Disclaimer:
This is a fictitious story. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real people is coincidence. Do not take any information in this story as health advice.
~~~
Jenny was sad that Maggie had moved to Melbourne but she was also glad that her life was getting back to normal. The automation building of the E-trips was mostly over. She and Joe had moved back into her home. Joe was practicing Tai Chi and still spending some of the weekday afternoons at the factory but he was just making sure that everything was working properly and that Harry had very clear and concise instructions.
Jenny was still playing tennis on Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings and she was seriously considering applying to remotely study literature at a university. She still wasn't confident that she could matriculate or pass the subjects.
Maggie, on the other hand, had realised that part of her need to hurt people was due to her abuse where she worked as a mechanic and now that she had inflicted revenge on those coworkers, she felt less urge to hurt people.
~~~
Tracy and Jenny were getting changed in the tennis change rooms when they overheard four other women talking on the other side of the lockers.
"Did you hear about poor Tracey?" said one woman, "I heard that her husband divorced her."
"He went off with a younger woman didn't he?" asked another woman.
"He's a lawyer isn't he?" said a third, "Poor Tracey she must have been taken to the cleaners."
"She probably had to move out of that big house that they lived in," said a fourth.
"A woman needs to do things to keep her man," stated the first.
"She must be devastated. Statistically she's not likely to find another man."
The conversation continued and it wasn't very flattering towards Tracy. Jenny could see tears welling up in Tracy's eyes and she'd had enough. She quickly gathered her things to leave, walked around to the other side of the lockers to face the women and said, "Excuse me but unfortunately I couldn't help overhearing your discussion about Tracy.
"I was a witness at Tracy's divorce proceedings so I know what happened, not like other people who speculate without knowing. I'd just like to clear a few things up.
"Kevin was having an affair with another woman, who incidentally testified against Kevin and did NOT go off with him so obviously she realised what he was like.
"Tracy divorced Kevin not the other way around.
"The court found that Kevin was at fault and so Tracey still lives in her home. Apparently she's done very well out of the proceedings.
"Tracey was the perfect wife, Kevin was the perfect arsehole.
"I highly respect Tracey. She works very hard to organise the tennis club and these games that we all benefit from. I have chatted with Tracy a couple of times and she seems very happy with her decision to dump Kevin. She certainly does NOT seem devastated.
"I suppose you're going to talk about me behind my back when I leave but that's okay. Some people just can't help themselves. I'm not interested in THOSE type of people. Good day," and then Jenny walked off through the main exit.
Tracy sneaked out the back way and ran to catch up with Jenny as she was getting into her old Volvo. Tracy held the driver's door open and said, "Thank you Jenny. That was not only very brave off you to stand up to those women to defend my honour but you also, potentially, opened yourself to criticism."
Jenny smiled up at Tracy and said, "You're welcome Tracy and don't worry, if those women talk like that behind other people's backs then I don't really want to know them. I can't stand people lying and what I heard were just vicious lies."
"Never the less, thank you very much," Tracy said and then paused before asking, "Would you like to do lunch sometime?"
Jenny was a bit taken back. She wasn't a very social person and mostly kept to herself, but for some reason she felt that she'd like to know this lady more so, to her own surprise, she answered, "Yes, that would be lovely, but not today. It's my turn to cook and I'm preparing a slow cook for dinner."
Tracy smiled but looked disappointed and said, unconvincingly, "Okay, another time then."
Jenny felt a bit guilty. It probably looked like she was fobbing off Tracy so she said, "What about after tennis next week?"
Tracy seemed to cheer up and said, "Yes, of course. That would be wonderful," She help close Jenny's car door, stood back and waved goodbye as Jenny drive off.
~~~
Jenny had developed a reputation from the 'locker room incident'. Apparently, she was a hard nosed woman who you don't mess with. Jenny didn't mind, She didn't want to be friends with the gossips.
Jenny had watched Joe when he was in the karate contests. He would always have a blank expression on his face and it seemed to scare some of his opponents. Joe would say that making a face would take the energy away from his karate moves and may also give his intentions away to his opponents. Jenny tried using the blank, face expression during her tennis matches with some of the gossips and it seemed to work. Well, she seemed to win more games that way.
Jenny tried using the blank expression on Tracy during one of their matches but Tracy just laughed and said, "Come on woman, don't you think I've seen that sort of psychological warfare before. It won't work on me, besides you look more beautiful when you smile."
Jenny never tried the blank expression on Tracy again, unless she wanted to make Tracy laugh. Which sometimes worked, because Jenny would serve while Tracy was still laughing. However, Jenny often did use the blank, face expression on her opponents that she didn't like.
~~~
