The Snow Came Down

by Vandemonium1

This one was Inspired by The Rain came Down, by the great Papatoad. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed reading his.

It has once again been edited by the lovely CTC, so all errors are hers, not mine. Ouch… that’s spousal abuse that is.

It has been independently rated at over 3 pickaxe handles

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THE CRASH OF thunder shocked me from sleep. It rolled around the mountains well after rousing me, leaving me in no doubt as to why I was awake. Everything else was hazy though; afternoon naps do that to me. They leave me groggy and disorientated. Slowly, as the thunder rumbled, it all came back.

I was in bed at the cabin. The big lump beside me—Brian—was still snoring. We must have fallen asleep after making love earlier in the afternoon. Well, I say making love, but I use the term loosely; it certainly hadn’t seemed like that at the time. It was Friday, and we’d both bunked off work at lunchtime and driven to the cabin where we normally met. The cabin on the lake belonged to a friend of Brian’s. The cabin that was at the end of the twelve-kilometre (7 ½ mile) series of dirt roads.

We’d been prevented from getting together for over a month now. Prevented by life in the form of children, jobs, social functions and… other stuff. That’s why I used the term making love loosely. What actually happened when we arrived at the cabin was Brian grabbing me as soon as I walked through the door, pushing me to my knees, forcing his raging cock into my mouth, then holding the back of my head while he thrust in and out, all the way to unloading down my throat. Half the time I was worried about choking or vomiting from the gagging. It was painful and uncomfortable, but mostly it was humiliating. I would have blasted him except there was a tiny part of me, the inner animal, that was proud of myself for unleashing the beast within him.

After he came he wasn’t capable of much at all, so I took over, shoving him to the bedroom, stripping us both, pushing him onto his back on the bed, and using his face to get myself off and get him up for round two. He pounded me to several much needed orgasms before grunting a second time. Then, stupidly, we both fell asleep.

It was pitch black outside the cottage. Rain, heavy rain, began to lash the tin roof and windows, and I could hear the wind roaring, increasing in velocity, in the eucalypts around the lake. In a momentary panic, I grabbed my cell phone and was relieved to see it was only 5.15 p.m. If I woke Brian and denied his inevitable request to fuck again, took it easy on the slippery dirt roads that would take me to the highway, then stuck to the speed limit back to town, I would be home a mere hour after my usual time on a Friday.

All I had to do was ring my husband and tell him I’d be a little late. Stopping for a drink with the girls always went unquestioned. If he seemed unfazed by my news, well, Brian and I might have time for another round. Who knew when his wife would be out of town again and we’d be able to meet?

I stretched out luxuriously under the sheets. Life was good. I had it all. A doting husband whose business acumen was on track to supply us with an early retirement and the ability to escape long winters by travelling to Europe, a dream that we both shared. Returning home to spoil the grandchildren that were bound to start popping out of our three children in the near future. The youngest of our tribe had just gotten married.

On top of all that, I had the thrill and excitement of a lover. My five-years-younger-than me boss, a successful businessman in his own right, alpha male, who had rejuvenated my flagging libido and given me the excitement I thought was gone forever from my life. Sure, the sex was good, with the added benefit of re-awakening the lust I felt for my husband as well, but it was the thrill of the illicit that drew me back again and again. The best analogy would be to say it was like a drug high. If Brian continued doing what he was told and we remained being extraordinarily cautious, then there was no reason we couldn’t keep this up indefinitely. Well, until sex with Brian became dull and mundane as well.

I thought, not for the first time, that maybe my taking a lover was spurred by Dave’s and my  impending retirement. Once we were living in each other’s pockets and travelling, the opportunities to stray would be almost non-existent.

Focus girl! Time to ring hubby.

To guard against Brian waking while I was on the phone, I woke him beforehand. Incredible attention to every detail, no matter how small, was how we’d prevented our spouses finding out about our year-long affair and continued focus was how we would maintain that.

Once Brian was awake and I’d removed all possibility of immediate sex, I shushed him while I hit hubby’s speed dial number. As it rang, I idly hoped there wouldn’t be another clap of thunder. It was possible that the storm hadn’t hit our town yet. I decided to minimise the risk by being brief. The home answer phone cut in and, relieved, I started saying I was stopping for a couple of martinis with the girls and would be home around seven or eight and to go ahead and eat without me. No sooner had the words left my lips when I heard Dave pick up. What he said was simple and chilling.

