Their Secret Wife (Shadows Between Lies Book 2)

by Nicky Webber

  Logan lifts his glass and grins. ‘Well, I’m sure Fred will agree with me, that you two could!’ They laugh. ‘It’s all about incompetent communication and false advertising married to retarded social values,’ he concludes with a flourish.

  The conversation meanders over various other topics, settling onto Maddy and Fred’s son, Hawke Davis.

  ‘I have a real unease about him lately,’ Maddy says. ‘He looks like apple pie and ice-cream wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but I asked him last week where he got the Oakley sunglasses from. He said he found them on Venice Beach while walking the dog. I mean. Do you believe that?’

  The other three all speak at once, accepting the situation is plausible. People lose sunglasses all the time. ‘He’s such a tall, dark, good-looking guy,’ Mila says, as if Hawke’s appearance makes him innocent.

  ‘Yeah, he’s like Fred was at that age,’ says Logan, ‘hooking up all over town!’

  ‘Not like your romantic trials and tribulations, Logan,’ Mila says, upgrading the conversation. For a fleeting moment Fred considers if Mila is aware of her husband’s connection to Maddy, but dismisses his own paranoia.

  Mila changes the topic. ‘Remember when we were horse riding on the beach last summer?’ Logan says to divert the discussion. ‘It was fun. We both had superb horses, but we hadn’t ridden for years.’

  ‘I’m impressed you both made it into the saddle,’ giggles Maddy, relieved the conversation has steered away from her son Hawke.

  ‘Me too,’ Fred says.

  ‘Well, it’s like riding a horse. All those childhood memories of pony club competitions flood back and in ten minutes I was into it and says.

  ‘Well, it’s like riding a horse. Childhood memories of pony club competitions flood back and in ten minutes the horse took off down the beach.’

  ‘She did,’ Logan says. ‘It horrified me, thinking I may get bucked right off. But my horse galloped onwards. Scary!’

  ‘When we got back to the club,’ explains Mila, ‘I was catching my breath and leaning in the saddle patting my ride when Logan finally turns up, still upright on the horse thank God. He asked me; Why is your horse so hot and sweaty? I replied; Wouldn’t you be hot and sweaty if you’d been between my thighs for two hours?’ Mila laughs as the others give a raucous shriek from around the table.

  ‘Enough drinking for you, Mrs. Jones!’ said Logan, chuckling at the memory. d took off down the beach.’

  ‘She did,’ Logan says. ‘It horrified me, thinking I may get bucked right off. But my horse galloped onwards. Scary!’

  ‘When we got back to the club,’ explains Mila, ‘I was catching my breath and leaning in the saddle patting my ride when Logan finally turns up, still upright on the horse thank God. He asked me; Why is your horse so hot and sweaty? I replied; Wouldn’t you be hot and sweaty if you’d been between my thighs for two hours?’ Mila laughs as the others give a raucous shriek from around the table.

  ‘Enough drinking for you, Mrs. Jones!’ said Logan, chuckling at the memory.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Dreaming

  Maddy wakes with a start. Her beating heart flutters like a butterfly trapped inside her ribcage. It hammers with increasing agitation against the constraints of captivity. Her short, gasping breaths thrash against the limits of her tightening lungs. She tries to lie still, camouflaged in a pretentious sleep, secretly burying her fear within the folds of their comfortable marital bed. The rhythmical snoring of her husband, Fred, punctuates the bitter silence as he lies next to her in the darkness. Their lives are comfortable with the usual demands of a mortgage and numerous bills to pay. They're safe, bland, secure existence is not how she imagined her life would turn out.

  Once a free spirit, Maddy now feels like a ground down shadow of her original self after treading the company line for the past twenty years. A mere alien husk now occupies her flaying dreams. Where had the original Maddy gone? Replaced by a robot. Sleepwalking through life at the office and shattered by domestic demands at home. She thought of putting ‘smell the roses’ on her cell phone as a personal reminder, but it was too late for those platitudes. She has already forgotten what they smell like.

