Right from the start, I’d thought it was a really bad idea, but I’d had to try something ... anything. Even if I was convinced that I was wasting my before I got there, -- and everybody else’s -- time.

Bill Gillard (my boss) had heard about the vacancy and insisted that I go after the job. Bill knew as well as I did, that I was going to need a lot more cash going into my bank accounts, than he would ever be able to pay me, if I was going to stand any chance of winning the custody case...

Shit, I needed a damned sight more cash than I had, just to pay all the bleeding legal Wallies. Let alone, pay for a nanny or someone to look after the kids during the day whilst I was at work, if -- by some freak chance -- I did come out on top in court.

Job interviews have never been my thing at the best of times; I doubt many other folks enjoy them either. I’d got through the preliminaries without too much trouble and made it onto the short list. But this particular interview -- when HRH Jack Goldberg himself was going to be present -- was the one that I really wasn’t looking forward to.

You see, Jack Goldberg and I had ... er, well history of sorts. Well, that ain’t exactly the truth. What is true, is that I’d had a ... um, a liaison for more than a few months with one Canella Goldberg -- usually known to most people as Ella, or Ellie -- the old bugger’s daughter during our teenage years.

Actually, if I’m being totally honest about it, it was a very intense liaison, if you understand where I’m coming from.

But I’m afraid that I have to say, my family didn’t much approve of me courting a Jewish girl. Even if she was a cracking looker, who drove (me) around in a brand new car. Look my folks weren’t anti-Semitic, but they definitely were extremely class conscious. My father had this thing about people that he considered had been born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

And Canella’s family? Well, Ellie’s folks didn’t much approve of her keeping company with someone whom they considered came from the wrong side of town either. And, I wouldn’t be at all surprised; whom they understood was a Christian to boot; even if I didn’t attend church every Sunday.

Bugger, the only times I’d been inside a church since my own christening -- that I could remember, that is -- had been to attend the odd, wedding, christening, funeral and the like. Oh shit yeah, and my own wedding of course; but lets not go there, just yet!

Well, to be fair to everybody, I’m not at all convinced that religion came into the equation as far as the Goldberg’s were concerned. I believe that no mater who he was -- or what religion he followed -- if he hadn’t attended a public school, then there would be no way that the Goldberg’s would have considered any-bugger a suitable candidate for a perspective son-in-law.

See there was the problem, my old man thought that everybody educated in the privileged public sector, should be stood against a wall and shot -- not literally by the way -- but you get that general mindset. And Ellie’s family appeared to be of the opinion that people educated in the government sector were beneath them.

Mind you, for some inexplicable reason, the old Triumph I rode around on -- along with the accompanying leather jacket, jeans and boots -- appeared to produce a very similar reaction to the Goldberg’s, in most of the parents of the girls I courted back in those days. Of course they never saw me in the smart suit I wore to the office during my working day.

Maybe that’s why I wore the leather gear and even rode the motorcycle. I was young and I wanted to look the rebel at least. Most of my friends were still at college and didn’t have an “office dress code” to adhere to during their working day.

For a while, Ellie and I had had some real fun together; quite a long “while” really. Mind you, I did get a load of ribbing from the boys. You know, snide little digs about me only going with Ellie Goldberg in the first place, because she drove me around the nice new car, that her daddy had brought her for her seventeenth birthday. Like a lot of youngsters, I couldn’t afford a car of my own back in those days. And besides, even in the dead of winter there’s places you can park, and things you can do in a car, that you can’t do on the saddle of an old Triumph Bonnie; take my word for it!

Yeah well, I suppose I have to admit that that car might have had some influence on our relationship forming in the first place. But by far the biggest attraction -- for a hormonal teenager that is -- had been that Ellie was ... Well, Ellie was one tasty looking sort by any bugger’s measure. But to be perfectly honest with you, to begin with, I probably did chat-her-up, mainly because word had gone around the boys that Ellie would never demean herself by keeping company with a Gentile.

Being a bit of a ‘lad’ back then, and one who fancied his chances to the extreme, and who also carried the reputation of having the gift of the gab. That rumour had been like a red rag to a bull to me; I just had to prove to the world, that I was the man with golden touch. Or, more to the point, who could have any female he wanted. Whatever, I proved that rumour was wrong, damned quickly, once I’d set my mind to the task.