“What about my birthday?”

Fuck! Had I been so distracted by my planning and lusting that I’d forgotten his big day? I’m not a monster, I could easily put myself in his shoes and imagine how I would feel if it was him getting up in the morning and forgetting to wish me many happy returns. Would I think he’d been lazy and had taken me for granted or would I think it was deliberate, to build up the surprise for something special he’d planned for that evening? Trouble was, I had nothing planned. I’d plum forgotten. Time to think quickly. Stall his expectation of me being home in fifteen minutes, buy him something on the way and distract him with a night of sex that would leave him smiling for a week. The trouble was, I had a policy of not having sex with my husband within twenty-four hours of being with Brian. Oh well, needs must. Throwing myself on his mercy and decrying my fickle memory, I told him I would be there within the hour. Screw the speed limit and what was the point of having a fancy SUV if I couldn’t push it along a wet dirt road?

I yelled at Brian that I was leaving as I scrambled out of the bed, used a very cold flannel to swab my leaking vagina or the worst of its drool, threw on my clothes and sprinted through the near horizontal rain to my car.

Which wouldn’t start.

The engine turned over fine, it just wouldn’t go. The warning light that I recognised as the general engine fault light was glowing orange. I felt my blood pressure elevate by at least fifteen points but a plan quickly formed. I would get Brian to drop me around the corner from home and tell my husband I’d taken an Uber from the bar. I was sure Brian wouldn’t mind stopping while I did some gift shopping.

I returned to the cabin just as Brian’s phone rang. Hearing Brian’s side of the conversation it sounded like his wife was home early from her trip and was wondering where he was. He looked fairly relaxed as he said he had a half hour’s work to finish, so he’d be home in an hour.

I hustled him out the door and immediately shivered. It was cold. The temperature had dropped drastically since my arrival at the cabin. As soon as he turned his headlights on, I noticed there was snow mixed in with the freezing rain. It really had turned into a horrible evening. Thank God Brian’s car started and he eased onto the narrow gravel strip and headed south.

While I waited for the heater to warm the car’s interior, I pondered the nagging feeling I’d had since phoning home. I probed it. Then it struck me. Dave had expressed no disappointment or even surprise that I’d forgotten his birthday. Why the hell was that? If the tables were turned, I’d be livid. Despite our increased sexual activity, I knew we’d drifted apart emotionally over the last year or so but couldn’t believe it was as pronounced as all that. If it was, that was a huge breach of security. My research on affairs had shown that one of the biggest clues to infidelity was a sudden emotional withdrawal. All the more reason to rock Dave’s socks off when I arrived home.

For the second time in half an hour, an enormous crash roused me. Things happened so fast it took me seconds to unravel them. We were going up a steep section of road with switchbacks where the road doubled back on itself. The wind must have dislodged a dead branch which had smashed Brian’s windscreen totally. In a panic, he’d hit the brakes and slid into the bank. That was lucky as there was a drop off on the other side.

Rain poured in the window, Brian yelled that he kept an emergency pack in the trunk containing raincoats among other things. He grabbed a torch from the glovebox and went out into the sleet. He was gone over a minute, returning soaking wet with a puzzled look on his face. The whole bag of emergency supplies was gone, apparently. It definitely wasn’t there, according to him; how could he miss a bright yellow bag?

With no choice, and with considerable anxiety, I sat quietly as Brian gingerly reversed the car out of the ditch. Our only piece of luck thus far was that out it did come. He resumed driving up the switchback. I jumped in the back seat. It wasn’t so bad when we were going one direction, the wind was behind us, but as soon as we turned into the wind, Brian copped the lot. I could see his knuckles on the steering wheel were white from the tension and the cold. I was cold enough in the back.

We finally reached the plateau above the switchbacks and headed along flatter, straighter roads. Alas, straight into the wind. We slowed to a crawl. I began to shiver uncontrollably. It must have been about ten minutes later when I was busy in my head planning, when Brian cursed, the car lurched and then slewed off the road. Luckily, we were only going about 10kph when we hit the tree. Brian’s foray outside revealed we’d lost a front wheel and the studs were sheared off. We weren’t going any further in that car.