  Her agitation multiplies as the darkness presses against her face, her eyes wide open, gazing blankly into nothingness. Sleep won’t alleviate her gnawing thoughts. There’s no escape from her perpetual inner voice. Over and over, words keep asking: What are you going to do? Are you going to live the rest of your existence on commuter autopilot? Are you happy, feeling satisfied with love, life, and work, or are you numbed by mediocrity?

  Her thoughts pull her back to the condescending comments from her work associate. Maddy had known Ron, a tall, miserable middle-aged man, for about a year. He partnered with her on a project to improve customer processes. His arrogance and patronizing attitude is only secondary to his inflated self-opinion. Yet again, after traveling into the office the previous weekend to catch up with progress reports, Ron sat at his desk across from hers, glancing up when she walked through the door into the drab, open plan office.

  Thirty minutes later, he strolled over to her workstation, standing behind her back trying to read her laptop screen. Maddy swung around.

  ‘Hey Ron,’ she smiled. ‘How do you think the project’s going?’

  He gave a non-committal shrug, but she could sense he wanted to impart some pearls of business management wisdom for her benefit.

  ‘You know I have a special relationship with Warwick. We go back quite a few years. He often calls me on the weekends to discuss progress and is interested in my opinions.’

  Maddy plastered a smile on her face but seethes underneath. Their direct reporting boss, Warwick Jarvis, had asked her to complete the reports and circulate them before next week’s meeting.

  ‘So, I’ve made a few amendments to the draft report,’ announced Ron. ‘We need it to align with Warwick’s requirements and socialize the concept into the framework with the teams.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ responded Maddy, struggling to suppress her rising anger and frustration with meaningless corporate jargon. ‘He told me…’

  ‘The problem with you, Maddy, is that I communicate with Warwick at a Level Eight,’ he hesitated and frowned, leaning over her desk. ‘You know Business Communications Level Theory, don’t you?’

  Maddy stared at Ron’s narrow lipped mouth, not wanting to listen to his moving parts anymore.

  ‘I’m afraid you communicate at a Level One,’ he continued with his thinly veiled put-down. ‘So, it’s only natural that Warwick wants to run his ideas past me, so we can discuss them before implementation.’

  ‘I have work to do. We’ll talk about these ideas at next week’s team catch-up,’ Maddy replied, turning back to her computer and ignoring Ron for the rest of her life.

  She tried to step back from the coal face and view the motivation for callous corporate behavior. It came down to the global obsession with the mighty dollar, bolstered by the WASP work ethic. This combo was a slow, deliberate work-life death for both Maddy and Fred. She could feel her will to live being leeched from her soul. It confined them every day to a claustrophobic, gray office gazing at flickering on-screen spreadsheets of unrealistic targets. She faced daily team meetings, discussing inane business issues and arguing with non-compliant staff. All that wasted energy. Is this living?

  Having things meant being a taxpayer, shackled to a long line of work demands, exacerbated by new technology’s ability to drive everyone during every waking moment. How life had changed. There had never been a time when so many humans, crammed into massive battery-hen office blocks, were trapped by mortgages and performance targets generated by algorithms. Like sweating chickens, force-fed corporate cool-aid as they continued to lay golden eggs for absentee shareholders. Something is very wrong. No wonder she couldn’t sleep. They must find a more fulfilling way of working and living. Something better than continuous credit traps and mindless money shuffling at the domestic precipice.


  Her inner voice continued to banter. Do you want to be the winner, the top dog, the dog eats dog? Or do you want another way? Another way was enticingly close to the surface of her consciousness, but her ideas were never practical enough for actual life. There was always some glaring hole. Contemporary life is corrupt and saturated in its own greasy fat. ‘ESCAPE!’ she shouted out loud in a harsh whisper as Fred’s breathing stopped.

  Maddy turns over again, pulling the duvet up to cover her ears as if it would stifle her inner voice as she tried to grasp at the fringes of sleep’s holy grail. But her thoughts swirl as Fred’s rhythmical snoring kicks up a notch. Bored with her own head story, she listens to Fred’s breathing. He’s already out cold after a week of overtime and the killing hours ensnared in daily demands. His tall body is curled up in a foetal position, hugging himself in a deep sleep. His muscular frame built from a lifetime of competitive cycling. Even when it wasn’t a race, he was still competing. She closes her eyes again, to attract sleep and turn off her relentless thoughts.