I’ll also admit that when we started going together, I did not take the relationship seriously. Christ, I was young and didn’t take very much in life seriously back then. I kind of had it figured, that maybe Ellie was only going out with me to squash the rumour that she was some kind of a snob.

However, as time went on, I found myself getting attached to Ella and I deludedly came to believe, that she felt the same way about me. Despite the obvious disapproval of our respective families, and the ribbings I regularly received from the lads.

You know, Ella and I must have gone together for nigh-on two years, before her daddy shipped her off to ... Good question, Ellie called it a school, but I always thought it was some kind of university. Later, I came to believe that it must have been one of those Swiss finishing schools you hear about. You know, the places that those debutant birds used go off too, to learn ... shit I’m buggered if I know what they learn at those places, probably how not to slum it with the likes of me, I suppose. To my mind the Goldberg’s always did have delusions of grandeur

Anyway, I weren’t much for writing letters back then, and ... well, although I was more than a little upset that Ellie was gone, but the old hormones were still doing their thing, and there were plenty of other fish in the sea, if you get my drift. I supposed that Ellie was too busy with her studies, so -- after a first rush -- our letters grew fewer and farther between, until they kinda petered out completely.

I suppose eventually I got the idea that Ellie had just been having some fun herself, by slumming it with the hoi polloi for a while; that’s what some of the girl were suggesting she had been doing. Maybe even, getting the “wild oats” thing out of her system. I’m told that kind of behaviour isn’t limited to the male gender of our species.

What’s more, I very soon discovered that I hadn’t lost my touch and I also appeared to have accrued an interesting (if inexplicable) reputation amongst the eligible talent locally. Well, there had to be some explanation for my success in the female chasing stakes; well lucky I might have been in my younger days, but I’ve never considered myself an Adonis or anything like that.

I never did get the fine details of what the birds said about me behind my back. But let’s say, it soon became clearly apparent that whatever they did say, it was not doing me any damage when it came to chatting-up any bit of spare that was hanging around.

What did not do me any favours; was the odd friend’s “latest squeeze” blatantly making a pass or two, at me. Well, maybe I should say making it plain that she’d be available, should I care to cast my eye in her direction.

Tended to get up some of the other boys noses, did that! And led to the odd ... er, unfortunate confrontation, which often culminated in the end of more than one promising romance. And just as often the end my long-term friendship I’d had with the lad concerned. Hey no, if a bird made it clear ... then who was I to turn the lady down?

But none of that really has any bearing on what I was telling you about; I don’t think? A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since Ellie and I had been an item.

Where was I? You know I’ve got the nasty habit of going off on a tangent, but it at least gives you a little background and might save some explanation later.

Oh yeah, after Ellie had left the scene, it became my habit to change girlfriends quite often. Firstly, because I could, and secondly, because I’d grown quite attached to Ella while we’d been together and losing her had proved to be an unexpectedly painful experience for me. I had no intention of falling into that particular emotionally trap again, if I could help it!

I don’t know, three, maybe even four years must have gone by before I started dating Gloria. I have no real recollection of where we met; at a party or something I suppose. She was ... is, a remarkably good looking woman though, and had ... still has, a gorgeous figure considering she has born two children. That figure of hers most likely had a significant influence on how the relationship had originally came about.

Can I help it, if I’m a mug for a pretty face and a shapely figure? Christ, most hormonal young men are!

But I tell you, I can’t even recall when or how we met. Or under what circumstances I came to ask Gloria out on a date in the first place; but obviously I must have done.

Anyway Gloria and I hit it off pretty quickly really. I think it was on our forth or fifth date that she stayed over at my flat for the first time. Gloria wasn’t inexperienced, but then again neither was I. In those days very few people in their early twenties were! Well, they weren’t where I come from, anyway.

The old Triumph was gone be then of course; replaced by my own four-wheeled mode of transport; if I remember correctly a Ford with more than a few miles on the clock. Yeah well, I mentioned the disadvantages of two-wheeled transport already. And besides, I couldn’t ride the bike to work in a business suit and I felt like a real pillock waiting for the bus every morning. Promotion had come my way and I had to take a little more care over my image. I think it’s more usually described as growing-up.

I suppose five or six months must have gone by before one of the lads commented that Gloria been around for much longer than was the norm for my girlfriends, since Ellie. Actually I really hadn’t noticed; I wasn’t sure at the time if that was a good, or a bad thing. But it appeared that -- against my better judgement -- I’d kinda grown pretty fond of having Gloria around.

