A/N: challenging myself by writing in a new genre. Constructive feedback greatly appreciated!
For a "cheating wife" story, both the husband and the sex have fairly minor roles - this is mostly a story about race, religion, nationality, and identity. Hopefully it still appeals to a broad audience.
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Her name, she had to keep reminding herself, was Catherine Taylor.
It was, in most senses, a downgrade. Growing up she'd been Kate Oppong. It was a percussive name that lent itself to puns. "Great Aplomb", her mother called her.
Mostly, though, Oppong had been the most obvious sign of her Ghanaian heritage. Her grandfather was black, but fairly light-skinned, something which he said the family had celebrated growing up, and had married a Scottish woman who was as pale as milk. Kate's dad could have passed for Italian or Greek, and Kate was barely darker than her white classmates. When she saw herself in the mirror, she noticed her wide, flat nose, the only outward characteristic she inherited from her grandfather -- but nobody else ever picked her out as mixed-race, not unless she pointed it out.
Kate's mother, father, and grandfather were all lawyers. Her grandfather, Kofi Oppong, had won an academic scholarship as a schoolboy, and studied theology at the University of Oxford before pivoting to become a lawyer after graduation. He had been a reasonable criminal defence barrister, one of the first in the UK, but his tendency to take on too many sympathetic pro bono cases stopped him from living a life of luxury. He was a god-fearing man, who knew what his creator would have him do.
Kate's father inherited Kofi's solemn Anglicanism, but criminal law was not for him -- he couldn't, he said, face defending someone who he knew to be guilty. That, Kate thought, was a cover. It was certainly convenient that he had no moral qualms about high-paying corporate law, which seemed to Kate to just be a quest to find the latest shakedown.
Kate had been the first girl in her year at school to get prominent breasts, and she soon became accustomed to unwanted remarks. One day, on a shopping trip, a strange man made a lecherous comment within earshot of her father. Kate had never seen her father so angry. She was more embarrassed by his temper than by the pervert he was angry at.
"Please, Dad, I get worse every day at school," she said.
That was a pivotal moment in Kate's life. Her father, convinced that Kate's school was raising her to tolerate inappropriate, un-Christian behaviour, pulled her out of the local comprehensive and put a large chunk of that corporate lawyer salary towards a private Christian girls' boarding school for Kate. It was a big culture shock for Kate. She'd always been a good student, only landing herself in trouble a couple of times a year. The environment of her new school was much less permissive, and she struggled to stay within the narrow confines of the school rules. Punctuality, concentration, and academic performance all became issues. Kate found herself spending nearly every evening alone in the detention room, being made to copy out long passages from Leviticus.
After a couple of years, Kate internalised the school's rules, and gradually got in less trouble. She emerged at 18 as a conscientious young Christian woman, who was fully aware of the temptations and risks of gambling, unholy substances, and premarital sex.
Unlike her parents and grandfather, Kate did not want to become a lawyer. She went to the London School of Economics, and graduated with a first-class honours degree in developmental economics. While studying at LSE, she met Sam Taylor, who was studying history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, at a social gathering of the Christian Unions of the London universities. Sam was kind, open, and witty, amazing Kate with his knowledge of Chinese history. Moreover, they were very compatible. Crucially, they were on the same page about hanky-panky: no sex before marriage, and no hanging around: they got engaged before their final year and were married within a month of graduation. Of course she took his name. Why wouldn't she? That was what all her schoolfriends had done, and her sisters-in-law.
Kate got a job working at the Treasury, the UK's finance ministry. It was prestigious in itself, and the sense of prestige was only amplified by the grandeur of the old building, which had mostly survived the Blitz. Her job involved assessing requests for funding from the Department for International Development. Mostly, these were boring: the interesting stuff, about designing aid programmes, was worked out every few years in a major spending review, and so all Kate had to do was review requests for salary adjustments and IT upgrades. She was doing mundane white-collar work in the fanciest setting imaginable. Kate couldn't complain.
Except she wasn't Kate, not at work.
On her first day at the Treasury, Kate was disappointed to find that her email address had been set up as catherine.taylor@hmt.gov.uk, not kate.taylor@hmt.gov.uk. She soon found out why -- the Business Manager to the Deputy Director was also called Kate Taylor.
"We decided to go with Catherine to minimise confusion," said her manager. "There's an option for you to be kate.taylor2, but you'd just end up getting each other's emails. Trust me, there are six Liam Kellys in the department and it's a total nightmare."
After an hour of setting up her IT, Kate went to get a drink of water. Stood at the kitchenette was the most handsome man Kate had ever seen, with a square face and the cheekbones of a supermodel. Kate found herself mentally undressing him.
"Hi, I'm Kate. I mean, Catherine," she said.
He grinned at her. "Don't you know your own name?"
She sighed. "Apparently I have to be Catherine at work so that I don't get confused with the other Kate Taylor."
"Ouch. Can't say I ever have that problem." He offered his hand. "Kwame Osei-Dadzie. The one and only."
"WowΙ ano a emu yΙ duru?" Kate asked.
Kwame was taken aback. "You speak Twi?"
"My granddad was from Accra."
"Wow. I'd never have guessed. I don't actually speak it very well, but I recognise it when I hear it. I was born in Croydon."
Kwame quickly became Kate's main confidant at work. They would moan to each other about the canteen food, their managers, and above all else, the inanity of the budget requests they dealt with. Kate found Kwame to be a kindred spirit. He reminded her of the Ghanaian side of her in a way that dinner parties with Sam's white friends simply couldn't. She began to feel more authentically herself at work than at home.
Things boiled over, as they will, at the Christmas party. They weren't supposed to drink in the office -- the days of the permanently tipsy civil service were long gone -- but they had special permission to do so one Thursday afternoon in mid-December. Their Director brought in a crate of Prosecco and three cases of craft beer, a local pale ale.
Kate had never been a big drinker, but she figured one glass wouldn't hurt, and it soon turned into two. She had a good time, mingling with her colleagues. And then, across the room, she saw Kwame brushing the hair out of another girl's eyes.
