A Rich Fetish

Decision made, I sped back to the house. Starting with the guest bedroom, followed by the master, I checked everywhere there was to check, even to the extent of seeing if there were secret panels in the bottom of cupboards or the bottom of drawers. Nothing.

I fired up the home computer and searched every directory. Again, nothing. Sarah had no access to my work laptop so no reason to check that. Unless there was something in Sarah's car, or her phone, there was apparently nothing to find. So, what was the reason she'd withheld the daycare thing from me? And where was her bloody car? Where was my wife and what the fuck did she do on Wednesdays? Talk about frustratingly pissed off.

It was still only one-fifteen, so I had time to start the only thing I could think to do. Going into the sub-basement, I started all over again. There had to be something I was missing. This time, I actually moved the sewing desk and looked for any unaccounted-for space where a compartment could be hidden. Nothing.

Next, I decided to remove everything from the shelves and look in, under, and behind every item. Half way through, I picked up one of those wheat bag things; you know, the type people stick pins and needles into. One of the needles stuck into my finger. Exhausted from lack of sleep, suspicious, worried, and very pissed off, I did something I was renowned for never doing—I lost my temper. Picking up the lumpy little bag, I hurled it at the opposite end wall. Well, aimed it in that direction. At the last moment, it moved in my hand and flew straight for the bare light bulb. There was the pop of the implosion and I was suddenly thrown into darkness. Upset with my loss of self-control, I slumped into the desk chair, with only the dim light from the doorway for illumination. The combination of the small windows on this level, and the fact it was a cloudy day to start with, meant it was gloomy at best. Rather like my mood.

I remained seated in Sarah's chair, partly to calm down, partly to think where to look next, and partly to put myself in Sarah's mind, seeking clues. At this rate, I'd have a heart attack before she came home on Sunday.

I swivelled the chair back and forth, rolling ideas and possibilities around my tired brain. Preoccupied, the awareness of a slender shaft of light was slow to seep into my awareness. In fact, it was only my glancing down at my hand, resting on the sewing table, that drew my attention to it. It had spotlighted my wedding ring. Only later would the irony occur to me.

I followed the line of light to the wall of the room which was made from distressed wood panelling. I remember Sarah saying she'd picked it up cheap when we were building the house. Distressed, I was assured, meant the wood contained flaws, including knot holes. The light was coming from one such small hole. It was about the size of a milk bottle cap, just above and to the right of the sewing desk. I put my eye to it, but apart from ascertaining there was a space there, couldn't see a thing. As an experiment, I turned off the light switch near the main door. Sure enough, the light from the knot hole also disappeared.

Sprinting upstairs, I returned with a spare globe and quickly fit it. Light once more filled the room. For the next ten minutes, I pressed, probed, levered, and pulled the wall, looking for a hidden door. Again, all I got for my efforts, was an extreme sense of frustration. I was at the point of contemplating getting tools to smash the wall down completely, when the memory of one of Sarah's and my favourite movies came unbidden to my mind. In the movie, a girl was going through a stately old home, trying to find the entry to a secret passage. She eventually found the trigger to the door when she stuck her finger through a tiny hole. My gaze revolved to the knot hole. My feet moved of their own accord toward it. A probing pinky circled in the hole and met an obstruction at three o'clock. It didn't move inward, outward, or anticlockwise. When moved clockwise, however, there was a distinct click and one of the vertically laid wood panels, near the other end of the room, popped open about a centimetre.

My heart rate escalated, one moment steady, the next pounding. We'd built this house. The only people who could possibly know about this secret were the architect, the builders, and one other person; Sarah. Sarah, the only one with a motivation to build a secret room. What was I about to discover about my 'guileless' wife?

I instinctively knew that whatever was in the room was a big deal. The effort alone to keep me away from the construction site when this particular project was constructed told me that. Instead of satisfaction at having finally found I wasn't going mad, that Sarah did indeed have a secret she'd been keeping from me, I swallowed, pushing my sadness and disappointment down to a place where I could deal with them later.

