Surrogate – Chapter 2

byMattblackUK© and Vandemonium1

Way back in the mists of 2012 MattblackUK wrote a fine story called ‘Surrogate’. Half way through reading it I thought it was going to take a different track than the one it did. Recently I approached Matt and he gave me his kind permission to change the ending. The start of the story below is Matt’s work 100%. I have indicated where the new bit starts. I’ve kept as much of the original as I could. The following story carries both my and Matt’s name as I truly believe it is a co-authored story.

Matt’s original probably appealed to the ‘happy enders’ and left the BTBs wanting. Um, I’ve changed that.

Vandemonium1

This is damn good work by Vandemonium!

MattblackUK

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Chapter 1 (All Mattb’s work)

He’d had that dream again, last night. He somehow knew he was near water and he could hear two people laughing at him. It was such a vague, silly dream that he had not thought to mention it to anyone, not even his wife…

***

They were already a good part of the way to their destination, when Derrick’s Satnav flashed up an alert.

He glanced at it, frowned and said: “Paul. You haven’t got anything better to do, have you?”

Paul, his companion on the journey, said in an amused tone of voice: “No, well, not really. Why? What’s up?”

He replied: “There’s been a bad smash on the motorway, two junctions ahead of us. I’ll just get my satnav to work out an alternative route. If we take the next junction we should be able to take a detour and bypass the crash and get back on track. We’ll be late, but at least we’ll get there.”

Half a minute later he groaned. “Oh, famous last words! The alternative route is also blocked. Looks like we would not be able to make it to the Northern office much before 6pm at the present rate. Instead of trying an alternative route, I’ll get the next junction and re-join the southbound traffic and head back to London.”

He pointed to his hands free phone in its dashboard cradle. “Paul, mate, do me a favour, please? Call the office where our appointment is and tell them what’s happened. Give them my apologies, too.”

Paul keyed the number in and made the call. When he terminated the call he turned to Derrick and asked: “Do you want me to phone HQ and tell them what’s happened?”

“Please!” his companion responded.

But when Paul tried to dial the number, nothing happened. He frowned. “Sorry, I think I just buggered your phone up!” he said, apologetically.

“Oh, no! Not again! It’s nothing you did. I keep telling our IT people there’s something wrong with that bloody phone! I think there’s a faulty connection, somewhere. I’ll go directly to IT, after lunch. Got some errands I might as well run, before I do that. What’ll you do with your unexpected time back at the office?”

“If we get back by one, I might just go straight into my wife’s office and take her out to lunch! She’s been working on a number of special projects, recently. I worry that she’s being overdoing it, these last twelve months. She always seems so tired.”

Derrick paused for a few seconds, waiting until he had passed a caravan before he replied. “Sorry about that. But caravans always make me nervous out on the road! Yeah, your wife is the PA to Gary Briggs, the company CEO. I understand that you and Beth know Gary and his wife Sally, outside work, in social settings? Doesn’t that cause any problems?”

Paul replied easily: “Well, you’d think it would, that it might, but it’s made no difference between us. Well, no difference so far, that is. We generally keep work and pleasure separate. We’ve all been friends for yonks. “

Derrick accelerated past a garishly coloured Hackney Carriage before speaking again. ”You going to phone your wife to tell her that you are already on the way back?”

“I’d love to,” said Paul, grinning. “But guess who left his mobile phone in his briefcase in the boot?!”

“Ah, never mind. I’ll pop in to see David Banning my line manager after lunch. He can call the people up north to reschedule the meeting.”

He gave Paul a fleeting glance, quickly returning his eyes to the motorway that was taking them back toward London. “What about you? Who is your line manager, now?”

“It’s still Gary. He’s still the person I report to.”

“Oh! I wondered if there’d been a demotion for you. After all, following all your high profile projects of the last few years it must seem a bit of a comedown, with you having to sit in on sales presentations and regional office meetings like the one I had planned for today.”

“It’s not a demotion, though I can see why it would look like it was. It’s a bit of a curious one, I have to admit. Although I am not entirely certain about this, it’s just what I have surmised, it seems that Gary got a bee in his bonnet about certain people who he felt were underperforming.

“But he did not know what to do, as he was unsure if their failings were caused by them, or if they’d somehow been let down or failed in some way by the company training programme.

“And as he had a big part in designing and implementing the training programme himself, he wanted to make sure everyone got a fair shake before appropriating any blame.”

Derrick said “Yes… I see. I suppose that makes sense. Still, doesn’t seem to be a good use of your skills. Unless he has an idea to somehow identify the root cause of the problem and get you to create a director-led programme to deal with it?”

Paul nodded, saying: “You could well be right, though he has said nothing about anything like that.”

They then began to talk of non-work related matters, the chances of Aston Villa or Chelsea to win the cup, or the contenders in the Grand National, and other such topics men talk about on long, boring car journeys.

They got back to the North London suburban HQ of their employer, just before 1pm. Derrick parked the car and walked out of the car park to a nearby parade of shops, whilst Paul, briefcase in hand, entered the vast complex that made up the Hyperology Corporation.

There were several clusters of office buildings and a modest factory floor area where trial versions of the company’s products were built for testing and for the designs to be finalised before they were to be constructed in the main manufacturing plant just outside Cheadle Hulme, near Manchester.

Paul dropped his briefcase in his office, noting that his attractive secretary Rhonda was already at lunch. Pity, he mused. She could have booked him and his wife, Beth, a table at one of the nearby restaurants. Still, no matter. There was a Wetherspoons in the High Street. No need to book there, he told himself.

Besides, lunch with Beth would be good, even if it was a case of popping into the local Aldi store, grabbing some bread and cheeses and some of those dinky little bottles of wine with the screw caps and dining alfresco in the nearby park. That would still be magical, as far as Paul was concerned.

The offices of the senior executives of the Hyperology Corporation were all on the first floor. So it was a fairly short walk from Paul’s office to the offices of his wife, Beth and of their boss, Gary. Gary and Beth had offices that were side by side, with a connecting door between them.

Paul walked into the outer office of Beth’s assistant, Gill. When Gill saw Paul, she froze. He failed to notice the stricken expression on her face. “Afternoon, Gill!” He said breezily, as he opened the door into Beth’s office.

“Please don’t go in Paul…” bleated Gill, but it was far too late. As Paul opened the door, he froze, as he saw Gary fucking his wife Beth on her desk. They were talking, or rather, shouting at each other as they fucked. “Does your pathetic husband fuck you like this?” “No, Gary! He doesn’t! Only you fuck me this well!” “Whose cunt is this?” “It’s yours, my love, my handsome lover! Yours! All yours!”

Their heads both snapped round at the same instant as they realised they weren’t alone. Gill said, in a quiet voice, “Beth! Your husband… is… you… I…” she stopped; suddenly realising she was talking utter bollocks.

Paul looked, but he did not look at the errant lovers, rather, he looked through them and beyond them. They returned his glassy-eyed stare, horror etched into their features, caught as they were in mid copulation.

Paul turned and lurched away. Nothing was said by anyone as he passed Gill without seeming to acknowledge her existence.

