Belief is a Wondrous Thing

The next five months however were hell!

We rented a place convenient for my work and for Jenny to go back for her second year at university, but her emotions got the better of her and she couldn't stop bursting into tears at the slightest provocation. She said some pretty awful things to me, but when she blamed me for Greg walking out on her, I nearly lost it, and it was only Mum that kept me in there trying to work through it. Then the birth approached, Jenny took leave from her studies, never to go back as it happened, and my resolve was stretched to its limit.

But how things do change?

The birth was apparently fairly easy, though what did I know about such things, and Jenny gave birth to a beautiful little bundle of fun that was our daughter.

We called her Julie. Rather convenient to have two enthusiastic grandmothers with the same first name.

But what a change in Jenny, who took to motherhood like a duck to water. The tears dried up, the nasty comments disappeared, and we became the happiest pair of parents in the world. I swear we even enjoyed the sleepless nights and we happily shared the numerous new tasks that befell us.

Julie was an angel, and the joy of our life, as for the next three years we lived the impossible dream. I loved my job and Jenny loved being a stay home mother. Our sex life, which had dried up prior to the birth resumed, and though perhaps never went back to the reckless shagging we'd done previously, became more and more tender and loving.

The doubts that I admit to having about my decision to stick with Jenny melted away and life became just about perfect with my perfect little family.

That, unfortunately, was when I got my first surprise.

--

"I had an interesting e mail today," Jenny mentioned casually over dinner.

"Who from?"

"Gregg." Her answer stopped me short, and a shiver of uncertainty ran through me.

"How did he contact you?"

"Oh we mail one another from time to time," was an answer that I didn't really want to hear, much less so what she went on to say. "He's coming back on leave next week and is going to be in our area."

"Fine," I relented, though not at all pleased with the news. "Perhaps we can meet up with him for a drink somewhere."

"Actually Bob," she told me breezily. "I've invited him here."

"Here! Which day?" I asked deciding that I had to grin and bear it.

"All week of course," she shocked me with. "I've invited him to come and stay with us."

"Without checking with me first?"

"I didn't think you'd mind Bob," she said, taking my hand in hers. "He was your best friend for God's sake."

"He was a pretty good friend of yours as well Jenny," I reminded her, making little effort to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

"He was and he still is Bob," she laid down the law. "He's friends with both of us and I've invited him and that's the end of it. I know you two fell out a bit towards the end, but that was all a misunderstanding."

I bit my tongue. Strange term that. Some bloody misunderstanding. I decided not to argue any further though and that maybe I was being petty. Maybe I was being too touchy about the happenings of those last few months when we had been such good friends for more than two years previously.

"OK," I agreed with a sigh. "I guess we'll all have grown up a bit. I'll do my best to try and go back to the way things were."

"Thanks Bob," Jenny grinned happily. "We got on so well before and I'm sure we can again, if only for just the week."

Matter settled.

Maybe I should have been more specific about which period in our life 'we' were talking about going back to.

--

Next week arrived and I began to think about the good times Gregg and I had spent together. The bars, the football matches, the hikes, the visit to Wimbledon, and oh yes the bars. Did I mention them?

By the morning he was due, I was genuinely looking forward to seeing him again, and no doubt hearing about his experiences in Africa.

"He's due at about six isn't he?" I checked up with Jenny. "I should be home before then."

"Six at the latest," she reminded me. "I thought I'd leave Julie with her grandmother. Don't want any embarrassments the first night."

"Why would our daughter be an embarrassment?" I demanded, not liking the implications behind that statement.

"Well you know Bob," Jenny mumbled, unwilling to meet my eyes. "Besides your Mum loves having her."

"Our daughter would never be a embarrassment Jenny," I stated firmly, putting great emphasis on 'our', but I decided not to push the matter any further. With any luck Jenny and Greg would end up having an argument, and he wouldn't stay long enough to have to meet her. If she didn't then maybe I would!

With that, I went off to work, slayed a few dragons, figuratively of course, and later found myself pulling back into our drive at twenty to six precisely, finding my wife coming down the stairs to greet me with just a towel wrapped round her.

"Better get ready Jenny," I urged her. "Gregg could be here any minute.

"He's already here," she surprised me with. "He got here several hours ago."

"Where is he then?"

"Finishing his shower," Jenny replied, a flash of something like guilt passing over her face.

Finishing?

Here several hours already?

Jenny in just a towel, looking as if she'd just finished showering herself?

I'm not stupid but I couldn't make what I was seeing and hearing add up to the obvious answer.

"What's going on Jenny?" I asked in confusion.

"What we agreed Bob," she explained. "We've been going back to the way things were."

"What?" I stuttered, my insides churning.

"The way things were Bob," she repeated. "Back at university when we shared."

I just stared at her, lost for words for the moment, as the reality of what she was telling me began to sink in. Began to that is, as my brain couldn't fully accept what my ears were relaying to it.

"You've slept with him? I gasped in disbelief.

