Chapter 1
It wasn't my fault. I didn't come home early. The only thing I can think is that they must have lost track of time.
I wasn't prepared for what I found. We'd, my wife and I, made love that morning before I went to work and there was no strange car parked outside our home when I arrived back from work, so I was clueless as to what was happening. What had been happening whilst I was at work. And for a long time before.
After I parked my car on the driveway, I walked through the front door of the house, our house, pulled the door to, and realised that there was no smell of cooking. "Oh, well" I thought. Maybe she wants to eat out?" Even though I loved Myfanwy's home cooking, I didn't mind eating out and we generally ate out once or twice a month.
I placed my laptop bag on the kitchen table, poured and drank a glass of water, I placed the empty glass on the draining board and walked through the house. In the back of my mind I wondered why I couldn't hear Myfanwy. Had she gone out? Odd. Surely she'd have told me? Sent me a text message?
I walked upstairs and went into out bedroom to change out of my business suit and that was when my life, my happy married life, was brought to a very nasty and brutal end.
Myfanwy and I had been married for fifteen years. We'd met on a sort of a blind date. Some mutual friends had introduced us at a barbecue they were holding and we'd hit it off immediately. Love at first sight? Is such a thing even possible? I'd like to think that it is. That's what I felt when I saw Myfanwy outside in the back yard of our friend's house all those years ago. We never had children, it just hadn't happened.
My name, if you are interested, is Ken, a perfectly ordinary name. Myfanwy's interesting name comes from her Welsh ancestry and her Dad is still the chairman of the local Welsh Society set up when a slate mine had imported some Welshmen to come to mine slate in our state.
The slate mine idea hadn't worked out, but there was still, 150 years later, a fairly large Welsh population in our part of the state.
I looked down at our marital bed and saw Myfanwy and her lover asleep, naked, entwined together.
The room stank of sweat and sex and I knew that I had lost her forever. My sweet, loving Myfanwy, she didn't love me. Perhaps had never loved me. Perhaps could never have loved me?
I was, somehow, silent. I held it together as I walked out of the room, down the stairs and out of the perfect little house we had shared for ten years, leaving them sleeping the sleep of the just fucked.
I knew perhaps I'd never see the inside of that house ever again. Before I left the house I made a detour via the kitchen.
There was a park at the end of our street, so I shambled into it and heavily slumped onto a bench. My life was over. I was in shock. My life was over. Tears poured from my eyes. People avoided me. Good.
Chapter 2
Myfanwy awoke first, smiling. "Hello, lover" she said, kissing her lover on the lips.
"Hah!" Responded her lover, with a grin. "You wore me out. Waking up with you is the best!"
"Shit!" shouted Myfanwy, suddenly panicking. "Oh my God! Look at the time! Ken will be back from work any time, now! Thank God he didn't find us! Hurry! Let's get dressed! Damn! It's nearly 6 o'clock and I haven't started anything for his evening meal, yet!"
"Oh, gotta be the perfect little wifey, huh?" The sneer in the voice seemed out of character for her lover and it got to Myfanwy in a way that was sort of, what? Primal?
"Yes!" She snapped. "I have got to be the perfect wife for my husband! If I can't stay faithful to him, the least I can do is cook him a good meal..."
She suddenly burst out crying and her lover, embarrassed by this unexpected turn of events hugged Myfanwy's naked body and said: "Oh, Fanny, I am so sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. I guess maybe I am a little jealous that Ken gets to wake up with you every morning and this is the first time I ever woke up with you."
Her lover's hands wiped the tears from Myfanwy's eyes. Myfanwy nodded, but said nothing. They swiftly dressed and hurried down the stairs. "Look", said Myfanwy's lover. I'll help you in the kitchen, we can put up a scratch meal real quick."
As they entered the kitchen they both noticed the laptop on the table, the solitary glass on the draining board. When Myfanwy focused her eyes on the table she gave a little shriek when she saw her husband's wedding ring on his laptop bag.
"Oh, my god! He must have come up into the bedroom and caught us!" This time she didn't cry. This time she began sobbing her heart out, for real.
The two women hugged together, both shedding tears as they stared into the gaping, smoking chasm that had once been Myfanwy and Ken's marriage.
Chapter 3
I had no idea of how long I had sat in the park, but I realised it was becoming dark and I was cold enough to begin shivering, dressed as I was in my thin business suit.
Finding Myfanwy and her friend Karen, my damned boss, in bed together, in our martial bed, for what that was worth, obviously sated from an energetic session of lesbian sex, had shocked me. I was flawed. Flummoxed. I had no idea that lesbian sex was what Myfanwy really wanted. The subject had just never arisen.
I had nowhere to go, nowhere to stay. No home, no wife and no job, either. Shit. My life had turned to shit!
I had thought Myfanwy loved me and was as faithful to me as I was to her. And I thought that Karen had at least liked me. Well, how wrong could a fellow be?
I got up from the bench, stretching my stiffened limbs and walked away from the park.
I had no idea where I was going. I just knew I could not go home. Because I honestly felt that I had no home.
Chapter 4 They were sat at the kitchen table, Ken's wedding ring on the laptop case was a beacon of infidelity, it seemed to Myfanwy, a sign of her wickedness. She had never intended the making out sessions with her friend Karen to get so serious, so full on, to become a proper, real love affair. But they had. And now she had to face the consequences of her actions that had resulted in the breaking the heart of the only man she had ever loved.
Karen looked at her. "We really fucked it all up, didn't we? Christ! What a mess! You broke the heart of your poor husband and I probably lost the best engineer I ever had!"
Myfanwy picked her cell phone up and hit the speed dial for Ken's number and, seconds later, the phone began to ring in the side pocket of his laptop bag.
"Shit!" she yelled, turning her phone off. "Now I can't talk with him!" More crying ensued as they clung to each other.
"Don't worry, Fanny!" sobbed out Karen. I am sure he'll be all right."
She hoped she sounded more convincing than she felt.
Chapter 5
I walked until me feet started to ache. I was in a part of town I didn't know. I really needed to get a place for the night but I'd left my wallet at home so had no money for a hotel room.
Then I noticed a sign: "Homeless Shelter."
I shrugged. "Any port in a storm," I didn't even laugh at my own joke.
I walked in, noticing how the step had been polished away by the tramping, tramping feet of so many homeless people down through the weary, empty years of hopelessness, helplessness, of broken dreams and of dying lives.
The man at the desk had been reading the evening paper. He glanced up at me and said: "This is a homeless shelter."
