Chapter 2: Decision

Wendy was still in a quandary, but David had decided that he wanted her as his housekeeper. She was good at doing that and he had never enjoyed doing it, but it was all becoming a little boring in bed. It was not that she was unwilling, rather that she was only too willing to go along with his plans, ideas, or even whims. There is just no challenge any more, he mused, So if this Rodney wants her back he can have her.

“You may think you want to stay with me, but I strongly advise you to go back to your husband. There is no secure future in ‘us’,” David warned her, “Even if you were to divorce your husband you have no guarantee that life would be any better. For example, I have not proposed, or even so much as hinted at marriage. I may just want to keep you as a slave functioning as my housekeeper and bedmate until someone I fancy more than you comes along.”

“But I thought we had a good relationship?” she whined.

“Oh, we do. But it is not the same for both of us. I think you feel that you need me, whereas I feel that I enjoy you. That is not far from the truth, since I have saved your financial bacon with this job, and the modelling, whereas you have saved me from a chore I was perfectly capable of doing myself. The sex is, I grant you, mutually enjoyable, but you could do that with your husband and I could find another partner if I really tried,” David suggested.

She started to cry quietly, but after a few moments of silence she said, “But sex is so much better with you than it ever was with him. Isn’t it good for you? Just tell me what you want and we can do it.”

“Tell your husband sex was good with me and it had better be good with him. If he wants details, tell him what was good and what he did, or didn’t do, that meant it wasn’t good for you.” I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me, he thought. Then he added, “There will always be a job for you here if you need one, if only the modelling sessions. Anything else in respect of work will depend on whether I have hired a new housekeeper. I think a clean break in the bed department would be a good idea when you take him back. Each of you having a thing with someone else at the same time means that you aren’t getting one over on the other, but when you are back together afterwards I think faithfulness is underrated nowadays when a couple are married.”

She sat thinking for a time, then she said, “So I’m to go back to him, am I, Master?”

“Wendy, face it. If he comes back you belong to him. He has first claim on you if he chooses to keep you fed and the mortgage paid. I’m just a stop gap at the moment for you to rely on if he doesn’t. That isn’t an order, just a reasonable assessment of the situation and facts.”

Four months later, as David was putting the last of her cases in the car to take her back to Greenacres he gave her a fat envelope.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s all the back pay for the time you have been on reduced wages since you let the house. It may come in useful and it is yours by right. So take it and say no more about it,” he ordered.

When David had delivered the last of her belongings to number 33 and brought his borrowed suitcases back to his house he fell to musing about things. She must be a bag of nerves. Moving out of here and back into that small house and wondering what Rodney will say about her new clothes and whether he will twig that she too has been in a different bed. He must guess what’s been going on, I imagine, and if he doesn’t a ‘kindly’ neighbour will tell him. What will his reaction be? Will she confess all? I expect she will.