"We didn't have much time to sleep Bob," Jenny giggled, so wrapped up in her own little world to remain unaware of my adverse reaction. "He's still as good between the sheets as he always was."

"You let him fuck you?" I growled, and for the first time Jenny began to notice how upset I was.

"Now don't you take that attitude with me Bob," she had the cheek to scold me. "We talked about it. It's the way we've always been. What's wrong with you?"

"But we're married now Jenny," I mumbled back, and I don't know what her answer would have been, as at that moment Greg came bounding down the stairs, dressed fortunately, and threw his arms around me.

"Great to see you again mate," he laughed out as he hugged me. "Great to see both of you. Jenny's still as beautiful as ever."

"Look about Jenny," I started to put him in his place.

"Yes mate," he interrupted me with a huge grin. "Still no tits, but still a great fuck."

If at that point he hadn't turned and grabbed Jenny's towel and yanked it off her leaving her naked, and if she hadn't giggled rather than screamed or something, then things might have turned out differently.

But they did!

Perhaps my reaction would have been the same anyway.

I hadn't punched anyone for many a year, but the one I launched at him probably made up for it. A pain shot through my fist as I hit him, so Lord only knows what it did to his jaw.

He went down but I went after him, determined to punch him or kick him into oblivion.

--

No need to pretend that I didn't recognise where I woke up, some time later. A hospital room is pretty well obvious, as was the lump on the back of my head, and the bandages round my middle.

But how had I ended up there?

"I'm so sorry I hit you with the pan Bob," Jenny sobbed when she eventually turned up at visiting time. "I thought you were going to kill him."

"I was," I grunted, and glared angrily at her.

"You really pissed Greg off Bob," she carried on. "When he got up he kicked you in the ribs before I could pull him off."

Well, that explained the bandages!

"Has he gone?" I snapped at her.

"No," she murmured.

"Still at the house?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Still fucking you?" I demanded, but I got no answer, as with a sob Jenny leapt to her feet and fled the room.

"Well that went well didn't it?" I said to the empty room. At long last my wife seemed to have grasped the fact that I didn't approve of another man fucking her.

--

They'd only kept me in overnight because of potential problems due to concussion, and later that day they released me, having other clients with greater need of the bed than I did, and fortunately Jenny had earlier bought in a change of clothes for me. Dad was a bit puzzled why he had to pick me up when Jenny didn't work, and even more puzzled when I wouldn't discuss what had led to my visit to the hospital. He cottoned on that not all was well when I asked them to keep Julie for yet another night, and simply sighed and shook his head unhappily when I didn't invite him in.

"Are you Ok honey?" my loving wife greeted me, rushing up to throw her arms around me, her face falling when I handed her off and growled at her.

"Where is he?" I demanded. "Is the bastard still here?"

"Upstairs Bob," Jenny whispered. "We need to talk before he comes down."

"Get him down here right now and get him out of my house," I snarled at her angrily.

"Seriously Bob, we do need to talk," she protested.

"Get him down here now Jenny," I spat out at her. "Or else I'll go up there and drag the bastard out, and maybe you with him."

"Ok Bob," she cried out, holding me back as I took a step towards the staircase. "I'll get him, but you do need to listen to what I've got to say."

"OK get the fucker," I relented. "I'll let you say what you have to, but if utters a word then I'll bloody well kill him."

"Right," she mumbled and started up the stairs, only to meet Greg, who must have been listening, coming down. If I'd hoped or expected any show of regret from him, then the smirk on his face indicated otherwise.

"Shut up fuckface," I screamed at him when I saw him about to say something, and fortunately, maybe for both of us, he changed his mind.

"You need to listen to what I've got to say Bob," Jenny ended the angry silence that had fallen.

"Talk then," I scowled at her, by then expecting the worst, pretty sure that she was about to announce that she was leaving me for him, one of the reasons that I hadn't wanted Julie there.

Boy oh boy, was I wrong. The worst was suddenly about to get even harder.

"Bob," Jenny started gently. "Greg being here is no coincidence. We've been e mailing one another for a few months now, and Greg's here for a reason."

"Which I nearly interrupted yesterday," I grunted.

"Not that honey," she whispered hardly audibly. "This," and with that she handed me a sheet of printed paper.

"What's this?" I snapped, staring it, surprised by then that it clearly wasn't some notice of divorce or similar.

"DNA," my wife sighed. "It's the result of a DNA test."

"What? - Whose?" I spluttered out.

"Julie's," she quietly informed me. "Actually hers and yours. With a DNA test you can tell..."

"I know what a bloody DNA test is for God's sake," I interrupted her my anger growing. "What the fuck does this one prove?"

"Julie's not your daughter Bob," Jenny announced, close to tears. "I'm so sorry honey but the results are clear and you are not Julie's father."

"And?" I grunted close to tears myself, not doubting that what she was telling me was true, even though I'd been so convinced since the day she was born that our child really was mine.

