Hi there. Welcome back once again. This is the last planned story in the Conversations series, and once again, I’ve tried to put a new spin on that devastating discourse between spouses; here looking at the question of trust. Trust is a vital part of every relationship. It’s one of the three legs of the stool that is marriage - take one away, and it topples. Everyone knows that. Well, almost everyone.

So, settle back, sip that hot drink, and let me tell you a story...

(8276 words)

“It was a matter of trust,” said Andrea.

“No, it wasn’t. It was a matter of you fucking someone else.”

“I’ll say it again; I never slept with him.”

“And I’ll say it again; you were ready, willing and all set to go. If I hadn’t turned up, you’d have had jolly old Pere Noel as deep in your cunt as you could manage – probably within the hour.”

She looked down at her glass. After a moment, she took a sip, concentrating on not looking at me. That was the one thing she couldn’t deny: the intent. I’d been there. I’d turned up at her work’s Christmas party like the proverbial bad penny, and witnessed it.

Oh, not any actual nasty fuckery, just a planned betrayal – almost perfectly executed, but for one thing; my lack of trust.

“So I guess I was right not to trust you,” I said, after a moment.

She looked up sharply.

“It was that lack of trust that got us into this position in the first place,” she hissed.

“You keep saying that.”

“Well, it’s true. Throughout the whole time we’ve been together, it feels like you’ve had me under a magnifying glass – all the damned time – watching me, examining me, looking for my faults.”

“Rightly so, as it turns out,” I replied.

“But don’t you see? That’s what made me so angry until eventually, I resented you enough to turn to another man.”

She noticed my left eyebrow lift, as it always did when someone tried to bullshit me. She had lived with me long enough to realise what it meant. It was one of my tells, a subconscious physical manifestation of my thoughts. Most people have them. It was the reason I don’t play poker; good players can pick up on something like that almost instantly – like sharks on a blood trail.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “You’ve never trusted me. I’ve known that ever since we met at Uni. And I never understood it. Yet, until now, I’ve never given you cause not to trust me. I love you, you know I do, I had to, in order to put up with it for so long – but to be the one person in the world you don’t trust became just too wearing. I needed someone who loved and believed in me.”

“He certainly believed that you were going to share a room this evening,” I commented.

“I was,” she agreed, somewhat shamefacedly, but with a spark of defiance in her eyes. “I know you don’t love me – your distrust shows that all too well, despite my never having given you any cause. Quite the opposite. Yet I loved you with all my heart.”

I shook my head and took a mouthful of beer. We were still sitting in the lounge of the hotel where we’d sat after her wanna-be lover had run away when I confronted them.

In a weird, twisted way, it had been almost funny. It was her company’s Christmas party. She’d done all the groundwork – ‘Honey, it’s going to be a full-on blast at the party. Karen will probably be handing out fresh photostats of her bum at some point, and Anthea’s tits will almost certainly fall out of her top – just as they always do at every Christmas party. I might have a few drinks and don’t want to get pulled up on a drunken driving charge, so I’m just going to get a room at the hotel and hope you don’t make too much noise when I get home hungover tomorrow.’

Not original, but reasonable under the circumstances. Hell, Andrea was my wife of three years, and she’d never put a foot wrong in the five years we’d been exclusive, so I should trust her. Of course I should.

Not a chance!

When I’d turned up about halfway through the party, she’d been mad at me – almost spitting mad. To give her time to cool down, I went and fetched us both a drink. As I returned, some idiot in a fat Santa suit, along with full white beard and red bobble hat had approached her from another direction.

“Drea,” he’d called. “Come on! Let’s go. I’ve got us booked into the room and unpacked that sexy nightie for you.”

She hadn’t seen his approach, watching me bring the drinks over. She could see in my face that I’d heard his words and knew what they’d meant. She paled and closed her eyes, a look of grief and sorrow crossing her face, knowing the consequences could be dire.

She’d played it calmly, however, turning towards him with a foreboding look on her face. “Don’t bother, Sid. It’s not going to happen.”

