Chapter 1
He'd had that dream again, last night. He somehow knew he was near water and he could hear two people laughing at him. It was such a vague, silly dream that he had not thought to mention it to anyone, not even his wife...
***
They were already a good part of the way to their destination, when Derrick's Satnav flashed up an alert.
He glanced at it, frowned and said: "Paul. You haven't got anything better to do, have you?"
Paul, his companion on the journey, said in an amused tone of voice: "No, well, not really. Why? What's up?"
He replied: "There's been a bad smash on the motorway, two junctions ahead of us. I'll just get my satnav to work out an alternative route. If we take the next junction we should be able to take a detour and bypass the crash and get back on track. We'll be late, but at least we'll get there."
Half a minute later he groaned. "Oh, famous last words! The alternative route is also blocked. Looks like we would not be able to make it to the Northern office much before 6pm at the present rate. Instead of trying an alternative route, I'll get the next junction and rejoin the southbound traffic and head back to London."
He pointed to his hands free phone in its dashboard cradle. "Paul, mate, do me a favour, please? Call the office where our appointment is and tell them what's happened. Give them my apologies, too."
Paul keyed the number in and made the call. When he terminated the call he turned to Derrick and asked: "Do you want me to phone HQ and tell them what's happened?"
"Please!" his companion responded.
But when Paul tried to dial the number, nothing happened. He frowned. "Sorry, I think I just buggered your phone up!" he said, apologetically.
"Oh, no! Not again! It's nothing you did. I keep telling our IT people there's something wrong with that bloody phone! I think there's a faulty connection, somewhere. I'll go directly to IT, after lunch. Got some errands I might as well run, before I do that. What'll you do with your unexpected time back at the office?"
"If we get back by one, I might just go straight into my wife's office and take her out to lunch! She's been working on a number of special projects, recently. I worry that she's being overdoing it, these last twelve months. She always seems so tired."
Derrick paused for a few seconds, waiting until he had passed a caravan before he replied. "Sorry about that. But caravans always make me nervous out on the road! Yeah, your wife is the PA to Gary Briggs, the company CEO. I understand that you and Beth know Gary and his wife Sally, socially? Doesn't that cause any problems?"
Paul replied easily: "Well, you'd think it would, that it might, but it's made no difference between us. Well, no difference so far, that is. We generally keep work and pleasure separate."
Derrick accelerated past a garishly coloured Hackney Carriage before speaking again. "You going to phone your wife to tell her that you are already on the way back?"
"I'd love to," said Paul, grinning. "But guess who left his mobile phone in his briefcase in the boot?!"
"Ah, never mind. I'll pop in to see David Banning my line manager after lunch. He can call the people up north to reschedule the meeting."
He gave Paul a fleeting glance, quickly returning his eyes to the motorway that was taking them back toward London. "What about you? Who is your line manager, now?"
"It's still Gary. He's still the person I report to."
"Oh! I wondered if there'd been a demotion for you? After all, following all your high profile projects of the last few years it must seem a bit of a comedown, with you having to sit in on sales presentations and regional office meetings like the one I had planned for today."
"It's not a demotion, though I can see why it would look like it was. It's a bit of a curious one, I have to admit. Although I am not entirely certain about this, it's just what I have surmised, it seems that Gary got a bee in his bonnet about certain people who he felt were underperforming.
"But he did not know what to do, as he was unsure if their failings were caused by them, or if they'd somehow been let down or failed in some way by the company training programme.
"And as he had a big part in designing and implementing the training programme himself, he wanted to make sure everyone got a fair shake before appropriating any blame."
Derrick said "Yes... I see. I suppose that makes sense. Still, doesn't seem to be a good use of your skills. Unless he has an idea to somehow identify the root cause of the problem and get you to create a director-led programme to deal with it?"
Paul nodded, saying: "You could well be right, though he has said nothing about anything like that."
They then began to talk of non-work related matters, the chances of Aston Villa or Chelsea to win the cup, or the contenders in the Grand National, and other such topics men talk about on long, boring car journeys.
