Loreal: A Tale of Betrayal

Loreal sat there, stunned. Dave picked up the cases again and paused, holding her gaze with that strange, unfathomable expression. The moment stretched on uncomfortably. It was not until Loreal dropped her gaze that she heard him recommence walking. She heard one of the cases lightly bump against the door frame and then he was gone. She knew she should run after him, but why? What would she say when she caught up to him? He'd said it all, already.

CHAPTER 2

That all happened on Friday night. Loreal may have avoided her initial PTSD except one after another all three of her children rang to let her know that their father had contacted them and pulled no punches.

Penny, her eldest, and Laura, the youngest, both rang early Saturday, asked her how she was then calmly let her know how disappointed they were in her before ringing off.

By Sunday afternoon when Mark, the last of the three rang her, she'd only left the bed to answer calls of nature and put the sheets in the trash. He was much more brutal in his summary of his feelings. It proved her wrong. She did have more tears to shed.

Friday night had been utterly devoid of sleep, and by Sunday night, she dreaded what sleep she could snatch. A pattern in her dreaming soon developed. Well, nightmares really. It would start with a fond memory of her earlier life with Dave. Maybe an anniversary, or just a gift or huge bunch of flowers Dave brought her for no apparent reason. In her dream she'd say, "Dave, why do you spoil me so?" He would reply as he always had, "Because you're worth it, Lori." She'd look up, smiling into his face but see no return smile. Instead he wore the expression she'd last seen on his familiar face that fateful night. An expression she still couldn't begin to decipher. That inevitably woke her, at which time the memories of her betrayal would come crashing into her stupefied brain.

Dozing was almost as bad. Half asleep, she'd receive a trigger that brought the trauma crashing back. It could be a grunt that reminded her of Friday night, or turning her head toward the bedroom door. More often than not, it was a smell. Imagined aromas of male sweat, stale beer, or sex. No amount of changing bed linen or spraying with air freshener stopped them. On Sunday night she bowed to the inevitable and moved to the spare room, refusing to even enter the master bedroom to use that bathroom.

By Monday she was a wreck. If the phone rang, she only looked at it long enough to see if it was Dave. When it wasn't, she ignored it. In a way, she was grateful he hadn't rung yet. Despite all her efforts she still couldn't even begin to justify what she'd done, to herself, never mind him.

Tuesday evening there was a knock at the door. Knowing Dave would never knock, she ignored it and returned to her obsessing. She almost jumped out her skin when Sandra, her best friend and charity colleague, entered the bedroom. She took one look at Loreal and came to the bed worriedly. She explained she'd been concerned about her friend not contacting her and had come over to find the front door unlocked.

Loreal let it all pour out. Taking her turn to not pull punches. Laying all the blame squarely where it belonged; with her behaviour. Sandra had been happily married for longer than she and Dave and was the most non-judgemental person Loreal knew. That's maybe why the condemnation in her friend's eyes hurt so much.

Sandra voiced no opinion, though, but quickly prepared some food and forced Loreal into the shower. She made the call to their boss and arranged the rest of the week off for her friend.

That set the pattern for the rest of that week. Sandra keeping Loreal alive. Loreal emotionally wasting, increment by increment away. Sandra broached the idea of getting some psychological help for her friend, but Loreal adamantly refused. It was bad enough her friend and children knew what she'd done. The idea of telling a total stranger was abhorrent.

By the following weekend, Sandra knew she needed help supporting her friend. It was getting quite depressing and she had her own life to lead. Loreal had told her enough about her conversation with her son, Mark, to know there was too much pain there to get past in the short term. Loreal's youngest daughter, Laura, was at college in another state and not due for a term break for several weeks and Penny was away for another two weeks on a work trip to Europe. Sandra was aware that a neighbour was another friend of Loreal and sounded her out as relief, only to be told that the neighbour was a friend to both Dave and Loreal and Dave's tales of his wife's actions had resulted in her and her husband taking sides and Loreal wouldn't like which side they'd taken. Sandra took the opportunity to probe Dave's side of the story, only to find it was an unembellished version of the one she'd been told by her friend. It appeared Dave wasn't being particularly vindictive but was simply stating his case. Sandra couldn't blame him. Divorce polarises relationships.

