I found out my wife was cheating in the most ridiculous of ways. Twenty-eight years and a tyre track brought the foundation of my life crumbling down. Sandy and I were both keen gardeners who took particular time to make sure our garden looked perfect. So, imagine my surprise when I got home after work on a Friday, and there was the faint trace of a track on the edge of our lawn next to our driveway.
She was in the kitchen prepping our usual Friday family dinner. She would get home an hour, maybe ninety minutes before me, and decide what we were having. I would get home, and after I got changed, I would set up the barbecue while she made our sides. I was still thinking about the tyre tracks on our lawn when I walked into the kitchen.
Kissing my wife on the check, I mentioned my observation.
"Hey, I think one of the neighbours or their kids accidentally drove onto our lawn."
"Hey," my wife replied. "What makes you think that?"
"Didn't you notice the tyre track on our lawn?" I asked, confused. She had been known to complain about our roses being pruned a day late. "Don't worry about it. The door cam probably got them. They didn't do too much damage. I'll just have a word with whoever did it."
I felt her go tense.
"That's a waste of time. Let's just send a communal email to the neighbours asking everyone to ensure they don't use our drive. No need to embarrass anyone."
I was confused. I had seen her lose her temper over some of our neighbours' children nicking blackberries from our bushes before they were fully ripe. Before I could think about a response, our daughters came home.
We had three children; our oldest, Ben, was twenty four and lived in London. He did something complicated in IT and was employed by a national newspaper scanning the dark web for new information. Our middle daughter Abi was twenty two and doing a Masters locally. She lived in a shared flat but came home a couple of times a week and never missed Friday dinner. Our baby girl, Stacey, nearly eighteen, was in her last year of school and was trying to decide her future. We were proud of all our kids and loved the fact they were all their own people while keeping a tight sibling bond.
Seeing my daughters made me forget about the lawn as they immediately took over the room with affection and news of what they were up to. Outnumbered three to one by the women in my life, I quietly excused myself and went to the bedroom to change. I had nearly changed into my lounging clothes when another alarm rang. Our bedding had been changed. Sandy and I had a ritual of changing our bedding every Sunday, and the sheets and covers were different from when I went to work. It was subtle, but they were different.
I immediately thought of Sandy's evasiveness about the lawn and thought the worst. I played dumb through dinner and our movie, but my hackles were raised. When it was time for bed, I begged off, telling my wife I wanted to stay up a little longer. With a quiet kiss, Sandy let me go.
"Fine. You have one hour, I've needed you all day. I'll only wait so long," Sandy told me.
More alarms started ringing. Sandy had rarely been the initiator in our marriage, but for the last month, she had been insatiable. As soon as I was comfortable, I checked our doorbell cameras. I found nothing. They had been disabled between one and four that afternoon. All the worst thoughts went through my mind, and I ended up falling asleep in front of the television after one too many bottles of beer.
I was woken up by my youngest, and she wasn't happy.
"Daddy, you were meant to get up and take me to my football tournament, but you got pissed instead. I can't believe you."
"I'm sorry, Princess. Give me twenty to get a shower, and we'll be off."
"No, you're still drunk. Mum can take me. Turn up or don't. Clearly, it isn't important to you."
By the time I got moving, my wife was staring daggers at me. Remembering my reasons for getting drunk, I waved her off. "You better head off. There's no point in her being mad at both of us. You can yell at me later. I'll meet you there."
As soon as they were out the door, I went straight online, looking for reasons for our cameras to fail. All I could find out was that either our Wi-Fi had been down or it had been turned off. I pushed the thoughts out of my mind and joined my family at Stacey's football tournament. Her team did well and came second. That didn't take away from her annoyance with me which had spread to her sister as well as her mother. I suffered through their cold treatment for the rest of the weekend.
When I returned home the next Friday, there was no evidence on the lawn, but our bedding had been changed again, and now I was worried. Once again, I faked an excuse to stay up. Once again, there were three hours of missing camera footage. Something was wrong, but I knew I had no proof, so once again, I played happy family through the weekend while avoiding my wife.
When I got to work on Monday, I had the start of a plan. I quickly went online and bought some much smaller remote cameras I could hide. I just needed two, one to cover our driveway and our bedroom.
When they arrived a couple of days later, I took a half day at work and went home. After setting the cameras up, I remembered an old tablet that Sandy had given me to reset a few months earlier. Charging and opening the old tablet I restored it to the most recent cloud backup. Within minutes, I had texts, emails and photographs.
It was worse than I thought. It had been going on for four months. It had been his idea for her to initiate with me more regularly. He thought it would keep my suspicions down. He also admitted that the idea of giving me sloppy seconds turned him on. The day I spotted the tyre track was the first time their affair had reached our bed. In her defence (barely), she had fought it, not for my sake, but for our kids. She had argued against bringing another man into the family home. He wore her down, pointing out Stacey would be gone soon, and she'd never know. What made it worse at least to me, he was a sort of friend of mine. John was our account manager with one of our preferred suppliers.
I got my ducks in a row. I saved all their messages and called a meeting with my business partners. I was the MD and one-third owner of a niche building company focusing on high-end updating and renovating older houses. We liked John's company because they were local and always managed to meet our needs on time, especially our custom orders. Living in Oxford there was a huge market for us, and we covered most of the county and occasionally a few neighbouring ones. We stayed away from the cutthroat world of London. Mark and Craig, my partners, were disgusted and wanted to end our business relationship immediately. I asked them to hold off for a month while I sorted my affairs out. Divorce was inevitable. Now, I was just looking for ways to protect myself and the kids.
Even without my share of the business, I would have been fine. I'd inherited the house from an uncle who had no children, and I had also inherited substantial investment portfolios from parents and grandparents, which we kept separate from our shared portfolio. Inherited assets weren't typically considered marital assets, but I wanted to make sure Sandy couldn't touch them, so I had a Trust created declaring me the sole beneficiary and had my lawyers move it off-shore, and in the event of my passing, it would be divided between our kids evenly.
The hardest part was keeping up the illusion that I was fine for the kids and Sandy. My resolve broke a little each week when I would get home to find new bedding. I thought about going home and confronting them directly, but I couldn't see the point. There was no need to add more logs to the dying embers of my marriage.
