Fat Chance Ch. 02

Friday was one of Maisie's gym nights, so I wore dark clothing and waited in the bushes at the back of the car park. It wasn't long before I saw Gavin pull up in his flash red BMW with "GAV" as part of the number plate. No wonder Karen knew that it was his car without any mix-up.

Sure enough, just over an hour and ten minutes later, Gavin returned to the car alone, but sat in the car waiting rather than drive off. Two minutes later, my loving wife put in an appearance. She walked over to the car and let herself in the back seat. Gavin got out of the front, looked all round and got into the back with her. Within five minutes the car was bouncing up on its springs like Karen had described.

Now, why was I still crouching there? Any hot blooded male should be storming over there as soon as she got in the car and bashing their bloody heads together, instead of letting them smack the bases of their torsos together. Oh, yes, I was angry, you can be sure of that, but I didn't want to stop them, well not in the short-term, and I definitely didn't want her back.

What I wanted was revenge and I had an idea how I was going to achieve at least part of it.

I crept out of the bushes and up to the car on hands and knees. Using a small screwdriver, I always carried in my work shirt pocket, I slowly let the air out of all four of the tyres. Then I crept away on hands and knees a few car lengths before getting up and looking for Maisie's car. I knew if I let her tyres down in the same way that they would know that it was me, so I just jammed my penknife into the side wall of one of the tyres, so it would look unrelated. Thinking about it, Gavin was getting off bloody lightly, so I crept back to his BMW and this time used my penknife to cut off all four of his tyre valves and chucked them in the undergrowth.

Then I went home and lay on my lounger so I looked asleep when Maisie got home about half eleven. She clipped about, showered and stomped off to bed while I appeared steadfastly asleep throughout. Actually, I fitfully slept in that chair all night.

When I got up on Saturday morning and checked the microwave, her supper was still in there, untouched. I left for work early, as soon as I heard her get up to go to the toilet. I didn't want to be around her in case I lost my temper. Her car was outside, with the spare non-alloy wheel on the rear nearside. I let out about three-quarters of the air and fetched a couple of nails from our garage and hammered them into the tyre. I hoped she would get halfway to the supermarket before the tyre went down and she'd be stuck on the bypass with no spare. I didn't want to make a noise opening her boot, but I am sure that's where the vandalised flat tyre was.

Usually on a Saturday morning, on those weekends when I didn't go down to the coast, I would work overtime from 7am to noon in the garage. Saturday morning was one of our busiest sessions of the week. I had taken this Saturday off. I drove into town and bought several cans of body-building protein powder, a case each of wine and beer and a load of chocolate bars. I guessed that when Maisie got home she'd need a glass or two of wine. The house was empty when I got back. I emptied the protein powder into empty jars of flour and sugar and packed the rest in plain freezer bags which I stored at the top of the cupboards out of normal reach. I started cooking a pasta sauce with loads of olive oil and the protein powder mixed into the sauce. I thought that if Maisie had plenty to drink, she wouldn't notice any taste difference.

I went to look at No 22 Fairfield Walk to see if I could get a glimpse of who the guy was, but the car was missing from the short driveway.

Next, I called Emma, the slimming consultant, to get hold of Gavin's address. I told her I had arranged to pick up some recipes from him but lost the post-it with his address on. She was happy to supply it to me, knowing we often close to him. I drove over to see him, but there was no sign of his bright red car either. However, I rang the bell while I was there and spoke to his wife, an attractive confident-looking woman in her early thirties.

I sat down and introduced myself and told her straight that her husband was having an affair with my wife. She had expected something of the kind as soon as I asked to speak to her privately. She had suspected her husband of other affairs but he always denied them and she had never had concrete proof.

Adrienne had three young children and wanted to keep her marriage. I told her she would need to keep Gavin on a short lease if that was the case, perhaps by hinting to him that friends were keeping a check on him and she was hearing some strong rumours.

I owned up to her about vandalising his car at the sports centre and that I was now going to concentrate on frustrating the pair of them in future. She thought it was very funny and we laughed about it, agreeing that we would keep in touch and let each other know our respective partners' movements. Adrienne and I exchanged mobile and email addresses and then I got up to go.