Was I in love with Gloria? Well, to be honest, I can’t tell you. I assumed (or at least thought) I was at the time, despite her more obvious shortcomings. You see Gloria had the same delusions of grandeur that Ellie’s family had had. But unfortunately -- unlike Ellie had proved to be in practise -- Gloria was rather high maintenance. Or to put it succinctly, Gloria was a bloody expensive girlfriend to have. She might have been extremely entertaining in the bedroom, but she could spend money like it was going out of style. However by the time I’d become aware of that major drawback, I’d got so used to Gloria being around and that I couldn’t envisage my life without her.

We’d been courting for just over two years when I must have popped the question. No, I can’t recall when I first asked Gloria to marry me; although I can remember the party sometime later, when and where I formally gave her an engagement ring. But by then, it was a done deal and no surprise to anyone.

We were married within the year of that party and within a few months Pamela, the first of our two children, was on the way.

Unlike so many of our young married friends, to start with money wasn’t a problem. Somewhat surprisingly considering that, not being a particularly gifted student -- I’d left school well before the majority of my peers, much to Mrs Williams (my maths teacher) chagrin -- maths was the one subject at school that I had shown talent in. However, Mrs Williams had guided me in the direction of the accounts department of a local company to find employment. And, I assume, she had used some form of nefarious influence, to get them to offer a young tearaway a job.

Look, as a teenager no bugger would have looked at me, and thought ‘accounts department’ except Mrs Williams. I know all my friends and family got the strangest expressions on their faces when I told them about my new job.

My interest in computers and computer programming might have helped, by the way; but I don’t think that it was really significant.

Anyway, I fell on my feet with that job. Bill Gillard, the company accountant -- and I learnt very much later, by coincidence a very good friend of the matriarchal Mrs Mary William’s -- took a liking to me. After a very short period of time, he sent me off on day release courses in accounting at the local technical college.

On those courses much to my surprise, most of my fellow students were more than a few years my senior. And even more of a surprise, it wasn’t long before some of them were asking me to become their study partners. My maths bent must have been greater than I’d ever realised.

The net result of my studies was, that within a very few years I was number two in my employer’s accounts department working directly under -- and being guided and coached by -- Bill Gillard. And I should add I had leapfrogged over many of the much older and more experienced members of the staff.

Oddly though, few of them seemed to take umbrage at suddenly finding themselves subordinate to a man barely out of his teens. Maybe, it was because I did not get all high and mighty when one of them made the odd boo-boo. And, usually I could put things right without making a song and dance about it.

Anyway the position I’d risen to -- at such an early age -- had meant that I had never really been particularly short of cash during my early twenties. But then again the young-man-about-town side of my nature, also lead to me being able to spend my cash, almost as quickly as I’d earned the bloody stuff. That could-well be the reason why I hadn’t noticed that Gloria was so high maintenance, whilst we were courting.

It was after Gloria had had our second daughter that things really began to go wrong. I’ve told you that Gloria was high maintenance and enjoyed delusions of grandeur. Well after Debra joined the family Gloria began to go overboard. Although she was a stay at home mum, Gloria wanted us to employ an au pair or a nanny to help look after the girls. This, I didn’t think we could afford and Gloria called me an ogre and a skinflint, who wanted her to work her fingers to the bone looking after our offspring.

For a while, war broke out. Well, to be honest, Gloria had been whining about being stuck in the house all the time since just after the birth of Pamela, but I’d put that down to the fact that she was a new mother. It was just that things didn’t come to a head until our second daughter Debra had joined the family.

Eventually Gloria suggested that she would return to work -- albeit, part-time -- to pay for an au pair to help with the children. That sounded like and amicable solution to me, and for a while -- after we’d gone through the rigmarole of applying for Gloria’s au pair. Lots of visits from officious old dragon’s and form filling -- peace reigned in the house for a while.

Ingrid, our young Swedish au pair -- underline the “dish” part of the word here -- appeared on the scene a few weeks later, and Gloria returned to doing few hours most days every week at the company she’d worked for before Pamela was born.

Both our children -- even if Debra was hardly old enough to notice -- took to Ingrid instantly, and she appeared to dote over them. I never once heard Ingrid complain -- as Gloria was want to do -- of the demands the children made upon her. Some evenings Ingrid would sit in the nursery for what seemed like hours, quietly singing (in Swedish) the children to sleep.

