I had three telephone calls that night.
After I got back from Rosie's house, I felt flat and empty. It was like a mood swing. At Rosie's I had felt optimism, euphoria and no inhibitions. Was I sliding towards that romantic state of falling in love with her? I thought about that.
The psychologist in me took over. The feelings that I had were well known symptoms of becoming manic. Falling in love and mania have a lot in common, I thought. Maybe I just had an exhilaration hangover, like an adrenalin come-down.
You cranky shrink-wrap, I thought. What next? What would my textbook say? I picked up a big dusty volume that I had used to study at the Institute of Psychotherapy and flicked through it to find 'hypomania': The mild version of the manic condition- Diagnosis, treatment, general advice for sufferers.
I skipped through the general advice for sufferers, the first words leapt from the page. They read: 'First and foremost, be true to yourself.'
I heard Rosie's words from earlier sound inside my head.
She had said, "Which is worse committing 'marital infidelity' as you put it, or being unfaithful or untrue to yourself?"
First and foremost, be true to yourself. My mind was whirring through rapid thoughts. (Rapid thoughts are another symptom of mania.) I knew I was fine. My stomach was gurgling like a geyser about to erupt. I needed to eat. I turned on the oven and got out another packet meal and poured myself a large glass of red wine.
It was then that the phone rang for the first time. It was Jane.
The conversation started innocently enough.
Then she asked, "How's the search for work going? Are you doing okay?"
I talked about my progress. I had made a lot of progress and my consulting work pipeline was bursting. It was as much as I could do to keep on top of all my prospective clients.
The conversation took a sudden turn.
"And how's the girlfriend? Is she thriving too?" she asked.
"Girlfriend? What girlfriend?" I asked.
"You know the one that sends you sexy emails like 'Where's my birthday present big boy? When are you
going to give it to me
?" she said angrily.
"Where on earth did you get that from?" I asked.
"I was looking at your Broadnet e-mail account earlier just to get an idea of what you were up to. I came across it there, it was unsigned but from wichita@virgin.com," she said angrily.
"And there's a whole chain of messages and a lot from you too," she said.
As she talked I turned on the computer and loaded my mail program. In the search box I typed the e-mail address, 'wichita@virgin.com.'
Jane was ranting, spitting venom down the phone.
"So now I know why I'm not there. You're getting what you need elsewhere and you don't need me anymore, you cheating bastard!" she shouted.
The computer listed all the emails from and to wichita@virgin.com and I highlighted one with the subject line 'It's my birthday!' That was obvious enough. I remembered. The notes were from Adrian, the male transport coordinator, at one of my government clients. He was inclined to go in for camp, off-the-wall humour. On this occasion, I had camped it up with him and sent him back some messages in the same vein.
"Am I your wife or aren't I, you shit? No wonder, it's taking you so darned long to sort things out in the UK. It's because you are having a fuck fest!" she screamed.
"Look, Jane. I think you ought to stop. Those notes were from a male colleague at a client. It's just English humour, I guess. It's sometimes more bizarre, wacky and less obvious than its American counterpart, just like Monty Python," I said.
With both Americans and Britons, it's often a case of 'one strike and you're out,' one sniff of infidelity and it's over, I thought. I remembered reading about a recent Gallup Poll that found that Americans are more tolerant of polygamy and cloning, than they are of infidelity.
"Don't give me those lies, you two-timing shit! Don't think I don't know what you are up to!" Jane ranted.
"Okay, I am going to say it one more time. Those e-mail messages are just banter between two men who aren't fucking each other. The man who wrote them is called Adrian and if you're so suspicious, there's a cell phone number on one of his notes. Why don't you call him up with your preposterous allegations and ask if I'm having an affair with him? Then you can look as stupid as you sound right now," I said. "And another thing, why were you snooping through my e-mail accounts?"
"I knew you were up to something and I know I'm right too," she said.
"What I'm up to is working my nuts off to get work. You're completely wrong and you've got a problem. What's obvious to me now is that you're suspicious and you don't trust me. What's worse is that it shows what a bad state we are in," I said. "So what's the next step?"
Most of what I was saying was true but only if I ignored the events of the last twenty-four hours.
"I just don't know how we can resolve this. I just know there's someone else and that there has been for a very long time now, since you've been in England. I just know it," she said.
"So I'll ask again, what's the next step? How do you get your resolution?" I asked. "How do you resolve something that isn't real? I don't know the answer to that."
"Oh you tricky bastard!" she shouted and with a resounding crash slammed down the phone.
The oven was smoking. My instant meal packet was now a burnt offering, its contents close to charcoal. I turned off the oven and went back to the computer.
I had a large e-mail account and I had kept copy messages at my Internet Service Provider for backup. I went back to the Broadnet account, selected all the messages and chose 'delete'. The messages flickered then disappeared. I had a backup on an external hard disk drive in any event, keeping a third copy was belt and braces.
