I can honestly say that the worst day of my life, worse even than the day my father died, was the day my wife found out about my affair. Not just because of the horror of the day itself -- the screaming, the shouting, dropping the kids off with a friend so she could go and confront my lover herself -- or the pain and embarrassment of the days and weeks that followed. It was the effect that carried on for years after even up to the present day: the loss of friends, the self-loathing, the slow realisation that I had damaged our relationship beyond repair, that our sex life was essentially over, but that we were going to have to keep up the pretence for the kids.
So, ten years later, when the roles were reversed and I discovered Katy's infidelity, you can imagine there were a mixture of emotions: anger, incredulity, and a certain amount of self-righteousness. After all the grief that she had given me over the years, she had gone and done exactly the same thing -- the hypocrite!
I found out in the way that I guess a lot of people find out these days -- a text message. I'm hadn't been in the habit of screening her calls or anything creepy like that; Katy had nipped out to the shops and left her mobile in the kitchen and when it went ping, I thought I'd see who it was as she was expecting a delivery at some point. It wasn't an unrecognised number, but it only had an initial L against the message, and tee first few words grabbed my attention -- "Can't wait..."
Can't wait for what?
I wondered? Chances were it was spam texting and I'd be able to delete it instantly anyway, so I pressed on it.
"Can't wait to kiss you again!" There it was in black and white. I had just begun to scroll back through previous messages (expressions of love, of lust and desire; arrangements for meetings; familiar conspiratorial messages) when the door opened and Katy walked back in. There was a moment when her face went from happy to perplexed to scared shitless as she looked at me, then the phone in my hands and the penny dropped.
This time, there was no screaming and shouting, there was weeping and sobbing and hand wringing and apology after apology after apology because she was so, so sorry. And not in a Father Jack way. I mainly stood and glowered as she collapsed into a sobbing pool of snot and tears in front of me but there was one question I wants answering.
"Who is he?" I asked in a pause in her crying.
"What?" she asked, and genuinely seemed bemused.
"Who is he?" I repeated. "Who the fuck is L?" I'd been wracking my brain for men whose name began with L and come with nothing apart from the fact that L may be for Loverboy, but that sounded very unlike Katy. Almost as unlikely as her having an affair in the first place.
I could see the realisation dawn on her face, and she looked down at her hands and muttered an answer that I couldn't quite hear.
"
What
?" I shouted at her, and for the first time in minutes she looked me in the eye.
"Lorna," she whispered. "It's Lorna."
I was stunned. If this were a film, we'd probably go into one of those montages that are supposed to show one of the characters inner thoughts preceded by a zooming close up of the characters eye. You know what I mean -- like in Harry Potter when he's learning Occlumency from Snape and it backfires and he reads Snapes mind instead, all swirly and out of focus.
The first image would probably go back something like 20 years to when we were all working together. Lorna was a couple of years younger than the pair of us so was the new girl on the block -- the pretty, slim, cute, single new girl with the big smile and big heart. She'd fitted in straight away to our little group and become a personal wank-bank favourite of my own despite her being a little on the prudish side. Or maybe because of her prudish side -- what's more of a turn on than being the one who released the inner slut of the goody two shoes. She had a face that just begged to be cummed on, long dark hair that I wanted to wrap around my cock, tits that begged to be sucked and legs that just screamed out to be stroked. She quickly went from new girl to Katy's best friend -- even when we all left the company, we were there for each other, we were there when she split up from a bad boyfriend, there when she met her future husband in a cheesy nightclub. They were bridesmaids at each other's weddings, god mothers to each other's children. Lorna came over to babysit when Katy went into labour with child number two, it was Lorna who the kids were dumped on when my affair was discovered. And throughout it all she was gorgeous, even as her body changed with children and with age: spreading, getting curvier and bigger, especially her tits and arse. She was the same modestly dressed prude.
And now she was fucking my wife.
Is that enough for the montage?
I must admit, the wind was seriously removed from my sails. My anger was replaced by three-parts bewilderment and one-part curiosity. More questions began to surface: the long walks in the country, the trips to London to see a show... had they really happened? Or were they just part of the smokescreen?
"How long?" I asked.
"We never meant it to happen..."
"How long?"
"... it just sort of...."
"How long?"
"...one night on the train back...."
"
How bloody long?"
I shouted, interrupting her explanation cum apology.
"About a year," she mumbled, "Maybe 18 months..."
"Where?" I asked. This was starting to be fun, remembering all the shouted questions from 10 years ago and slinging them back.
"We booked a hotel a couple of times and... and...."
