Conclusion 1

On Monday morning Early went to work at the usual time and upon arrival checked his mail finding his company Visa statement and when seeing the hotel account for his last trip listed he suddenly thought what surprises Susan's Visa statement might contain. He told Carole to cancel his days appointments and went home and went into the den/home office where he looked for and found her statements.

He checked out the last 12 months statements and found that about every 2 to 3 weeks there were entries for a days accommodation at a middle of the road motel, the Welcome Inn situated about 15 minutes from Susan's office. He then rang a private investigator he knew through work and asked to meet him at lunch time at a nearby coffee shop. He found a recent photo of Susan and went back to work until lunch time when he met with Laurie the PI and told him of his suspicions and asked that he go to the motel and see if he could get a description or name of anyone Susan may have been there with.

Laurie rang him late afternoon and said he was lucky that a $50.00 bribe had opened the clerk's memory and he got a reasonable description of the woman who had been meeting Susan there fairly regularly. After racking his mind as to who the woman could be, Early thought of Jennifer and suddenly it clicked remembering the little private chats and extended visits to the restroom that the 2 women seemed to constantly have when they were either at work functions or when the 2 couples dined together.

He felt that this was the ultimate betrayal, her choosing another woman for sex instead of him. Hetero adultery he allowed was bad but not earth shatteringly bad, whereas same sex adultery was the lowest card in the pack.

At home that night they spoke to each other only when absolutely necessary and that night slept again in their separate beds.

Next morning, he Tuesday contacted the law firm which handled his companies business and was put through to an acquaintance Tim, who handled the family law side of the practice and set up a meeting with him for 11.00am that morning. He told him of the 2 instances he definitely knew of and she had admitted to where she had stayed in both cases 2 days and nights with John Strickner and John Stockton and also of the trysts with Jennifer at the motel where he was confident that sexual liaisons had taken place. Why else would they meet in such a situation?

He asked Tim to act on his behalf and arrange for their bank accounts to be frozen mid morning the following day Wednesday and to freeze all cards except her Visa card which was in her name only, the other cards being in both names. He gave Tim written authority to do this. He also arranged for $10, 000 to be transferred to a new account in his name only. He then arranged with a local locksmith to change the house locks mid morning Wednesday also and then he arranged with Carole to move his appointments so that he could be missing until lunch time so that he could let the locksmith in.

He decided then and there that he was going to give her as much grief and humiliation as possible due to her behaviour so he set that ball rolling that night Tuesday when they were in their separate beds he made sure that she could hear him masturbating and when she commented on his doing that when she was there for him he just said that he was scared on STD's and goodness knows what she had picked up through her dalliances. Her sobbing went on until he fell asleep and could hear her no longer.

He awoke at the usual time Wednesday morning and followed his usual routine except for going into the office. He drove around for a while and returned home around 9.30am to wait for the locksmith who arrived at 10.00am and spent the next 90 minutes changing and upgrading all the locks. He then sat down with a coffee and rang Susan's mother and told her an abridged version of what was happening and felt uneasy when she broke down when she realised what a trollop her only child was. He arranged to meet with her in a few days time to talk to her about the lose/lose situation he was in.

Early then rang one of the other partners of her employer and gave him also an abridged version of the current situation. The partner was extremely angry that she and Jennifer had compromised the firm's good name in such a way and he also of course knew of her affairs with the 2 Johns.

He then rang Jennifer's husband Brian at work and filled him in on his findings and Brian went absolutely ballistic after a period of silence and told Early that he had known something was not quite right for some time and although he had checked the dirty laundry basket several times he could not find any sign of her having been with another man and now he knew why.

