A Virtual Affair

by Tracie Podger

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere, Dini boy. Time for a walk,” I said, sliding my legs over the side of the bed and sitting up.

  The word ‘walk’ had Dini in a frenzy. He chased his tail and narrowly missed knocking me down the stairs as he rushed past. I grabbed his lead, pulled on my Wellingtons and coat and opened the back door.

  The house sat behind a farm and woods. We had a little gate that led straight into the field and although I never needed to put Dini on a lead, I slung it around my neck anyway.

  The wind had died a little but the cold stung my face as I pulled my hood up. I walked and thought, planned and even spoke out loud the conversation I would have with Michael when he returned home—if he returned home.

  Many times he would stay in London; where, I had no idea. Well, I did but refused to acknowledge it. He had early meetings he would tell me. ‘Early meetings’ seemed to have become code for staying with the slut he was currently fucking. I giggled as I spoke the swearwords out loud. I knew her, of course. Her husband had left her and Michael was the shoulder she used to cry on. She was his golfing partner, a typical, middle class, cling to anything with money type. She was welcome to him. As much as Michael didn’t love me, I didn’t love him either. It had saddened me when I’d first realised.

  I walked my normal route, calling to Dini when he ran from my vision and headed home. I kicked off my Wellingtons, caked with mud, before entering the back door. Dini ran into the kitchen and straight to his bed in front of the Aga, the warmest place in the house.

  I checked the mobile I’d left on the kitchen counter and noticed some missed calls. One from Casey who had left a message telling me she’d call me another time, and one from Ben. After making tea and settling at the kitchen table, I called Ben back.

  “Hey, Mum, been for a walk?” he asked once he’d answered.

  “I have, sorry I missed your call. What are you up to?”

  Ben told me about his latest landscaping project. I listened, loving to hear the enthusiasm in his voice as he spoke. He’d dropped out of college. Like me, he wasn’t academic but loved to be outdoors. He’d started his own landscaping business, initially just helping the locals with their gardens. He’d asked Michael for a loan. Michael refused, of course. Casey could have what she wanted because she was still in education; Ben had to beg. Aunty Carla came to the rescue and helped him get his business off the ground.

  “I have news,” I said once he’d finished telling about a wonderful garden he was planning. “I’m going on holiday to the Maldives with Carla.”

  “Wow, that sounds amazing. When?”

  “Two week’s time, and I have a favour to ask. Can you look after Dini?”

  “Of course. And two week’s time? Blimey, Mum, you don’t hang about. How did you get that past the old man?”

  Ben rarely referred to Michael as Dad. No matter how hard I tried to protect him, he’d always felt the distance from Michael.

  “I haven’t told him yet,” I said with a giggle.

  “How do you think he’ll take the news?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be thrilled for me,” I said with a snort.

  “Fuck him. You go, Mum. If you need some money, I have some saved.”

  Was it wrong of me to never chastise my son for swearing? He only ever did when he talked about his father. Ben was twenty-five years old, a grown man and one I was extremely proud of. He lived with Kerry, the most beautiful and kindest young woman I’d ever met. Casey and Michael disliked her, of course; she wasn’t from the County set.

  “Thank you, darling, but I won’t take your money.”

  We chatted a little longer. I asked how Kerry was. Ben was a little concerned that she had been poorly of late, but we ended our conversation with promises to speak the following day. Ben called me every single day. Casey I heard from once a month, if I was lucky—unless she wanted something.

  I hadn’t heard from Michael and was reluctant to call him. He was always cross when I rang him at work but the evening was drawing in and I wanted to prepare dinner. I decided to send him a text.

  Can you let me know what time you’ll be home? I want to get dinner on.

  I hesitated before pressing send, not really knowing why. Any form of communication with Michael was difficult. His reply was quick to arrive and curt, as usual.

  Won’t be. Staying in London.

  I slammed the phone on the table. I wanted to ask if he was staying with her. I wanted to call him all the names under the sun, show him how far from the gutter my vocabulary had—or rather hadn’t—risen. But I did none of that. I did what I always did—I ignored it.

  He must have known that I knew. Although nothing had ever been said, I’d washed his shirts, stinking of her sickly and overpowering perfume. I’d scrubbed the lipstick stain from his collar and laughed, bitterly, at how corny that was. I wanted to confront him; it would be the ideal opportunity for us to separate. But I wasn’t confident I’d walk out of our marriage with enough to live on.

  I hated that I felt that way. I hated that I was only staying for the security. It made me feel weak. I hadn’t worked the whole time we had been married and I was unsure what I could do. I’d been a secretary for a lovely old gentleman in his accountancy practice before getting married. My typing skills were still up to speed; maybe I should start to look for a job. Maybe I could actually start that plan I’d written down years ago—Get Jayne A Life plan.

  I had a plan, a very detailed list of things to do before I died. I’d just never started it. I’d had dreams and hopes from childhood for an exciting future; I hadn’t fulfilled any of them. Instead I was stuck in a marriage of convenience with a man who didn’t like me and was too scared to do anything about it.

  “Good morning, how did he take the news?” Carla said as soon as I picked up her call.

  “He didn’t come home.”