I had got a missed call from Maisie on my mobile while at Adrienne's. I had an inkling what it was about and called her back on my way out of Adrienne's door. Maisie screamed at me that she was stranded on the bypass with a flat tyre. She blamed it on me for not checking her spare regularly enough.

"Honey," I said, "you didn't even tell me you had already had to use the spare."

She shut up ranting then, probably unwilling to tell me how she managed to change the old tyre.

I said, "I'll pick up a spare BMW wheel from the garage and get to you in thirty minutes and sort you out."

I took my leave of the lovely Adrienne at her door. As I turned to say goodbye, I held both her hands and blurted out that I was so sorry that I had brought such bad news of my wife's infidelity, saying it was probably my fault, and my eyes started to well up.

Adrienne put her arms around me and pulled me into her shoulder and rubbed and patted my back. I returned the comforting pats and rubs in as neutral a place as I could find, between her shoulder blades. Adrienne was cooing and reassuring me that it will be all right, as if I was a child. After thirty or forty seconds, we released each other and pressed a couple of cheek kisses on each other before I left to collect my soon-to-be-ex-wife Maisie.

I thought about my situation on the way, of course I did. I really hadn't thought of anything else since Karen tipped me the wink about my cheating wife. How did I feel about her lovers Gavin and the mystery father of young children from the bank? Well, the common denominator in both these affairs was Maisie. Whose fault it was didn't really matter, she shouldn't be doing what she was doing. It certainly wasn't a one-time mistake due to being drunk or some other excuse, she was having an affair, in fact multiple affairs at the same bloody time, the slut! We had a sworn agreement to be faithful with one another, forsaking all others it said. We weren't just shacked up, we weren't a casual relationship, our commitment was tied, not tenuous, we were married and had a legally binding contract to have and to hold for better or for worse and she should have honoured it.

When we agreed to marry, we did so as equals, OK she was better looking than me at the time (who wasn't?) but I made up for my lacking in the looks department by helping to support her through college and providing us a roof over our heads until she had established her career. Since then she had improved herself out of all proportion, not only career wise, but she looked much foxier than when we originally started out. Meanwhile, I had pretty well stayed still career wise and my looks had gone downhill. I had been overweight and even though I had lost most of the surplus weight, my body had a lot of loose skin and I was not exactly as toned as my tanned upper torso implied.

It seemed to me that we were no longer in the same league. Maisie had been promoted to the Championship and I had until recently dropped down a couple of divisions to Non-league. Due to my efforts I could say I was back in the game in League Two, but I still had some catching up to do. Could I ever catch up though? Was it in me to make myself attractive to my wife again? More to the point, though, did I want her anymore, now I knew how I was being treated?

I certainly didn't like Gavin. Any guy who would have a wife and children at home and still be prepared to play around as if he was single, was a shit. Adrienne was a young and very attractive-looking woman. I couldn't understand why Gavin would be tempted by my wife to be honest.

Look, I had loved Maisie exclusively for as long as I can remember and I have always thought she was lovely, even when she wasn't quite as gorgeous as she was now. But my tastes were particular and I had honestly never looked at any other woman with anything other then enjoying feasting my eyes only.

Clearly the banker she was also seeing had a young family, like Gavin. I really didn't want to hurt the families of either man, but I did want to hurt Maisie. Now I had forced myself to confront the future, there was no way I would ever want to patch up with her, not following her serial betrayal.

By the time I had worked through my feelings on that short drive, I had caught up with Maisie on the bypass. It was pissing down with rain by then and for safety sake the police had forced her to leave the vehicle and was standing behind the barrier. I heard later that the police issued her with a ticket, fining her and adding points to her licence for having a unserviceable spare. She looked pissed and miserable, and I couldn't help smiling.

At the end of the day, this was all her fault, if she would go out fucking with other people, than she had only herself to blame if she got fucked with in return.

