Lucky Man Pt. 01

I returned to the bedroom and started going through all her drawers. I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. Eventually I found what I really didn't want to find. Right at the very bottom of her knicker drawer, inside a package of tampons under a layer of the familiar cotton pads was three months' supply of birth control pills. They were not a hangover from the time I was aware that she was on the pill, some ten plus years or so ago, as the use-by date was another 15 months in the future. I assumed that if she was currently on the pill there must be another currently-used pack somewhere.

I found it in the wardrobe where she kept her handbags. As soon as I saw them I remembered she had taken a slim evening bag with her to Edinburgh but had brought home a larger one with her purse etcetera in it. I couldn't remember which one it was. I didn't share her passion for fashion, so it was a case of looking through them all.

The third one I opened held the jackpot. For a start it still had her purse in it and another bundle of receipts, one from a department store for luggage, the rest from Edinburgh restaurants. Three of them itemised either tea or coffee for two and were dated within the last few days. Tucked into a corner of the bag, carefully wrapped in tissues, was a foil pack of BCPs with the first 16 pressed out and used, so I had evidence that she had been on the pill for over a fortnight. I had answers to a couple of my questions, she had certainly been planning on having unprotected sex with someone other than me since she last had her period over two weeks ago. If I was her exclusive lover she had no need of the pills as she had made me have a vasectomy about eight years ago.

I toyed with the idea of carefully removing the next five tablets and replacing them with whatever looked similar from the medical cabinet, or something from the pharmacy at the 24-hour supermarket, but I couldn't be that petty, could I?

I needed another drink, especially as it was now pushing 1am. I wasn't prepared to confront her, so took my drink upstairs, packed a couple of suitcases and moved them into the guest room. Then I went to bed about half past one, setting my alarm for first thing in the morning. I didn't actually sleep much, and I heard the cab pull up outside, the guest room being at the front of the house and the master bedroom at the back.

When Ruth came in past 2am in the morning she didn't even see that I was using the guest room. She went straight to the master bedroom and into the shower. I had already moved my clothes into the spare room, leaving my empty wardrobe doors and chest of drawers open. I don't think she even noticed when she tumbled into bed. It is possible that she hadn't turned the bedroom light on and had assumed that I was asleep on my side of the bed.

I made the breakfast in the morning bright and early and had thrown the bills and pills on the table where she habitually sat. Ruth came down, dressed and ready to go to work, clearly still suffering from an excess of alcohol and whatever else she had been up to. She was mumbling an incoherent greeting in my general direction before she even noticed the little pile next to her bowl of prunes and yogurt.

To my couple of questions delivered through clenched teeth of who she'd been bonking in Edinburgh, she exploded back in my face,

"Well, what did you expect?" she spat venomously, "I wasn't going to let you fuck up my trip and my fucking birthday because of your useless job, so I took someone else instead who was prepared to show me a good time. And yes, you are right, we fucked like rabbits while in Edinburgh and then I was still upset with you when I got back so we enjoyed a final fantastic fuck last night too!" She stuck out her tiny chin defiantly.

"Well you can fuck him all you want now!" I yelled, "I'm moving out, today."

I had a cup of black coffee for her in one hand and a plate of buttered toast in the other. I let the coffee cup slip from my fingers to smash into splinters on the floor splashing tiny spots of scalding hot coffee onto both our legs, my legs were covered but her legs were only wrapped in thin black tights. I also flipped the contents of the plate, toast, butter side down, onto her lap.

She screamed at me as I turned and walked out the kitchen door. I was so angry and upset I didn't want to stay in the house with her a second longer. I had left my car keys on the side and my packed overnight bags on the unmade guest room bed. I didn't want to go back for them just at that moment and feared for my actions if I stayed in the house with her.

So I just stormed down the drive with tears filling my eyes and yomped up through the estate, blindly turning this way and that until I was forced to stop at the end of a cul-de-sac, breathing heavily and feeling a nagging stitch in my side coming on. I turned and walked back out of that close, more than a little lost and looking for any landmark I recognised.

