Chapter 1

Michelle Simons is eagerly awaiting her husband to get home from work. She feels that over the last year or so he has lost interest in her, he works, comes home, showers, eats, watches television for a couple of hours before going to bed and when they get there he nearly always goes straight to sleep. Yes she knows he works hard and has been doing a lot of overtime to pay off debts she had incurred, and so she did worry that he had gotten angry and was still holding on to that anger.

He was also uncommunicative, as she saw it almost every attempt she makes to start a conversation seems to be met with a sometimes almost inaudible grunt, or if she is lucky, “Jesus ‘Chelle, I’m too knackered to think about that now,” and so she had looked around for advice. Most of her friends had told her she was just being silly, some even called her paranoid, but nothing anybody said to her, reassured her.

Not feeling her friends had taken her seriously, she had searched the internet and found a variety of sources offering to bring the love back into her marriage. She considered most to be watery new age pseudo counselling, others she found shocking, they seemed to be more about the woman becoming a dominant tyrannical sluts, sleeping with other men and consigning their spouses to a life of degrading subservience and worse, things she did not even want to think about.

Nevertheless, she had found one site offering, “Tried and tested methods to reunite couples-educating both partners to show their other halves the rightful importance they should have in an idealised modern marriage in every portion of their lives together. Proven techniques that will enhance the togetherness of women and men that every loving couple needs in this modern age.”

There were also many positive reviews, saying things such as, “my husband has never been so attentive,” some even telling how their husbands had overcome destructive behaviours such as drink or drugs through to irrational jealousy. A few even told about varied and drastic improvements in their sex lives. The more reviews she read, the more she became convinced that this company was the only one offering to do what she needed and she contacted them.

She had had to answer a long, detailed and very personal questionnaire, detailing some things so intimate that she had never considered them before. After that, she had exchanged a lengthy series of e-mails before getting a call informing her of acceptance to the program. With the acceptance came a list of tasks and conditions for her to adhere to, breaking any of them, a breach of contract. This would mean forfeiting the full price of the service and a further financial penalty of £2,000. She considered that even with that as an additional cost the fee of £1,800 per couple for a month away that includes full board and lodging a reasonable deal, not much more than the cost of staying at home, especially adding day trips.

The first condition they demanded, although she did think it strange, was secrecy. She was not to tell her husband or anybody else about this arrangement, insisting that it is a complete surprise to him. The next condition emphasised the need for her to arrange time off work with his employers, the longer the better, although people rarely needed more than one month to graduate the program. She was lucky with this, as his employer carried holiday over from year to year, and working a four on four off shift system Michael had also worked another two days on his off days and not taken any holiday except when the factory shut down for eight days over Christmas and new year. In theory, giving the possibility of fourteen weeks off and she had managed to negotiate two.

So excited with the thought of enhancing the sex between them, she did not consider the debts that he had been working so hard to clear would be paid off over the coming year, most in the next few months. It would not be long before Michael would be able to stop doing some of the overtime, not long before he would not be so tired, not long before he would have the time and energy to put into the marriage they both wanted him to have.

Her hand had slipped between her legs and she unconsciously rubs herself, her excitement growing by the second when she sees hears the familiar growl of his classic Z 900 pull into the garage. She meets him at the door, as soon as he walks in and tells him to go up and shower.

As soon as he comes down, she hurries him out of the door, telling him she has a wonderful surprise planned and he was not to ask about it.

Having had a particularly hard day and too tired to argue, he submits to his wife’s demands and slides himself into the passenger seat of his wife’s car and tried to guess her “surprise.”

Contrary to her request that he not ask her about her intended actions he does try to take advantage of her obvious excitement to try and coax her into revealing her plan. She avoids his attempts, although he keeps on guessing until they hit the motorway when all his ideas of what she might be planning disappear.

As the car slowly eats up the miles, the two occupants do not speak a word to one another for the first half hour or so. The woman struggles to contain her excitement, imagining how happy and surprised he will be to discover they are on holiday, as at the moment he is unaware they will be spending even one night away from home.

