink.

I watched him returning. Smiling as he approached. Suddenly, something toward the back of the restaurant caught his attention. He grinned briefly before his face suddenly fell. I watched, bemused, as he changed course, walked straight up to a guy at a back table and grabbed him by both lapels before throwing a punch at him. Even in my fuzzy state I thought that was stupid. The guy was significantly bigger than John. I watched the inevitable happen and John hit the floor like he was poleaxed after one punch in return. Confused as all hell, I looked at the guy towering over John, then at his dinner companion. I saw Jenny looking at me, slowly shaking her head. A look of what I could only interpret as pity on her face.

In the last moments before whatever drug John slipped me took full effect, I felt a humiliation like I’d felt when Dave first caught me and John together. Instinctively, I headed to the nearest exit. Of all the escape routes I could have taken, fate led me to that one. The restaurant was in one corner of an old hotel. The exit I’d chosen took me through the public bar. Unfamiliarly high as a kite, scantily dressed, sans wedding ring and horny, this particular lamb was dropped into the wolf pack.

My memory is very hazy of the next hour. I think someone grabbed me and dragged me onto the dance floor. He was good looking and I loved dancing, so didn’t resist enough. Glimpses of drinking, dancing, talking and more drinking come to my nightmares even today. I do remember several guys suggesting we go somewhere else, but I retained enough control to beat them off. What got through my defences in the end, were two guys acting in tandem. One of them pulled me into his lap, facing away from him while his mate kissed me. Any thoughts of resistance disappeared when the seated guy encircled me with both arms and grabbed a breast in each hand. I melted. After an unknown amount of time, and to some cheering, I was led out to the carpark by both guys. I was the most excited I’d ever been. Two guys together was my ultimate fantasy.

If only I’d just gone along with them, life may have taken an entirely more benign course. We reached their car, a big one but don’t ask me what type. They both kissed and groped me for a while before one guy opened a back door. The other lifted my dress, ripped off my panties and pushed me backwards onto the rear seat. The shock of the cold leather on my buttocks shocked me into near sobriety. If Dave ever found out about this, my ideal world, my utopia, was gone forever. The guy above pushed me all the way down and roughly entered me. I tried to push him away, but he just pushed back harder, grabbed a wrist in each hand and pinned them above my head. That must have excited him because before I knew it he was grunting in orgasm. I could feel the pig twitching inside me. That spurred me to greater effort and I freed one hand, reached up and raked his face with my fingernails. All I got for my troubles was him slapping me very hard. It stunned me and made my ears ring.

Through my daze, I registered a sudden cacophony of noise and brilliant blue lights. Both me and the guy still inside me looked over his shoulder. Parked end on to us was a police car. As we watched, the passenger of the police car took down my assailant’s mate. The guy in me pulled out and tried to escape as well. His trousers around his ankles impeded him long enough for the driver to collar him. I tried to hide my face from the growing crowd, motivated by only one thing. Dave could never find out about this.

More police cars arrived and bundled the two guys away. I was invited, forcibly, to the station to make a statement. I was in the original squad car and during the drive I regained enough of my sensibilities that I told the cop I didn’t want to press charges against anyone. He said, “Lady, you’ve been watching too many Yank cop shows. It doesn’t work like that here. I saw him hit you, that’s enough for us. Besides, we know he’s been dealing for years but have never been able to pin anything on him. Thank you for handing him to us on a plate.”

On arrival at the station, I rang my sister, who was fine to stay the night. The duty medical examiner was called, and my face and privates were examined. A BAC test was made, 0.12. A blood sample was taken. He left me with an ice pack to minimise the bruising on the side of my face. The police wanted me to go along with a rape charge. I briefly contemplated hiding behind that but there were many witnesses to say I’d gone out to the carpark of my own free will. Besides, I just wanted all this to go away. I told them it was consensual. Yes, there were drugs involved, but they hadn’t been administered by them. I refused to tell them who did. That way led to John being charged, which led to Jen… Fuck, Jen already saw us together. What was all that in the restaurant? I could only pray Jen didn’t say anything to Dave. I signed my statement telling the truth about what happened in the car, downplaying anything that may have smacked of rape. The media always jumped on that. I denied witnessing the fight in the restaurant.

