I would like to thank Randi for her invitation to participate in
The Art of Falling
story event.
Please enjoy all of the stories. I believe everyone will be in for a pre-Christmas treat!
I'm not inclined to make a big deal out of stuff. As a child, my history teacher described me as "taciturn to a T." I didn't know what that meant, so I looked it up later at home and found it meant reserved or saying very little. That is still true today, pretty much. In fact at work I am, or rather was, known as Laconic Lewis, because my name is Lewis Porter.
Why a surname for a first name? My dear late mother really had the hots for the actor Kevin Whately, so she decided that she wanted to name me after him. My father didn't think much of Kevin as a name, my mother didn't like the name of the character he played in the detective series Morse, Robbie, so they hit on a compromise of calling me Lewis, as the detective he played was Robert 'Robbie' Lewis.
I got a degree in Business Administration and my first job was at Arthur Long Associates, working with the eponymous Arthur Long who had founded the company 30 years previously. Although I wasn't exactly what you would describe as his right hand man, I was certainly up there in the top layer of his management team.
After I'd been there for three years I met Penny Lane, who worked in the marketing department (Yeah, her dad, Arnold Lane, was a Beatles fanatic and a bit of an idiot, at least in my opinion). We hit it off, we fell in love and we got married. We bought a three-bedroom semi in a fairly decent part of our town, not far from our company offices.
Although Penny wasn't exactly my first girlfriend she was the first woman that I really felt comfortable about being open with. Taciturn? Meh. Probably shyness, looking back on my life.
We talked long into the night on many occasions, we talked of having children and we were looking at buying a four-bedroom detached house in an up-and-coming part of town.
Obviously, I still loved Penny but as it transpired Penny didn't love me anymore. If she ever had? But she hadn't the decency to let me know. How did I find out? I'll tell you.
Arthur had always been keen on the company attending trade shows, from the early days when he would pose as a visitor and wander round trade shows meeting people, making business contacts and avoiding being thrown out by security, to nowadays, when Arthur Long Associates would often sponsor trade shows.
There was talk of a new trade show in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, which he wanted to be involved in, so he asked me to visit the venue, talk with the organisers and the Business Development Officer of the Welsh government.
Actually, the latter meeting was cancelled at very short notice, because he'd been called away to a meeting at the Welsh government offices in Holyhead, which was right at the other end of Wales, at the top.
As a result, I packed my bags, signed out of the hotel a day early and was soon heading to our home in the English Home Counties. I sent Penny a text message telling her of my change of plan, but I didn't know if she read it.
Once I was back in our offices, I had to go into the room where we stored our presentation material and equipment to put some stuff away, and whilst I was there, I learned that my marriage had been over for quite some time but that nobody had had the decency to bother to apprise me of that fact.
The storage facility was a large basement room, and designed like a warehouse with different zones for storage of different trade show materials from leaflets to trade stands which were all stashed in an alphanumeric system. As luck would have it I was at the far end of the room, round the corner in Z-9.
Two of my colleagues came in shortly after I did, and they were at about A-2. They began to talk and their words talked my marriage away. Due to the cavernous nature of the room, the sound of their voices carried very well indeed.
"Have you heard any more about Penny Porter and that prick Dave Rogers?"
"No. Why, what's happened now?"
"Turns out Dave was supposed to go down to Cardiff to scope out a new trade show at the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff. But he faced Arthur down and said, "Why not send Porter? That way he'll be out of the way for what I have in mind."
"No fucking way! He was that brazen? The cheeky fucker! I don't know why Arthur puts up with that! And he had to know that Dave meant giving Lewis' Penny a good seeing to!"
"It's all due to nepotism, really. See, Dave has something that poor Lewis will never have. Dave's mom is Arthur's little sister, so he gets away with all types of shit that nobody else would."
"Yeah, that makes sense. Explains Dave's apparently charmed life."
"I feel for Lewis. Poor sod's done great work for Arthur down through the years, and by way of a reward instead of the seat on the board of directors he might have expected, Arthur sends him off on a wild goose chase whilst he lets his bloody nephew fucks Lewis' missus. And that's not right, is it?"
"Well, no. It's not. I have thought about ways of anonymously tipping him off, but it's not easy. I can't let it get back to Arthur or I'll lose my job, and with the bloody mortgage we're saddled with and uni fees for our two kids, I just dare not risk it."