Not for the first time, my anxiety escalated and I began worrying about my physical as well as my emotional safety. All I had on was my work uniform consisting of a straight-legged skirt, pantihose, a thin blouse, and a jacket designed for looks rather than warmth. It would keep me from getting soaked to the skin for about ten seconds in this weather. Brian was worse off than me; he was already soaked. While we discussed what to do, he kept the engine running with the heater on full bore. We debated options. Both our cell phones were useless. Normally, there was one bar of signal at the cabin, but between there and the highway was a blind spot. Brian estimated we were about seven kilometres from the cabin and about five from the highway. That meant we were about two kilometres from where another dirt road forked off. We could expect zero cars to be coming to the isolated lake on this section of road tonight, but the joining road should be busier. At worst, we could keep going to the highway and flag someone down.

Brian looked at the dashboard. The good news was that we had enough fuel to keep the heater going all night. The bad news was that the engine temperature warning light had just come on. Brian guessed the tree we’d slid into had punctured the radiator. In his opinion, the engine would overheat and seize in less than fifteen minutes.

A walk was in our future and rather than risk our body temperatures cooling while we waited for the inevitable, we decided to start walking now. I thought of lambasting Brian for the shoddy maintenance of his car and his driving skills, Dave would never have lost control after losing a wheel at that speed but limited myself to glaring at him. Muttering about ‘Friday the fucking thirteenth’, he opened his door again and I followed him outside.

Outside was as ghastly as it looked. Near horizontal sleet and a huge wind chill. I was soaked in seconds. Brian, with the only torch, set a brisk pace homeward causing me to have to half run to keep up.

To distract myself from the stinging sleet, I wondered what Dave was thinking at that very moment. He might think I was having trouble finding a cab and couldn’t ring because my phone had gone flat. That would stop him from being concerned for a while but, knowing Dave, at some stage he would begin to feel worried. In desperation, I hoped that meant that when I finally did show up he would be so relieved that he would accept whatever feeble excuse I could think of between now and then.

The rapid pace had the effect of keeping me a little warm, but not for long. Soon, I began to shiver uncontrollably and each shard of sleet felt like a needle prick against my face and hands. Brian wasn’t faring any better and I nearly tripped over him when he stumbled. When we came to the intersection of the more used dirt road, entering on our right we paused and I gave myself a hug, trapping my hands in my armpits. I could feel their iciness through my jacket and blouse.   With a hopeful glance over my shoulder, I followed Brian toward the highway. I knew it was a race against time now. We couldn’t bank on anyone using the dirt road so it was simply a race against the cold to the bitumen highway.

We hadn’t gone fifty metres before Brian stumbled again. This time it took him a while to get up. He accepted my help but shook off my hand as soon as he was upright. I couldn’t understand what he seemed to be blaming me for. We resumed walking, our brisk pace a thing of the past. Now it was mere trudging.

Suddenly, the wind abruptly stopped and it began gently snowing. The relief from the wind was immediate but it did highlight the sound of the constant chatter of Brian’s teeth. Other sounds emitting from him made me realise he was really struggling. Each time he stumbled it took longer for him to get going again. Finally, there came a time when he stumbled and went all the way down, rolling onto his back on the road. I grabbed his torch as it rolled away from his prone body and immediately noticed that his hands and face were ghostly white. He begged to be allowed to lie there and just sleep. I knew if I let him do that he’d die so I called him a pussy and all types of things, anything I could think of to make him angry. I saw a tiny spark of defiance in his eyes and he staggered upright and began stumbling down the road again. I doubted if he would rise from the next fall.

With numb and clumsy fingers, I dragged my phone from my pocket to see if we had signal yet, but it was soaked and dead.

Then, the prayed for miracle happened. We were suddenly bathed in the light from a vehicle coming down the road behind us. It braked hard to avoid us, we were in the middle of the road.