I got-on with Ingrid like a house on fire; what male wouldn’t! Ingrid was very easy on the eye, to say the least. The quintessential Swedish maiden we’re all used to seeing in films, and her presence in the family had a distinctly humorous side to it. And, I’m not talking about the way Ingrid mangled the English language here; actually her spoken English improved in leaps and bounds after she’d been with us a few weeks.

It was Ingrid’s presence with us on the street, or when we all went shopping to the supermarket as a family, that led to most of the hilarity.

I found it humorous to watch, as young men -- and very often older blokes who should have known better -- walked into lampposts and crashed shopping trolley’s into each other etcetera, because their eyes where on Ingrid and not on where they were going.

The kinda of fun you can have nowadays watching those numpties texting on their mobile phones, whist walking down the street.

On the more serious side, one young man rode his pushbike into the back of a bus and another went base over apex off his skateboard down a flight of stairs. Proving that you can’t do trick skateboard jumps, whilst staring at an attractive young Swedish girl.

Eventually -- and regretfully -- Ingrid’s presence had a serious side to it as well. Unfortunately after being with us about three or four months she, chose to complain to me -- not very subtly by the way, but in private -- that on some particular days she was being left to look after the children for far longer than was stipulated in her contract. Which, incidentally, were for not for many more hours each day than Gloria was supposed to be working. Although Ingrid always appeared happy to help with the children most evenings

Considering her obvious affection for the children one might have thought her complaint odd, if it wasn’t for the fact that Ingrid also hinted -- equally not subtly again -- that on such particular days, Gloria had got into and out of, a strange vehicle on her way to and from work.

It was pretty obvious that Ingrid’s complaint was nothing more than a way for her to bring to my attention to something, she thought I should be aware of.

At first the car didn’t bother me, because Gloria had informed me previously that she on some days was going to car share with another part-time employee and long time friend of hers. As I said, Gloria had returned to work for the same company who’d employed her before she became pregnant with Pamela and she’d kept in touch with her all friends who were still working there in the meantime.

But then, Ingrid kinda hinted that the car-sharing friend of Gloria’s appeared to have access to two very different vehicles, and besides that fact, -- usually on the days when Gloria was rather late in coming home from her job -- her car sharing friend had magically changed sex.

Ingrid was very sweet really. She explained to me later -- in far more words and after going around the houses several times in the process -- that her mother had been running around on her father when she was a little girl. Consequently Ingrid had felt obligated to inform me that she suspected, Gloria was doing likewise.

On the relevant days -- with Ingrid giving me the nod -- I took a few afternoons off-work and quickly verified that my Gloria was having an illicit affair with one of the management wallahs’ at her office.

Shortly after assuring myself of that fact, things took an unexpected turn when I challenged my wife over her affair. Gloria wasn’t in the least bit taken aback when I told her that I was aware of what had been going on.

Actually she might have been surprised, but Glory just didn’t seem to care. She simply repeated once again, that I was a tight-arsed skinflint, and added that I was a boring one to boot. Or words to that effect, if not somewhat more crudely explicit!

Then Gloria informed me that she would be moving in with her much more generous (and I assumed less tight-arsed and boring) boyfriend, as soon as she could arrange it. What’s more, she said that she’d be taking the children and Ingrid with her.

Gloria and the children did move in with the bastard the following day, although I think Gloria was somewhat surprised to discover that Ingrid would not accompany them.

No, Ingrid didn’t stay with me; the au pair agency relocated her to another host family that very same day. Although she did come to see me very often, but she always brought a suitable chaperon along with her. Mainly one Agda something-or-the-other (unpronounceable anyway), another Swedish ex-pat, au pair, and apparently Ingrid’s number one female friend in the UK. But you’ll hear more of the two girls later.

Now, I wouldn’t like anyone to get the idea that I simply stood-there gobsmacked and took it all, during that confrontation with Gloria.

Quite the opposite really, I gave back -- verbally -- just as much as Gloria dished out to me. More really, because I after all, I had all the ubiquitous “cheating whore” repartee, to fall back on. The only ammunition Gloria seemed to have was that -- in her opinion -- I didn’t earn enough of the readies to keep her in the extravagant lifestyle she’d have preferred.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gloria did not choose to demean my performance in the bedroom department. That took me by surprise actually; I’d been reliably informed that that is the usual “weapon of first choice” in a cheating wife’s arsenal. And I’m assured, the favoured ego buster.

As a mater of fact, much later, Gloria told ... No, I’ll come back to that later; if I find the opportunity.