Presently, Rhonda returned to her office and she noticed that the door to Paul’s office was open. She wondered who could have been in his office in her absence. Then she saw Paul, sitting in his chair, it was up against the corner wall, far back from his large desk.

“He looked so poorly that at first I thought he’d had a heart attack,” she confided in a friend, later that day.

“Mr Augustine? Paul? Are you alright?”

She approached him and she noticed that he was staring blankly into space, and shivering so badly that his teeth were chattering.

She touched his neck to find his pulse. It was weak and rapid, his skin felt clammy and cold, she noticed that his breathing was rapid and shallow, his lips were blue.

She had worked as a nurse for several years before deciding to go into the corporate world and she had kept up her First Aid training so she knew that Paul wasn’t actually suffering from a heart attack, as she’d first surmised. “Shock?” she thought to herself.

“Paul! Paul! Are you OK?” she asked, an edge of concern in her voice.

He slowly looked toward her, he answered haltingly, “No, Rhonda. I am not. I just found out that my marriage is over. I found out in the worst way possible.”

The next several hours were a blur for Paul. Somehow Rhonda had managed to get him to drink a cup of hot, sweet tea (“how terribly fucking British!” he had thought) but the tea had, like all the books on old wives tales said, somehow helped him to feel better physically. But mentally? Not so much.

He knew he should speak with Beth, and with her lover and with his wife, Sally. Christ! That was going to be awkward! How to tell Sally that he and she were being cheated on?

Rhonda and someone else, a man, maybe Phil from Accounts, he couldn’t be sure, had managed to get him home. They’d asked if he wanted them to stay, but he had politely waved them off. He wasn’t sure what they knew and didn’t want to risk breaking down in front of them.

He sat in his lounge, wondering what to do next. He wanted to phone his wife but found that he had not got his head around what he would be able to say to her, after what he had witnessed.

Twenty two years of marriage? And all gone in an instant!

Then he became angry that Beth had not bothered to come to his office to see how he was feeling. Had not even bothered to phone him, let alone come home to check up on how he was. He believed that this told him this was because she really didn’t care a fuck about him.

She and Gary were probably together, laughing at him! That dream… could they have already really been laughing at him, together? Mocking him? Had he somehow read their thoughts? Seen into their dirty minds?

Although he wasn’t one for drinking, he suddenly felt the urge for a drink. He looked in the drinks cabinet and noticed, right at the back, a litre bottle of vodka that someone –he couldn’t recall who- had brought back with them on a holiday from Eastern Europe. Neither he nor Beth particularly liked vodka so it had languished there for a couple of years.

He reached in and got the bottle out, snagging a tumbler at the same time. As he broke the paper seal on the bottle’s neck he had another idea. A darker, nastier idea. He remembered something he’d read about in a school history lesson. It was what Sir Walter Raleigh had said as he had fondled the sharp blade of the axe that would take his life when he was executed: “‘Tis a sharp remedy, but a sure one for all ills.”

He left the bottle and glass on the coffee table in the lounge and walked into the kitchen. He opened the drawer that they’d dubbed the medicine drawer, where all prescription and over-the-counter medicines were placed. He rummaged around in it until he found what he was looking for.

Out of force of habit he closed the drawer and walked back into the lounge. He stared at the bottle on the coffee table, then looked at the two packets, one in his left hand, the other in his right.

“The cure for all ills” he said out loud. He filled the tumbler with vodka and opened both packets. Good. They were full. They’d serve his purpose. Be the sure remedy for all his ills.

He had a savage feeling of vengeance within him. He imagined what would happen. The two lovers would slink into the house. Then, they’d find his cold, dead body in the lounge. Bastards! That would teach them!

In his left hand, the super strong opiate painkillers Beth had been given when she had hurt her back and in his right hand, the sleeping tablets she’d also been prescribed. But she had used neither.

He took a painkiller, then a good swallow of vodka. Then he took one of the sleeping tablets and another even bigger swallow of vodka. He took another painkiller, popped it in his mouth and reached for the vodka.

Chapter 2 (All Mattb’s work)

Meanwhile, three very unhappy people were sitting in the dining room of the mansion-like house of Gary and Sally Briggs at 12, Damson Glade.

Sally spoke first. “Oh, you stupid, silly little shits! Of all the fucked up fucking things to do, you had to let him catch you together, screwing each other’s brains out! Jesus Christ! What the hell was going on in your minds? As for you, Gary, you are the CEO of your own highly successful company, supposedly of superior intelligence, and yet you let your dick do your thinking for you and you allowed our very dear friend Paul to see you and his wife fucking!”

Gary shrugged and swallowed a finger of Scotch before speaking. “Well, Sal, I know it sounds bad, but, well, it IS bad, but we were trying to be discrete about it, you know, but we kind of…”

“Completely buggered the whole thing up! Bloody hell! If your idea of discretion is fucking your lover on her desk with the door unlocked, then you have no chance! You do realise this will be all over the company by now?”

“Oh, Christ! Really?” asked Beth.

“Yes, really!” responded Sally, her voice a little cross. “When we started this whole thing off, didn’t we agree that we would not want or allow Paul to know anything about what was happening? To protect him?

“You… we… we all knew he’d never be OK with the idea of you two being fuck buddies; that we had to keep him out of the loop in order to keep him happy. And what do you two do? Out yourselves to him in the most callous, horrible, public way possible!

“You humiliated him publicly and you broke his fucking heart, you idiots! You do realise he may never get over this? May never forgive us? Have either of you spoken with him?”

They shook their heads, saying nothing, like naughty children before the headmistress.

“Oh, really!” now the anger in her voice was palpable. “Beth, you at the very least should have made sure he was feeling OK… or at least asked him how he was feeling! Where is he now?”

Beth spoke up: “He is at home. Or at least I think he is. I got my secretary, Gill, to check. Apparently Rhonda his secretary and some man from accounts helped to get him home.”

“Well, that’s something, I suppose! Do you want to phone him, now?”

Beth shook her head. “No, I can’t really think of anything to say to him.”

Sally shot her a dirty look. “How about: “I’m sorry? How about that?”

Beth said: “But sorry for what? Sorry I am helping you and Gary out? No, I can’t say I am sorry for that. Sorry I hurt him? Well, of course, yes, to that. But I feel too ashamed to phone him, yet.”

Gary pulled out his mobile and made a call. He spoke into it: “Hi, Paul. This is Gary, here. Listen mate, what you saw… although what you saw must have been a terrible shock to you, please, you must believe me when I say we never intended to hurt you like that. And what you saw might… well, if you let me, us, explain to you what it was all about, I think it will answer some questions that you must have. Please don’t think this has in any way harmed your marriage. Because it hasn’t. Not really, not if you don’t want it to.

“Please come to our house at ten am tomorrow and we will all have a decent, civilised chat about the situation. We do need to explain some stuff to you and speaking quite frankly, you do deserve an explanation.”

The call had gone straight to the answerphone service of Paul’s mobile.

Whilst Gary was speaking, Paul had been busily and almost mechanically keeping to the routine that he had set himself: left hand, painkiller, swallow vodka, right hand, sleeping pill, swallow vodka, then repeat…

Vandemonium1 starts making major changes to MattblackUK’s original text.