They got back to the North London suburban HQ of their employer, just before 1pm. Derrick parked the car and walked out of the car park to a nearby parade of shops, whilst Paul, briefcase in hand, entered the vast complex that made up the Hyperology Corporation.
There were several clusters of office buildings and a modest factory floor area where trial versions of the company's products were built for testing and for the designs to be finalised before they were to be constructed in the main manufacturing plant just outside Cheadle Hulme, near Manchester.
Paul dropped his briefcase in his office, noting that his attractive secretary Rhonda was already at lunch. Pity, he mused. She could have booked him and his wife, Beth, a table at one of the nearby restaurants. Still, no matter. There was a Wetherspoons in the High Street. No need to book there, he told himself.
Besides, lunch with Beth would be good, even if it was a case of popping into the local Aldi store, grabbing some bread and cheeses and some of those dinky little bottles of wine with the screw caps and dining alfresco in the nearby park, that would still be magical, as far as Paul was concerned.
The offices of the senior executives of the Hyperology Corporation where all on the first floor. So it was a fairly short walk from Paul's office to the offices of his wife, Beth and of their boss, Gary. Gary and Beth had offices that were side by side, with a connecting door between them.
Paul walked into the outer office of Beth's assistant, Gill. When Gill saw Paul she froze. He failed to notice the stricken expression on her face. "Afternoon, Gill!" He said breezily, as he opened the door into Beth's office.
"Please don't go in Paul..." bleated Gill, but it was far too late. As Paul opened the door, he himself froze, as he saw Gary fucking his wife Beth on her desk. They were talking, or rather, shouting at each other as they fucked. "Does your pathetic husband fuck you like this?" "No, Gary! He doesn't! Only you fuck me this well!""Whose cunt is this?" "It's yours, my love, my handsome lover! Yours! All yours!"
Their heads both snapped round at the same instant as they realised they weren't alone. Gill said, in a quiet voice, "Beth! Your husband... is... you... I..." she stopped; suddenly realising she was talking utter bollocks.
Paul looked, but he did not look at the errant lovers, rather, he looked through them and beyond them. They returned his glassy-eyed stare, horror etched into their features, caught as they were in mid copulation.
Paul turned and lurched away. Nothing was said by anyone as he passed Gill without seeming to acknowledge her existence.
Presently, Rhonda returned to her office and she noticed that the door to Paul's office was open. She wondered who could have been in his office in her absence. Then she saw Paul, sat in his chair, it was up against the corner wall, far back from his large desk.
"He looked so poorly that at first I thought he'd had a heart attack," she confided in a friend, later that day.
"Mr Augustine? Paul? Are you alright?"
She approached him and she noticed that he was staring blankly into space, and shivering so badly that his teeth were chattering.
She touched his neck to find his pulse. It was weak and rapid, his skin felt clammy and cold, she noticed that his breathing was rapid and shallow, his lips were blue.
She had worked as a nurse for several years before deciding to go into the corporate world and she had kept up her First Aid training so she knew that Paul wasn't actually suffering from a heart attack, as she'd first surmised. "Shock?" she thought to herself.
"Paul! Paul! Are you OK?" she asked, an edge of concern in her voice.
He slowly looked toward her, he answered haltingly, "No, Rhonda. I am not. I just found out that my marriage is over. I found out in the worst way possible."
The next several hours were a blur for Paul. Somehow Rhonda had managed to get him to drink a cup of hot, sweet tea ("how terribly fucking British!" he had thought) but the tea had, like all the books on old wives tales said, somehow helped him to feel better physically. But mentally? Not so much.
He knew he should speak with Beth, and with her lover and with his wife, Sally. Christ! That was going to be awkward! How to tell Sally that he and she were being cheated on?
Rhonda and someone else, a man, maybe Phil from Accounts, he couldn't be sure, had managed to get him home. They'd asked if he wanted them to stay, but he had politely waved them off. He wasn't sure what they knew and didn't want to risk breaking down in front of them.
He sat in his lounge, wondering what to do next. He wanted to phone his wife but found that he had not got his head around what he would be able to say to her, after what he had witnessed.
Fifteen years of marriage? And all gone in an instant!