A well-rugged up man jumped out of the driver’s side of what turned out to be a white van. The man mid-thirties maybe, a little scruffy. The van had certainly seen better days. He opened the sliding door and gestured us into the interior. It was one of those vans with just seats in the front, the back being an empty space. The floor was scratched and scuffed, suggesting it was a delivery van. The presence of two different sized cardboard boxes confirmed that theory. As I gratefully pulled myself into the rear, I noticed it had extended headroom and I could comfortably stand.

Brian tried to follow me in but was having trouble lifting his legs. The guy stepped in and basically pulled Brian after him. He closed the side door and the relief was immediate. Brian slumped heavily onto a box while the guy crawled through to the cab and cranked up the heater before facing the back again.

“Where to, folks?”

“Town, please. As quick as you can.”

An animalistic look of cunning crossed the guy’s grimy face. My heart sank. Was the guy some kind of serial killer? Had Brian and I gone from the frying pan to the fire?

The guy was in a powerful position and he knew it. Life or death hung in his hands. He could throw us both out of the van, very possibly to our deaths by hypothermia. In our current state of being neither of us were strong enough to stop him. Shit, he could probably finish us both by just sitting here. We needed more than the van’s heater to stop our body temperatures falling. The guy’s eyes lingered over Brian; assessing the threat, I guessed.

“It’ll cost you.”

I started to fumble in my sodden handbag.

“You can put that away; I don’t need your money.”

“What is it you want then?” The last was said in a voice through chattering teeth.

With his piggy eyes on Brian, Scruffy said, “A blowjob would be nice.”

I suppose he thought Brian and I were man and wife. Keeping an eye on Brian guarded against him leaping to my defence. Brian’s eyes flashed but he continued full-body shivering and his face still had the sickly pale pallor I’d seen in the torchlight.

I idly wondered how far he’d go to defend my honour. That question was silently answered when he focused pleading eyes on me. We both knew that I might survive a delay getting into a warm bath, but he probably wouldn’t. Nevertheless, what his silent plea was asking me to do caused me to lose whatever respect I still had for him. It transformed into an equal amount of contempt and hate. Fuck him; I’d call our ‘saviour’s’ bluff. I turned to the slimeball.

“You lowlife piece of shit! I’d rather die than have any part of you near me. Even if you force me, you’ll have to murder us to stop my husband from hunting you down and killing you afterwards.”

The slimeball turned a strange look toward me. It was part sneer, part amusement, with a tinge of disgust thrown in.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Five simple words and the game had totally changed. It took Brian many more seconds than me to realise what was happening, but when he did, incredibly, his face turned paler. Soon the random movement of his shivering turned into distinct shakes of his head, which we all knew was the only defence he could mount if push came to shove.

A sudden wave of hatred overcame me. This was all Brian’s fault. If he hadn’t crashed the stupid car, I would have arrived home, damp, two hours ago. I could have bluffed my way past my naïve husband’s probing, saying I’d decided to try to find him a birthday present on the way back from the bar. If I were to distract him in his favourite way as soon as I could, and keep my apologies up half of the night, he would soon be at heel where he usually was. Then, my only problem would be ensuring he didn’t notice how sloppy I was. Perhaps it was time to sacrifice my anal virginity for the cause.

Now, I was going to arrive over three hours late, soaking wet, with no gift, and in no fit state to distract Dave. That meant having to answer some pretty embarrassing questions. And it was all Brian’s fault. He’d been more than willing to sacrifice my virtue for his safety, now the bastard could give his up.

I stood, with difficulty, walked behind the slumped Brian, grabbed an arm in each hand and held them behind his back. He turned his head and looked at me desperately and with what anger he had the resources for. Our so-called rescuer smiled and came toward us, unzipping his fly as he approached. Brian thrashed his head feebly from side to side but all to no avail. With practiced ease, the guy grabbed the back of Brian’s head with one hand, while forcing his mouth open with the other.

“No biting,” he admonished with a sick smile.

With his target immobile and open, he simply thrust his cock into Brian’s mouth, put his now free hand on the back of the helpless man’s head and began pumping.

I didn’t particularly want to watch but I could hear Brian gagging and hunting for breath. I wondered if he saw the similarity and irony of his situation. He’d practically mouth-raped me in comparable circumstances just hours before. Painful, uncomfortable, and humiliating, I knew exactly what Brian was going through and despite the dire circumstances, I smiled.