I was upset and angry, my wife was fucking someone else, after just twelve years of marriage, when I honestly believed our life together would be forever.

I suppose I had to admit I was not much of a catch any more. When we were both young I was fit and athletic, I probably appealed to Ruth as a bit of rough compared to the spoiled brats she was used to being around. But in those twelve years since Ruth had outgrown me, she was a very attractive self-made career woman surrounded by slick powerful, dynamic businessmen at the top of their game and I was a harassed second-rate teacher in a failing inner-city school, still sporting my greying and ridiculously unfashionable pony-tail. Most of the time I came home exhausted, with marker pen stains on my shirt, which was straining around my middle-aged paunch. Surely though, after all this time the love that I knew had been so strong between us must still be there somewhere.

Ok, I could understand that I had let her down this time. She had been looking forward to this trip without the girls. Hell, I'd been looking forward to it myself as well. In our busy lives, opportunities like this for a romantic interlude were so rare they almost never ever happened. That course that I had to attend came from out of left field somewhere and I never saw it coming.

However, what partner goes off to a hotel room and fucks another man over a little tiff, probably with someone who is also cheating on their own partner? I just couldn't get my head around the image of Ruth, my little sweet innocent loving Ruthie, with her legs in the air fucking some accountant or other, leaving me blissfully unaware and planning a welcome home dinner hopefully followed by make-up lovemaking.

Even more incomprehensible to me was that she compounded her deceit by trashing my attempted make-up courting and going off and fucking him again the very first night back.

I felt so ill that I staggered onto a front garden to hold onto a tree while I emptied the contents of my stomach onto a neatly manicured lawn.

She wasn't my Ruth any more, I knew that now, what had been a loving relationship once, could never be again. If she wasn't mine, then whose heart did she belong to? Was she in fact anybody's other than her own independent woman? Where would I go once I left the marital home?

Chapter 6. Mixed memories

I flashed back to when I was 16 and I left my parents' house with absolutely nothing, just the bloodstained clothes on my back. I had survived back then, I would again, perhaps upgrade to a hotel this time instead of some cheap fag ash Lil's digs. A cheap hotel would have to do for now, once we split up money would be extremely tight.

That time I looked for somewhere to stay, fresh out of hospital with one eye still closed, the other blackened, butterfly stitches sealing splits above my eye, a cheek and chin, swollen fat lips and several teeth missing, I must have looked a sight. In fact it was two years before I could afford to get my teeth fixed so I spoke with a lisp for a long time. My shirt collar had still been decorated with stiffened blood.

I remember I was turned down by every landlady bar Old Mrs Thompkins. I was so naive I didn't even realise you needed enough money to leave a deposit, I had still been at school a few weeks earlier and didn't have a job or even a chequebook. Mrs Thompkins didn't let me my dingy room out of compassion, she didn't care less about me at all, she had a room to let and I needed to rent a room. Her husband was the foreman on a building site and needed a willing labourer, so I arrived at the right time and place, i was a lucky man. Mr Thompkins paid me cash on the lump and even deducted the rent money out of what I earned.

My poor old Mum had been confused. I knew she was full of love for me perhaps even more so because I stood up for her, also tempered with pity because I was so pathetic compared to my brutal father. The first time we arranged to meet in a nearby cafe, she was trying so hard to persuade me to come back home. Then the next time we met she would say I was better off where I was. To confuse me completely she'd once got down on her knees in public and begged me to come back, and squeezed me in a bear hug and whispered "I love you and you know what's best, darling," when I refused to.

I feared for Mum's sanity then. I asked her several times over the years why she stayed with my abusive father. I offered to support her a number of times, before and after I was married. She always said the same basic thing, "I stay with him because of you, honey," and later "I stay with him because of you and your lovely girls". Neither of which statement ever made much sense because none of us were living with my father.

