Of course he'd known.
But for quite a while he just didn't know he knew. Yes, that needs some explaining, I guess.
You see, when a horse wears blinkers, it can only see what is right in front of it. But it knows there is more. It can hear it, even smell it.
But it doesn't see. Until it turns its head.
One day John Filmore Cunningham turned his head. No, one day people turned it for him.
Chapter One: How Sarah left him.
Let me fill you in.
John Cunningham overheard two men discussing the sexual prowess of his wife. Not in a hypothetical sense, mind you. They were comparing experiences. And they were rather graphic in doing that.
Those experiences involved words like "slut", "deep throat" and "ass fucking". They were words he never associated with the woman he married twenty-one years ago. And even less with the mother of his daughter. They were actually so distant from the world they shared, that he never believed they were talking about her.
It was in a pub.
He was there with colleagues to celebrate the fact that every week has an end -- even this one. The two men were at the other side of a glass separation. It was only partly transparent, so he just got a sketchy image of them.
Their voices were loud enough to be heard over the bar's din. They must have had quite a lot to drink to make them this uninhibited.
As I said, it took John a while to notice that their bragging might concern him. So he must have missed quite a part of their conversation. Most of what he remembered was a poor reconstruction he did himself. He had to build it from what he heard after he really started listening. And that listening only began after one of the guys mentioned her name.
As in "that Cunningham-cunt from accounting."
Hearing your name that way usually gets your attention, doesn't it? And yes, his wife had a job in accounting at a big firm whose name the guys dropped only a few seconds later.
Hearing this was enough to make him listen. But as I said, the choice of words was too alien to make him realize they actually might be talking about Sarah, his wife.
And yet, there was enough to make him restless.
He automatically stepped closer. But it seemed they were mostly finished. One of them belched. The other one said he had to go. John looked around the corner and only saw his back when the man went out on the street. He was heavy and bald on top.
John Cunningham had no clue who the other one might have been. The place was rather busy.
***
When John came home, half an hour later, Sarah wasn't there. Another half hour later she still wasn't.
He wondered if it would have made him think twice if it weren't for the assholes he overheard. Or did he think twice because he felt there was something to it?
Preposterous, he thought.
Sarah had her right to unwind as well as he had. And she surely needed no clock to tell her when she was unwound enough to go home.
But she could have phoned.
She usually did when hours ran late. She did that a lot recently, he now realized. And he felt the echo of other evenings, nights, these last months. This last year.
After another hour John called her on her cell phone. It was down. He tried her office. The cleaner took it.
Then she hurried through the front door.
Which excuse would you not have accepted? Rush hour? Car trouble? He might have accepted a delay. But two hours without a call? Could it have been a sudden bout of overtime? Well, maybe, though quite unusual on a Friday night, especially without her knowing earlier.
Besides, the cleaner told him everybody had been gone for hours.
Could she have forgotten the time while winding down with the girls? Could be. But it would have been a first to be later than two hours without calling.
As I said: the belching brothers did have their effect on him.
To be sure, she used neither of these excuses. To be even more precise, she used no excuse at all. Just a simple "hi". Then she raced up the stairs and took a shower.
No need to say she never took showers when coming home.
***
When she came down, she looked all-fresh.
Her skin was a healthy pink and her hair still damp. You have to know she was a beautiful woman, not just by her husband's prejudiced standards. The crispy white blouse and the linen skirt hugged her trim body.
She donned an apron and asked him to dress the table. Then she turned to get the dinner from the fridge.
It took her a while to notice that he gave no reaction. She shoved the casserole in the oven and went to prepare a salad. He still had not started the table.
"Something wrong?" she asked. She dried her hands on the apron. It was the first time she looked him in the eyes.
"I might ask you," he said.
She just stared.
"Ask me what, honey?"
"I worried. You were late. You never phoned."
Her brow frowned. Then she threw a glance at the kitchen clock.
"Oh dear, I see! So late already. I had no idea."
Her hand had gone to her mouth. Then she came over to him and put her arms around his neck.
"Truly sorry, honey. Forgot the time."
Her blue eyes were steady. They drooped a bit and her eyebrows made small steeples. The effect was the look of a sorry puppy.