The most difficult question Loreal asked Sandra was if she thought Dave would ever come back. Her friend avoided an answer. She knew Dave to be an exceedingly loyal but also an incredibly uncompromising person. After all, she'd known him for years as well.

CHAPTER 3

Loreal was well enough to return to the office the following week. Her performance wasn't a patch on normal, though, and she was noticeably jumpy to loud noises and irritable, particularly when anyone laughed out loud.

For Loreal, the days were almost bearable. For whole minutes at a time, she was busy enough to forget what she'd thoughtlessly slaughtered in her personal life. It was the nights that were killing her.

Sandra was getting increasingly concerned and frustrated. Her husband was pressuring her to distance herself from her friend. He condemned what Loreal had done to Dave and was worried about any influence Loreal may have on his wife. Sandra was forced to admit that while she also condemned the behaviour, she felt she owed her friend some loyalty. However, a decision point was fast approaching. Sandra and her husband had a cruise booked for a second honeymoon, beginning in two-week's time. Not willing to forfeit the non-refundable tickets, all Sandra could do was contact Loreal's eldest daughter, Penny, to make sure she could take over Loreal's care while she was away.

Luckily, when the process server arrived, Sandra was there for support. She'd brought her husband along to show him how much her friend was hurting and hopefully garner some sympathy from him and thus reduce his pressure to distance herself from the situation. When the enormity of the ramifications of that simple package sunk in, Loreal said to her friend, "I don't want a divorce. I love him."

Sandra's husband began to say, "Bullshit! If you did you wouldn't have—" before his wife elbowed him into silence.

Loreal knew what the rest of that sentence would have been, and it was eating her that it was true.

There was no doubt Loreal was in deep crisis. If she'd been in a rational enough frame of mind to analyse it, she would have deduced the crisis had two main foci. It was increasingly obvious that Dave was gone forever. The fact he must know the amount of pain she was in and was making no move to console her alone made that self-evident. That meant she had to move on at some point. But what did the future hold? Sure, she was still attractive, the rugby player had at least proved that, and according to the terms of the proposed divorce, she'd be financially comfortable if she kept working.

No, the problem, or problems plural, was love.

She'd thought she loved her husband like nothing else, yet she'd betrayed him horribly; twice. That left the huge question. Did she know what love actually was? Would she recognise it if she tripped over it? If she did manage to find love again in her life, would it really be love? Would she be able to delude herself that she loved the new guy, or would the thought always be there that she'd lied to herself once, and was doing it again?

That direction of her philosophising monopolised her thoughts until Penny returned. On seeing the state of her mother, Penny strongly debated moving in with her, but she had a fiancé she hadn't seen for a month and decided not to. She did, however, spend as much time with her as her conscience allowed and joined her voice to Sandra's in nagging her mother to find a counsellor.

Loreal's second crisis was inadvertently triggered by her eldest daughter. It was a Sunday and Loreal knew that Penny had attended a business awards dinner on the Friday night. She saw her daughter pull up in front of her house. Her house? No. Hers and Dave's house. As Penny was walking up the path, Loreal went to open the front door. Penny looked startled as her mother opened the door and hurriedly hid something behind her back, then kept it out of sight until she was inside. She couldn't disguise the fact it was Loreal's delivered Sunday newspaper, though. As usual, Loreal had been awake much of the night and was grumpy. She demanded to see the paper, then noted Penny's nervousness as she spread it on the table and glanced through it.

She found what Penny was hoping she wouldn't in the social section. She may have missed the full impact of the photograph if Penny hadn't tipped her hand by trying her own brand of censorship.

There were several photographs from Friday's business awards dinner. No, the picture wasn't of her husband accepting an award. It was simply a picture of some attendees enjoying themselves. On the left-hand side was Dave seated at a table next to Penny, her fiancé, and some guy Loreal had never seen before. What was it about the photograph that had her daughter so anxious? Loreal looked closer. Her breathing quickened, then stopped completely as she spotted it. Dave's right hand was near the bottom left-hand corner of the photograph. Another, disembodied hand was resting on his forearm. A dainty, feminine hand. The gesture wasn't quite intimate but was definitely possessive.