Chapter 3 (All inserted by Van1)

As Rhonda and Phil from accounts, were returning from dropping Paul off, they used the opportunity to talk.

“Far out Rhonda. I have never seen a man more devastated than that and I hope to never see it again. What do you think caused it?”

“You’re kidding aren’t you? Everyone knows that shithead Gary is bending Paul’s wife over the desk just about every day. Are you serious? Have you been living in a cave for the last year? The whole bloody company knows about it.”

“No, I didn’t know Rhonda. You know they call accounts the mushroom department. Keep ‘em in the dark and feed them bullshit.”

“Well, believe me, it’s been happening. The sad thing was that everyone thought Paul and Gary were into wife swapping and Paul was cool with it. I think today we discovered it was a one way deal.”

“What a pair of pricks.”

Rhonda was being troubled by her own conscience. Why hadn’t she quietly sounded her boss out on if he was cool with the situation between his wife and Gary? She could only agree with Phil: what a pair of pricks. In common with many people, Rhonda responded to guilt by taking it out on other people. On returning to the office she stormed into Gill’s work space.

“Did you know that Paul was kept in the dark about what Beth and Gary were up to?”

Gill’s reply came in the form of casting her eyes to the floor.

“Well that makes you just as bad as that pair of assholes doesn’t it?”

“I had to keep it quiet Rhonda. Beth threatened to fire me if I told a soul. What could I do? Mick and I just bought a house and neither one of us can afford to lose our jobs.”

“So every day you sat here guarding the door while the boss screwed Paul’s wife over his or her desk and it didn’t occur to you that the decent thing to do was to let the poor cuckolded prick know somehow?”

“Ahem.”

Both girls turned to see the Operations Manager, Bruce Cullen standing in the doorway. He stood there looking at them in turn. After stepping in the room, he closed the door.

“Am I right in assuming from this conversation that the CEO of this company is being accused of having sex, in the office, with the wife of one of our other employees?”

“There’s nothing, ‘accused’ about it sir”, said Rhonda, “It’s been happening for ages and I think today poor Mr Augustine finally found out about it.”

“Is that true Gill?”

“Yes sir. Paul, I mean Mr Augustine walked into his wife’s office today and caught her with Mr Briggs.”

“Did you witness any sexual act Gill?”

“Yes sir.”

“Have you ever witnessed it before Gill?”

“No sir, but I…I know it has been going on for about a year, sir.”

Bruce Cullen just shook his head. He asked Rhonda to leave so he could talk privately to Gill. Rhonda welcomed the opportunity to escape.

The office was abuzz with rumour that afternoon. Enough people knew the gossip and had seen how Paul looked when he left, that there was little need for speculation. No one noticed the sudden surge in internet usage. Most people knew poison when they saw it and many employees began job hunting before they got smeared by the wide tarbrush they knew was heading the company’s way.

Rhonda contemplated calling Paul to see if he was okay but she was just too plain embarrassed to follow up on the thought.  

Chapter 4 (mostly Mattb’s work)

The next morning at 10am sharp, Paul rang the doorbell on the doorpost of the Briggs household.

An anxious looking Gary opened the door and ushered him in. They walked from the hallway through the door on the right, that went into the lounge.

The two women were waiting for him, sitting side by side. That puzzled Paul. He realised that if they could sit so closely together without tearing each other’s hair out, that perhaps the message from Gary that he’d listened to had been correct when he had said that some stuff needed explaining. Paul stood, staring at them.

Gary stood awkwardly by his wife, it looked a little like one of those stiffly posed Victorian studio photographs. Paul said to them: “You three look like one of those bloody Victorian studio photographs. All very stiff and formal. Yet with all the corruption and vileness just bubbling away beneath the surface.”

They didn’t know how to respond to his off the wall remark, so remained silent.

“Nothing to say, anyone?” said Paul. There was a sardonic and almost brutal quality in his voice that unnerved them, but especially Beth.

“Paul,” said Beth, “this isn’t like you. Where is my husband, my lovely, kind, gentle, warm, loving husband?”

“He’s dead. You killed him.” Said Paul, cruelly.

Beth buried her face in her hands and started to sob. Sally cuddled her, comforted her. Sally looked at Paul, hard. There was something strange, different about him. He had a haunted look. He looked pale, deathly pale.

She swallowed before speaking: “Paul, I know what you saw must have come as a terrible shock but… how are you? What did you do last night? Did you get any sleep at all? Have you eaten?”

Paul trembled before speaking. “No, I haven’t eaten. Couldn’t eat. Sleep? Not really. None to speak of. And as for what I did last night, well, I sort of got to feeling very sorry for myself and in a moment of madness I am sad to say that I tried to commit suicide by drinking a litre of vodka and downing two boxes of tablets. Unfortunately, I was let down at the last minute. It appears I overdid the vodka. It made me vomit up all the fucking pills.”

They looked at him, appalled at what he had said. Gary was the first to react. “Oh… Christ! Oh, Paul, mate. I am so sorry! We knew that what you saw would have upset you, hurt you, but driving you to try to take your own life? Oh, fuck!”

Beth looked at him, tears streaming down her face. “But what would have happened when we found your dead body? What would we have done?”

“You’d have all laughed at me, again?” asked Paul, shrugging. They all looked puzzled at his remark.

Suddenly he felt very, very tired and he sat down in an easy chair that was facing them across the room.

He looked at them. “Why? How long?”

They looked at him, Sally spoke up, first. “Look, Paul, I realise that us all being in a group together facing you is all wrong. It must be ramping up your sense of betrayal and loss and making you feel so much worse. Can I come over and sit by you, please?”

Paul shrugged his acquiescence. Sally stood up and walked over to him. Gary, to his credit did not make the mistake of sitting down by Beth. He remained standing where he was, a silent observer.

Sally sat on the wide and well-padded right arm of the chair and said: “Paul, I am so sorry for how things have worked out. But if you will let me explain how things got started and what has been going on, I hope that we can all move on and that we can help you and Beth stay together as a couple.”

“Remember in the early part of last year when I was rushed into a private clinic with a gynaecological condition? Well, they had to operate on me and as a result of the operation, which I think they botched, I became physically unable to ever have sex again.

“I know that Gary is a very passionate man. He told me that he’d be perfectly OK with doing what he called the five finger samba. I knew that with my problem with my epiglottis that I could not dare try to perform oral sex on him.

“I knew he wouldn’t want to, but I was frightened that he would stray, that he would have sex with someone else. Start an affair and perhaps even leave me. He assured me that he wouldn’t and though I believed him, I still worried.

“I mentioned the problem to Beth when we were drinking tea one Sunday morning, I think you and Gary were out playing a round of golf, and she suddenly blurted out: ‘I can help out, if you want. I can be your surrogate with Gary!’

“At first, I thought she was joking, but then she convinced me that she wasn’t. We chatted about how we could bring it about. A couple of days later we mentioned the idea to Gary. He was in favour of it, of course.

“Pretty early on we decided that you would never be OK with the idea of lending your wife out, even if it were in such a good cause, so, and it pains me to tell you this, to admit to it, we decided to keep you in the dark on this.