I watched Dave when he came back, but his behaviour was unchanged, thank God. As he never looked at me anymore, it was easy to apply makeup and hide the bruise on my face. Life settled into the routine of Dave coming home late each workday, taking the kids out on weekends and the kids spending more and more time at their friend’s houses. I did corner Dave once and he did confirm that my lack of a reason for straying made it impossible for him to convince himself it wouldn’t happen again. Still, I had hopes.

Invitations to social functions continued to dry up and I became a virtual recluse. Nothing I tried with Dave made the slightest difference. My parents and family did press me on everything, but I just told them Dave and I were going through a rough patch. I begged them to leave us to work it out and not approach Dave. I could only pray that things would slowly normalise, and I could return to being a respected mother, even if I never fully recovered Dave’s full love.

I was just starting to relax a month after the pub debacle as I called it, when I had a shocking visitor. It was the Monday after Dave spent the weekend away for a work conference. I opened the door to an unfamiliar woman, who looked to be about five years younger than me. Pretty, in a girl-next-door kind of way. She was polite, calling me Mrs. Brown and asked if she could come in for a chat. I agreed, and she, Susan, started rabbiting on about a friend of hers that began a relationship with a guy who supposedly was separated from his wife. After three months, they were confronted by an irate wife who was totally unaware that she and her husband were indeed separated. The fact that her friend was ‘the other woman’ shamed her for years and made a big impression on Susan. When I asked what the point was, she told me that she and Dave had been dating for a month and she just wanted to know if what he said was mutually agreed. That he’d caught me having an affair and we were emotionally, if not physically, separated. She interpreted all she needed to know from my automatically downcast eyes and the fact I stopped talking. I rallied a little in the silence.

“If you’re asking for my blessing to sleep with MY husband then it will be a cold day in hell before I give it.”

She just smiled at me with a little pity.

“Oh, I slept with him this weekend. I just wanted to make sure of the lie of the land before I got in any deeper.”

“Did Dave put you up to this? To make me jealous?”

“No. He doesn’t even know I’m here and I would appreciate you keeping it that way.”

With that, she left. I couldn’t imagine being more humiliated. Yes, I could. If I’d come home and found Dave in bed with her. Just like he’d done with me. For the first time, the full weight of what I’d done hammered into me. I kept to myself for the next two days and ended up rationalising that Dave was only doing this to teach me a lesson and once delivered, things would return to normal.

That particular delusion lasted until five weeks after the bar incident. I was served a summons to testify against my assailant. Thankfully, it was done when I was alone in the house. I drew the maximum amount of cash out at an ATM, three days in a row and quietly went to see a lawyer. No, I couldn’t wriggle out of testifying. All I could do was hope like hell that the trial occurred during a busy news week and attracted no attention.

The trial lasted only a day and I faced it absolutely alone. Not being able to share the story with any friends or family members. It was a horrible experience. I was the first prosecution witness and was led through events starting when I entered the bar and ending when I was slapped. Photos of my face were even entered into evidence.

The defence lawyer was ruthless. He tendered my BAC results, the presence of ecstasy in my blood and four witness statements to my behaviour. He was obviously trying to make me look like a slut so his client looked comparatively better. I sat down, after at least an hour in the dock, shaking in humiliation. Frustrated because I’d never been given an opportunity to deny taking the drugs voluntarily. I stayed for the rest of the day just to see how bad it would be.

I don’t know whose witness he was, but the policemen who’d driven me to the station was called. The fact that I was struggling before the slap, was good. The graphic description he gave of the cum running down my legs after I stood up, not so good. I left when the jury was sequestered, everyone knowing the result for the accused was inevitable.