Loreal looked up at the nervous face of her daughter. All of a sudden, Dave's actions made perfect sense. The reason he'd moved on so quickly and so completely was that he'd already met her replacement. With ragged, panting sentences, she grilled Penny on Dave's companion of the evening; all the while struggling to avoid falling into the mental abyss suddenly opened up right before her.

Penny chose her words with care. Yes, Sue was pretty, slim, and a few years younger than her mother. Yes, she seemed to dote on Penny's father and, yes, they weren't afraid to let other attendees know they were there as a couple.

Penny was very worried when her mother lapsed into a near catatonic silence. She had a pretty good idea of what Loreal had spinning around her head and automatically leapt to her father's defence. Wise beyond her years, she realised that most people judged others by their own standards. Her mother was a cheater and thus probably thought everyone was capable of cheating.

She spoke to set the record straight. No, her father hadn't been having an affair before he caught his wife with another man. She began telling Loreal that her father was far too honourable to behave like that, until she realised what that indirectly said she thought of her mother. An opinion she'd taken great efforts to disguise. It was obvious nothing she said was penetrating her mother, though, so she lapsed into silence.

Inside Loreal's head, a battle raged. The counterpoint of most of her thoughts of the last month were unmasked.

Dave had obviously been either seeing this woman while living with Loreal or had moved on and found love very, very quickly afterward. How could this be? She would have staked her life on the fact her husband loved her completely, with everything he had. The last gift and declaration, 'Because you're worth it', hadn't been that long ago. His actions, to her, indicated he still loved her. She knew she'd been a little distracted by her thoughts and scheming in the few weeks leading up to that horrible night, but how blind had she been to not see Dave had fallen out of love with her? That was far from the actions of the Dave that loved her to distraction. How long was it that he'd been lying when he said she was worth it?

So completely out of love with her, in fact, that when he discovered another guy in bed with her, he hadn't even tried to defend his honour, albeit in the certain knowledge he'd have had his head kicked in. Also, there wasn't a skerrick of evidence he'd even once thought of fighting for her and their marriage.

Thus, by the time Penny called an ambulance because her mother was completely unresponsive, a few dread certainties had solidified in Loreal's head. One; Dave wasn't coming back. Shattered by her actions, he'd moved on. The second was that if Dave had been having an affair it could only have been because she, his wife, wasn't enough for him. That hurt beyond belief. The third thought was a very ill omen for her own future. Not only did she not know if she'd be able to convince herself that she loved someone, even when she was sure she did, but now she would forever think she was being lied to when another man told her he loved her. If her husband of many years had fooled her so easily, a comparative stranger could pretty much say what he liked.

CHAPTER 4

Loreal awoke in the psychiatric ward of the hospital with no memory of how she got there. In a way, Penny was relieved. Now her mother was pretty much be forced into counselling. She visited as often as her work permitted. Her father offered to help out, but the specialists advised that probably wasn't a good move. After confirming he had no intention of continuing the marriage, he was politely asked to stay away. He forced himself to obey, even though it went against decades of instinct to go to Loreal's rescue.

Loreal was in hospital for two weeks before she was released under anti-depressant medication and with hospital monitored counselling.

Claire, her counsellor, was a crusty veteran of thirty years' experience. Her private practice had failed due to her persona. Like all counsellors, Claire had a choice to make early in her career. Either take on some of the pain of her clients, and risk becoming an emotional basket-case herself, or build a hard, impenetrable shell around her psyche. She'd chosen the latter, which didn't endear her to clients. Don't misunderstand, she was good. Just a little brutal at times. She was putting the months in until she could retire from her government job and become the fulltime doting grandmother she yearned to be.