Throwing open the door immediately revealed the join butted onto a wall joist. That's why I'd felt no movement during my earlier probing. The space within the door was lit by a strip light above the frame. They do say keepers-of-secrets are often betrayed by the simplest things. Tonight, the saying held true; having this light and that of the sewing room wired to one switch was a mistake. Unless the outer bulb blew, or, in this case, was hit by friendly fire, the secret room would never be detected. Bizarrely, I wondered if that was an oversight by Sarah, or whether the electrician hadn't followed her instructions.

I recognised I was dithering. Knowing, deep down, that whatever was in the compartment was going to change my happy life forever I was now reluctant to unveil Sarah's secrets. For a long drawn out moment I was tempted to close the room and walk away. Perhaps, ignorance was bliss. Later, I realised that not in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined how much change was in my future.

The space was twenty-four inches deep. Revealed by the three-foot-wide panel were clothes, hanging on a steel rail, just like in Sarah's closet upstairs. Unlike the latter, though, these were obviously classier and much more revealing than I was used to seeing her in. At the bottom was a small set of drawers, which a quick search revealed were filled with lingerie that, when worn by my beautiful wife, would have caused an Egyptian mummy to get an erection. Next to the drawers, were racks holding about ten sets of high-heeled shoes.

The right-hand wall of the space was wood and obviously the end. The left-hand wall was steel. Turning left, I noticed there was a gap between the wall and more steel. In the gloom, I could see that what I had originally thought was solid wall, was actually the left-hand door of a double set. There was a catch which I activated, allowing me to throw open the second door.

The second half of the hidden room was entirely taken up with a huge fireproof safe. It was so big it could only have been installed before the room was anywhere near complete. Where had I been when all this was going on? Sarah, oh Sarah, what are you hiding?

On the front of the safe was a keyhole and large spoked handle. Damn. Now I had to look for the bloody key. In frustration, I grabbed the handle and leaned on it, almost losing my balance as it turned unexpectedly. Sarah must have been so sure I'd never find the secret compartment, she never bothered locking the safe. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Was she so confident because she thought me a fool, or herself so clever?

So, if it wasn't for security, what was the huge safe for? Keep the mice out? Or protect the contents from fire in case the house burned down? That made the contents very valuable indeed. Taking a deep breath, I opened the thick door and stepped into a whole different realm.

The top two thirds of the space were steel shelves. The bottom third, a steel drawer. Incongruously, the first thing that caught my eye was a glossy brochure from a cruise line. The front cover showed a cruise ship sailing just off a spectacular iceshelf. Antarctica. Under that brochure were others, for Alaska, the West Indies and you guessed it, every other place she'd supposedly been to with her aunt. I suspected, even at this early stage of my investigations, that this was her research material. The source of her future stories about her fantastic, fictional cruises. One shelf held journals, conveniently marked by years, and documents, some loose, others in envelopes. The next shelf held more documents and a few DVDs. All non-commercial and all in individual plastic covers. Each disk had a set of initials and a date. The one on the top was marked AK, 4^th August 2016. That was approximately twenty months ago.

The bottom shelf held an open wooden tray. When I pulled it out, its contents caught the light and sparkled. Thrown into it, seemingly randomly, was jewellery. Lots of jewellery. Jewellery has never interested me, but I know eighteen carat gold when I see it. It was obviously expensive stuff, but, rather bizarrely, it looked to have been casually tossed in, almost discarded. The owner, whoever they were, weren't treating the expensive baubles with any respect at all.

Among the glittery bling were two satin ring boxes. These, at least, looked like they'd been placed with care. The contents of the first, larger box, left even me in awe. It was a solitary diamond, and a big one at that. I held it up for closer inspection and, by the way it sparkled as soon as it caught the least bit of light, I took it to be the genuine article.

The second box broke my heart. Looking small and insignificant next to the rest of the hoard, were two rings. One, a central diamond bracketed by two smaller diamonds, the other a plain gold band. How paltry the diamonds looked in comparison to the whopper in the other box. How familiar those rings were. Of course, they were—I'd bought them. One had been donated while I was on my knees. The other, when I'd been standing in front of a priest.