“I am really so very sorry about that. But we were so sure that we could arrange things so that you would never know, that it wouldn’t hurt you at all. But now, well, you are very hurt. We can all see that. The revelation that you tried to take your own life, well, that makes me feel so badly about what we did.”

Paul glanced up, and then looked back down again. “When did it begin?”

Sally answered him: “It was twelve months ago. We decided that the first time would be at a barbecue that we held. If you remember it was a gloriously hot summer’s day, we cooked and ate the food and we lounged by the pool and we drank. We… I am now somewhat ashamed to say that we spiked your drinks with something to put you out, to make you sleep. And, once you were asleep, Gary and Beth stood up. Beth came to you, kissed your head, whispered that she loved you and then she and Gary walked into the house, hand in hand. Before they entered through the patio doors, Gary turned and asked me if I wanted to come with them and watch? I said that it would be unwise to leave you alone, as you’d been drugged. They nodded and went indoors.” She paused, the memory haunting her.

Paul looked even sicker. “Then what happened?”

She shook herself before continuing: “I stayed with you, I thought I owed you that much, at least. I held your hand and I stroked your head, I apologised to you for what we were doing to you, with your wife. I think I even cried, a little bit. I suddenly felt very guilty. After all, you were there, so very vulnerable. You were our good, very good, dear friend and we were betraying your trust.

“I felt it was my duty to watch over you to make sure nothing bad happened to you. I mean, how would we had felt if we’d all been indoors, with me watching my husband fucking your wife, and you’d come round and staggered into the pool and drowned? Or had choked on your own vomit?”

Paul shook his head. “Maybe it would have been better if I had just died, then? After all, if I’d died at your poolside I’d never have known that Beth was sleeping around on me.”

Beth gasped: “But I don’t want you dead! And I am not sleeping around on you; I am just sleeping with Gary.”

Paul again shook his head. “Sleeping around in the plural or the singular is still sleeping around.”

Paul stared directly ahead. “What happened, that first time?”

Gary and Beth exchanged glances. “We left you with Sally, then we went indoors and we made love in the guest room. I didn’t think it fair on Sally to use our marital bed,” said Gary.

Paul looked at them, before speaking again. “What happened when you came out?”

We walked back to the back garden; Sally was sitting at your side, holding your hand.”

Paul whispered, “Did you laugh at me when you saw me?”

“No!” Shouted Beth. “We didn’t! What makes you think we’d do that?” She sounded distressed.

“That’s not true, Beth,” Sally’s voice sounded tired. “When you came back to the poolside, you both did laugh at Paul. I told you off, and you both became quite contrite. You explained that you laughed mainly out of embarrassment, but also because you found the sight of him, lying there, dozing in the late afternoon sun, amusing.”

She looked at Paul, pensively. “Why did you ask that? Did you have a reason?”

He told them off the recurring dream of being near water, and people laughing at him.

They looked at him, they were all stunned and somewhat ashamed of themselves.

He could see Sally reaching for his hand and moved it out of the way. “I can’t believe that you would risk my life by drugging me! For fuck’s sake! None of you are medically qualified! You could quite easily have killed me! Didn’t you stop to consider that?”

They shook their heads, obviously they hadn’t thought about that.

Sally looked very embarrassed. “I am sorry, Paul. I really am. We didn’t think that your life could be in danger. Gary had bought the drug from a reputable online source, so we did our best to protect you, protect your health.”

“Won’t the police be happy to hear that?”

Gary shrugged. “Good luck with that one buddy. I used an anonymous Darkweb account and Bitcoins to pay for it all. After all this time, there won’t be a trace in your system. It will be your word against the three of ours. I suggest you don’t even try it.”

The conversation lapsed again until Gary again spoke up: “Look, we made sure that we never had sex at your house, only either here, at work, or in a hotel room. We also did our best to protect your marriage, too. I, well, we all talked and we realised that if you weren’t getting any exclusive time with Beth, that this might hurt your marriage, so we worked out that we should let Beth be yours exclusively, every weekend.”

Beth chimed in, then: “And that’s why I began the idea of you and me only having sex at weekends, because I did not think it right to have my husband following my lover in bed with me, doing it, I mean having sex with me on the same day. Because, as hard as this might be for you to accept, it was never a cuckolding thing, this… relationship… of ours, mine and Gary. It was something separate from our married life. There was never any intention to humiliate you, in any way. You must believe me, you must believe us!”

“Fucking, hell!” Muttered Paul, loudly. “You just don’t get it! How fucking patronising and condescending of you three shits! You allowed me to have the full and exclusive use of my wife at weekends, after you had been banging her like a rusty gate all through the fucking week? Shit! Don’t you realise, Gary, that having my wife 5 days a week to my 2 made this whole thing fucking utterly unbalanced and completely unfair on me? Even if I had agreed to this, had known about it.

“And you say it was not your intention to humiliate me? Well, with you two fucking on Beth’s desk, with her poor assistant knowing what you were doing, with her seeing how broken my discovery of you fucking around on me made me… hearing the nasty, vile things you said about me… how humiliating was that, do you think?”

Gary shook his head. “Sorry, that shouldn’t have happened. And what I said about you being Beth’s pathetic husband, I didn’t mean it. That was just silliness on my part.”

Paul looked at him, then scanned the eyes of the other two, settling his gaze on his wife. “And the kicker is, most people at work knew even before I did.” He saw their surprised expression.

“Oh, yes. Beth, there was your assistant, she knew. And I have wondered why people on the shop floor were whistling that Laurel and Hardy theme, the March of the Cuckoos when they saw me? And why some people took to nicknaming me Cookie?

Beth looked bemused. “I’m sorry, honey, I don’t understand… why’d they do that?”

Gary went red in the face and Sally gasped. Sally said: “Oh, my God! That’s… dreadful! How could they have known?”

Paul replied: “Because you weren’t as careful and as discrete as you should have been, were you? And for your information, Beth, they were mocking and deriding me as a cuckold, humiliating me without me knowing why!

“And even people who didn’t know, they thought I’d been demoted because of the fact I kept having to go out to act as a useless shadow on lots of sales and engineering calls. Well, now they’ll be able to surmise that the real reason I lost all my interesting project work was because my boss wanted me out of the way so that he could fuck my bloody wife!”

He stood up. “I am sorry. I can’t cope with this, any more. I’m going home.”

Beth stood up too, making a move toward him. She looked anxious. “You are looking after yourself, Paul, aren’t you? You are feeding yourself?”

He gave her a withering look. “Yeah, right! Like you care a fuck about me!” Beth gasped and choked back a sob.

He turned to Sally, who was now standing slightly back from him. “Sally, despite your part in this, I do feel sorry for you. I really do. You thought they were only doing this so she could be your sexual surrogate, right?”

Sally nodded. Paul continued: “But that’s not actually true now, is it? They are having a hot and torrid love affair. They aren’t fuckbuddies, any longer, you poor idiot! They are lovers! Hot blooded, cold hearted lovers!”

He stormed out of the house. Sally caught him just before he got to his car.

“Can I come and see you or call you?”

