Chapter 1

There used to be a British TV Situation Comedy called “One Foot in the Grave”, the title of which implied it was about an old man. Not just any old man but a curmudgeonly old character called Victor Meldrew for whom life generally went so wrong that he was almost constantly affronted, amazed, nay staggered. His exclamation in such situations was always a shrill: ‘I don’t believe it!’

The meal was over, and had lived up to the hotel’s high reputation, and the band was about to strike up, when something happened that, well, I didn’t believe it either! In fact, I was so affronted, amazed, nay staggered, that I was paralysed, my eyes blinking as if each new opening would allow me to deny what had just occurred. No such luck; the reversed reality remained the new reality. I’m sure my mouth was open, and I gasped, at least in spirit, Victor Meldrew’s lament: ‘I don’t believe it!

Some events, sudden and totally unexpected, can do that to you; the sort of events that reverse your understanding of the comfortable, settled, status quo you relied on up to that point for you to make sense of the world, and to allow you to assume everything is normal and will go on being normal. On that evening, all that security fell into chaos.

A man, passing by our table behind Faye, stopped short and exclaimed with with a smile of happy surprise in a rich tenor voice, ‘Faye? Is that you?’

She turned her head and looked up at him. There was a moment before recognition dawned, then came the squeal.

‘Leo? Leo Fredericks?’

The squeal would have done justice to the young lungs of any pre-teenage girl, and she immediately leapt from her seat and turned to face this Leo person. They embraced hugged and kissed, and this was not a chaste kiss between friends but a steamy one between past lovers; long and sensuous, bodies pressed together in a tight hug!

I had been facing him and had seen him first. He was about our age, in his mid to late thirties, tall, taller than me, and broader. He was handsome of face, with almost ash blond wavy hair – I quickly realised he’d be extremely attractive to women and accordingly disliked him with immediate fervid intensity. The way he kissed my wife evaporated any tolerance I might have had.

‘Mmm,’ she murmured gaily, now holding him at arms length and gazing at his face. ‘Oh, Leo! So good to see you!’

In rising and turning to face “Leo”, Faye had turned her back on me, and she remained that way, her hands still on his shoulders and his on her waist. There was then the usual exchange of ‘How’ve you been?’ ‘Fancy meeting you here after so long.’ ‘You haven’t changed a bit, Leo.’ ‘Still as pretty as ever Faye.’ And so on. Sickening!

By now I was grimly waiting for Faye to turn and introduce me as her husband, but I was disappointed, being ignored by both of them. My first impulse was to clear my throat deliberately, stand and make myself known as Faye’s husband, but a surge of obstinacy gripped me and I sat back to see exactly how long it would take Faye to remember who she was with, who she was married to, and her manners.

It didn’t happen.

‘Come on, Faye, darling,’ “Leo” was saying. ‘The dance is starting. We can catch up on all our news on the floor.’

And they walked away! They actually walked away! onto the dance floor. Faye didn’t even glance over her shoulder at me!

‘What the fuck?’ I muttered, which was not quite Victor Meldrew’s style.

Onto the dance floor they went, and while they in fact danced a decent distance apart, I could see that all her wrapt attention was on “Leo’s” face as she gazed into his eyes. Her azure blue eyes were shining with excitement and, yes, I was sure, affection – even adoration. Or was it simple lust?

I could see the gentle mounds of her breasts pushed forward as her hand rested high on his shoulder. The couple (the people not the breasts) were obviously talking up a storm, and she must have said at one stage she was married, because I saw “Leo” look over at me, then look away rapidly, a smirk appearing on his face. Not a smile, a self-satisfied smirk.

They stayed on the floor for two more dances, during the final one of which she moved into him and put both arms round his neck, her short skirt lifting to show more of her slim thighs and slender calves, while his hands rested on a spot where the top of her neatly rounded bottom cheeks began.

All that time, my attention was fixed on them. During the first dance I decided to go and intervene, but overruled myself. I wanted to see how long it would take her to remember who she was with, and how this would then turn out.

Initially I was incandescent with anger, with rage, mixed with a dread that I had suddenly lost her to someone else. I thought of our two young children, Samantha who was eleven and Michael nine. I could see the marriage ending and me collecting them once a week. I could see her living with this character in our house that I would now have to visit and where I no longer belonged.