"Yeah, I see what you mean. I'm in a similar boat, really. Pass me that box, please. Ta. They've been at it for several months at least and Lewis hasn't noticed anything, or at least he's not done anything about it."
"Maybe he knows, but either doesn't mind or is like everyone else here, too frightened to say anything? After all, as you alluded to, there are rumours that Arthur is thinking of moving Lewis up onto the board of directors, so rocking the boat wouldn't be a good move at the moment."
"No, I suppose not."
"Who knows that his wife is having an affair?"
"Pretty much everyone in the company, really. Anyone that matters, certainly all the C level management staff. Maybe some others, too."
"Maybe. Well, you know how rumours spread. Anyway, is it true that Penny intends to divorce the poor sod and marry Dave?"
"So I've heard. Don't know if it's 100% true, though."
They left the room, their jobs of doing whatever it was they were paid to do completed, and destroying my marriage at the same time. I didn't even recognise their voices.
I finished putting the items away and decided to leave the building.
It appeared that everything I thought I knew was wrong. The love of my life and my wife, was neither the love of my life or really my wife. My boss, friend and mentor was really a lowlife piece of shit, and my career at Arthur Long Associates was nothing like I thought it was. Was over, in fact.
My colleagues, who I had thought I could trust, clearly weren't worthy of my spit, let alone my trust.
In the space of a matter of minutes I had lost everything that I held dear to me. My wife, my future children, my home and my employment. Both of my parents had died before I'd met Penny, I'd been an only child, so that was why losing Penny was such a big deal to me. She was like that song from donkey's years ago, "You to me are everything the sweetest song that I could sing" but not anymore. Not now.
I wanted to tell someone, but who? Actually, since I was a day early, I had seen nobody who would recognise me, so I could escape from work and try to see how to address this shit storm.
I booked a room at the local Premier Inn Hotel and looked through Google for a good divorce lawyer. Get the best one before the bitch could.
Luckily, I was able to get a Zoom appointment almost at once (there was only one local law firm Pleasant and Pleasant that offered that service, so I went with them) and spoke with one of their family and matrimonial matters services, a Miss Jane Pleasant.
I explained to Miss Pleasant what I knew. She was making notes and she looked at me through the screen and said, "What do you want, Mr. Porter?"
"I want to divorce her for adultery. But won't we require evidence? Hire a private detective and suchlike?"
"In the old days, well before even my father's day, the only way to prove adultery was to catch the guilty couple in action with independent witnesses, photographs, etc. That's all changed for the better, thank goodness. Hiring a private detective is a possibility, but they are limited by the laws governing the gathering of data. The interception of mail has always been illegal, and the laws regarding privacy have been beefed up to include tapping of phones, hacking emails and the like.
"We use a local detective who is ex-police. His name is Geoff Lithgoe, and he runs a company called Detectif Investigations. If you like, we can handle all that for you. He will not do anything shady or illegal, but if there's evidence to be found, Geoff will get it for you.
"Having said that, it won't be cheap, his fees and ours, but as someone once said, "'What price can you put on peace of mind'?"
I agreed with her sentiment, but I still needed to know how much I'd be expected to fork out. "I'll e-mail you the cost for filing the divorce (but don't worry, we'll deal with that for you), which is 600-odd quid to the government, there's Geoff's fees of perhaps £1,000 and our costs will start at £5,000 as our first tranche fee, but I'll keep you informed of any likely extra fees. We are, however, a family law firm and we try to keep our rates reasonable."
"Would I need the detective?"
"Well..." she paused for a moment, then nodded her head. "Yes, I'd advise that you bite that particular bullet and hire Geoff. We have worked with Geoff ever since he left the force to start his own agency, and he is very, very good. Unless your wife suddenly gets a fit of conscience and says, 'Yes dear, I have been having sex with Tom, Dick and Harry, I agree to your divorce terms,' then yes, you'll need Geoff's expert help. Incidentally, do you have any idea who she is having an affair with? If you do, how did you find out?"
I told her about the conversation that I had overheard. It felt good to be able to tell someone what I had found out.
"That's good enough evidence for starters," she said. "However, you'll need more evidence if you want to go for adultery, and Geoff will, hopefully, be able to gather the evidence that you need. However, there are other points that you will need to consider. You almost certainly will not want to continue working for your employer under these circumstances, so I would look at going for a constructive dismissal claim.