“No! I’ll contact you when I am good and ready. Tell those other two arseholes to stay away from me as well, unless the bitch has a really convincing argument why I shouldn’t abandon the marriage.”

Sally watched as he got in his car and screeched away. She turned to see Gary and Beth gazing after the retreating car. She just shook her head.

Chapter 5 (All Mattb’s work)

After Paul left, all was not well at Damson Glade.

Beth was wandering round in a funk, consumed by guilt.

Sally had decided that things had gone too far. She was fully aware that it might be too late to save the marriage of Beth and Paul, but damn it, she was going to try!

Sally was addressing the two errant lovers. “I do not want you having sex at the moment. From what Paul told me, you pair of idiots are in love. Is this true?”

They said nothing, but glanced at each other, guiltily. “Oh,” said Sally. Well, I suppose that answers my question. So… where do we go from here? Gary, are you going to divorce me and marry Beth?”

“No,” said Gary. “I want the two of you, living here, with me. I know it’s not ideal for you, Sally, not being able to make love and I’ll try not to rub your nose in it, when I have sex with Beth. Really, I mean that.” He nodded for emphasis.

“That’s so fucking decent of you! So whilst you have Beth and me here as your wives and you live like a 19th century Mormon prophet… where does that leave poor Paul?”

Beth answered her: “Sally, I honestly don’t know. I still love Paul, but I am no longer in love with him, like a wife should love her husband. I am sorry about this, Sally, but I am in love with Gary.”

Sally shook her head. “So the fact that we upset him so much that we caused Paul to try to take his own life doesn’t really matter to you?”

“Of course it matters to me!” shouted Beth. “I’m not a monster! Please don’t think I don’t care about him, because I do. It’s just that it’s the kind of love you’d have for a good friend, not a lover.”

Sally folded her arms before she spoke again. “We really have fucked him over, haven’t we? So there’s no hope for your marriage? If that is the case, we had better get a meeting set up with him and try to work out what we can do to at least make the end of his marriage as pain free as we can for him. We owe him that much, at least.”

Gary sighed and said: “I’ll have to let him go, of course. From his job, I mean.”

Sally glared at him and hissed out: “No!” It made Gary jump, such was the venom in that one word.

“But don’t you see, Sal, I will have to let him go. He would not want to work there, not with everyone knowing that he… well, that his wife and I are having an affair.”

Sally shook her head. “That’s not good enough, Gary. If you do that, what happens when he decides to sue the company?”

Gary shrugged. “Christ, Gary,” thought Sally to herself. “This having a lover has turned you from a number 1 business brain into a Class 1 idiot!”

She quashed her anger and replied to Gary: “You can’t sack him! ‘I have been fucking your wife’ are NOT grounds for dismissal. If you haven’t the guts to work with him, just put him on the books as a consultant. And to soften the undoubted blow to his ego, give him a massive salary rise. And don’t tell me you can’t afford it, as I know we can!” He acquiesced to her suggestion.

Meanwhile, Sally began to resent the fact that she, the cheated upon wife, as she began to finally realise she was, was having to try to do everything herself. And Sally was trying to keep her own marriage together, though she was beginning to wonder why she was bothering, to be frank.

Chapter 6 (All inserted by Van1)

Monday morning, Gary and Beth arrived at the office separately. Beth walked into the executive suite and noticed Gill’s desk looked empty. No files, no coffee cup, nothing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d beaten Gill to work. She grabbed her cup and walked into the coffee room. Lisa, the HR secretary was there already.

“Hello Lisa. How was your weekend?”

Lisa just gave Beth a strange look, then walked out. Beth put it down to Mondayitis. It wasn’t until another secretary walked in, took one look at Beth and walked straight back out that she knew something was badly wrong. She walked, with the coffees, into Gary’s office.

“I think word might have got out Gary. I’ve just been cold shouldered by two office girls and I’m worried about Gill, she hasn’t shown yet.”

Beth totally missed the sudden look of worry that crossed Gary’s face as she continued into her own office. He shouted after her.

“Prepare the paperwork to make Paul a consultant will you.”

“Sure thing boss. How much am I giving myself?”

Beth immediately regretted this flippant question. If it came to that, she knew the idea of no longer being Paul’s wife would take a while to sink in.

“Just leave that blank for the moment. I’ll talk it over with Bruce. Speak of the devil, what can I do for you Bruce?”

The very sombre Operations Manager, having brushed past Beth with a scowl, sat at Gary’s desk. He threw an envelope to Gary’s side of it. He was exaggeratingly not touching the desk.

“What’s this Bruce?”

“That is my resignation, effective immediately.”

Gary was stunned. While he was the head of the company, Bruce effectively ran it. Over 80% of the employees reported either directly or indirectly to him. He ran design, manufacturing, sales and distribution.

“What the fuck. You have a two month notice period.”

“Well I’ll be gone in an hour. If your conscience allows it, then sue me. Wait, what am I talking about? Any man that can send another man out on useless errands just so he can screw that man’s wife in her own office, obviously doesn’t have a conscience and is completely beneath contempt. Sue me, asshole, I have the press release prepped and ready to go.”

Bruce Cullen then arose and walked out through Beth’s office. He was going to contemptuously walk right past Beth’s desk but changed his mind at the last moment. He stopped and stared down at her.

“You’ve fucked up the best man this company ever hired, you bloody slapper!”

He remained staring at Beth until she flushed bright red and dropped her eyes to her desk. After he had gone she ran into Gary’s office.

“Gary, you have to sack that arrogant arsehole.”

“Too late, he just resigned. What have we done Beth? Bruce was the heart and soul of this company.”

Beth couldn’t think of anything to say as Gary left, saying he was heading for HR. He took Bruce’s envelope. He only made it as far as Beth’s outer door when he met the HR Manageress coming the other way. He thrust the unopened resignation letter at her. He hadn’t had the psychological strength to open it. He could just imagine the tirade it contained.

“What’s this?”

“Bruce Cullen’s resignation.”

“Shit, not another one.”

“Another one?”

“Yes, that is the sixth today already. Two designers, a Production Foreman, the Warehouse Manager and er, your assistant Beth.”

Beth was stunned. “Not Gill?”

“I’m afraid so. Do you want me to get her in for an exit interview?”

Behind Gary’s back, Beth was violently shaking her head. She was so busy doing that, she missed the smaller shaking of Gary’s head. Gary retreated to his office to contemplate developments. He was starting to smell a big fat rat. He knew his main competitor had been trying to poach Bruce for years. If he had to guess, he’d say they had finally succeeded and he was taking some key employees with him. Gary was very aware of just how small a change you had to make to a design to circumvent patent laws. Added to that, Bruce knew everything, production costs, mark-ups, customer contacts. The lot. All of a sudden he was very, very worried.

He decided to do a royal tour of the office and factory. That always boosted morale. It backfired. Most supervisors were out of their offices when he arrived. The ones who weren’t, answered his questions stiffly and formally. There was none of the usual banter he shared with his middle management. If there was any doubt at the cause, it was dispelled when Gary went into the factory toilet. Above the urinal, some artist had scrawled a scene. One of the male caricatures was mounting the female caricature from behind, over a desk, while sticking a knife in the back of the second male figure. The tour was cut short as Gary returned to his office to hide.