I had never felt comfortable about leaving my daughters at my father's house. I was always on the look out for signs of abuse at bath time, whenever the girls came home after staying with my parents. They never seemed to show fear in his presence, certainly not when I was around, but I always stayed alert for anything of concern. I can fortunately say that the girls appeared to dote equally on all their grandparents.

What would happen to the girls, now, though? I groaned at the thought. I hated the very idea of forcing them to grow up in a household where the parents were estranged. How would that affect the way they matured into adults? Perhaps it wouldn't make a difference; I was from a broken home and had been totally loyal to my sweetheart for 12 years. Their mother was from what I had always assumed was a stable, caring background; and she turned out to be a cum-sucking fuckpig. I was still angry at Ruth.

I had to go back to my recent former home and get my bag, my keys ... Bugger! I didn't bring my keys! If she's gone to work, and of course she has gone to work by now, she has her own agenda and I was clearly no longer a part of her plans.

I couldn't get indoors without my keys. I checked my pockets. What pockets? What a dick, I thought! Was it any wonder that Ruth was fucking someone else? I was a fucking dickhead! There I was, running around completely lost in my own fucking neighbourhood at about 7 o'clock in the fucking morning and I'd still got my fucking pyjamas on and ... I looked down ... and carpet slippers, covered in lawn dew and my fucking fresh, fucking vomit!

And I was fucking lost as well. Lucky man? The one thing I thought I was lucky in, was love. As the song goes, if I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have no luck at all.

I spent another 20 minutes stumbling around an estate I had lived in for several years and it turned out that I barely knew. Look, I drove through one series of roads and junctions inwards and the same ones in reverse on the way out. I hadn't walked anywhere for years and certainly not around there.

During that stumbling walk that morning, feeling every stone and sharp road chipping through my moccasined soles, I thought that I must be my Mum's son all right, finding myself isolated, lost, marooned in a deceitful marriage. Eventually I managed to find the main drag and followed it to my, well what was formerly my, door.

Ruth's car was still in the drive. I steeled myself for round fucking two.

"No you're not", Ruth spat out when I knocked on the locked kitchen door and told her through the glass I was just looking to pick up my bag and keys before changing my clothes and getting out of her hair and leaving.

"You can't just run away from me and the family over a stupid little mistake. It was nothing, it meant nothing. I need you to be here for the girls. We need to work out our differences and go forward, together, hopefully."

"What do you mean, 'it was nothing', you've already admitted that you've fucked someone else! 'Like rabbits all week', you said. You even fucked him again last night!"

"I only said that this morning because I was angry at you," she said, "I was angry and prepared to say anything to hurt you. Last night I really did have a meeting back at the office, then we went onto a restaurant with a couple of guys from Altec Engineering. They are suffering with increased overheads and reducing customer orders and desperately need more help from my firm. It is Alec Jones's account and he needed me in there urgently because he thought he was losing the account. You've met Jones, he's old school, bald with bad breath and past it when it comes to signing on new accounts, but he has a good nose for finding leaks in the system. I got to the office in time and charmed them into giving us a chance to pitch solutions to solve their problems. I think we nailed them in the end."

"Are you telling me you spent until gone two in the morning just talking to some engineering firm executives? Ruth, I just don't buy it, were you banging one of them or both?" I glowered at her and she arched her brow and gave me a look that could have burned me to a cinder.

"We were out clubbing after the meeting and the meal because those boys wanted to party, but I swear to you that we were just dancing. I simply had a lot to drink and lost track of time. Jonesy put me in a cab. You can call Jonesy at work, he was there the whole time."

Ruth looked sincere, she was chewing her lip again and looked the same age as Andie was. I really wanted to believe her, I ached to hold her and have her return the love I still felt for her, despite everything, but I didn't know how I could.

"So what about the guy you were screwing all week in Edinburgh?"

"I was angry, so I invited a creep from one of my clients who had been trying to get into my knickers for years. I was stupid and it was a one-off mistake. I hated every minute of it. I couldn't get rid of him because his stupid shitting airline lost his luggage, so I was stuck with him. I went crazy, still angry with you, got pissed and he took full advantage and fucked me twice. It was horrible and I cried the whole time. I won't repeat it."