Mercifully, for Brian, our slimy saviour must have been even more desperate than Brian had been. All too quickly he groaned as he unloaded down Brian’s virgin throat, then held a box for him to throw up into with defeated, feeble heaves. I lost interest and went and sat in the front passenger seat where it was warmer.

Brian’s rapist zipped up, joined me in the front, and, with a huge smile, pulled the van onto the road and drove toward town.

Even though Brian lived closer, I asked Mr. Slimy to drop me off first, then gave him Brian’s address. Between them they could get Brian inside to his wife to answer some, I suspect, difficult questions. Where have you been? Why are you so late? What’s that on your chin?

Despite the heater in the old van, I could feel my strength waning so was a very relieved woman when we pulled into my driveway. I nodded at our perverted rescuer who simply muttered, “Happy Friday the thirteenth.” With a last contemptuous glare at Brian, I fled toward the safety of my front porch.

I had no idea what I was going to say to Dave, but that could wait. My hands were so numb I had difficulty getting the key from my handbag, so I leaned on the doorbell. Nothing happened. I wanted to cry but couldn’t. That would only spark more questions from Dave. Gritting my teeth, I went back to trying grasp the keys. When I finally managed to find and drag them from my bag I dropped them twice before succeeding in my goal. Once inside, I yelled for Dave to help me but all the lights were out. He must have gone to try and find me.

I staggered to the bathroom and with great difficulty put the plug in the bath and ran mainly hot water. I tried to undo the hook and eye clasp of my work skirt but my fingers were so numb they were nigh on useless. Crying, I fumbled the skirt around my waist until I had the zipper at the front. On my second attempt I managed to pull it down before grabbing the ends of the fabric and pulling in opposite directions. The hook and eye clasp gave way and I was free.  I managed to slip my hands between my pantihose and my skin and drag them down.

The challenges continued with my wet, clingy top with its tiny pearl buttons. Hard to remove at the best of times; now impossible. In the end, I gave up and just climbed in as was. The water made my frozen muscles ache but with returning warmth came power and mobility and I was soon naked.

Lying back, knowing how close to death I’d come, a sense of euphoria enveloped me, but it must have been chemical because my next thoughts were ones of dread. How the hell could I explain all this to Dave? Not only arriving home near dead, three hours late, but forgetting his birthday as well?

Cleaning inside myself as far as I could with my middle finger, I flexed my reawakening muscles, hoping they would hold out until I’d fucked Dave to death. It would be touch and go. On the subject of birthday presents, I’d go for honesty. ‘Sorry, Dave, I plum forgot.’

Relieved I was physically safe, and confident I could screw my naïve husband out of asking too many unanswerable questions, I closed my eyes and wondered what I’d buy for Dave tomorrow, happily reminisced about Brian’s weak gagging of just an hour ago and pondered whether there was anything in all this Friday the thirteenth bullshit.

I knew my eyes shot open, I felt them, felt the light pierce. Knew I was sitting bolt upright by the water slopping over the lip of the bath. It WAS Friday the thirteenth. I’d known it since Dave pointed it out to me over breakfast, although immersed in planning my day with Brian, I’d paid hardly any mind to Dave.

So, what was the big deal about it being the thirteenth? Dave’s birthday was on the twenty-second! Nine days away!

That begged the question; why had Dave made me think I’d forgotten his birthday? A phone call that proved to all and sundry that I was completely inattentive to my husband and had been for some time; to the point I’d forgotten when his birthday was. A phone call that started a panic reaction that led to a whole series of really bad events. Life-threatening events. Shit, I think I just answered my own question.

Leaping out of the bath, I wrapped a big towel around myself and for some reason rushed straight to the attached garage. It was empty. Dave wasn’t there and neither was his car. He had been though, quite recently. There were several blobs of half melted snow around where he usually parked. A set of waterproofs hung on the wall, glistening and still wet.

In the spot where my car was normally parked was a strange little tableau. Firstly, there was a bright yellow bag with ‘Smith’ stencilled on it. Smith was Brian’s surname. Incongruously, lying next to the bag was a log; freshly broken and oddly familiar.

On top of the bag were four thick, plastic-coated wires; yellow at both ends and blue for the rest of their length. Again, they looked vaguely familiar.

