My wife of over fifty years died a while ago, leaving our kids and me devastated, she had always been my best friend, lover, wife, and the glue that kept us all together.
We had run a country guest house for over forty years, we both enjoyed having people stay with us and, of course, they paid for the privilege. However with Mary no longer by my side I just didn't have the will to carry on, so I sold up and moved to a lovely cottage, also in a rural location.
A fair number of our guests had, over the years, become good friends, these I still kept in touch with, and it is one of these that this is about.
Brian worked in a major city about a two hour train journey from our local town, he had stayed with us once a year for about fifteen years, he used to help at a local event that was held annually until he fell out with the organisers. After that he visited every month or so until his Dad, who he stayed with, died. He then had no one to look after his pets so stopped coming. Somehow Mary had arranged that I take him to and from the station, not something we normally did, but Brian didn't drive.
Anyway, about six months after Mary died he rang me and said that he wanted to get something off his chest, the following is what he told me. I will try to tell it as it happened...
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"Hi Mark," said Brian when I answered the phone, "how are you keeping?"
"I'm coping thanks, but it doesn't get easier," I replied, "how about you?"
"Um, I'm fine thanks, but the reason for the call is that I have something that I need to get off my chest, it's been bugging me since Mary died," he said, "but you may be upset, um, er, Mark um, did you know that Mary had an affair with me?"
Gobsmacked, I held the phone, it felt like the air had been knocked out of me... My wife, my Mary, an affair... No way!! My brain was whirring, how, when, why, no, surely not, not Mary! We were so happy... he must be imagining it, surely not, no way!
"Mark are you still there?" he asked.
"Brian, I don't know why you have fabricated this, if it's a joke it's in extremely poor taste!" I replied.