I fell to my knees in a sick parody of my proposal, my hands trembling like that of a Parkinsons sufferer. Wherever my wife was, which was within driving distance, she was there as a single woman. The barriers against my thoughts going extreme, crumbled under this latest evidence. I'm only a little ashamed to say I clambered to my feet only to stagger backward and slump into the chair and was, well, emotional for a while. I was only interrupted when my phone alarm went off, reminding me it was time for the school run. I gathered my wits, compartmentalising my shock and grief, and left.

This time I picked up James and Jenny first, before going to my sister Carrie's. We'd been invited to dinner. I stewed all the way on what I'd found and what it meant. After dinner, while my kids played with their cousins, I spilled the beans to my sister and brother-in-law. They couldn't believe Sarah was anything but a loving wife and doting mother but wanted to race over to my place immediately and see what was in the envelopes, on the papers, and in the journals. We all knew if we were to learn the truth before Sarah came back, it would be from those documents. Sis wanted to go home with me right then and there, but I fobbed her off, saying I needed to deal with it all first.

As soon as was polite, I bundled the kids home and into bed. Grabbing the baby monitor after Cindy dropped off, I headed back under the house, anxious, and yet somehow reluctant to start reading. Before reaching for the first journal—I'd decided to read those first—I pushed the wooden tray back onto its shelf. That drew my attention to the one place I hadn't investigated so far. The steel drawer at the bottom. At an awkward angle, I couldn't shift it. I knelt on the floor and looked closer. There was no locking mechanism. Grabbing it firmly, and now at a better angle, I pulled harder. It slid out. I rocked back on my heels, stunned.

The reason opening it was so difficult proved to be because its contents were so heavy. But then, gold is.

Laid out on a thick felt mat, were eleven gold bars. Some smaller 100g ingots, but most the larger 250g ones. I knew a little about bullion. Just after we were married, Sarah convinced me to buy a 100g ingot as an investment. It still lived in a safety deposit box at the bank. Her boss was convinced gold was about to skyrocket. He was right. The bar we'd paid about $7,500 for was now worth over $14,500. It seemed hardly a week went by when Sarah didn't google the current gold price and tell me what our little shiny brick was worth.

I did a quick calculation in my head and estimated the drawer held about $133,000 worth of bullion. As I was trying to get my head around this, I noticed the layer of felt under the ingot was lumpy. Lifting a corner of the mat, I saw another layer of bars. Hastily removing a few of them at the front, I lifted another layer of felt to find yet another astonishing layer of gold. Was this how Howard Carter felt when he opened Tutankhamen's tomb? Another hurried shifting of ingots revealed the third layer was the last.

Hurriedly, but gently, I emptied the drawer and stacked all the bricks according to size. I grabbed my phone, turning on the calculator app. I won't bore you with the maths, but even assuming the current price was around $1,800 per ounce, the gold in the drawer exceeded one and a half million dollars. Only then did I ask myself, where the hell did Sarah get it from? My eyes drifted, as if on autopilot, to the right, to the sexy, revealing clothes hanging where I was never meant to see them. A horrible thought stole into my soul. As I stacked the bricks back in the drawer, I desperately tried to think of a rational explanation for all I'd found. Apart from the obvious one, that is.

I was a bit stuck on which of the documents to read first. In the end, I decided the journals promised the best chance of finding out what the hell was going on quickly, so I picked up the one marked 2018 and opened it.

I was wrong.

It wasn't a journal. It was a ledger. Not only that but it was coded. No, I quickly ascertained, not a code. Just shorthand. The first page started with a balance carried forward, presumably from the end of last year. Strangely, it wasn't just in dollars, but in ounces and dollars. Written in the far-right column was a dollar amount. $1,657,900. I realised it was the only way of accounting for a fluctuating gold price.

The first page showed the gold amount remaining static but the cash increasing by $1,500 on the last Wednesday of January. I flipped to February. There were cash inputs, of $1,500 each, on three Wednesdays. January was school holidays, and we'd gone touring for three weeks, only returning with a few days to prepare for the kids return to school in the first week of February. Oh no.

March contained three inputs of $1,500. For April there were three deposits of what I was fast beginning to see as the standard amount and one of a massive $20,000. Oddly there was a debit for the same amount the following day. I quickly looked through the rest of the book, but it was blank. Inside the back cover there were three printed A4 sheets. A quick glance at them showed they listed houses or something that were for sale. There were far more relevant things to read, so I only glanced at them.