Meanwhile, with no assistant, Beth was having to field her own phone calls. She’d just turned down a second request from a local journalist for access to Gary. After Gary returned, she followed him into his office. He locked the door then attacked her over his desk. This time it was a distraction fuck, rather than their usual sensual coupling.

About the only thing they achieved that day was emailing off a very generous consultancy offer to Paul. The email was returned less than 10 minutes later, with the addition of the one word, ‘accepted’. Beth was relieved. At least Paul was with it. The generous deal went a long way to assuaging her conscience. She knew Paul had always dreamed of a life of leisure. The fact that he had always dreamed of having her by his side while living the high life, couldn’t register on her guilt ridden brain.  

It was a very quiet night in Damson Glade that evening. Sally asked if Beth had contacted Paul that day. Sally replied truthfully that she’d sent him an email. When questioned, she replied that she’d received a one word reply.

“Well, that’s a start I suppose,” huffed Sally before flouncing off. Rhonda wasn’t the only one that cleansed her own conscience by spreading the agro.  

The only relief for Beth, was when one of her 21 year old twins rang and said they wouldn’t be coming home from university for the inter semester break, as they were going to a friend’s place in Scotland. Elizabeth and Frank were in their third years. Elizabeth was studying Engineering and Frank, Chemistry. Beth was relieved. That delayed the time she had to admit to her and Paul’s children that she had wrecked their family. She was evasive when asked why there was never an answer on the home phone. She guessed that Paul wasn’t up to fielding questions yet either.

That set the tone for the rest of the week. Beth and Gary feeling increasingly isolated at work and at Damson Glade. The happy couple snuck away for one afternoon at a motel, but it soon became obvious that their former passion was gone. Guilt had finally killed it. Hers at the loss of a husband. His at the loss of a friend.

 
Chapter 7 (A mixture of Mattb and Van1)

Sally’s demons allowed her a full week before she rang Paul the following Monday. In that week, she’d found it easier to text Paul herself than nag his errant wife and friend to do it. Paul responded promptly to her questions of how he was travelling every time, with a simple, OK. She rang Paul that Monday instead of texting and was pleasantly surprised when he agreed to meet her in a restaurant that night.

Paul was already seated when she joined him. He told her he’d already ordered, as his favourite meal took a long time to prepare. Sally placed her order and opened the conversation. She tried to reach over and grab Paul’s hand but he withdrew it. He obviously wasn’t feeling that forgiving yet. Once again Sally cursed herself at her part in his deception.  

“Has Beth rung you yet?”

Paul shook his head.

“I am not surprised, really. I am still just so angry how they handled this. If I’d have been Beth, I’d have been camped on your doorstep day and night until you forgave me.”

Paul interjected “Yes, but you aren’t her, are you, Sally? Looking at this from my perspective and from an outside view, I think you were played and taken for a fool.”

“In what way, Paul?” Sally was intrigued by what he was saying.

“Oh, just think about it. She tells you she is willing to act as your surrogate so Gary will not have to cheat on you. But she doesn’t want her husband to know. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she didn’t use her idea for her being your surrogate as a shield for her real intent, which was to have an affair with Gary.”

“Shit!” said Sally. “That’s not something I’d thought about, before, although I was a fool not to, wasn’t I?”

Paul spoke up: “Sometimes we trust people who we shouldn’t trust. Because we love them, or hold them in such high regard, we don’t realise we should not trust them.”

As soon as he said it, he saw the flash of pain on Sally’s face. “Well, Sal, sorry if that remark hurt but…”

“It only hurt because it was far too close to the truth for comfort,” said Sally, her voice tinged with regret. “You are right. Your wife and your two best friends. Damn it, if you can’t trust us, who can you bloody trust?”

He shrugged. They chatted like the old friends they were. Sally’s meal arrived and Paul urged her to start without him. Sally finally asked the question she had been avoiding.

“So Paul, have we totally destroyed your faith in womankind?”

“No Sally. I did doubt my own faith in myself as a man for a while but then Rhonda came around last week and…well let’s just say she restored my faith it.”

“You’re sleeping with Rhonda? Well done Paul. Gee, Beth is going to be pissed.”

“Why should she be Sally? She’s been bonking your husband for a year and if you believe Rhonda, they’re still doing it in the office.”

Sally went white.

“No, I told them to stop that.”

“Does it surprise you that your expectations of their fidelity carry no more weight than mine did? You authorised them to cheat in the first place.”

“But this is different.”

“Why, because it’s you this time, not just me?”

By mutual, unspoken agreement the diners switched to neutral topics until Sally’s coffee arrived after the meal. Eventually, they made ready to leave. “You’ll have to tell Beth, you know,” said Sally. “Or do you want me to break the news to her?”

“Oh, I am not keen on using you as a go-between, but I really am not that keen to speak with Beth, just now, either.”

“Why not?” asked Sally gently.

“Because the thought of talking to her makes me want to throw up.”

Sally nodded, thoughtfully. “I’ll tell her,” she said. They switched topics again.

“Sally,” Paul sounded tentative, “about your physical condition that means it’s impossible for you to make love, have you had a second opinion?”

“Well, no, I haven’t. The surgeon who I went to was supposedly the top man in Europe. I saw him at his Harley Street clinic.”

“For what it’s worth, I’d go to see your own GP and ask for a referral to an NHS surgeon. I mean, what have you got to lose?”

Sally yawned. “Nothing I suppose.

“Well thanks for an entertaining evening Paul. I’ll just go to the bathroom and then I’ll make myself scarce.”

She did just that. When she came out of the bathroom, Paul was gone. She checked with the waiter if their bill had been paid. It hadn’t. She asked for it and was surprised it was so low. It only accounted for her meal. Thinking about it, she couldn’t remember Paul eating. She put this out of her mind as she left, already reviewing their conversations in her head.

Chapter 8 (A mixture of Mattb and Van1)

The implication that Paul was having sex with Rhonda enraged Beth. “The nerve of that woman!” she fulminated. “She’s old and… and she has droopy tits! That bitch should leave my husband alone! Or I might just decide to divorce him!”

Sally shocked herself. She actually wanted to smack Beth’s face. Very hard. She was finding her attitude to be very irritating.

“Don’t be such a bloody hypocrite, Beth! You have been fucking my husband this past year and when Paul gets some too, you start whining like a bitch! Grow up for God’s sake! Now cut Paul some slack! And please talk with him! You owe him that much, surely?”

Beth shrugged by way of reply and then said: “I just don’t know what to say, Sal.”

“Well if you will not speak with him, I will!” snapped Sally. She didn’t raise the fact that against her express wishes, Beth and her husband were still getting it on. She hadn’t decided how to handle that knowledge yet.

And that was what happened over the next couple of weeks. Sometimes Sally and Paul would chat on the phone, sometimes they would text or email. More than once she tried to raise the subject at the heart of all their problems, but he refused to cooperate. Finally, she could take no more of it and unilaterally announced that she had something important to say and she was going to say it. Paul remained silent.