Early got home at the usual time late afternoon and waited for Susan to attempt to enter the house and he would be able to twist the knife a little more. His car was, unknown to her, in the garage and she noticed that the automatic door opener would not work to allow her to park her BMW beside his but did not take much notice of that alone. At this stage she did not know whether he was home or not. When her key would not open either the front or back doors it still did not click with her so she rang their home phone from her cell phone and could hear it ringing with no answer so she rang Early's cell phone which he answered immediately. She told him that she could not gain admittance to the house and he then told here that he had had the locks changed and suggested that she could stay at the Welcome Inn Motel where he knew they would accept her Visa card. Her scream was quite audible to him inside at her hearing this and she collapsed in a heap at the front door and he let her lay there, watching from an upper storey window. When she came around he rang her and he told here that this was only the start of what she was going to suffer and suggested that she get a lawyer as she would certainly need one. He also quoted the passage from the prenuptial agreement which states "that in the event of adultery by either party, the other party would be granted an uncontested divorce, custody of any children, ownership of all properties both real personal including jewellery, furniture, homes, cars and virtually everything except clothes," and told her that he would adhere to the agreement to the letter as he was sure that she would have if he had been the adulterer.

The next day the shit hit the fan at Susan and Jennifer's office with both of them being sacked on the spot. John Stockton was severely censured by the other partners and it was suggested very strongly that he took early retirement.

The following Saturday Susan rang Early and asked if she could come and speak to him. He told her that she was never setting foot in the house again but gave in to her pleading and arranged to meet her at a local coffee shop at 3.00pm. When she walked in he noticed that she looked like shit, her face was lacklustre and even her shoulders drooped.

They went through the current scenario and she agreed not to contest the divorce or contest the prenuptial agreement and he told her that although he had not taken out an intervention order, he would if she tried to enter the home or harass him. The points he made to her were that by her reluctance to honour their wedding vows, and her failure to be able keep her knees together she had forfeited which was to then a good marriage, good home, a good social life, more than adequate money, a good job and career, and the respect of her former friends and their mutual friends.

Being a city of around only 90, 000 the word had spread and she became a social pariah, and she became virtually unemployable except in menial minimum wage positions like waitressing and checkout operating. She told him that John Stockton would not accept responsibility for the child and with her knowing that her financial situation would be precarious for possibly the rest of her life she had an abortion. This sent her further into a depressed state and she even contemplated suicide but thankfully did not take that drastic step.

They parted in a civil manner with her begging him to trust her again and take her back. He told her 3 times bitten, 4 times shy.

Early returned to his single life and started dating again, nothing serious but at most times enjoyable. After the split up he started to leave home a half hour earlier in the morning and have a hot breakfast at a diner near the office, have his lunch at his desk and most nights have dinner at a nearby hotel which served good value nutritional meals, thereby only having to feed himself at weekends. After some time he started to notice that a pretty but not especially beautiful woman around his age had her breakfast also at the same diner and they started to nod to each other and then bid each other good morning and after a couple of weeks when the diner was packed they were put in a position where Early asked if her if he could use the vacant chair at her table. Her name was Belinda. She agreed and they started eating together each morning and became increasingly familiar with each other until Early asked her to have dinner with him the following night, a Friday night. She said she would love to and he agreed to pick her up at 7.00pm at her apartment.

They had a great time and they swapped their stories with Early not being too explicit in his case. She spoke of her relationship of 2 years breaking up recently and each sensed that the other had been badly burnt. They kept seeing each other and eventually Susan asked him to visit her home for a home cooked meal to which he quickly agreed. Their relationship problems were not mentioned and they had a very nice evening with them kissing as he left.

They started frequently having meals at each others homes and after a few weeks they grew more comfortable with each other with quite a bit of old fashioned necking until their hormones took over one night and he stayed the night with them making love gently and passionately.

They started spending their weekends together either going on trips for the weekend or just crashing at one or the others home. They were both a bit cautious about committing and hesitantly Early asked her to move in with him. She did and the only thing missing in their lives and romance was a marriage certificate.

They dined out at a very nice restaurant one night and who should be waiting on their table but Susan. She looked like something the cat had dragged in and she spoke in a nasally whine, such was her low self-esteem. Early was very polite and introduced her to Belinda as his ex wife. At last there was closure.