Initially her demands that he shower and get ready to go out meant to him that she was taking him to a restaurant for an overpriced meal and he wracks his brain trying to think of an occasion he has forgotten.

He is a little annoyed, he too had planned a surprise, he was not working this weekend and unusually he was not due back to work until Tuesday.

Forty-five minutes ago, when they took the motorway north he began to wonder what she was up to, he was concerned only knowing that whatever she is planning it was not something he really wanted. He had hoped to to do nothing but mong out in front of the television with a couple of beers and get an early night. Now, because she is heading far away, he is sure she must have planned for them to be out for the night. This meant that someone must have told her he was not working tomorrow as usual; else she would not be planning anything to take him far away from home. It does not help his mood that her only replies to every question he asks are mostly, “It’s a surprise,” and an occasional, “When we get there.”

For the moment however, he had a more pressing concern, when was he going to eat? A concern that while not life threatening is understandable considering he had eaten no breakfast or lunch today, he had actually only eaten a packet of crisps since he last ate a meal over twenty-four hours ago when he had yesterdays evening meal.

A few more miles pass and he asks for the second time that she pull over for food she answers with the same, “when we get there,” he tries a different tack and tells her, “If we aren’t nearly there, you had better pull over before I piss myself.”

“Can’t you hold it a little while longer?”

“Not for much longer.”

“Why didn’t you go before we left?”

“Really, you’re asking me that? How about because I thought when you hurried me out of the house I thought you were taking me to a pub or restaurant. Y’know, somewhere local, to eat, I had no idea you would be driving me to the Outer Hebrides first.”

“Outer Hebrides, we’re not going ther ... oh.”

He watches as a multitude of perplexing expressions flicker across her face, it seems her plan, whatever it is has not allowed for him to need the toilet and yet she still seems to be struggling to find a reason to deny his request. After about five minutes of indecision, her face sets with a determined expression and she continues to drive without saying a word, passing another service station.

Infuriated, he says, “Right, have it your way.”

He reaches behind him, finding his target out of his reach, he unclips his seat belt and turns around and kneeling on his seat, he reaches for her handbag. Grasping it, he empties it out onto the backseat before turning around. He sits back down and clips the seatbelt around him, “Last chance, are you going to stop?”

“What ... I can’t.”

“Look we just passed a sign that said the next services are in three miles, you stop there or I’m going to piss in your handbag.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Whether she believes he will or not, she keeps giving him cautious accusatory glances.

They come over a rise and the services are in sight, he makes a display of unzipping his trousers, “the minute you pass the entrance...” he threatens.

She glances at her bag, then his face and then back to his face before cutting across in front of a car and receiving an angry honk of complaint takes the exit to the services.

As soon as she has slowed the car, glancing at her handbag she says, “You would have wouldn’t you?”

“Damned right I would.”

He jumps out as soon as they have stopped. Secretly she is glad of his threat, as she needs to use the facilities.

He, on the other hand, does not really have to go, having relieved his bladder whilst having his shower; instead, as soon as they have to part and after checking she is not watching him, he side steps and joins the queue at the McDoggles counter.

He buys a big dog meal and a second big dog burger and sits at a table to eat, he is just starting on the second burger when she finds him. In the time he has been alone, he has made a decision, he will not get back in the car until she tells him where they are going.

“What are you doing?” she hisses as soon as she is at the table, “I told you you were not to have anything to eat.”

“Sorry dear, but we normally eat about sixish, you know about half an hour after I get home. We didn’t leave home until quarter past and I was bloody starving then. In fact, unless you can assure me we haven’t far to go and there’s a slap up meal waiting for us,” Taking an antagonistic bite of the burger to further provoke her, he speaks again, loudly chewing at the same time, then I might just have another burger. So bollocks to you missus, And what’s with this, I told you crap? if you carry on with the, I can’t, or I must, crap, I will not be getting back in the car. I don’t know what’s got into you. Since when does either one of us tell the other what to do?