Still in a daze as I exited the courthouse, I ran full tilt into three television crews. I blotted them out of my consciousness and just ran. The story had all the ingredients to make it a hit. Married mother of two going alone into a bar, going with two guys to a car in the carpark for group sex, and a juicy assault to top it off. I wandered around in an absolute daze until I found myself parked outside my house late at night. I wandered in like a condemned prisoner on his way to the gallows, but no one else was home. I listened to the message bank on the landline just to see if they’d rung to say where they were. My cell phone was still turned off from court.

The first message was from my mother, letting me know in no uncertain terms what she thought of me. I didn’t listen to the other seven messages. I drank myself into a stupor and was basically unconscious when Dave and the kids arrived back home. His only acknowledgement that he knew about the court case was the glare that he directed at me at first meeting.

It was a Saturday and by the time I awoke, hungover, Dave and the kids were gone. A note said they’d gone camping and would be back the following night. Vague memories of Dave mentioning it came to mind, but I’d been so distracted the last few days that nothing had penetrated far.

When I had the strength, I started listening to the messages on the home line and cell. The total was up to fifteen by then. Most, like my mother’s, were former friends telling me what they thought of me for doing that to Dave. That confused me. Several were from people supposedly offering support. After ringing the second of those, I concluded they just wanted the juicy details. One of them did clear up the confusion though. The scuttlebutt amongst our friends group was that Dave and I had been estranged for months because I demanded the right to screw around outside the marriage.

New enemy or supposed friends alike, it was obvious that I’d lost the respect of just about everyone I’d ever known. That hit me harder than anything else I could think of. My ego had really relied on my queen like status amongst the community. With one party and one visit to a restaurant I’d become a social pariah.

When Dave got home, I tried to explain what had happened at the hotel and in the carpark. How I’d been drugged, probably by John then exited through the wolf pack. Therefore, nothing that happened in the hotel was my fault or my choice. He shut me down with one or two questions, very soon after I began my explanation.

“Wendy, you knew I was wondering how to trust you again. Why would you sneak off with your lover again while I was out of town?”

“Darling, he begged me to go out with him. Refused to leave our house the day before until I agreed. I was terrified someone would see us, and you’d find out. Please believe, I had no intention of sleeping with him.”

“And yet you went to a restaurant, with another man, without your husband’s knowledge or consent, dressed like a slut.”

Before I could come up with a response for his very valid three points, he’d risen and gone.

That night, at dinner, it was even worse. All my kids could talk about was how much fun they’d had with Susan and her children. I recognised the name from her visit, although I hadn’t remembered it until then. Dave steadfastly refused my demands of another conversation until the Wednesday night of that week. He initiated it, which should have aroused my suspicions, but didn’t.

Later, I would call it Dave’s ‘I wish’ speech. It went something like this.

“I wish you hadn’t exposed our kids to public ridicule from their school mates that saw the newscasts.”

I realised I hadn’t even considered the effect of my actions on my family. So much for my vow to be less selfish and self-centred.

“I wish you’d said you were sorry for having an affair, rather than threatening to take my kids away from me.”

“I wish you hadn’t sided with John against me when I caught you.”

“I wish you’d given me a reason I could trust you again, even a half-arsed one… Something I could have built on rather than just say you had no reason. If you didn’t have a reason, what’s to stop you doing it again?”

“I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

With the latter, he handed over an envelope which I instinctively knew held a divorce petition. I’d made a couple of bad calls and been caught. I’d been badly led by a very selfish man during the aftermath. I’d made an amazingly bad error of judgement going to a restaurant with that same selfish prick. I was too proud, arrogant, and overconfident of Dave’s reactions to just throw myself on his mercy. Looking back on it all, he never reacted with anything but predictability.

EPILOGUE

John’s wife, Jenny, made out like a bandit during the divorce. Hell really doth have no fury like a woman scorned. She was awarded custody of their children with crippling child support. Whether she poisoned his relationship with his kids or whether they came to their own decisions, what little visitations he had were uncomfortable. It was almost a relief when she moved to the other side of the country with her new beau. He hasn’t had sex since then, with a married woman or single. He’s too scared to approach them until he gets his erectile dysfunction sorted.