Penny accompanied her mother to the first session and did much of the talking. Claire asked the daughter to stay for a private chat after Loreal left the room. Loreal was relieved. She'd found most of the session extremely embarrassing. If Penny hadn't been there, many of the details revealed would have taken the counsellor many sessions to drag out of her. When Penny emerged fifteen minutes later, she said nothing, and her mother didn't enquire. Sitting in her office, Claire pretty much knew which of her well-tested techniques to use. She emailed Loreal a request to bring the family photo albums with her next time for a long session. Claire hated short sessions; the constant stop-start was irritating.

Loreal arrived at the next appointment alone, nervous and carrying the requested albums. Claire spent less than two minutes flicking through them. They were exactly as she expected.

It took her over ten minutes to relax Loreal, then she asked her to describe her marriage. Loreal's face took on a generally happy expression as she described meeting Dave, his pursuit of her, his proposal and their years together. She told Claire about how Dave constantly brought home surprises like flowers and gifts; even about their ritual of her saying, "Oh, Dave, why do you spoil me so?" and his ritualistic reply of, "Because you're worth it."

Nigh on an hour into the session, Claire saw that Loreal was waffling and suspected it was because she was subconsciously delaying talking about her cheating. Claire was good at her job and brought the session to the nasty issues she knew her client was dreading. She invited Loreal to describe the end of her marriage, a deliberate choice of words on her part, in as much detail as she was comfortable doing. She was quite surprised when Loreal skipped over her justifications for cheating; most of her clients in this situation used the opportunity to unburden themselves and look for approval from the counsellor. Instead she skipped through the details of her first disastrous impromptu fling with a random guy and the more deliberate meeting with the rugby player.

Claire admired Loreal's description of Dave's obvious emotional control at the final confrontation and correctly concluded that control, and the fact that he'd returned unexpectedly early, was evidence he'd been expecting what he found.

After her painful confession, Loreal was weakened enough for Claire to find out without too much effort exactly what Loreal wanted from the sessions: an answer to why Dave hadn't fought for her. The embryonic ideas that she was incapable of love and unable to spot that Dave had been lying when he said he loved her, had been buried deep during her hospital stay.

Claire was interested in Loreal's description of the strange expression on her husband's face that night and suspected she knew what caused it but knew she had to break the reason to Loreal very carefully or risk another breakdown.

Claire requested the receptionist bring in a couple of coffees while they chatted about innocuous subjects as a little break, before turning Loreal's attention to the stack of photo albums. For the next half hour Loreal turned the pages, giving a brief explanation of some of the photographs. Claire mentally kept tally.

Six pages into the first album, Claire pointed out a picture of Dave and Loreal at a formal dinner. Loreal pointed out that the dinner was one of the nights that her husband had received an award for one of his designs and another table member had offered to take the picture. The photo was taken from the side, with Dave leaning out from behind Loreal. Claire, who knew the importance of clients discovering things for themselves rather than having them pointed out, tried to prompt a self-discovery.

"Did you take any photographs of Dave receiving his award?"

"Of course I did."

"So, where are they?"

"Oh, I didn't have room in the album to put all the photos in."

Claire pointedly looked down at the opened page. The other seven photos on that page were of Loreal looking radiant.

"Dave certainly took a lot of photos of you."

"Well, what do you expect? That's a $400 dress, $150 hairdo, and a $100 professional makeup job. Look at me, I was beautiful. I hadn't become pregnant yet, so I didn't have that little tummy I've had ever since."

The counsellor couldn't help a little unprofessional comment slipping out.

"Dave must have felt very honoured that night."

Loreal didn't see the comment for what it was and totally misinterpreted it.

"Of course, he would have. He must have felt very proud. I mean, look at all the other wives in the photographs. Dowdy and drab to a woman. He told me walking in there that he felt proud to walk in with me on his arm. I always knew I was a little out of his league, but I thought, 'what the hell'. He was kind and generous, passably handsome, had good qualifications, loved children, and obviously worshipped me. What woman could pass that up?"

Loreal lapsed into silence and Claire waited, hoping the screamingly obvious would start to take root in the woman opposite her. Unfortunately, Loreal simply turned the page and started talking through the photos again.