Yes, I really over-reacted emotionally, but still awaited Faye’s realisation of what she’d done.

So I waited, seething, and the anger turned into icy resentment at what amounted to her betrayal. Then eventually I wondered if I was over-reacting and that prevented me from making a scene in that very high class hotel.

At the end of the third dance, I was by now really ready to challenge the pair, and began to stand, but watched as “Leo” disengaged from Faye, cast another brief scornful glance at me, took a business card from his wallet and gave it to her.

He nodded towards the toilets, and went towards them, while Faye returned to our table. Her eyes were dancing, her pretty face with its little turned up nose shining with joy and her generous mouth wreathed in a happy smile, all of which proved she was very excited – until, that is, she reached the table and saw my face.

I didn’t move, but remained slouching back into my chair, staring at her with what I hoped was a contemptuous glare, saying nothing. For a moment she looked worried, then uncomfortable, then annoyed.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked defiantly, the old adage of attack being the best form of defence coming into use.

I continued to stare at her, raising my eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘You don’t know? You really don’t know? You’re that naïve?’ I said scornfully.

There was a brief moment of uncertainty and then embarrassment I am sure, before the defiance returned.

‘No. I don’t know. All I can see is your petty jealousy because I’m happy to see an old high-school friend.’

‘An old high school friend, eh?’ I jacked up the sarcasm. ‘A very good, close, intimate high school friend, eh?’

Up to now she’d been off balance, but now her hands went to her hips.

‘Honestly Aaron, what’s got into you? Aren’t you overreacting? His name is Leo Fredericks. I’ve not seen him since we all left school. What’s your problem?’

This last comment was patronising, and a challenge, with her chin jutting, a sure sign this question was not a quest for information.

I could see from her expression and posture she was now exasperated as if all the problem was mine. Now in my turn, I felt annoyance rising again.

‘I’m amazed you need me to spell it out,’ I snapped. ‘Sit down, you’re causing an embarrassing scene.’ I gestured to the surrounding tables, where an audience was hanging on every word. I paused while she sat down.

I spoke more quietly. ‘If at your age you really need to learn about showing some basic manners and consideration for others, I’ll educate you. You just threw yourself into another man’s arms in the presence of your husband; you kissed him in a way a married woman should never kiss another man, even without her husband present.

‘You then turned your back on me and fawned all over him. Did you turn back to apologise and introduce him to me and explain your relationship with him? No! Rudely, you remained with your back to me. You did not introduce him; instead, even more insultingly you then went off without looking back once, and had the first dance with him ... Then two more dances!

‘Have you totally forgotten what we are doing here, or rather what we had been doing? So let me relieve your amnesia by reminding you. We were celebrating our wedding anniversary.

‘So it would be basic manners for him, or you, to ask before you accepted any other man’s invitation for a dance. But the first dance on our wedding anniversary? Let me spell it out for you, since you seem bereft of any decency. You could have gently explained our situation to him and then asked me if you both could have a later dance together. You didn’t, and that was grossly offensive and insulting.’

I drew breath. ‘That enough for you, Faye? Is it? Or do you need more education in basic decency and consideration for others?’

I could see her surprise at my outburst or diatribe, which I delivered quietly and steadily and I thought was all the more powerful for that. I felt quite proud of myself. Then I saw guilt as she started to realise what she had done, but it was obvious that she did not think it was such a big deal.

‘Sorry if you’re upset,’ she said, almost dismissively. ‘I didn’t mean to insult you. You’re right, I should have introduced you to Leo. I just got carried away, it was such a surprise. I was so happy to see him again after all these years.’

‘You can say that again,’ I said with feeling. ‘I didn’t exist until he went to the gents. I wondered how many more dances there would be. Anyone would think you wanted to go home with to his place and spend our anniversary with him for the night instead of with me!’

There was a brief silence. Then her eyes flashed in defiance. She said, ‘If you must know, I did!’

‘Pardon?’ I delivered that with menace.

‘I said, I did. For a split second I did want to sleep with him again,’ she said with exaggerated patience, as if she were speaking to a small child. ‘We need to talk about that. You need to understand, he was very special to me back then.’

‘You’re damn right we need to talk about it. Your ideas about marital fidelity seem to have changed radically.’

I sucked in a deep breath: her statement had hit me like a physical blow.