  “With the slut?”

  “I imagine so,” I replied.

  “Oh, Jayne. Please do something about this. Kick him out, anything.”

  We had the same conversation on a regular basis. What Carla didn’t understand was that she was a much stronger character than I was, and for all of Charles’ faults, he didn’t argue that much when he’d received the division of property and the payment he had to make. I believed Michael would fight me to the bitter end. He’d deliberately wear me down. He would make sure I was dragged through court, and he’d have the backing of his wealthy parents, not that Michael didn’t earn well himself.

  “Why don’t I come over? We can plan,” she said.

  “Plan for what? But come on over anyway. I’ll put the kettle on.”

  I loved Carla; we had known one another from birth. Our parents were friends and had lived next door to each other in our small terrace houses in South East London, but sometimes she didn’t ‘get me’. She didn’t understand my fears, she didn’t see the forced smile I planted on my face every single day when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry over my pitiful existence.

  I just wanted a husband who loved me, children who respected me, and to have a life I could be proud of. I felt guilty all the time. I was living a lie and it was becoming harder to conceal my sadness from everyone.

  I heard a car pull on the drive. Dini ran to the door, growling. He was a Neapolitan Mastiff, a dog I’d found a couple of years ago tied to a tree in the middle of winter and rescued, much to Michael’s disgust.

  Carla had a key and while I poured hot water into the teapot, she let herself in. I chuckled as I heard her try to stop Dini greet her.

  “No. Down. This is Prada, not fucking Primark,” she said.

  “Dini,” I called for him. “Leave the Prada alone.”

  “Remind me to visit in sweats next time,” Carla said as she placed her new handbag on the kitchen table.

  “Like?” she asked, sweeping her hand over the pale blue leather.

  “It’s a bag.”

  “It’s a lovely Michael Kors bag.” />
  Carla wasn’t materialistic but she did enjoy spending her divorce settlement on nice things. I didn’t begrudge her at all. She appreciated what she had, she didn’t take anything for granted, and was way too generous with her friends.

  “Tea?”

  “Mmm, please. So, we need a plan, an exit plan,” she said.

  I sighed as I sat and placed the teapot, mugs and a jug of milk on the table.

  “Carla, can we do this another time?”

  She looked at me. “Of course. You look tired.”

  I hadn’t gotten much sleep the previous evening. I wasn’t getting much sleep any evening. My body ached from tiredness. Tears formed in my eyes and she took my hands in hers.

  “It’s okay. We’ll get you through this, I promise.”

  “I’m tired, Carla, not upset. But I can’t deal with Michael right now. I don’t care if he spent the night with her, I really don’t. And I know I have to face it at some point, but I’m too tired right now to do that.”

  “But it must hurt,” she said gently.

  “Of course it hurts and maybe I’m lying to myself when I say I don’t care. Maybe that’s my defence mechanism to stop it hurting as much as it should, but I don’t love him, he doesn’t love me. Why neither of us can just walk away is beyond me.”

  “He won’t leave because he thinks it’s going to cost him too much. He told Charles that ages ago. He wants to wear you down enough so that you leave. And you know what? It makes no difference in court. He’s been having affairs since the day you met him.”

  As blunt as she could be, Carla wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. I appreciated her brutal honesty, most times.

  “I have to prove it though, don’t I?”

  “You know her, you know her name and bloody address, Jayne. It’s not hard and I don’t believe she would want the scandal. She’s played the poor wife of an adulterer herself for long enough. Who knows, maybe that’s why her husband left her for someone else, maybe he knew.”

  “I love you, you’re my best friend, but let’s talk about this after the holiday.”

  I felt badgered. She meant well, but when Carla was on a mission it was difficult to stop her.

  “Okay, but please, promise me this. You will think about it. I can pay for the lawyer. You will walk away with something, I can guarantee you of that.”

  It all boiled down to money. I felt like a money-grabbing bitch. I hadn’t worked. I hadn’t contributed financially to our home, to the bills, to anything. All I wanted was to be able to feel secure. I didn’t want half of what he had, just enough to keep me going until I got on my feet, and even that made me feel shallow. I had wanted to be a stay at home mum. No one had forced me to give up a career, not that I had one really. I wanted to make a nice home for my family.

  “Have you packed yet?” Carla asked, jolting me from my thoughts.

  “I started to have a look. It was depressing.”

  “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  We headed up the stairs to my bedroom. I’d made a small pile of things I thought suitable. They were waiting to have a run through the washing machine.

  “Is that it?” she asked as she held up the pink sundress I’d found.

  “I like that dress. And yes, that is the pile I have, at the moment, of course.”

  “It stinks.”

  “It won’t once I’ve washed it.” I snatched the sundress from her. There was the distinct smell of plastic from the storage bag the dress had been living in.

  Carla opened my wardrobe and began to rifle through. “Do you have anything else of colour?” she asked.

  I stood beside her. “No, doesn’t appear so.”

  My wardrobe consisted of black, grey, blue and drab brown attire. I hadn’t realised just how depressing it all looked.

  “I’ll bring over some things tomorrow,” she said as she closed the door and moved to the chest of drawers.