She paused, deep in thought, before continuing. “Paul, I feel I still owe you an apology.” She stilled his objection: “No, it’s true. It’s the way I feel, anyway. When you were unconscious on that first day, whilst you slept, I made you a promise that, no matter what happened, I would not let Beth being my surrogate with Gary harm your marriage. Although I meant every last word of that promise, if I had been thinking straight, I’d never have made it as I had no way of controlling what Beth and Gary did. I know that, now, but I was caught up in the events.”

Paul smiled at her: “I accept your apology.”

Sally breathed a sigh of relief. “But there’s something else I need to tell you. I owe you my thanks, too. I took your advice and got a NHS referral to a surgeon at the local hospital.

“I went to see him last week. He told me that the Harley Street surgeon had made a hash of the operation and had given me some terrible advice. I can’t prove it, but I smell Gary’s hand in that. It transpired that the mistake was fixable and so the upshot is that I will soon be able to start having sex again.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful news! What do Gary and Beth think about this?”

Sally shrugged: “I haven’t told them. I’ve left him and Beth living in the house, I filed for divorce last week.”

“Why.”

Sally sounded very downcast. “Because, I know that even after I tell Gary the news, he will still want to have sex with Beth.”

“So, now you believe what this was all about Sally?”

“Yes Paul. I finally get it. I have my own money and have already moved out and bought a new town-house in a gated development just off the High Street. Maybe you and I could see each other there?”

This last was said with some hope, but that didn’t last long.

“I’m sorry Sal, but I have to go away soon. This may be the last time we talk.”

“No please Paul, don’t go. You can’t leave me feeling like this. You have to forgive me for my part in the destruction of your marriage. I just know I will never be able to sleep soundly until you do.”

“Oh Sally, Sally, Sally. If only your motives weren’t so selfish. How do you think I’ve slept since this all blew up? No, I’m afraid you will just have to live with what you have done to me.”

“Please Paul,” Sally pleaded.

But it was too late, the connection had been broken. With her hopes dashed and a lifetime of guilt and regrets to look forward to, Sally put the phone down sadly.

Chapter 9 (All inserted by Van1)

Two days later was a Friday. Gary had a thicker skin than Beth and seemingly had no trouble walking out the office at night to the accompaniment of an ever reducing number of condemning glares. Everyone had the same facial expression but there were far fewer faces these days. Beth was less protected and had taken to arriving at work before everyone else and leaving after the office was empty.

Thus it was that she pulled into the Damson Glade driveway to see an extremely angry man confronting Gary on his own doorstep. She parked and approached them.

“…and she confessed to me that you practically raped her at the office, you arsehole. If she’s right and she is pregnant then you’d better start running, boy. I’m not the sort of person who sues cunts like you. I’m the sort of guy who makes an appointment with you in a dark alley with an axe handle. You want to hope and pray the baby isn’t yours.”

By this time, Beth had reached the front door.

“Who is this Gary?”

The angry man spun around.

“This poor sucker is Gill’s husband. Are you the wife or the girlfriend?”

Beth automatically took two steps backwards. “I’m Gary’s assistant.”

“So you’re the bitch that threatened Gill? Well, the same goes for you, slut. I’d steer clear of any dark alleys from now on.”

With that, he spat on the ground, glared at each of them in turn before stalking off. Beth had heard enough to know that Gary had lied when he’d admitted having sex with Gill but that it had been before they hooked up. Many medical conditions have a delayed onset. Unfortunately, pregnancy wasn’t one of them. She was just about to rip into him, when her phone rang.  

“Hello, Beth speaking.”

“Mum, where are you? Dad’s dead.”

“What, who, where are you?”

“We’re at home.”

“I’ll be there shortly.”

Completely ignoring Gary, Beth jumped in her car and screeched off towards the house she used to share with her husband. As she drove she desperately tried to remember how Sally had said Paul sounded the last time she spoke to him. This couldn’t be true. If it was, her decision not to call Paul was going to hurt her conscience, she just knew it. When she arrived she saw her son consoling her hysterical daughter at the front gate. The effort of helping her seemed to give him strength. There were two police cars, an ambulance and a white van with ‘Forensic Unit’ written on the side and an unmarked van with blacked out windows parked in the drive or on the street.

“Hi mum. Our friend’s grandmother died, so our Scotland trip got cancelled. We decided to drive down here and surprise you but…”

At that point he dissolved into tears himself. From the corner of her eye, Beth saw a man run out of her front door and vomit in the bushes. Leaving her children, she headed towards the door. She was stopped by a uniformed policeman.

“This is my house, let me in.”

“Stay here madam, I’ll get the guv.”

The policeman opened the door and shouted inside. As he closed the door again, a horrific smell assaulted Beth’s nose. It was like nothing she had ever smelt before and triggered her gag reflex. Shortly the door opened again and a middle aged man came out. He had a smear of what looked like Vaseline under his nose and gave off a strong smell of Eucalyptus. He also had a green complexion.

“I’m Mrs. Augustine. Where is my husband? I want to see him.”

“We, ah, we think he’s inside madam, but believe me you don’t want to see him. In fact, it’s going to take me about three bottles of bourbon to get me to stop seeing him.”

“Is he…?”

“Dead madam? Yes, definitely.”

“Don’t I have to identify the body or something?”

“Believe me madam, you won’t be able to identify him by looking. The Coroner’s Officer…er…well he thinks he’s been dead about a month. But the pathologist will be able to confirm that. The developmental stage of the maggots and the like. Oh! Damn! Sorry. That’s obviously too much information.”

At that point, Beth’s self-defence mechanisms cut in and she fainted dead away. 

Chapter 10 (All inserted by Van1)

A month later.

“Please sit down madam.”

“Yes Inspector.”

“How did the identification go?”

“Oh it was my husband all right. I’m surprised there wasn’t more damage after he jumped six floors.”

“Now, now madam. Until the Coroner rules on cause of death, we have to say he fell, okay? If you must know, the morgue boys always clean up the bodies a bit before inviting the public in. It makes it all much more pleasant for everyone.”

“Yes I’m sure. After realising that his business was totally sunk with no hope of anyone buying that poisonous place, plus all the media attention over the last month, my husband just took a stroll on the roof of his office to get some air I suppose.”

The detective shuddered. Of all the disconcerting characteristics the woman in front of him had, her habit of looking over his shoulder every time she smiled was the one that troubled him the most.

“Well, there was no suicide note, so until a Coroner’s court rules differently, he fell okay?”

“What about the notepad on his desk?”

“I don’t think a single sheet of paper with, “Can’t sleep, Paul” written on it can be called a suicide note. Even if it was written 167 times.”

Sally conceded the point.

“Now, where did we get to last time? Ah, that’s it. You were telling me about what your husband said when he rang you last Friday. Can you start at the beginning again please?

“Certainly. He told me that their increased isolation from everyone at his business had caused them to be forced back together again, you know, ‘my enemies, enemy is my friend’, kind of thing. Gary was saying that Beth couldn’t handle going to work at all last week and was having supreme guilt issues. On Wednesday night he thought he’d cheer her up a little by making love to her. He said that they were doing it missionary when all of a sudden, she just started lashing at his face with her fists and screaming. He knew his nose was broken so he quickly left and drove himself to the hospital. While he was waiting there, in the ER, Beth rang him and tried to explain. She said that she’d looked up and seen Paul’s face on Gary’s body. Not only that but she said it looked like the flesh was dripping off his body.”