‘Well, darling,’ I said dismissively, ‘I’m not going to argue any further with you here in public. You have managed to destroy this evening and ruined our anniversary, so we’ll go home. Now.’ I stood up.

She remained seated. ‘I thought... ‘

‘You thought you could spend the rest of the night dancing with - What’s his name? Fredericks? While I sat here like a lemon. Really?’

‘No.’ A pause. ‘No, I would want to dance with you as well.’

‘As well?’ The words tumbled out of me as a strangled exclamation. This was becoming more and more surreal.

She flinched at the violence of my reaction, then recovered a little and ventured: ‘I was going to introduce you when he comes back from the loo. I thought he could join us.’

‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ I’m sure my face betrayed my incredulity. ‘No way! This was an intimate private celebration for just the two of us. That’s what you wanted, what you stipulated and what I found for you, but you don’t want that any more, do you? You want to share it with him instead, so there’s no reason why we should stay any longer. We go home.’

Faye bridled at this and snapped ‘I’m your wife, Aaron, not your prisoner.’

I snorted in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this! One insult after another! So now the marriage we were supposed to be celebrating, turns out to be a prison sentence in your eyes. If this is part of a prison sentence for you, why the fuck were we celebrating it for here tonight? No reason at all!’

‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ she backtracked, now looking worried as well she might: I was now incensed. I needed to calm down, so I took some deep breaths.

‘I’m going home,’ I sighed at length. ‘I’ve lost interest in this evening: it’s a nightmare. We clearly have a great deal to talk about. I wonder now if the word “marriage” means the same thing to you as it does for me. God! Two young children and you want to break us up!’

She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I don’t want us to break up, love, that’s the last thing I want. You’re twisting my words.’

At last I’d made her aware of exactly how seriously I was taking this debacle.

I stood and waited, as for a moment she remained seated. Then reluctantly she stood and followed me out of the building.

As we were leaving, I saw Fredericks emerge from the toilets and look surprised. He then made as if to intercept us, but my glance at him across the room was enough to stop him in his tracks. He looked puzzled, then that smirk that I didn’t like the look of at all crossed his face again.

It was a superior smirk, the smile of a sexually predatory alpha male. I had often been told I was a good looking man, mainly by Faye! But I was quite ordinary in height and build with mousy hair; Leo’s superior smile said I was not in his league. I had a sinking feeling we had not heard the last of this Leo Fredericks.

The journey home in the taxi was completed in total silence. I did not mind: I wanted the silence to be uncomfortable for her. My anger simmered all the way home.

As soon as the taxi stopped, Faye left it and was already in the house by the time I finished paying the driver. Anne, our teenage baby sitter, was leaving as I arrived at the front door.

‘Thanks Anne,’ I smiled. ‘No problems?’

‘No Mr Jenkins. They’re never any trouble. We had a good time.’

‘Faye pay you?’

‘Yes. Good Night!’

‘Thanks again, Good Night.’

I went into the house, but Faye was nowhere to be found; I suspected she was in the bathroom, so I went to the kitchen and made some decaffeinated coffee: caffeine keeps me awake all night! I wondered if this family crisis would keep me awake anyway, but didn’t want coffee to enhance my insomnia, or discomfort.

Even after the drink was made and poured, she was still absent, so I sat in the living room on the sofa and waited her out. I knew what she was doing: she was planning how to handle the situation, and perhaps hoping I would go to bed and be asleep when she came out – no chance of that! I thought grimly.

After another quarter of an hour, she emerged from the bathroom and came downstairs in a bathrobe. Her rich, thick, lustrous bronze hair was now down and shone in the living room’s soft lighting, how pretty she was! She strode into the living room and sat in the armchair as far from me as possible. That spoke volumes and revived my irritation: I was not the guilty one here,

She sat upright, her legs crossed at the ankles, but her bathrobe fell open at the front and it was clear she was still wearing her gauzy black bra and knickers. That was a sign that in the early evening she was hoping for some bedroom action when we returned home from our romantic evening. How untroubled and affectionate we’d been as we had set out! How different things were now!

I moved her coffee cup to where she was sitting. She did not thank me, but pulled her robe together; it was another sign of rejection. The action could not hide her perfectly shaped legs though, and it was obvious that I was staring at them. She made an exasperated grunt at that, which gratified me: she could not hide them!