She didn't relish my cheery smile and answered my "Wot's uppppppp!" greeting with a scowl, which made me smile even more, although I had the sense to keep my back to her as I worked on the car. I changed the wheel and chucked the shredded tyre in the back of my van. As I got the original damaged tyre out of her car boot, I saw that she had not bought any groceries or other goods, even though she had been out "shopping" all the morning and was on the way back to our place via the bypass. I assumed she had been somewhere meeting either Gavin or the other jerk. I thought I'd start keeping track of her daily mileage from then on, to at least have some idea of her range.

I drove off and she followed me until I turned off to get two new tyres, while she continued home. Once I had replaced the tyres, I scooted over to see if I could catch Mr Banker at his house. His car was home so I assumed that he was too. There was no bell fitted to the door, so I knocked firmly. Soon the garage door opened and a tall, spare young man in his early twenties, with thinning sandy hair, stood there wiping his hands on a rag.

"Hello, mate," I began, "My name is Jerry Cox, I'm Maisie's husband. Can I have a quiet word ... in private?"

He looked worried, his face went white and he backed up away from me. I followed him into the garage.

"I'm here because I've heard a few rumours about you and my wife," I said, "and I want to get a few things straight, direct from the horse's mouth."

"There's nothing going on," he said nervously, "Mrs Cox and I just work together, that's all."

"If that's all," I said with an edge to my voice, "then you've nothing to worry about, have you, sunshine?"

His eyes looked furtive and he wouldn't look me in the eye. I looked around the near-empty garage. In the middle of the floor there was a large doll's house, which he was clearly painting, probably for his daughter. I remembered the child's car seat in his Ford. I heard the front door open behind me and a short, heavily-pregnant young woman poked her head around the door.

"Oh, I thought I heard a knock at the door," Mrs Banker said. I think she sensed the tension between us. "Everything all right?"

I walked over to her with a big smile on my face and held out my hand. In automatic response, she shook it tentatively.

I said, "Hi, I'm Jerry, I just called round to have a quiet word about things going on at the bank. You know, walls have ears at that place, don't they? You look amazing," I added, "when are you due and do you know whether it's a boy or girl?"

She smiled sweetly, replying "I'm Josephine, Jerry. Thank you, Gordon and I decided we didn't want to know the sex until the birth, we've got nine weeks to go."

"A summer baby, eh? Hope it's not too hot in your last few weeks. Would you think it forward of me if I asked for a cup of tea for us? I had a puncture on the bypass and got soaked." My coat and jeans were pretty wet, I continued, "I must look pretty dishevelled, I don't want to drip on your carpets, so I'll just stay out here with Gordon." I finished my sentence with my cheesiest smile. I may be ugly, but I always look sincere.

She smiled back and waddled off to put the kettle on.

I turned back to her husband. "Nice family, Gordon, I take it you also have a little girl?" I pointed at the dolls house.

"Yes, Kylie will be three next month." Then he was silent.

"Look, I'll get to the point, I think you have been putting your family life at risk by playing away from home with my nearest and dearest and I want it to stop before anyone gets hurt."

"Nothing is going on, we just meet up and talk that's all, I've got enough on my plate at the moment and can't afford to lose my job."

"Talk with your boss all you like, anything more and your feet won't touch the ground. So where do you go for your little talks, because you are not at the bank until all hours as I was led to believe?"

Gordon wrung his hands, he was struggling to respond to my straight question with an acceptable answer. Suddenly, the back door to the garage opened and Josephine brought in a tray with teapot, mugs, milk, sugar and a plate of biscuits. That put temporary halt to our conversation.

Gordon made a space on the chest freezer in the corner and I took the tray off Josephine and plonked it down. She said she had to get straight back to Kylie who was watching the television. I thanked her and off she went, not without a nervous glance from her to her other half. I poured the tea for us both and took a mug over to look at the doll's house.

"I picked it up in the local free ads and trying to do it up in time for Kylie's birthday. I've been working on it all morning an' not getting very far," Gordon said.

So, he wasn't my rival today. He was probably a great banker but as a do-it-yourselfer he was a non-starter. I use my van to store all the stuff I needed to paint and repair the mobile home in the caravan park, and I am good with my hands.

