February Still Sucks

"Wait. You said nearly!"

"...but I am not a legal expert so I don't really know. I said nearly because one of the men interviewed your group after Jim stormed out. Was one of the group called Deirdre or Debbie or something like that? You might want to have a talk with her."

"Yes, Dee. She called me as soon as I got home on Saturday and I have talked to her every day since. She is my best friend."

"You might want to choose better friends. She hogged the interview. When the interviewer asked her why you had left with Marc she said that it was Marc freaking LaValliere and he could have had his pick of the women there and every single one of them would have left with him. He then asked her if she had been chosen, would she have gone? She looked across at her husband and saw the look on his face and said that she could not have done it because SHE loved her husband."

(silence)

"You still there?"

"Yes. That was a bit of a shock. Dee never mentioned that!"

"Doubt that she ever would. She's probably hoping you never see the video."

"OK. We have done Marc..."

"Well, one of us has!"

"Don't fucking start!"

"Just had to get that one in. So now do you want to talk about Jim? I think the fact that you wanted to talk about Marc first is significant."

"No it... Oh just get on with it."

"Jim hates his job."

"No he doesn't. He is always talking about his work."

"No. That is you not really paying attention and is part of the problem. He loves the people he works with. He called them his surrogate family. He told me he talks to them more about what he wants and feels than he does to you. The job he hates. The people he loves."

"But we have just had a wonderful couple of weeks. From Valentine's day up to the end of the month."

"Yes. That is what we talked about recently. He said that he no longer felt a connection with you, that you were both pretty much sleepwalking through your marriage. All of those little things that show you loved each other had gone missing. He was doing a job he hated in order to look after you and the kids and had started to wonder if it was worth it. He was going to make a big effort for Valentine's to see if he could get that old feeling back."

"We got snowed in."

"We all did, but he was quite upbeat about that afterwards. He said he had a great time with you and the kids and that made him really look forward to the Madison where he hoped to put all his doubts finally to rest. Instead you walked out on him."

"But if I can just talk to him I can explain what happened and tell him how much I love him."

"Look at it from his point of view. He was feeling trapped and he was thinking of stepping off a cliff to see where it would take him. Right, cliff is probably not the best analogy but let's stick with it for a moment. He had walked to the edge and was prepared to jump and then you had that snowbound weekend and everything went great and he was starting to back away from the edge. Then on Friday night you walked up behind him and gave him a great big push."

"Oh God, you don't think he is going to hurt himself?"

"No. That is why I started to regret the cliff bit. I meant a step into the unknown. This is a big country and my brother is a clever bloke. If he wanted to make a new life for himself he is one of those people who could probably find a way to do it."

"What about me and the kids?"

"Well I don't think he cares about you any more. Ask Marc to look after you and the kids. See if Marc even remembers your name now that a couple of days have gone by and he has had other women in his bed."

"I need to contact him and tell him I love him and that it was all a mistake."

"No. A mistake is when you walk out the house without your keys or when you run out of petrol and stuff like that. Deceiving your husband and leaving him standing there in front of everyone while you walk off and spend the night having sex with another man is a deliberate act of betrayal."

"But if I can't talk to him how will I convince him to come back?"

"I don't think you could convince him to come back."

"What about the kids?"

"Well, that is something else. He still loves Emma and Tommy. If he comes back or even if he contacts you in future it will be because of them.

It is now just a matter of wait and see."

A lot of you are going to hate that I left the story there.

I am English and we like inconclusive endings. They linger in the memory for longer as your brain tries to imagine where the story could go next.

If that pisses you off just waste even more of your time, give the story 1* and get on with your life. I don't worry about scores. I write these for my own amusement and the hope that some of the readers on here will find some small amount of entertainment in reading them.