Devotion and Duty

When he announced two months later that he was being moved off base because his team was preparing another MoD facility for service personnel coming back from the Gulf, I was sad but he was relieved. With hindsight, I was glad circumstances ended the relationship, because I didn't have the courage to. It was not long after he left things reached a crisis and Frank had a complete breakdown. This time there was professional help available, and they made families feel part of the solution. I committed myself to making Frank better. I was glad to play a part in his rehabilitation and grateful life was not complicated by what could have been a messy end to the affair.

You had also come back from your tour of duty and were living on the base near Portsmouth. I remember how excited I was to see you again and how supportive you were in helping me deal with Frank's problems. You said you'd seen so much of it on tour. I was so happy as when you told me you started seeing someone, but you did not want to say too much, because you didn't want to jinx it.

It was about six months later when you both came over to see us. I've replayed that day in my mind many times over the years. We had not long moved into new MOD accommodation near Aldershot. You came to our door, and I greeted you excitedly. You could not wait to tell me you were engaged and your fiancé was bringing us a housewarming present from the back of the car. We hugged, and I looked over your shoulder and saw him. Then the world stopped. That's right, your fiancé James was the man I'd been having an affair with for almost 18 months! He looked shocked to see me, and then a big grin spread over his face. He covered it by the time you introduced me, but I lost my words under my pounding heartbeat.

What a terrible thing to happen. It was almost two hours later before I got the chance to grab a few words with him on his own. I said this was a terrible coincidence, and I begged him not to say anything to you or Frank, and we should just be polite and keep our distance from now on. James just laughed and said it was nonsense; it was fate and good fortune. He joked that he always wanted to have two sisters, and maybe we could work something out when we were all better acquainted. I was horrified, and then I remembered the wife abroad and threatened to expose him if he did not leave you alone. He laughed. He just made that up, so he had an excuse to get away if women were getting too clingy like I had at the end.

I realised what a naïve fool I had been. He was unfazed by it all. He even had the nerve to look around to see if the coast was clear. Then he lifted my dress and put his hand in my knickers, as he had on that very first occasion. I'm ashamed to say I responded to his touch. "See you want it just as much as me Jess," he said.

When the two of us were alone, I asked you how you met James and your story was not a million miles from my own. He was doing repairs on a radiator in the Mess and he gave you his cheeky chappie banter. I felt sick inside and had the awful thought the two of us were not the only ones he tried it on with. Do you remember me asking if it wasn't all too fast and that perhaps you should take things slowly? I hoped in time you would see what I did not. But I could not get through to you. "Be happy for me, Jess, I think he's the one."

So I tried to be happy for you Vicky, I really did. I smiled when we were together on dinner dates and the stays at our parents. Ignored it when James tried to touch me up when no one was around. Laughed his jokey requests to meet him somewhere for a quick blow job. I hoped he would just lose interest after a while. But then he became menacing. He said he wondered how Frank would react if he knew what a whore his wife had been while he was away. James said if he heard news like that it would drive him mad. Frank was making excellent progress and he depended on me, as I wished he would have done at the beginning. But it would devastate him if James carried out his threat. Frank would never trust me or anyone else again.

It was horrible to discover the man James really was underneath all the false smiles and good humour. He got such a kick from having had both of us and was always making comparisons I did not want to hear. Said things like I should come round and give you some lessons in cock sucking. Vile man, I knew it would not end; I would have to find a way to warn you.

I remembered you phoned one day and said we should all get together at the weekend. You sounded excited, but wouldn't tell me what your news was. I could not wait any longer, I was determined to tell you about me and James, beg your forgiveness and beg you not to tell Frank. Not for my sake, but for his, as a fragile patient recovering from psychological injury. I drove down to Portsmouth on that rainy day to confess, but before I could get my story out you told me your news, you were pregnant. We hugged and I congratulated you. You asked about my news. I could say nothing then. Had to pretend I could not wait until the weekend to hear your news. You were it so excited you believed my lame excuse. You could not take bad news after what you just told me. I'd have to wait and hope all was okay in the meantime.

I could only see one way out of this terrible situation. I would have to sacrifice myself for Frank's sanity and your safety. At least that's how I rationalised it. I did not want James going with any other woman and bringing back God knows what diseases to you and your unborn child. Also, the thought of Frank suffering again after he had suffered so much already was impossible to bear. So, I saw James again, I'm ashamed to say, behind your back and Frank's.

At first it was just quick assignations in lay-bys where he'd be happy with a blow job. But that did not last long. He drove out to secluded woodland areas where he could fuck me properly in the car. I always felt nervous that someone might come along, and then one day it happened. We were in the middle of it and a group of men appeared from nowhere and gathered round the car and started wanking. I wanted us to go, but it turned James on and he made me turn this way and that to make sure the men could see all the action. I felt ashamed and disgusted with myself, and my only saving grace was the thought at least I was sparing you this ordeal. I told him afterwards that I never wanted to go there again. "Okay, no dogging," he said, and that was when I discovered what they called it.