I fetched my WorkMate, tools and a few offcuts of wood and made a toy washing machine and cooker for the dolls house kitchen and painted them using a wide range of brushes I had with me - Gordon only had a couple of brushes which were far too big for the task. Using a spare sheet of marine ply, I made a new roof for the dolls house to replace the damaged one. From my diddy-box I found some brass hinges so that the new roof could be opened like another door, adding to the playability. I told Gordon that I had a small tin of red paint in my shed at home and would drop it in to him the next day so he could paint the roof.

When Josephine collected the tea things half an hour later, she found the pair of us bonding, working away together on the dolls house, discussing things we could use as furniture and fittings. I spent a couple of happy hours there, before taking my leave of the couple, shaking Gordon's hand. Josephine kissed me on the cheek and gave me a hug and murmured thanks for helping make Kylie's present so special.

It felt nice to feel wanted by my lover's wife, the irony of the situation didn't escape me.

By the time I got home, Maisie had showered and changed and the skinny lazy good for nothing cow was actually waiting for me to cook the evening meal. I could believe it, though, and that was the truth. At least she had already found the wine in the fridge and was on her second glass by then and thoroughly pissed off.

When she asked where the hell I had been, I answered that, after getting her new tyres, I had helped a friend with some DIY, which I said I had pre-arranged before her little emergency on the bypass. I told her I would change the wheels over for her the next day.

For our evening meal I put together a carbonara for her, with oodles of olive oil and whey protein in the sauce, rather than the usual lo-cal olive oil flavoured spray. For my meal, I had poached eggs on wholemeal toast with steamed vegetables.

When I checked the fridge, I did a quick count up and saw that a couple of small bars of chocolate had disappeared. Hee hee, I love it when a plan comes together. Childish, I know, but the way I was feeling inside at the time I'd snatch up any little pleasures that came my way with both hands.

Next morning I put a chicken in the oven, changed Maisie's wheel, and popped round to Gordon's with the paint and some sheets of paper I had produced on my colour printer, of wallpaper designs downloaded off the net on Saturday evening. Josephine answered the door.

"Jo, you look absolutely radiant this morning," I smooched as I hugged and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled and squeezed me back. She did look absolutely gorgeous.

I took the roof off the dolls house with a few twists of the screwdriver, leaving Gordon to give it a couple of coats of red paint, while I cut up the "wallpaper" and started to paste it to the walls of the tiny rooms. Jo brought out a couple of beers, admired what we were both doing and invited me to lunch, but I said I had to get back home in an hour or so and finish off our own roast dinner and would take a rain check on a future meal with them.

I'll not forget her comment, "Oooh, a man that cooks, your wife must thank her lucky stars." Yeah, right.

As soon as Jo left the garage, Gordon told me quietly and candidly, "We've been shagging most Tuesdays and Thursdays for about three months."

He looked me unwaveringly in the eye before continuing. I looked up from sticking some rather odd paper shapes with tiles printed on them in the toy bathroom and nodded for him to carry on. I wasn't angry, I suppose 'resigned' was the best attitude I could muster.

"It started on that quarterly area progress briefing at Ferndale Valley conference centre. The managers sometimes take a junior member of staff with them to widen their experience and this time it was my turn, the first time I had been. There are some training meetings during the two days but mostly it is just a jolly for the bosses and an excuse for some extra marital goings on overnight. Everybody is at it apparently and the few not in on it turns a blind eye. Rumour has it that Mrs Cox usually pairs up with Stewart Marshall-Hobbs, the area manager. Apparently he couldn't make that weekend, so I er, got grabbed to fill in for him."

Gordon pulled a few gulps from his beer while I let this sink in. I carried on sticking in paper on the dolls house walls, with really nothing to say.

"I found it quite exciting that first night," Gordon confessed. "I had never been in that position before, but everyone was doing it. Hardly anyone was discrete, so I thought what the hell, it was a one-off and so long as Josie didn't find out... Then when we got back, your wife wanted to continue and she had me over a barrel. To start with it was still a bit of fun, but the fun doesn't last, it was nerve-wracking keeping up the deceit and I got to hate it. It was just sex, there was no love involved. It wasn't an affair as such, I was just..."