When they got home Early found that a great weight had been lifted from his being and felt that Belinda was the one he could spend the rest of his life with. Little did he know that she had felt the same way for quite a while and had been hoping and praying that the air would clear between them and they could commit.

Early ran into Jennifer's ex husband Brian one day and Brian told him that after the dual spit up, Jennifer and Susan had shared a small apartment for a few weeks but it did not last, with Jennifer returning to her home town in an endeavour to make a fresh start and escape the stigma she had suffered due to her actions.

At this moment Belinda and Early have been married for just over a year after having lived together for 7 months and they are expecting their first child.

Early is on top of the world and Susan is doing it hard. If only she could have used her leg muscles to keep her knees clamped together when she should have.

Early had had a very good relationship with his ex mother-in-law Eleanor, and whilst they did not visit each other even living in the same city, they kept in touch by telephone, with Early sending her small gifts on her birthday and at Christmas. She did the same for him. She had just celebrated her 50^th birthday, the big 5 zero.

Although Susan was her only child and Eleanor was devastated over her adulterous actions precipitating Susan's loss of her husband, marriage, potential for having children, lifestyle, career, her happiness, and her ability to hold her head up high, she still loved her daughter unreservedly and was utterly disturbed as she learnt via the "grapevine" of her new lifestyle.

Susan had been in a couple of very short term relationships with men best described as "unsavoury", one of whom had coerced her into prostituting herself for his benefit to finance his "habit". Although at last she had also found part time work as a clerk, the pay was minimal and her constant illnesses wrought havoc with her finances. She needed the extra money the whoring gave her.

The illnesses could mainly be attributed to her botched abortion that the scumbag Stickner had arranged and paid for as his parting "gift" to her.

Apparently he had sabotaged her diaphragm, just for fun.

She relied on the diaphragm because she could not tolerate birth control pills.

The decision to abort was the result of her being treated as a pariah within the business community and being unable to secure work in any company of any substance and his refusal to contribute to the child's upbringing because of his own financial predicament brought about by his sacking from the Practice. He was unable to secure a well paying job because the "legal brotherhood' had also blackballed him throughout the profession.

When Early and Belinda's baby was almost due, it was learnt that Belinda had a heart problem which the doctors, if they had known of the heart condition in the first few weeks of her pregnancy, would have advised her to have a termination, but this was not to be.

Someone said to Early that slags had abortions and nice women had terminations.

To everyone's distress, Belinda died whilst giving birth to darling little Ruby Belle, and of course, whilst Ruby was still in hospital for tests to her heart it enabled Early to make arrangements for Belinda's funeral and Ruby's future care. When Early took her home, he was overwhelmed by his friend's and neighbour's help in settling father and daughter into a comfortable routine.

Eleanor came to be a tower of strength considering that she had only recently lost her husband Jack to a long battle with cancer.

Early took his annual holidays and paternity leave to establish a regimen for Ruby's childcare requirements and on his return to work, would deliver her to a reputable childcare facility at 7.30am on his way to work and collect her on his way home around 6.00pm. The care facility was first class, but Early was upset that, for 52 out of 168 hours in the week, nearly a third of her week was spent in what was virtually an institution, and not with those who loved her.

One Saturday morning while he and then 6 months old Ruby were doing their weekly shopping at a mall about equidistant from his and Eleanor's homes, he ran into her and they went to the nearest coffee shop where Eleanor absolutely was delighted with, what under different circumstances, she had hoped could one day have been her grand daughter. But again, this was not to be.

Early noticed that she was not her usual cheerful self, and when he asked her why, she told him that Jack's long running battle with cancer had taken all their savings and she had sold everything she could including her car, but all she had left was a small pension from his superannuation and the house. She was about to put her house on the market, as she could neither afford the rates and taxes on it or the utilities necessary to enable her to live there. Her plan was to sell the house to finance her old age, and if possible to secure a live-in job which would give her accommodation and a small wage. This, with her pension would enable her to live at least with a modicum of security.