But James had other ideas, and a couple weeks later we were in a different place. We were drinking a cup of tea from a petrol station and looking at the view. This was unusual because he rarely had much time for pleasantries. He started undressing me and I felt funny but aroused at the same time. "Just a little something to loosen you up he said looking at my tea. I felt I was in a dream as he took my clothes off and screwed me. I did not notice he had opened the windows until I heard the voices outside the car. There was another group of men. They were saying filthy things to me and trying to stick their cocks through the windows for me to touch and this time, I was ashamed to say, it turned me on, the crudity of it and the disgusting comments they made. "You love it, don't you, Jessica?" James taunted. "Victoria is as big as a pig now the baby is due, but even if she weren't, I could not enjoy this with her the way I do with you. You were made for fucking like this." He opened the window so these strange men could cum on me. I was so ashamed. I didn't know what depths of depravity I was capable of, but James was keen to explore them.

I know the birth of your first child Ellie was very painful. You had a lot of stitches, were not going to be ready for intimate relations with James for quite some time. I guess because of this he demanded we meet more often. He took me to a flat he said belonged to a mate of his. The place looked empty and James took me into the bedroom and showed me some things he wanted me to wear. He asked me to come into the living room when I was ready. I put on the suspender belt and black stockings, the gaudy open crutched red knickers and a pair of red stilettos that were two sizes too big for me. In the living room James was naked on the couch and excited to see me the get up. He did not waste time and soon he was fucking me on the couch, turning me this way and that, making me bend down with my arse in the air.

I don't know when I got the sensation that we were not alone, but I looked up and saw through the open kitchen hatch a man was filming us. I struggled to pull away but James is big as you know and he held me down until he was almost finished. At the last moment he pulled out and came over my back. I realised he had set this up to make his own porn movie. "Didn't I say she was a natural?" James said to the cameraman who came out of his hiding place. By this time, the other man had his fly open and his cock was out. Then James held both of my arms in one hand and the camera in the other and filmed while the man came up and jerked himself off over my breasts. They both laughed, and I fled into the bathroom to clean myself up. I cried bitter tears over how I had let myself get into this mess. I felt ashamed that I had been so used and abused.

When I came out again, the two of them were laughing and drinking tea. I said I never wanted to come back here again. James said that this was just an audition tape and that we would make others, unless I wanted him to send a copy of what we'd just been doing to Frank. He said they would edit it so James could not be identified and the other man Harry, would do the commentary. It was straightforward blackmail from there on in. What little feeling James had for me, he lost in his quest for kinkier thrills.

I'm sorry to say we went back again and made other films, with both of them having me at the same time and then with another woman involved. The sex was sleazy and degrading, but I could not help recognising that part of me was also turned on by this humiliation. I did not know that about myself, but James had seen it from the beginning and he latched on to it and exploited it. I was cursed for an illicit affair and felt it dammed my soul. I even contemplated suicide as a way out, but I was too cowardly to that. I told myself, how Frank would survive without me?

This terrible situation went on for another year, by which time Frank had almost recovered and you were expecting your second child, Nancy. It was difficult being a sister and your friend with all the terrible things I was doing, Victoria. I hope you can see I was not doing them to hurt you. By this time any sleazy pleasure I got from the filming and group sex had long since disappeared after mindless repetition. I convinced myself it was someone else doing these things, that there was a good person inside me who could comeback if only I had the chance. But I could not see where that would come from. Then one day a miracle happened, and what was an awful tragedy also became my salvation.

One July afternoon a police car arrived at my door and a WPC asked me if I was a relation of James Mulhern. I said yes, but why didn't they contact his wife? They just asked me to come with them. We arrived at Farnborough Hospital, where I was told James was seriously injured in a coma following a road accident. They took me to the ICU, and I saw him; a mask over his bruised face and the respirator going up and down. There was also an enormous cage around his body, holding the blankets away from him. Then they asked me if I could identify the deceased passenger in his car. My heart almost stopped as I thought it was you.

I went to the viewing room in the morgue and held my breath as they opened the curtains. I've never been so relieved in my life as when I discovered it was not you. They pulled the sheet back and I looked at the young woman on the slab. She was about the same age as I was when I started seeing James, and I knew my efforts to spare another person from James's attentions had failed. He'd been doing the same thing with someone else's wife, or girlfriend, or daughter. Now she was lying dead because of him. I looked at the shoes and the stockings and suspenders and I realised where they'd been. It made me so angry. I wanted to destroy it, to destroy it all. I saw my chance.

"I don't know her, but I think he's been having an affair," I suggested to the WPC.

"What makes you say that?" asked the female detective who had joined us.

"Well, please don't say any of this to my sister, but he's made improper suggestions to me several times."

"There is evidence that this young woman had sex recently," the detective confirmed.

"Perhaps you should look for a match with James." She nodded and made a note in her book.

A couple of days later I drove past the flat where they used to do the filming and then down to the junction with the major road and noticed an accident information board requesting witnesses. I phoned in an anonymous tip that I'd seen two people arguing outside a flat and get into a car which then careered down the road before crashing. The police raided the flat and arrested the man who did the filming, but they could prove nothing because he and James kept the tapes somewhere else. I panicked him enough to leave the flat and not come back, so I hope I spared other women his attentions.