I walked around the odd pile and saw something I would have missed if not for my circuit. It was a small ceramic bowl, and there was something in it. Arranged in a circle around the bowl were three wheel nuts.

Picking the bowl up, I saw it contained Dave’s wedding ring. The bowl itself was chillingly familiar. It was the twin of the one that sat on my desk at work. An aunt of mine had given the set to us as a wedding gift all those years ago. The one before me had resided in a cupboard here at home. The other, the one at work, I used for exactly two things, one harmless, the other… chilling. Usually, it held my car keys after I arrived at work. For the last year, however, it had been used for another purpose… it commonly held my engagement and wedding rings. Somehow, the thought of being with my lover while wearing my wedding rings just seemed wrong. Maybe, it was as simple as me feeling like I wasn’t married when I took them off.

I now knew what the expression, ‘blood turning to ice in your veins’, was all about. Wave after wave of chills re-invaded my recently warmed body. Memories of a time, approximately six weeks prior, when I’d returned from an afternoon tryst with Brian to be told by the receptionist that my husband had called in at lunchtime, waited in my office for a few minutes, before leaving without a word.

The fact he’d seen my rings was evidenced by the sight of his wedding ring in an identical bowl on our garage floor. The fact that he’d guessed the significance of my putting them there was attested to by the rest of the pile and recent history. The sequence of my downfall was suddenly clear to me.

The discovery that I’d left the office at lunchtime with my boss but had left my rings behind would have aroused pretty strong suspicions in my trusting but not stupid husband. My best guess was that Dave had probably then installed a find-a-phone app on my cell. If it wasn’t a sodden hunk of scrap, I could probably prove that theory.

I’d been extraordinarily careful not to use any kind of electronic means of communication with Brian; I knew Dave discovering my affair would both devastate him and end my marriage, which would, in turn, devastate me. I’d considered leaving my phone along with my rings when going out with Brian but didn’t. It seemed like phones were a part of you these days and, besides, considering the roads to the cabin, what if I’d gotten a flat tyre?

I could imagine Dave remotely following me to the cabin on the lake and seeing Brian’s car. Part of our security arrangement was that we never left the office together. After more than twenty-five years together, I could almost feel how crushed Dave must have felt at that. His emergency trip away a month and a half ago suddenly took on a whole new connotation.

Then would have come the watching of my every move. Following Brian and I to the cabin after lunch today. Looking at the sky and maybe the weather forecast. Had he seen the storm as the gods blessing his intended actions? Using that highly intelligent brain of his and a lifetime with me to predict the future and how I would respond to a fabricated stressful situation.

Opening two cars that Brian and I had felt secure enough to leave unlocked. The removal of the bright yellow emergency bag from Brian’s car and the vital wires from mine. Oh yes, I recognised them now from when Dave showed me how to check the oil and water in my car. I think he called them spark plug leads. Removing the wheel nuts from one of Brian’s wheels, maybe loosening the remaining ones. Then waiting for the inevitable phone call from me, coming up with a vaguely plausible reason to put me into a panic; the idea that I’d forgotten his birthday.

Driving ahead of us on our panicked return journey and stopping above one of the switchback corners. Throwing the heavy log from above to smash through the windscreen of the crawling car. Having a spare in case the first one failed. We could have been killed! Had he thought of that? Had he wanted that?

Then what? Coming home to move out? Or was he already packed before he followed me? For as sure as I was that the sun would rise on the morrow, I knew he was gone and we were finished. I would need to find someone else to travel Europe with. It wouldn’t be Dave in the gondola in Venice with me, dipping his hand in the Trevi fountain, or reassuring me as we took in the dizzying view from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

I knew devastation would come soon and I used the calm before the storm to hope like hell that Dave, out of respect of all our good years together, would leave me comfortably well off in the divorce. Would not be vindictive in the separation. Would leave me some dignity by being vague when telling the children why we were no longer together.

All these were possible, but then it struck me. My husband; the one who had sworn to honour and protect me, did not give a damn if I lived or died. Some of his actions earlier, whether the explosive destruction of Brian’s windscreen or losing a wheel on a narrow road with near vertical edges in places, or being stuck in a blizzard, could have caused my death. I knew with dread certainty that all Dave’s love for me had morphed into hatred and no mercy would be shown. Hatred, after all, was the flipside of the coin to love.