"Well if she's not yours, then that means..." Jenny started to explain but choked up, unable to carry through with stating what seemed to be the obvious, looking over at Greg to come to her aid.

"Look Bob mate," Greg butted in, despite my warning for him to keep his mouth shut. "It doesn't mean the end of your marriage. I've got to go back to Africa next week, but I've changed to six months tours there and two weeks back here. We can work something out between us. I get Jenny when I'm back and you get her the rest of the time. We don't even have to tell the kid or anyone else about me being her real father."

The look of blind hate that I gave him prevented him from going on to say what else he had in mind, and the annoyed look that Jenny gave him made it pretty clear that his statement wasn't exactly what she had been expecting either.

"I guess that's a no then," the arrogant bugger sighed with a shrug of his shoulders. "Your loss mate."

As tempted as I was to land him one again, he'd kept his distance this time, plus, as it happened, I had a surprise for them as well.

"Greg," I started, fighting to keep my anger in check. "You remember back in our student days we used to go and give blood just to see if any of the nurses were young and pretty?"

"Of course I do Bob," he replied, a puzzled look on his face. "Never did pick any of them up though did we."

"No we didn't," I agreed. "But do you remember what blood group you were?"

"Not sure," he answered, his puzzlement growing. "Different to yours. AOB or something like that. What the hell has that got to do with anything?"

"You were AB," I told him, and though Greg still had no idea where this was going, Jenny apparently did and let out a sob. "I'd noted it down in one of my diaries, and I checked back soon after our daughter was born. The point is Greg, our daughter Julie is blood group O."

"So?"

"That's not a possible combination Greg," I delighted in telling him, surprised at quite how thick he was acting. "You can't be Julie's father either."

The pair of us stared at one another for a few short seconds, and then as one, we both turned around to face Jenny. Jenny my wife that is, who had gone as white as a sheet.

"It couldn't be," she sobbed on the edge of hysterics. "It's not possible. It was only the once when you two were away at some rugby match and the dates didn't match up."

"Sounds as if you got your dates mixed up Jenny," I taunted her. "Looks like you two have some talking to do."

With that parting shot, I turned on my heels and strode purposefully out of the house, trying to hold it together when all I wanted to do was scream my agony out loud. I needed to get to my parents. I needed to hold my baby daughter in my arms.

--

The local press made a meal out of it, and perhaps not surprisingly the nationals picked it up as well. But it wasn't till the middle of the following year that the court case started, and then even the TV news channels got into the act. It had been a hard year for me, keeping Julie out of the limelight, and consistently refusing to give any interviews. I think I really pissed the media people off.

Jenny's legal team failed to persuade the court that Greg had tried to rape her even though she was naked when they found her; the fact that her clothes were neatly hung over a chair making that venue of escape a no go.

They accepted however that he had attacked her and beat her, the bruises and abrasions on her body when she was found making that pretty evident, and doubtless that counted in her favour.

She may still have got away with a not guilty verdict, her plunging a kitchen knife into his stomach in self-defence while he was attacking her. Nobody really doubted her word on that one.

But what condemned her was, by her own admission, that she'd slit his throat while he crouched there clutching his injury. All this within a few hours of me leaving them there on that fateful day.

The murder charge was thrown out, but the jury found her guilty of manslaughter. The media generally thought that her sentence of five years was maybe a bit harsh, but she never bothered to appeal it, aware that with good behaviour and time spent on remand, then she'd be out in a couple of years or so.

--

I only visited Jenny in prison once and that was in the first month that she was incarcerated. It wasn't a pleasant visit, Jenny spending most of it sobbing about how sorry she was and how stupid she had been, and how much she really loved me. It was however, somewhat enlightening for me.

"That DNA test," she told me. "It was false. I was a fool and I got a friend to make one up for me.

"Don't expect me to believe that one," I replied sadly, aware that she was at least trying to make things easier for me, and indeed our daughter. "It looked real enough to me."

"It wasn't," she insisted.

"Hard to believe," I responded, wishing that I could.

"It wasn't. You just have to believe me Bob," she more or less repeated something I'd said to her just a few years previously. "If I'd really believed you all that time ago, then we wouldn't be in this awful position that we're now in."

"I'll try Jenny," which is as much as I could promise her, but at least I genuinely meant it.

I haven't seen Jenny since, but have been busy making a life for myself and my daughter Julie, who is still the apple of my eye. When Jenny comes out in six months or so's time, then I'm going to have to interact with her because of Julie. She's still her mother after all.

As much a I try I can't bring myself to hate her, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let her back into my personal life. The trouble is that I don't know how I'm going to react when she's around again. Now I've never been a religious man, but just lately I find myself praying to God that I don't fall under her spell again.

Maybe it's not God's help that I need so much, as my daughter's best friend's mother. The one with the long dark hair, and the even longer shapely legs. The one who divorced her husband for cheating on her. After the great day we had out with the girls last Saturday, then I do think she could be the one to help me.

Optional Chapter 2

She was!