  Both Fred and Logan regularly cycled on a fun ride together on weekends and, afterwards, they would lambaste one another about who was the beater with the fastest time and the highest suffer score. Maddy smiles to herself. She thought suffer scores should apply to modern politico-economics across global societies. Then the world would learn who’s paying the price for hard-nosed capitalism.

  Their competitive husbands let this attitude bleed into other aspects of their lives, wanting a better car and a bigger house. And, the latest bike, couriering home the most expensive imported gear to go with it. There is no end to keeping up with the Jones’. Literally, Logan and Mila Jones always seem better off, not that they ever discussed wealth. Even Fred’s siblings and other relatives in his family owned every available gadget and condiment to make life run a little sweeter.

  The only person Fred didn’t feel driven to impress was his lifelong friend Logan. This stuff didn’t seem to matter to either man. ‘Things’ didn’t account for much in their shared lives where laughter, sports scores and challenging one another set their adrenalin going. They both accepted each other’s shortcomings too, foibles, warts and all. Their relationship was an anchor where shared conversations about anything and everything was the norm. One never out-wit, out-maneuvered or out-purchased the other. They both experienced their friendship as a kind of sanctuary from the sharp edges of the real world, which included the demands of their devoted wives too.

  Both Mila and Maddy are grateful their husbands were allies. All four friends interconnected with one another at almost every level throughout their collective years together.

  Something in his genes drove Fred. Like many males, he was drowning in the gene pool, wanting to be the winner, head and shoulders above the morass. He had a sharp, acerbic sense of humor, which often contained a little too much acid, for his own good. Over the years Fred alienated and offended a few friends and work colleagues, with his take on the political landscape and his complete disregard for any form of religion.

  He maintained he didn’t need an imaginary friend to interpret the world for him; he was well enough informed to work it out himself. Last Christmas he had included a small card with his gift to Maddy; ‘Merry Imaginary Friend Day. To the love of my life from your ever-loyal atheist.’ No kisses, but the mention of love was quite something! His intelligence and eccentric view of the world was shocking, but often entertaining. He never ceased to trigger laughter or shrieks of horror. He kept her on her toes, never boring but she never knew what he was about to say.

  Maddy forgave his various eccentric transgressions and tried to explain to him what it meant to live in a state of grace with others. This applied to his terms of engagement with her elderly mother. It was obvious he had no genuine concern.

  ‘Most people are twats!’ he proclaimed. This was a familiar refrain and a similar catchphrase that her father often stated. Both men expressed horror that democracy allowed everyone a vote. They believed most people didn’t understand the minutiae of economic or political expediency and voted like idiots, which explained the mess in the world. Fred sited UK Brexit plans and the Trump phenomena as cases in point. Maddy nodded sagely to avoid any heated discussion. Nothing to be done, other than the mindless footfall on the treadmill of day-to-day middle-class frustration. Fred’s wit and intelligence, like her father’s, were the ingredients which attracted Maddy to him. She wondered if she had sought and married her father after all?

  Maddy’s eyes sprung open in the darkness. She started counting her breaths. In-out-in, forcing her heart into calmness and tries to switch her dark thoughts to her happy place. There aren’t many to choose from. It had been her experience that temporary happiness always gave way to bitter pain. So why change the habit of a lifetime?

  ‘What day is it?’ she questions herself. This wakes her from a slight drift into a dozing sleep. Friday. Blessed are the weekends, for they break up the relentless repetitiveness of the day job. After work and standing in the supermarket queue on Friday night, Maddy imagined she was a gerbil on a treadmill. The penetrating electronic shrillness of the cash registers punctuates Maddy’s zombie-self, long mindless lines, sucking out the last vestiges of hope before the weekend housework and her son’s sports activities begin.

  She rolls over again, remaining motionless in the early hours. Her scruffy hair disguises alert and resistant brown eyes that will not close and a brain engaged in sleep avoidance. She considers today’s workers as the new slaves. Unchained but imprisoned. Trapped by bank loans, credit applications, and ongoing revolving debt. It’s slick how banks call it revolving credit, she thought, like it’s free money and a credit to everyone who signs up! The things you must have, but don’t need, has us all in a choke-hold. Like many, Maddy spends much of her spare, and often sleeping time, thinking about ways to jump the capitalist fence and escape urban dronism.