I sank to my knees on the cold garage floor and wept the first of a bath-load of tears for a life and love lost.

EPILOGUE

The following morning when a semblance of rational thought had returned it occurred to me that Dave, for all his cleverness, had left himself open to prosecution for tampering with both Brian’s and my vehicles. He could even be done for attempted murder. I raced to the garage only to find the evidence had disappeared. Everything. The log, the emergency bag, the wheel nuts. Everything. When I checked the kitchen cupboard the bowl was back to where it had always resided. I had no proof. Nothing.

By Saturday night all three of my children had rung to tell me exactly what they thought of me. It turned out Dave had some footage of Brian and I taken through a crack in the cabin curtains as well as the circumstantial evidence of seeing my rings in the bowl on my desk at work. More than enough to hang me with our kids.

All attempts to communicate with Dave failed. “This number is no longer available,”, “This email was undeliverable.” I just wanted him to leave me some of my life.

The HR manager at work met me in reception on Monday morning, telling me that Brian had had some sort of mental breakdown and was insisting I be suspended. It turned out his wife knew all about us and had ambushed him on Saturday. She’d heard the doorbell on Friday night and opened the door to find Brian unconscious on the step. The ambulance was quick, and he was well enough by Saturday evening to fully understand just how fucked he was by a well-informed, well prepared, and extremely vindictive wife.

I waited for Brian in the office carpark on the Monday evening, but as soon as he saw me, he went ashen and threw up, before stumbling away. I guess I reminded him of the episode in the van. The company lawyer and I negotiated a small severance package for me over the next week.

It turned out that the instruction he gave to HR to fire me was one of his last orders as company CEO. It came out that the company was actually started by his wife’s father and he was just an employee like the rest of us. On the Tuesday morning, all staff were informed Brian no longer worked there. Not wanting to rely on the video evidence, her lawyer quietly offered me ten grand for a deposition attesting to an affair with Brian. I didn’t think it would make much difference and boy did I need the money. I jumped at it.

He glared at me during the custody hearing for his kids. I believe he got to see his children once every two weeks or so until they told him they didn’t like the crappy little apartment on the bad side of town which was all he could afford.

I was totally unsurprised when my phone call to Dave’s company revealed he’d sold it the previous week, rumour had it, for fifteen million. I now regretted signing the pre-nup his father had advised we have. So much for my cleverness and precautions. I wasn’t clever enough to keep my legs shut.

I was surprised, however, when an eviction notice from the house was enforced. I’d lived in Dave’s late parent’s house since before we were married and it felt like I was a spaceman on an extra vehicular activity and someone cut the tether. Having no cash for a defence as Dave had pretty much drained all the accounts, I couldn’t fight it. Sure, he’d have to reimburse me for my half of our savings account, but he could draw that out. In the interim, I was penniless.

After the eviction, each of the kids allowed me to stay at their places for a week, then they clubbed together to make up the shortfall for the deposit on a small apartment, the repayments of which took most of my wage as a waitress. With a five-year gap in my resume, and having been terminated with the words, “I wouldn’t use us as a reference if I were you”, I was pretty much unemployable for anything else.

Things with my children began to thaw by the time Christmas came around the corner and I was invited to my eldest son’s place for the feast. I was in the kitchen, helping my daughter-in-law with cooking when I noticed the postcard held on the fridge by a magnet. It was a picture of the famous Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence outlined by a beautiful sunset. I idly picked it up and turned it over.

I recognised Dave’s scrawl immediately. “Merry Christmas. Rome, Venice, Milan, and Florence all fantastic. Off to see the rest of Tuscany. Staying at the house of a lady friend I met. Will be bringing her to meet you all in February or March. Love you. Dad.”

I don’t know if I screamed in frustration before I collapsed or not.

*****

Now lighten the fuck up!

The owner of a golf course on the Gold Coast was confused about paying an invoice, so he decided to ask his secretary for some mathematical help. He called her into his office and said, “You graduated from university and I need some help. If I were to give you $20,000, minus 14%, how much would you take off?”

The secretary thought a moment, and then replied, “Everything but my earrings.