“What? But we agreed ... I got the room ... Why not?”

“Because you just announced all that to my husband.”

He’d turned to where she gestured, and the colour had drained from his cheeks. I’d put the drinks down and took a step forward.

“I always play them little jokes,” he’d yelped, backing away quickly. “Ho ho ho!”

With that, he’d turned and run.

And so, there we were, drinking those drinks and discussing the fallout. I think the reasonably severe expressions on our faces were successfully acting as barriers to Andrea’s semi-drunk work colleagues. They hadn’t yet reached the stage of intoxication where the sight of someone not yelling, stumbling around and screaming with laughter presented a challenge. Nobody had so far, put an unwelcome arm around our shoulders, breathed 90% alcohol fumes in our faces, and told us to ‘lighten up, have another drink, go with the flow and have a good time. It’s Christmas!’.

“You’ve got two critical things wrong so far during this little chat,” I said, determinedly calm. “First, and most important, is that you believe I don’t love you. You’re a hundred per cent wrong about that. One eighty degrees wrong! In fact, you’re the only person I love in this whole world – the only person I’ve ever loved.

“Well, you were. Now, I don’t know for sure.”

She closed her eyes at that for several long moments. Then she pulled herself together and looked at me again.

“And the second thing?”

“That you’re the one person I don’t trust. Why would you think that?”

She looked puzzled and shook her head. “I don’t get what you mean.”

“Why would you think I singled you out on the matter of trust?”

“Because you trust others with ... Because you can’t ... No. Sorry. I still don’t understand what you’re saying.”

It was my turn not to understand. “I thought you said that you felt you were the only person I didn’t trust.”

“I did.”

“Well, that’s not true.”

“All right, I didn’t mean it literally. I mean you obviously wouldn’t trust people you didn’t know – strangers...”

“Or friends,” I put in helpfully.

“Or friends ... Wait! You don’t trust your friends?”

“Of course not. Why would I?”

“What about Rob? He’s your best friend – you two are like brothers.”

“He’s like the brother I never had,” I agreed.

“But you don’t trust him?”

“No. Of course not.”

She sat and thought about that for a long time.

“So who do you trust?” she asked finally.

“Me. Most of the time.”

“Most of the time?”

“Not when I’m drunk,” I explained.

“So that’s why you rarely drink?” she asked, her face showing enlightenment, almost as if she’d just finished the Times crossword in pen for the first time. I nodded.

“You don’t trust anyone at all?”

“No.”

“But you stood there in church when we got married and...” She trailed off.

“I vowed to love, cherish and honour you. Nobody mentioned trust,” I said calmly. I thought it was a very reasonable point. I was clinging onto reason like a life raft.

“You said you loved me.”

“So?”

She sat forward on her chair, leaning towards me, her dark brown curls falling over her substantial chest. Her pretty knees twinkled at me through her dark stockings where her little black dress had pulled up slightly. She’d gone all out for Santa Booby.

“So – when people fall in love, they offer each other their trust. I expected you to trust me.”

“Why?”

“Because we said we loved each other,” she said, sounding irritated that I didn’t seem to understand and instantly accept what she was saying. I did understand. I just disagreed and didn’t buy it.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Just feeling a certain way about someone else, doesn’t actually give them the characteristics you want them to have,” I said.

I didn’t want to get into a fight with her. Not here. After all, it was Christmas – traditionally a time for fighting in the privacy of your own home. Besides, we were almost surrounded by the drunken stumblebums she worked with, who would be sure to want a long, rambling say in any private fight that had absolutely nothing to do with them.

“Surely you’re not suggesting that simply by falling in love with them, someone has earned your trust? Again, that doesn’t make sense. They haven’t done anything to earn it – certainly not by that stage.”

“You’re saying I haven’t earned your trust?” she demanded, sounding quite upset about it.

I held my hands out, palm up and swept them around to include the party, one of whom was watching us from afar, his eyes twinkling more with worry than good cheer.

