A game of musical chairs, wondering whether I will be seated in the final, lone seat when the music stops. Or will it be the man chasing my wife?

I stood in the darkness, my stomach feeling like a clenched fist, and listened and waited.

Yes, I know that this sounds like that cliché of the husband coming home early and found himself listening to his wife fuck some strange in their bedroom, but you’d be wrong.

So, I stood in the darkness, my stomach feeling like a clenched fist, and listened and waited. For the right moment. Then I pressed the button.

No, nothing blew up! Leave it!

With a smooth whir of machinery, aided by compressed gas boosters, she descended down in front of me, her legs spread wide.

When she saw me loom out of the darkness, she opened her mouth to scream. I clapped my hand over it and whispered in her ear.

“Shh, the audience will hear you.”

“What the hell are you doing? You can’t do this! This is ... this is...”

“A forced conversation with my wife!” I finished grimly. “You were determined you weren’t going to talk about what needed to be discussed. So I’ve forced the issue.”

“Get me back up there, you lunatic!” she shouted in a whisper.

“Relax, you have twenty eight bars before you play again. I can get you back up in one second. And down again. I would advise you not to move off your seat, because if you do I’ll simply drop open the trap, and when you fall through I’ll just have to try and catch you. Or maybe not. But either way, I won’t be able to put you back up on stage again, so you’ll have to sit out the rest of the concert down here with me. I don’t think your boyfriend would like that.”

“Oh for god’s sake, are you still going on about that? He’s not trying to fuck me!”

“Yep, I’m still on about that, and with all the reason in the world. He is indeed trying to fuck you. You and him sleeping together; that’s what this is about.”

In my head I had been counting the bars, and pressed the button. The trap promptly put her back up on stage in her place within the orchestra. It had taken some doing, calculating sizes and positions, and then shifting the podium and all the chairs on stage exactly four inches to the left, so that my wife’s chair, as first cello, would be square on the little stage lift. Normally it was used for magic acts and scene changes where heavy things had to be lifted in and out of place really quickly. Now, it was so my wife, Rosa Vicarrio-Evans, and I, James Evans, could have a conversation in peace.

Above me, I could hear her slide the cello into the music with a long, stretched note on one string, becoming an almost unheard presence in the music, before coming to the fore, and bringing the drama to the piece that highlighted this movement. Man, I loved that cello. I loved her too. And I wasn’t going to let that fucking cunt-hound get a piece of her. Unless he already had, and then... hasta la vista baby. I wasn’t in the mood to forgive again.

At last the crescendo came to a close, ready for the long interlude featuring the flutes and cor anglais. I pressed the button. Down she came.

She was ready for me this time. “I never slept with Umberto!”

Umberto Fostellini, the maestro. The honoured guest-conductor of this farce, and the dog who was sniffing around my wife’s back-end.

“This is an intervention,” I said calmly. “You were about to fall off the wagon ... again.”

She went strangely still, the cello between her knees, her arms resting on it. I could see she wanted to ignore that remark, but she was ever the curious little kitty, was Rosa.

“What do you mean, again?”

“I mean I know all about Richard Arsehole-of-the-month Tate. And what you did with him a week before our wedding. That was the previous time you fell off the wagon.”

She went pale, and then blushed bright red. In the incomplete darkness of the under stage I could actually see the glow.

For four bars we sat in silence.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she said at last, her voice tearful with shame.

“Oh, I thought about what I should say, what I should shout, what I should scream!” I replied, still holding onto the calm. “Dump you at the altar, and tell our parents and all the wedding guests what a cheating slut you’d been. I thought long and hard about that. I really wanted to.”

She put her hand to her mouth as the lock I’d put on my feelings broke slightly to show the depths of my emotions in my voice.

“But I already knew you were a slut, the word was out far and wide throughout the university that you were the musical bicycle. One ring on your little bell and you were off to the races, with every cock you could find. When I met you, I was quite prepared to simply fuck you, get my end away and move on; like all the other guys. At that time you were nowhere near the wagon and instead were fucking all the passengers on it by all accounts.

“But, at the same time, I was curious why one of the best musicians in the university, possibly in the whole history of the university, needed ... yes, needed ... to fuck herself into complete humiliation in order to get by.

“I was doing psych as a minor and you were interesting. And then you fucked up all my plans by making me fall in love with you. Oops, hang on!”

This part of the concerto was just background fill for her, and in a few minutes I brought her back down again.

“I stopped sleeping around for you! I went on the wagon, as you put it” she said, leaning forward to try and take my hand. I moved it away and she looked so sad. “That was a nasty thing to say. I didn’t realise someone had said that about me.”

“Someone? Oh my God! You’re kidding! I was informed about your proclivities by three different people – all strangers to me – within 60 seconds of setting eyes on you for the first time. I was told that nobody, absolutely nobody, loved cock more than you. And I know you stopped doing that, for me. But I knew what you were like, so I watched you for a year. Didn’t you wonder why it took so long for me to ask you to marry me?”

“I just thought you didn’t want to settle down.”

“Well, I didn’t want to settle down with a slut. At least not one who slutted around with other guys while married to me.”

“I wouldn’t have done that!” she protested.

“Aaand, that brings us all the back to Dick Tate. Tate comes from the French Tete, meaning head. Dick Head. Hah! He got you all hot and bothered, didn’t he? I saw all the signs I’d seen while watching you before we officially met. The mood swings, the high-pitched laugh, a couple of little zits popping up on your jaw-line, the loss of appetite – those were the symptoms that showed up every time you were going slut-hunting before we started going out. So everything about you grassed you up, and said you were going to fuck somebody new or some people new, and cheat on me. And those signs were right – you did. I couldn’t step in because my idiot brother-in-law thought it so funny to handcuff me naked to a lamppost in the middle of town on my bachelor’s night out, while you spent the night with Dickhead.