Again, the detective resisted the urge to turn around as the strange woman opposite him smiled over his right shoulder.”

“You said he didn’t take this too well Mrs. Briggs.”

“No. Apparently he told her that he was going to ring his lawyer and get a restraining order. He suggested she get out of his house before he got home to avoid another public spectacle.”

“Okay. The rest is on the public record. He came home later and found her dead in his bath. Wrists slashed.”

“Are we allowed to call that suicide?”

“No, Mrs. Briggs. Again the Coroner is yet to rule on that. It’s pretty cut and dried, but again there was no suicide note. Do you think that could have caused your husband to, er, take his walk on the roof?”

“I very much doubt it. I don’t think Gary had much of a conscience. All the power had gone to his head see. He thought he deserved whatever he could get. As for a suicide note. Who was she going to write one to? Her children had both made it plain they were disowning her for caring so little about how their father was coping with her infidelity that she hadn’t even checked on him for a month. Not so much as a text. With her husband dead, her relationship with Gary at an end and abandoned by her friends, there was no one left to address the note to.”

Sally didn’t know whether it was the guilt, from what Beth had done to a fine man or the fact that the police, spurred on by the media, were out for blood, that had pushed Beth over the edge. Maybe it was the fact that her lover didn’t love her enough to leave the hired help alone. Of course the thought that she might see Paul’s rotting corpse every time she made love, would have been a powerful driver.

“Mrs. Briggs. Can we go back to your original story? As I’ve said before, there are aspects of it that confuse the hell out of us.”

“Yes, you said that. What do you mean?”

“Well, when we interviewed the three of you after we found your friend’s body, you all said the same thing. You all stated that the day after Mr Augustine discovered his wife was doing the dirty on him, he drove his car over to your old house and you all had a discussion.”

“Yes, that’s right. While he was there we, er, revealed that we’d…”

“It’s okay Mrs. Briggs, we already know you told him you drugged him illegally. We found the recording on his phone. The Crown Prosecution Service has already decided that as a minor conspirator, they aren’t going to press charges against you. The same couldn’t be said about your late husband. We grilled him about it pretty heavily two days ago.

“The problem is that Mr Augustine’s car has been in the Hyperology Corporation carpark since he was taken home that Friday morning. Added to that, interrogating his phone company records showed his cell hadn’t moved from his local mobile phone tower. If it had gone to your house with him, it would have registered on at least three other towers.”

“Yes, I can see your dilemma. If his phone didn’t come to my place, but was used to record that conversation, then it would look like we came to his place.”

“Exactly. That, coupled with the fact that the recording revealed that Mr Augustine may have been contemplating reporting his drugging to the police does look a little suspicious, doesn’t it?”

“So what are you saying? We all went to Paul’s place, had a conversation, found out he’d recorded a confession, then murdered him?”

“It did cross our minds. It fits with the Coroner’s initial findings on the time of death. With no sightings or confirmed, positive contact with Mr Augustine since he was delivered home by two colleagues on the day he discovered he’d lost his wife and friend, he had to conclude that Mr Augustine died that day, after consuming a cocktail of vodka, opiates and sleeping pills. Frankly, how and where that recording got on his phone is confusing the hell out of us. If you put the recording through an amplifier, you can hear a clock chime 11 o’clock. It’s the same chime as the clock in your lounge. The Augustine’s didn’t even have a chiming clock.”

As if the facts of this case weren’t confusing the detective enough, something else was confusing the hell out of him right now. He was explaining something very problematic to an obviously intelligent woman who still wasn’t officially out of the frame for a possible murder. Yet she was acting cool and had an impassionate calm about her. Where he should be seeing a good proportion of the confusion he felt, he only saw a half smile.

“Well the only problem with that, is all the times I spoke with him on the phone, the restaurant he went to with me and the email he sent to Gary when he got the offer as a consultant.”

The detective again looked at Sally very strangely. She had a dull monotone happening as well.

“Well that’s the rub isn’t it Sally? We found the email that Gary sent Paul, but there was no record of a reply. We also interviewed the waiter at the restaurant you went to. He remembered you going in and eating alone. It stuck in his memory as he thought you were mad. He said you appeared to be talking to yourself.”

He stopped here and awaited an emotional response. Sally just gazed at him with that strange expression.

“Then, about those phone calls Sally?”

“What about them?”

“Well, I don’t quite know how to say this but the local phone tower lost signal on Paul’s phone three days after he arrived home. That’s when his phone’s battery appears to have gone flat. We analysed your phone and logged 11 unanswered calls to his phone over the weeks. We have records of all your texts arriving but none were sent from his phone after that first day.”

“That is odd? I spoke to him for hours.”

Again the detective frowned. It was like the woman opposite him was reading from a script.

“What about Rhonda? She went around there and saw Paul the week after…you know?”

“Ah, I’m glad you reminded me. How do you know she visited Paul and um, had sexual relations with him?”

“He told me at the restaurant…”

Sally stopped when she saw the fundamental problem with this statement.

The detective interjected: “But Rhonda denied that when we questioned her.”

“I’m sorry, I… can’t explain this situation to you.”

The detective gave up. This conversation was giving him a headache.

“For the record, our head shrink is putting it down to some sort of group hysteria, brought on by guilt. We asked him how he thought the recorded conversation got on Mr Augustine’s phone but he just threw his hands up in the air and started to giggle manically.

“So, I’m buggered if I know. It’s way above my pay grade. Anyway, you are free to go Sally. I won’t detain you any longer.”

“Yeah right, free. Free to go out and face life knowing I have been instrumental in the deaths of two pricks and the most decent man I ever knew. Instrumental in making two young adults orphans. Sounds like fun.”

“We’re all responsible for our own actions Sally.”

Sally slowly stood and shuffled to the door. The detective had a friend that was a prison guard in the States. It reminded him of the walk his friend had described of condemned prisoners taking their final trip to the death chamber.

Sally had almost reached the door when she paused and turned suddenly.  

“Are you coming, Paul?”

The detective swung around, looking at the spot over his left shoulder that the impassive woman seemed to be focused on. Not seeing anything, he turned again and watched Sally’s haunted eyes. She just shrugged then turned and walked out the door.  

For the third time in the last hour the detective felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

The detective didn’t believe in ghosts. But, he thought to himself, if they did exist, could they manifest themselves to three guilty people? Could they record a conversation on a ghostly phone? Would extreme guilt make the living more susceptible to seeing them in a restaurant? Or in the face of a lover while having sex? If even a portion of ghost stories were right, then surely they were capable of robbing someone of sleep to the point that the despair they felt would drive them to suicide. The detective had been in the job for years. His task was to think of scenarios that fit all the facts. The scenario that suddenly leapt into his head did fit all the clues. In fact, it was the only one that came even close. No, the detective didn’t believe in ghosts, but that didn’t stop him running from the room anyway.

He needn’t have bothered running. Paul Augustine had gone.