She had the grace to blush.

“Okay, I didn’t mean tonight.”

“Or the pre-betrayal planning stages,” I suggested. “You didn’t plan this all out today, surely. There must have been some build-up. Or was it a spur of the moment thing, and you had the sexy nightie, bra and panties already in your overnight bag – all packed and ready to go, just in case? And it’s just where you keep your toothbrush every day? You made up your excuses about staying overnight on the fly?”

The blush deepened at my sarcasm.

“You knew about the overnight bag? Did you check up on everything I did?”

“Of course! You were the person closest to me, so you could do the most damage. Not trusting is quite exhausting, but on the whole, quite rewarding. By that, of course, I mean the rewards of not being betrayed.”

“You can’t check on everybody though.”

“Of course not. But then, I don’t interact with everybody. It may dismay you to know just how many people in the world, this country, this town, even in this hotel – have never heard of you or me. You worry about what people will think of you. I know that the vast majority never, ever think about me – not even once. So it doesn’t worry me. That’s a reward in itself. It’s very liberating.”

“But you can’t distrust everyone you know!” She seemed a little flustered. She finished her cocktail in one go, her face turning pink.

“I’ll just go and get another drink,” she said.

“I’ll come with you,” I suggested. “As I expect that that’s an attempt to sneak off for a quick chat to jolly old Saint Nick, so you can get your stories straight.”

She stared at me, her eyes wide, like a mouse hypnotised by a snake. Maybe she hadn’t planned on doing that. It didn’t matter. It was what I expected her to do, and would therefore check on it. It’s what I did.

Finally, she sighed and signalled to a waiter. He quickly refreshed her drink, and she took another sip. A few more of those and she would be as coherent as the rest of the idiots around us.

I took up the conversation where she’d left off.

“I distrust everyone I know, and so far, it’s stood me in good stead. So far it’s working out to be an excellent survival mechanism.”

“Give me a for instance,” Andrea said, seeming happier at discussing this facet of my personality than the reason the conversation was happening. I wasn’t sure whether it was real interest or a smokescreen she was pumping out to try and obscure the facts.

But it could be real. I had piqued a new interest, and that was who my wife was; a beautiful woman who loved nothing better than a mystery she could sink her teeth into and chew it to pieces until she could solve it to her satisfaction. Any secret was a challenge, and she loved a challenge. It was just a shame she’d decided to challenge me on my tolerance to betrayal.

“Charles Dunning at the garage.”

“Charles? But he helped us out when the car broke down.”

“No, he helped you out when you blew the gearbox on your BMW.”

“He gave us a discount on the bill!” A lower price seemed to prove, in her eyes, that Charles didn’t fit the profile of an untrustworthy person.

“He did. But then again, he fitted second-hand parts instead of the new ones he charged for when it was repaired, so he could well afford to look like the Angel of Mercy. Your gearbox will give up the ghost again within the year, and he’ll then claim it’s a little-known design or manufacturing fault. You’ll end up paying through the nose when he repairs it again and again and again.”

She put her hand to her mouth in shock. “But Charles is a friend! He wouldn’t do that!”

I shrugged. He’d already done it. It had taken me most of a day to strip it down enough to get a look inside the gearbox, but it would be worth it when I confronted him after it broke down again.

“Anne Wentworth,” I continued. The owner of a high-fashion boutique, she was Andrea’s big buddy and always gave her first pick of new stock when it came in.

Her eyes grew even wider, if that was possible.

“Not Anne. Those were never second-hand clothes! I don’t believe it!”

I smiled. Andrea was more concerned that someone might have worn her clothes, which wouldn’t hurt her in any way, than her car terminally breaking down – which was at some stage going to leave her stranded at the side of the road.

“No, they’re not second-hand, but they are made in Bangladesh – probably by underpaid children.”

She gawped at me. It’s the only way I can describe her expression.

“They can’t be! She told me they were from Paris, Rome, New York...”