Wendy’s decisions were much tougher. Dave charged her with being an unfit mother. His first thrust was the evidence from the assault case that was now public record. A story of her going out with her lover, self-medicating to get into the mood, then taking on all comers while drunk and stoned, in a public carpark, wove itself from all the evidence. If she did anything like that as a sole parent then, not only was it a poor example to her children but could leave them at risk while she was out of it. What if she invited predators into her house when the children were there? The question of what would have happened to her if the police hadn’t come along, loomed large in everyone’s thoughts.

The second reason was more personally damaging for Wendy. Dave had obviously not been idle. He had statements from many of their mutual acquaintances to say he was a much better father than she was a mother. There were affidavits to say that at social functions, she basically abandoned the children to Dave’s care while she lorded it up. It was clear her husband didn’t intend fighting fair. This stunned Wendy, until one of her few remaining sources of information, a former friend, let her in on the collective logic of her former social circle.

They’d been considered the perfect couple, and everyone drew strength from their happiness. She’d been the cause of bringing all that crashing to reality. She’d broken all their dreams, if you like.

In the end, her mother, who she still had a strained relationship with, gave her the advice that tipped the balance of her internal debate. Giving Dave primary custody would be the least controversial approach and thus make the healing time in all her relationships that much shorter. If she opposed Dave’s settlement proposal and won, it would offend everyone’s sense of justice. He’d committed no crime and would lose the things most precious to him. She’d shattered multiple dreams and would come out of it smiling.

The day after this last conversation, a much wiser Wendy signed the divorce proposal as written by Dave’s lawyer. Her hope? That Dave’s relationship with Susan was transitory, and she could win him back. After all, she was still the best-looking piece of ass around. She may have lost confidence in her judgement, but that was a fact she could take to the bank.

To compound that former statement, she decided to let the kids forgive her in their own time. Thus, when they wanted to stay with Dave when it was her time to get them, she didn’t object. Too late, she realised that by the time they were ready to forgive her, they’d already bonded with Susan. From that day on she was ‘Mum Wendy’.

Her next error in judgement was looking for male company from amongst acquaintances of their former social group. The idea was that word would get back to Dave, triggering his jealousy instinct. She never did see any evidence it made the slightest bit of difference to him. Things came to a head, when she cornered her estranged husband at a neighbourhood party. Wrapped around some muscled but vacant hulk, one wine too many under her belt, she sidled up to Dave and Susan.

“Take a good look, David. Look at what Paul here is taking to bed tonight and what you are.”

Dave did as instructed, then drove the last nail into the coffin of Wendy’s dreams.

“Yup. I’ll be with the one that’s beautiful on the inside and the outside. Going out with one that was beautiful only on the outside didn’t work out so well for me.”

Susan looked up at her partner with loving eyes, then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled back. Wendy turned away in embarrassment, which brought several eyewitnesses of the event into view. All of a sudden, she realised how transparent her action had been. They looked on, shaking their heads in condemnation.

She fled. Paul tried to persuade her to come back to his place. Wendy looked at him with unblinkered eyes and realised he was a reflection of her life at the moment. Transient fun, but utterly shallow. Realising over the next few days that she’d lost her love, her children, her status, and the respect of everyone she knew, including herself, she left town to start a new life.

THE END

NOW LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP!

The other day, the missus asked me, “When you’re on a boy’s only trip away, do you think about me?”

 Apparently, “Only to stop myself coming too quickly” wasn’t the right answer.

*******

Got this text from my brother yesterday. It read. “Can I stay at your house for a while? My missus kicked me out after she caught me measuring my cock.”

Always accommodating, but a little curious, I replied, “Sounds a bit unfair. BTW, how long was it?”

“Just long enough to reach the back of her sister’s throat,” came the reply.