Of course things might-well have become violent, I was pretty well pissed-off with Gloria and after all is said and done, everyman has his breaking point. If it had not been for the fact that the seventeen-year-old Ingrid had specifically warned me to keep-my-cool and not to allow things spiral out of control ... well, who knows what I might have done!

Apparently -- in a remarkably similar situation -- Ingrid’s own father had not managed to keep his emotions under control. In consequence, the man had gained himself a criminal record for assault, and/or as an abusive husband ... or whatever they charge husbands who’ve been pushed beyond the bounds of reasonable behaviour within Sweden. Apparently doing so had completely buggered his chances in the later child custody battle.

Ingrid informed me that if her father had only kept his cool that day, then probably she would not have had to live with her mother and the fanskap!

Well, I think she referred to the guy as a fanskap or fanskarp. I have no idea what a fanskap is, -- or even if I’ve spelt the word correctly here -- but I have to assume that it is a derogatory Swedish term of some kind or the other. Whatever, Ingrid habitually used it (with a venomous tone to her voice) whenever she referred to her stepfather. And, I might add, latterly Gloria’s boyfriend. Yes, at first I did assume that it was actually Ingrid’s Stepfather’s name, but I know better now.

The divorce proved to be a messy affair, to say the least! And, it was somewhat protracted as well. Mainly because I had no intention of giving-up my children to live with the arsehole -- who’d been banging my wife behind my back for god knows how long -- without a fight.

Gloria also didn’t want to loose custody -- or control -- of the children, and at one point Gloria even tried to convince the court that the girl’s weren’t mine anyway. But she’d forgotten that the court wouldn’t quietly accept her word for that fact, and the judge ordered the relevant DNA tests.

Kinda got me wondering though, for just how long had Gloria been letting the bugger bang her? Those kind sort of thoughts don’t do much for the old self-esteem, I can assure you!

Whatever, it’s quite possible that in the long term Gloria shot herself in the foot by making that claim; Judge’s do not like people trying to take the pi ... er, blatantly lying to them.

The battle for custody was still on-going the day I went to that interview, and were proving to be extremely expensive. Thereby hung my need for a greater salary to pay for all those double-talking legal Wallies.

In the UK the general consensus of opinion seems to be, that the mother is the best candidate when it comes to raising children. That’s of course, assuming that she’s not a drunk or a drug addict. And/or the father doesn’t have a lot more money in the bank to grease the right palms.

Anyway, I know it’s been a long way around, but that’s why I was at that interview that day, with my then present boss’s blessing by the way. It was Bill Gillard who had suggested to me that I go for the position, which had a much higher salary scale than he would ever be able to offer me.

----------TWT----------

There were five of us who had been short-listed by “Goldberg and Son’s” for the two jobs on offer; Accounts Department Manager and his/her assistant. According to Bill Gillard the two previous occupants of those posts had ... Well, to be brief, they’d financed their affair -- and subsequent disappearance together -- out of the company coffers. But that was off-the-record information and Bill had sworn me to secrecy.

Along with the other three blokes, and one female we’d been asked to present ourselves at Goldberg’s offices at ten AM that day. Then all five of us were left together, twiddling our thumbs like dummies in a sort-of waiting room come reception area. Being watched-over by one Jill Sampson (I learnt later, a very efficient -- and rather tasty looking -- secretary from the personnel department) until almost eleven o’clock, when the three members of interview panel decided to put-in an appearance.

They consisted of the accounts director and the personnel manager -- who referred to himself as Head of Human Resources -- and Jack Goldberg himself. The other two didn’t bother me, but Jack Goldberg I very much suspected would reject me on sight, as a suitable candidate for either position. Or at least as soon as he’d worked-out who I was, he would!

Sure enough they strolled into the room with barely a glance in our direction, -- well Jill was sitting behind the desk on other the side of the room and she’s the kind of woman who has that effect on most men. Mind, I have to add that the female job candidate was nothing to be sneezed-at either. But I think the secretary only just beat her on points.

Anyway, then -- as the other two were saying good morning to the delectable Miss Sampson -- Jack Goldberg did a quick double-take in my direction. I nodded and tried to smile politely as I wished him, “Good morning, Sir!” He kind-of grunted “Good morning,” in reply, then -- after giving me what I can only describe as a quizzical second look -- all three of them entered the conference room where the interviews were going to be held, closing the door behind them.