You had been away on some secret briefing about how to deal with nerve gas attacks, and that's why they could not contact you on the day of James's accident. I know, you may hate me for saying this Victoria, but I consider with happened to James a godsend. I remember the two of us sitting together outside ICU for two days and nights before James regained consciousness. I prayed he would die while you prayed for his life. The doctors conducted tests before they would allow us to see him. I suspect you knew what they were looking for, but did not want to alarm me.

When they came out and delivered the news James was paralysed from the waist down, our reactions could not have been more different. As his wife unaware of all his other deeds, you broke down and wept tears of genuine love and anguish. I had to pretend to be in shock because inside I was rejoicing. I'm sorry to say I took a spiteful delight in his injury. My ordeal was over. His hold over me was broken and he would never terrorise me or any other woman again. But then I thought it through and could see that his enslavement of me had been replaced by his enslavement of you, because now he needed your care for the rest of his life. I knew you wouldn't desert him and I knew I couldn't tell you, not just then. This evil and undeserving man would get the love and attention of his unsuspecting wife. I was so sorry it would trap you with him for the rest of his days.

While you went to tell mum and dad, the news he was still alive, I stayed with him in the room. Leaned over him and said the young girl was dead and soon he would wish he had died in the car with her.

I was the first to tell him he was paralysed from the waist down and that his cock would be of no use to him now, not even for pissing out of. I told him I would do everything I could to persuade you to put him into a home and leave him there to rot. Said I would tell you about our affair, not the first one. Say that after you were married, he spiked my drink at a party and fucked me while I was out cold. Tell you he took pictures to blackmail me into seeing him again.

James said you would not believe me, then he remembered me asking for some as souvenirs of our adventures. He never thought I'd ever be able to use them against him, so he was happy to give them to me. But now he'd provided his own evidence to support my story. I reminded James you always got along with Frank, and maybe the three of us should come to an arrangement now he was no longer up to it in the fucking department. He could ask Frank what it was like to have two sisters at the same time. James started crying, but I just threw every hurtful thing at him. I was panting at the end.

Finally, I asked him how it felt to be blackmailed and terrorised like he had done to me. He recoiled at the anger and hate in my face. Even made an insincere apology for it all. Said he just got carried away and that he would never have followed up on his threats. I did not believe him and he knew it. But I made him a deal for your sake and the kids. I said that as long as he wasn't a bastard to you during his rehabilitation, I would leave him alone.

I kept my word longer than he did because less than six months had gone by before James was making life hell for you, Victoria. You were struggling with two young kids and the pressure of being the only breadwinner.

The doctors had discovered evidence of cocaine abuse when he was admitted after the accident, so that violated his driving insurance. There would be no pay out for the accident. Added to which, there was the pending manslaughter charge for the death of his young woman passenger.

I almost jumped up in the court to object when the judge acquitted him for lack of evidence, saying it would be wrong to separate James from his family after the injuries he had suffered. What about the family of that poor girl? You would have been better off with him in jail. He brought all this shit on you and he was no help. I saw you struggling to keep on top of it all and I knew I could not let you suffer anymore, so I did something about it.

James always had a very high sex drive. I'm sure you suspected he sated his appetites elsewhere, especially when you were pregnant. It is my shame the source of his satisfaction was so close to home. Anyway, without the ability to have sex now, I knew James would think life was not worth living. He would have no concerns about how you and the kids felt. If he could not satisfy himself, nothing else mattered. So, I provoked him, bending down in front of him so he could look up my skirt. I would lean close so he could see my cleavage and once or twice flashed my boobs.

But I never let him touch me, never. There would be no reward for him. These displays got him excited in his mind, remembering what we used to do, and then I would grab his crotch and it would be dead, lifeless, and that realisation would make him break down in tears. But my heart was hard, and my revenge had to be as spiteful as his exploitation of me. I saw the pitiful look in his eyes and made suggestions. `If you want to go, to end it all James, I could help you. I could make it painless.' I was like water dripping on a stone every day. I only hoped he would give in before you broke under the pressure of trying to keep everything together.

Then one day he asked me to get him some strong pills. I still had the ones left over from when Frank was heavily medicated and I had to look after them to avoid him doing something stupid. But I thought that would lead back to me, or even worse to you, as you were a nurse. So, I bought paracetamol, lots of different brands and I gave him strips with some tablets missing. I wanted to make it look like he'd been scavenging them for a while. Also, I went out and bought him another bottle of the whiskey we gave him for his birthday as there was not much left in the first one. He could hide this one away to do the job.

But he wasted weeks trying to summon the courage to do the right thing. Then you collapsed at work with a dangerous stomach ulcer, and they kept you in hospital for observation for 48 hours. I took your kids back to mine for the night, and I could see how guilty and grateful they were not to be spending their time with James. He had become a toxic person and was polluting you all.