“I always wondered if you asked your brother to do that, or suggested it somehow, so you could sneak off.”

She shook her head vehemently. I pressed the button and listened to her short solo.

I had no idea how this was going down with the orchestra or the audience, but it was actually working quite well for me. It was giving me a chance to calm down again when I got too worked up.

Yes, I imagine that some of you will be quite disgusted and already writing letters of complaint to the press. She had cheated on me while we were engaged, therefore I should kick her to the dogs and hope they tear her apart. I didn’t. But I had my reasons. I simply did what was best for me. Not her. Not you. For me.

After the solo she descended with tears in her eyes.

“I never realised you knew,” she whispered. “I didn’t ask Philip to handcuff you – and he is an idiot. I would have felt a lot safer if you were with me, and would have stayed by your side. And it wasn’t the whole night, it was just five minutes, I think. Five minutes which changed my world view. We’d been together for a year, and I would be married to the man I loved and lusted non-stop for in just a week’s time. And I risked all that for him? Just so he could jump on me and squirt his nasty stuff all over me – so what was the point? I was a fucking idiot. And I never cheated again. I’m sorry I did that. I really am. I’m not sorry you found out. I deserved to be beaten and kicked out, shamed and humiliated for what I did. But I thought you never knew. Why didn’t you do any of those things to me? You should have!”

“I’ve thought about that many times over the years since we married,” I said. “When I found out, I raged and swore, even thought about topping myself, and then went on a violent bender instead, destroying stuff that I valued and which meant a lot to me – records, books, my computer. And I think it was that which helped me make up my mind. In the end I realised one thing. All that righteous indignation would just break yet another thing I loved and wanted. I loved you and wanted you, so if I kicked you out, what did I get out of it? Just a salve on my pride. Although I did kick that bastard in the balls later though. I didn’t have any problem with destroying those. Your brother got a couple of black eyes as well, just as an object lesson about schoolboy pranks – and to make me feel better.”

I made a balance with my hands. “I’ve always known you were a slut, but there was the possibility that you loved me enough, so I had to look at the scales. Pride on one side, and a future with all the love I could ask for from the woman I loved on the other. It weighed pretty heavy on that side. So I simply watched you. Trust, but verify is a good motto. I made it mine. Except for the trust part. I didn’t do that.

“But don’t get me wrong, my ignoring and putting aside your little affair – five minutes or a whole night – did come with a price, because that balanced the scales again. Anything else from you and the scales would tip, and you would be out of my life faster than a piece of well-squeezed wet soap.”

The button was pressed for the end of the first movement.

When the last note died away, I heard her high heel shoe knocking on the trap as pages on the musicians’ scores and the pages of the audience’s programmes were turned. I pressed the button once more.

She descended, ducking sideways and down to get a look at me as soon as possible.

“I didn’t sleep with Umberto.”

“You were about to, and that’s possibly just as bad. Intent and deed are very close together in legal terms.”

I pressed the button once again to send her back up. This movement started with a fast, rollicking piece that would gradually slow to lead into the tragedy of the final movement, making the counterpoint.

At last she got to take a break for a good couple of minutes for the first violin to emote as best he could, after which the piano would take over.

“I was not about to!” Rosa said, leading with that as she came into view. “And we need to stop doing this, Umberto is giving me the stink-eye. He’s furious.”

“Good. And no matter what you say, you were about to sleep with that wrinkled old creep.” I gave an exaggerated shudder to show my thoughts of even touching him, just to rub it in a little.

“How can you even say that? While we’ve been married I have never been unfaithful to you!”

“I know,” I said. “I made it my life’s work to check up on you, remember?”

“But...”

“Exactly! But!” I continued over her protest. “Let’s take a look at a few things here. Zits? Yep, I can see two right now that even that amount of make-up can’t hide. Appetite? Gone. You haven’t had breakfast in a week. Two more weeks of this and schools could use you to show what can happen to the unwary whenever very bad people get into power. And that laugh of yours is beautiful – it makes me feel warm and happy inside, it makes my heart sing in harmony. But right now that laugh could crack crystal!

“God! Don’t even get me started on the mood swings. You downright refused to talk to me at all about this – about my fears and doubts of where you were going with him. You simply ignored or pooh-poohed all my warnings that Umberto was trying to get more than just a good performance out of you. Which is why we’re here now, and the audience out there is wondering why the first cello is pretending to be some sort of sexy prairie dog, popping in and out of its hole.

“Look at what you’re wearing. That little black dress is so sexy it makes my balls ache just to look at it. But you’re a cellist and have to spread those wonderful legs really wide to play it. So you’re showing your knickers – and they aren’t granny panties by any means – to half the audience and teasing all the hetero members of the orchestra. And I can’t help thinking that the main target of that beckoning pussy is the man that stands right in front on stage – Mr Conductor Man.

“Another thing. You have played for over nine years on the best stages in the whole world, and yet Umberto, for some unknown reason, needs to spend two evenings coaching you through a piece you could play in your sleep. At the same time, he needs to hang over you from behind to actually move your hands over the strings and bow. Really? You believed he was helping you somehow? Oh I know he didn’t get anything more than an ‘accidental’ feel of your tits while he was doing it. But he was getting you all nicely warmed up for the main course, wasn’t he. Ready for tonight’s party, to which you and he received an invitation and I didn’t – where all his hard work would pay off and he would finally get his chance to fuck you.”

“Now go away!”

I pressed the button. She wasn’t needed to play for another two minutes but I’d had enough.

Soon she was thumping on the trap with her heel again. I sighed and pressed the button.