“And you paid those prices – with the friends’ discount of course.”

“But how could you know where they were made?”

I grimaced. How to explain this gift, or curse – whichever it is – to someone who has never experienced what I have? With an almost photographic memory, I collect facts - little titbits of knowledge - from any and every source, and I don’t trust people. Those things work well together.

“The cloth,” I said finally. “It’s just too thin, too fragile, and the seams are similar to the ones in those cheap t-shirts that I buy. So I casually asked around, nothing suspicious or over the top. It’s surprising what people will tell you while just chatting and passing the time. It seems that Anne doesn’t attend the high fashion shows as she claims. She goes to the trade shows instead – where the wholesalers from the Far East and the sub-continent turn up to pitch their knock-offs. You could have bought pretty much the same things at most of the lower end discount clothes shops, where you wouldn’t normally shop and therefore wouldn’t spot the scam.”

I didn’t feel great about buying clothes made in sweat-shops, but if they closed them down, the people who worked there would in all likelihood go back to begging or just starving to death. They were probably living hand-to-mouth, but at least there was some food in both hand and mouth. Sometimes morals are harsh on choices. Or vice versa.

“Bitch!” sighed Andrea. I guessed Anne had lost a customer, and possibly a friend.

She thought for a moment, her eyes wandering over the antics of her fellow-workers. I noted that her gaze didn’t avoid or linger on Santa, which meant she’d dismissed him from her thoughts – at least for now.

“Okay, so some people cut corners to make an extra quid or two...”

“Harry Watson,” I said.

She blinked as I forced her thoughts in a new direction.

“Who is ... Harry, the postman?” Her bewilderment was evident, which changed to shock. “No! I can’t believe he would steal.”

“No, he doesn’t do that,” I admitted. “Or at least I haven’t discovered it yet if he does.”

“So...”

“If there’s only junk mail to deliver to someone, he doesn’t bother, and simply dumps it all in a recycling bin on his way back to the depot. It’s not stealing, but he is cheating both the post office and the people who pay them to deliver that crap. He doesn’t steal money; he steals time and effort. I understand it. He probably thinks he’s doing everyone a favour, as most people hate that stuff. But he is cheating.”

“Anyone else?” she asked after a moment. There was hesitation in her voice. I understood it. Nobody likes having their world view come crashing down around their head.

I shrugged. “Heather.”

Her expression became one of outrage. “My sister? How dare you even think of accusing her of betraying anyone? She’s an angel!”

“An angel who takes pills home from the hospital. Probably stuff prescribed and not all of it needed. Or remainders after a change in prescription, or after the patient died. Whatever. Nothing drastic, but something Jackson should be watching – if he’s not benefitting from it.”

My brother-in-law always used his surname – and understandably so. Christened Cyril, he’d fought that one off all through his childhood and refused point-blank to let anyone use it when he became an adult. Even the HR department at the retail chain where he worked only had C. as his first name. His parents had a lot to answer for when they reached the pearly gates.

I wasn’t sure if he was aware of his wife’s partiality to collecting unconsidered trifles – like pills – but that wasn’t my problem.

Andrea was shocked into utter silence, which was nice for the moment. It gave me a chance to order from the waiter – another beer for me, and an apple juice with soda and a sprig of mint for her. Any more alcohol and she would become maudlin and end up crying in a corner. Or she would go the opposite way and insist on dancing with everyone there, from bar staff to members of the board and even other hotel guests. A crying Andrea was not a pleasant occasion as she became flushed and puffy-faced, and her nose would run a whole lot, which meant continual sniffing. As to an Andrea when she was off her tits? Well, no civilised person should be drunkenly organising and forcing people into a conga line to shuffle and prance along like a demented Thomas the Tank Engine while trying to coordinate kicks. It just wasn’t right.

I stretched my legs out in front of me, getting comfortable. “Out of the people in this room, probably a quarter of them are currently cheating on their spouses; Harry and Georgina, Celeste and Carol, Meg with Johan and Alberto, to name a few.