I next grabbed last year's journal. This time I only skimmed through it, stopping when I finally saw something in the debit column. Two things, actually, in the one month. The first was for $78.53 and was marked Ptrl. All I could think of was that it stood for petrol. Fuel for her car? How bizarre if it was. The second debit was marked VS $125, Ling. What the hell that meant I didn't know.

This ledger also contained glued in delivery dockets. It took a couple of minutes to confirm they were receipts of the bullion bars. On the same page as the docket, sure enough, the cash amount went down and the ounces up. Most months contained three cash inputs, some four. The summer months sometimes dropped to one or two. Out of interest, I flicked to last March. Two inputs of $1,500 and one whopping $20,000. Written next to the latter was 'West Indies'. You guessed it; that was the cruise destination last year. Quickly scanning the 2016 ledger, I found the $20,000 credit next to the word 'Greece', that year's supposed destination. I glanced at the pile of brochures. Sarah returned that year with vivid stories and even a smattering of Greek words. If, indeed, she hadn't ever been there, then the level of her dishonesty was both staggering and heartbreaking.

Who was this woman? Did I know her at all? I forced that down. I wanted to be as clear-headed as possible. I put last year's journal back and rather than plough through them all, I picked up the earliest one. It was marked 2003, the year before we met. A quick glance showed there were many more entries per month, but generally for lesser amounts. The very first was for $200, but over the course of the first three pages, they rose to $600. Next to each credit was an initial. There seemed to be about four or five different initials. Scanning the rest of the book, I found three larger amounts. All for $10,000.

It was all confusing the hell out of me, so I moved from them to the envelopes.

The first of those was a normal, business sized one. The envelope might have been standard but with its contents things just got stranger and stranger. It held the registration papers of a Ferrari. The owner was Sarah and it was first registered a little under two years ago. Sarah owned a car that was probably worth at least $500,000? Where the hell was it?

A stray memory flicked, unbidden, into the forefront of my swirling mind. It was from sometime last year, I think. I was on an errand for work when I pulled up at a traffic light, right next to a gleaming red Ferrari convertible. I glanced over to admire it. The driver was a blonde lady, wearing sunglasses and a headscarf. She looked to be about my age, but I didn't look too closely, I was interested in the car. Sitting next to her, with his hand on her bare leg, was a much older guy, who looked vaguely familiar. The words, 'sugar daddy' sprang to mind. I was admiring the long, sleek front of the car, when, in my peripheral vision, I saw the driver glance at me. I turned to give her a grin, but she turned quickly away. Perhaps her sugar daddy was the possessive sort. Again, my peripheral vision saw the light turn green. I expected the Ferrari to blitz past me, but it stayed on my rear quarter until turning off two blocks later.

Could that have been Sarah driving? There certainly wasn't several hundred thousand dollars' worth of car in our driveway. I'm observant and would almost certainly have noticed. So, where did she keep it? What a frustrating life she must lead. Owning one of the world's greatest cars and not being able to drive it every time she wanted to. Maybe, only once a week, on a Wednesday... But how would you avoid being recognised by people you knew? Perhaps, by wearing a blonde wig, headscarf, and huge sunglasses...

The next envelope was big and bulging. It contained cash. Lots of cash. That didn't interest me in the slightest.

Strangely, there was a brochure for apartments under the envelope. I knew the place. Stage One of the complex had opened with great fanfare a couple of months ago. Sarah and I had talked about it. The units facing the river were not selling like hotcakes because of the price. Not much change from three quarters of a million. One of the things I love... loved..., oh bugger it. I had to give her the benefit of the doubt at this stage. Unlike lawyers, whose motto is 'every man is innocent until proven broke', I firmly believe in the old maxim, 'every man, or woman, is innocent until proven guilty'. Where was I? I liked that Sarah was not upwardly mobile. She seemed perfectly happy with the low six-figure salary I brought home. We could have afforded one of those apartments, in time, if she'd worked. However, that would have meant her giving up her primary role of full-time mother. Neither of us were prepared to do that. Therefore, I could understand Sarah having the brochure, but why was it hidden away here?