"What about the birth control pills, you've been taking them for over a fortnight."

"I know." She was speaking so quietly that I could barely hear her. "When you cancelled on me I asked him if he was free, he was. Look he is married with children, it was just a fling and I didn't want any complications. The birth pills have to start from your period to period otherwise they don't work. I made an error of judgement, big time and don't want you to leave me. You are the only man I love, it is just that we have both been under pressure these last couple of years and it has caused us to drift apart. I was really looking forward to this trip, we haven't made love in months and I miss you so much. I wanted us to share my birthday like we always did, I wanted you in my arms, dancing all night again. I love you with all my heart and want us to be together as we were supposed to be all along. Please Mark, if you give me another chance, I'll do anything to keep you. You and the children are the only people important to me."

"So you shagged a married man bareback and now you want to fuck me so I can catch whatever you caught? I thought you were smart, Ruth, but you are nothing but a dumb cheating bitch. This guy was clearly up for an extra-marital affair, in sexual relationships with two woman at the same time. He wanted to shag you on your trip as well as his own wife before he left for your tryst and when he got home. Who knows what other tarts he has on the side or even if his wife knows he is cheating and is getting her action elsewhere? Whatever happens between us, Ruth, you better get yourself down the clinic and get a health check for your own piece of mind. And certainly before I will ever even kiss you again."

"I'll make an appointment today. I am so sorry, Honey, I was so thoughtless. I know you are upset with me, but I am just as disappointed with myself. I made a mistake, ok, twice, but I regretted it straight away. What can we do to make this right?"

"We can't. We're done, Ruth. Just the girls we need to concern ourselves with now."

"Don't say that, honey, please. Look, if you really can't bear to share our bed with me, you can stay in the guest room until we can straighten things out. I didn't shag anyone last night, I simply rose to the bait and said that when you accused me."

"It sounded true, I believe it was true, I still do. You fucked some stud, maybe more than one. Whatever. You've fucked our marriage."

"You are so sensitive. We're not finished, not by a long way." She thought for a moment. "If you still can't bear to work with me on our marriage, then at least stay with us as a family until the girls have left school, then you can move out if you still feel a need to. Alright? Now I must get off to work, you'll pick up the girls from the school coach?"

She picked up the bills, stuffed them in her handbag, grabbed her keys and waltzed off out of the door on her way to work, without even a kiss, leaving me confused and hurt and still uncertain what to do.

Bob popped round later that day, wanting to find out how my course in Bournemouth had gone and whether Ruth enjoyed her trip to see the Tattoo even though she was alone.

I didn't want to wash my dirty linen in public, especially with my oldest friend, so I bottled it up. I admitted that she was still upset with me about us missing the Edinburgh trip together. Bob reminded me that the girls would be back in a couple of days and he offered to organise a trip out for them so that I would have more time to sort out my problems with Ruth. Bob was still a bachelor, but he regarded his goddaughters as part of his close family and they loved their Uncle Bob in return.

So I ended up staying in the marital home, but more as a lodger than a husband. Over the next few months Ruth and I sort of got back together, but our relationship was never the same as it once was. When she initiated it, we resumed having sex after a few weeks of abstinence, but it really wasn't making love as we used to and it eventually petered out to non-existence. I just didn't trust her any more and that meant I couldn't summon up the passion for her like I used to.

Ruth also seemed to have lost interest in the physical side of our relationship. We hardly even spoke. Eventually I moved out permanently to the guest room, using the excuse to the girls that Mummy needed her sleep and Daddy was snoring too loud. I only stayed on in the house for the sake of the girls, but they were not stupid, they cottoned on that Ruth and I were estranged and they decided to take their mother's side.

What did I tell you about my luck? I never had a chance. I knew that once the girls went off to university, we would part and probably divorce, we were already separated to all intents and purposes.

Chapter 7. Buried

It was five years later that we reached the lowest point in my life so far. My father had a couple of strokes about three months apart and died.