“Celeste and Carol? With each other?” she gasped. I knew how she felt. Celeste was the CEO’s private secretary, a well-groomed woman in her late forties with a husband and three near grown-up children at home. Carol was twenty, an intern for the summer – her boyfriend of two years working in the same company, although in a slightly different role. To me, just by watching the two and the way they carefully interacted with each other and the rest of the staff, it was evident that they were sleeping together outside of work. In all likelihood, the pair had probably dallied in some remote storerooms during office hours as well. Even so, it was an unexpected affair, that was certain.

“Wow,” she breathed. “How do you know that?”

“That explanation would lead us away from the topic at hand, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Later then?”

“Possibly. The jury’s out.”

She bit her lip.

“Wow,” she repeated after a few moments.

“Three-quarters of the rest of your colleagues have either cheated in the past or will soon.”

“God, that’s so depressing,” she said finally, after a long look at her workmates as they cavorted drunkenly. Interestingly, she never questioned anything I told her. She trusted me to tell her the truth – and to be fair, I always did. I found truth to be as liberating as distrust, at least when it came to myself. Most of the time, it didn’t matter, as people simply believed what they wanted to think – even if they had to misremember what I’d said. The rest of the time, people would laugh it off and then think about it later, or just walk away. I didn’t gain any friends by telling the truth but surprisingly, didn’t lose that many for doing it either.

Andrea had learned to trust what I told her over the last five years, even when it was uncomfortable. She didn’t ask me if a new dress made her bum look big any more, and in return, I didn’t betray that trust. The irony was thick in the air that night.

“How can you live like that? How can you mistrust everyone? I’ve loved you for five years and been your wife for the last three. I thought it was just me you didn’t trust. How could I not know about this ... whatever aberration this is? I still don’t understand how or why you became this way.”

It was to be a night of revelations then. I sighed again. I started to speak and then stopped and stood up abruptly. She instantly reached for my hand, looking fearful.

“Please don’t leave me.”

“I’ll be back in one minute,” I reassured her, knowing that she meant those words on several levels. “Duty calls.”

I headed to the gents, dished out a few presents, and returned a minute later, feeling better.

“Let’s walk, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

She took my hand and joined me. As we collected our coats and left the hotel, I noted that she didn’t look back even once. Santa was obviously on her naughty list – if he was still in any of her plans at all. He certainly wasn’t in any of mine. The presents I’d dished out were Secret Santa ones – from staff members to co-workers with a £10 maximum limit – all bundled up in that big red sack he carried. The bag was reasonably heavy, and I’d dished the presents out all in one go, swinging the thing at the back of his head while he was pissing at the urinal trough. A final caution about the dangers of messing with the wives of other men, while he lay flat on the floor and dazedly tried to squeeze piss out of the false beard, and I was gone in less than the minute I’d requested from Andrea.

It was a freezing cold December evening, there was a sharp frost in the air, and we were the only people in sight. The streets looked wet and shiny, and the illumination from the street lamps and shop window displays had a taut sharpness to it. Andrea pulled her scarf up over her mouth, and we both tucked our hands into our coat pockets as we strolled down towards the river. After a while, she tentatively slipped her right hand into my left pocket and clutched onto mine, intertwining our fingers. Despite an immediate reluctance, I suppressed my feelings and left it there.

“What do you want to know,” I asked eventually, the tension growing thicker the further we walked.

“Everything,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by the scarf. “When did this mistrust of the whole world start? I mean how, where, why ... Everything?”

I gave a soft snort. “I guess it started from day one – of my life, not my marriage to you. I told you I was an orphan and that I don’t have family, but you never got any real details. One of the endless foster parents I ended up with really enjoyed tormenting me; enough that she relished telling me the minutiae of those events.

“My mother was seventeen when I was born. One night, when I was around three months old, she carried me to the park, left me on a bench and just walked away. So, legally, I’m not an orphan, although I don’t see any real difference.”