  “Yeah, right. You’re what, a size eight? I’m a fourteen, if I suck my belly in.”

  She was ignoring me. “This is nice,” she said and she turned and held up a white silk camisole top with red poppies.

  I took the top from her and looked at the label. “That’s not mine,” I said quietly.

  “What do you mean it’s not… Surely it’s not hers?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too big for Kerry and too small for me.” I sat heavily on the bed.

  “You don’t remember washing it?”

  “No, maybe Kerry did. She uses the washing machine because theirs is broken.”

  Carla sat on the bed next to me.

  “He’s had her in my home,” I whispered.

  For once, she kept quiet. I took the top from her and folded it. Why I folded it so neatly, I had no idea, but I placed it on the top of the chest of drawers.

  “Let’s go through the other drawers,” I said.

  I wanted a distraction, wanted to find some nice clothes to take on a holiday I was determined to enjoy. I clenched my jaw closed and emptied the contents of the drawer on the bed.

  Michael came home unannounced late that afternoon. He took me by surprise; I couldn’t recall a time he’d arrived home before seven o’clock. I had arrived back from walking the dog when I heard a noise upstairs. The floorboards creaked above my head as I shrugged off my coat in the kitchen. I stilled and listened. As I crept to the bottom of the stairs I could hear his muffled voice. Remembering which step to avoid for fear of giving myself away on the loose treads, I climbed the stairs.

  “I know, I will. I’ll discuss it with her tonight. For now I have to find some clean clothes. Is it that hard to have clean shirts available for me?” he said.

  Clean shirts? He had a wardrobe full of them. I paused on the landing.

  “I have to do everything myself, what with working all the bloody hours. Honestly, this move is going to be wonderful.”

  Do everything myself? Move?

  I moved closer to the bedroom door, thanking myself for insisting on a deep pile carpet for the upstairs. His door was ajar; I could see him on his mobile pacing the room.

  “I know, baby,” he whispered.

  I’d heard enough. At no point in the whole time we had been together had he called me anything other than Jayne. Or dumb, that was a word he used a lot. I forced a cough and watched him freeze, shut off the phone and then he surprised me by putting it in his underwear drawer.

  I marched on the spot for a few seconds before pushing open his bedroom door.

  “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t know who was up here,” I said.

  “Unlike you to be brave enough to confront an intruder, Jayne. Why didn’t you send up that useless dog?”

  “Mmm, I wonder what would have happened if I’d set my useless dog on you. Who were you talking to?”

  “No one. I may have been mumbling to myself, rehearsing a rather important pitch I have tomorrow but since you’ve never been interested in my work, I won’t bore you with the details. I doubt you’d understand anyway.”

  Pompous prick, I thought.

  “Before you rush off again, I have some news. Carla invited me on holiday with her.”

  I held my breath. “I hope you turned down her offer,” he said.

  “No, I said I’d go.”

  He turned to face me. “And how do you think you’ll pay for this holiday?”

  “It’s my birthday gift,” I said. My voice grew quieter.

  He laughed. “Gosh, I bet you feel like the poor relation. We don’t accept charity, Jayne. Tell her you can’t possibly go.”

  He stared at me with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “You know what? Yes, I do feel like the poor relation, thanks to you and your fucking budgets. I haven’t had a holiday since the kids were small and even then I was the one to ferry them from activity to activity while you sat and recuperated on the beach.”

  “I work, Jayne, fifty hours a week or more. If anyone needs a holiday, it’s me. And i
f you can’t have a conversation with me without using foul language, we’ll continue this when you’ve grown up. I have a dinner to attend.”

  He turned his back and headed to his wardrobe. I stood with my stomach in knots and a mouthful of expletives that I kept locked in.

  Fuck you, fucking prick, dick-head, twat, ran through my mind.

  “It’s not right, what she’s doing. You should see poor Charles…”

  Before he finished his sentence I verbally launched at him.

  “What was not right was poor Charles fucking his secretary. I mean, how clichéd can you get.”

  I walked away.

  I was sitting in the back garden wrapped up against the biting wind when Michael left the house. No words of goodbye were said, just the slam of the front door and the spray of gravel against the side wall of the house as he sped from the drive, I guessed.

  I raised the hand containing the one cigarette I had a day, waving it at him in defiance of his no smoking rules. And then the tears fell. Why couldn’t I stand up to him? Why couldn’t I tell him how he made me feel? He belittled in such a subtle way it wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me. He made me feel worthless. Being a stay at home mum wasn’t a job; it was a vocation for me. I didn’t envy the women that had to work and bring up their children. I didn’t envy those that chose to work. I did what I thought best for our children. I kept house, I was a mum, there was a dinner on the table each evening, clean clothes in the wardrobe every day and a tidy house.

  A thought hit me. I stubbed out the cigarette and made my way back up the stairs. The phone I’d seen him throw in his drawer was gone. He’d obviously been speaking to her. I sat on his bed and thought about what I’d heard.

  He’d said ‘this move’. What had he meant by that? Although I had no reason to, I opened his wardrobe to confirm to myself. A row of neatly starched and pressed white shirts greeted me. So he had no clean shirts? I wondered just how dumb she was to believe him.