  CHAPTER 4

  Twenty Years Ago

  After graduating and working a few years, the four remained firm friends. They paired up in an uncommon combination, recognizing that love and loyalty combined with a close friendship could last a lifetime. Both couples, Maddy and Fred Davis, married together with Logan and Mila Jones on April Fool’s Day. Both women argued with their soon-to-be-husbands that the 1st April date would ensure they never forgot their anniversaries as they committed to marriage like so many other fools. Marriage seemed a collective madness, a life stage when friends and family expected marital compliance and so all four played joined the game.

  It was only a year earlier when Mila stayed over at Fred and Logan’s apartment, sorting out new accommodation for herself. The dynamics of their friendship shifted. She had broken up with a recent boyfriend and Fred was away visiting his parents’ that weekend. Even now, she couldn’t explain what changed, but somehow she and Logan clicked. He seemed a bit lost and more compliant than usual, offering to help wash the dishes and volunteering to get take-outs for dinner. It was seven nights together with the other flat-mates absent, and so they did a lot of talking.

  ‘I love Pink Floyd,’ Mila stated, when Logan turned on some music.

  ‘Me too,’ said Logan. ‘I thought you’d be more of a Carol King type. It’s been great having you here and getting to know you better.’

  ‘Well, well, Mr. Davis, I can tell you I’m impressed with you, as well. You and Fred together are just lethal,’ she chuckled easily.

  As time passed, the pair realized they had more than music in common, and within a few weeks they were a serious item on campus. Over the years they became inseparable and with Fred and Maddy talking marriage, they too danced a tango around the topic until marriage seemed an obvious step.

  The anticipation of living happily ever after was a straightforward decision. It spurred the foursome onwards. Since then, both couples had spent holidays and weekends together, friends since primary school and closer still, after marriage. Maddy was the first to become a mother to a son, Blake, followed a f
ew months later by Mila and Logan’s first child, Sacha. But that was over twenty-years ago and so much had impacted their lives along the way.

  Raising their children together created a lifelong bond that would never fade. They shared laughter and tears, gluing the two women together closer than any relationship they had ever experienced. Logan and Fred often talked about how amazed and shocked they were at the level of intimate detail the two women exchanged. Their husbands had little idea of exactly how much the two friends talked about. Every marital stress, every emotional high and low, every desire for everything they felt became the bedrock of their female bond.

  Soft afternoon light played on yellowing fall leaves fluttering in the gentle breeze that lulled Maddy into the past as she sat in the passenger seat next to Fred, gazing out at the scenery. Waves of sadness washed over her as flashbacks brought tears to her eyes. She blinked several times, trying to hide her heartache, not wanting her husband to notice. Strains of Enya played on the car stereo, reflecting the years gone by. Had it been over thirty years since she had met Mila? Memories of friends long dead laughing and chatting excitedly about a wedding, a child’s birth, or merely exchanging gossip. Fragments of family celebrations, shared meals and fun. How had time passed by so quickly and here she was back home where her heart belonged?

  The car weaved amongst the traffic. The broken white road markings had a pulse of their own, replicating the relentless rhythm of life. A life that waited for no one.

  ‘You okay?’ Fred asked his wife, glancing across at her from the driver’s seat.

  Maddy was unable to speak. They had married amongst the grape vines outside Sonoma, where the distant purple mountains reached the pale blue sky with strength and beauty surrounding the wine growing hills and valleys. A nod to France or Italy, Maddy thought, as they exchanged their vows all those years ago.

  ‘I promise to always love you,’ smiled Fred, his youthful blue eyes glued to hers. ‘Even when you’re a pain in the ass.’ The small gathering of friends and family standing under an ancient oak laughed loudly. ‘When you sleep in my T-shirts and refuse to hand them back.’ The gathering tittered with laughter and listened intently. ‘Or when you have a girl’s night out and swear on a stack of Bibles you didn’t drive home drunk but then spend two days in bed recovering.’