Samantha

He thought for a minute and then said. "It's almost lunchtime so we can delay the other interviews. I can give you an hour. There is a phone in an empty office at the end of the corridor that you can use for a bit of privacy."

I made my way to the indicated telephone, marshalling my arguments for when I got my wife on the phone. The receiver was lifted after three rings and Samantha said in a breathless voice, "I'm in the middle of getting laid, Can you ring back in about an hour - he should be about finished by then."

Then she rang off.

I was not unduly phased by this because Sam liked to say sexy provocative things on the phone when she was pretty sure that it would be me calling. Occasionally I had to put a Saturday morning in at work but at these times I always rang home at least twice during the morning and this was when she tried to tease me. Once she started singing 'Love for sale' and recently launched into an old ditty which went, 'Madame Li's parlour, all the girls are willing, men of the town half a crown, little boys a shilling'.

I dialled the number again and before she could speak I said, "Stop messing about Sam, this is serious. I want you to listen very carefully to what I've got to say."

"Say whatever you like," she said. "But I doubt if I will understand a word with this big cock inside me."

I caught my breath and in the ensuing silence I heard the noise of bedsprings, I heard the sound of a male voice but not the words - and then Samantha giggled. My finger shot down to break the connection and I stood trembling from head to toe. It took three or four minutes before I regained enough control to ring again but then I got the engaged tone and realised that she had left the phone off the hook.

I left the building without doing the courtesy of leaving a message and drove home dangerously fast. My wife was sitting in the kitchen when I arrived, smoking and holding a glass which I presumed contained gin and not water. She did not seem drunk. I took the expression on her face to be one of defiance. "Who was the man," I asked.

"My manager from work. I've wanted to fuck him for months - this was the first chance I had."

"But why?"

"I could say 'because he's got a big prick' but it's not just that," she said looking me straight in the eye. "You know that you have stopped giving me what I need in bed John and for ages I have been like a kettle waiting to blow. Terry happened to be the one available when I got the opportunity but it could have been anyone."

"But I trusted you."

Samantha shook her head. "No you didn't. If you had trusted me then I wouldn't have done it but you watch me like a hawk all the time. Even when I am at work I can feel your beady eyes on me from across the street."

"Doesn't this just prove that I was right to watch you," I came back triumphantly.

"No John. Years ago in a war, if prisoners gave their word not escape or engage in hostile action they were left at liberty and very few did. Later in another war, they built camps with barbed wire guards and machine guns - and the prisoners spent all day every day planning ways to escape. You see, because there was an apparently impossible system it became a challenge to beat it whether they really wanted to escape or not."

"Did you really want to escape?" I asked, following on with her analogy.

"Desperately," she said. "I was going stir crazy. I think that I was on the point of blowing a fuse if today hadn't happened."

"This is the first time then - you haven't done with him or anybody else before today?"

Samantha raised both hands towards me palm upwards and asked, "When else have I had the chance?" but then she smiled and said, "That's not to say that I haven't given him the occasional blow job in his office."

"Do you want to know why I rang you," I asked coldly and then without giving chance for reply I went on, "They offered me the team leader position at £75,000 per year. But I won't get that or any other fucking position because I walked out of the place after speaking to you."

She was impressed. "Christ - that's almost as much as I could make as a stripper."

"Just see what you've blown," I accused.

Samantha had the grace to look contrite. "I'm sorry about your job and I am sorry that I told you like that. I think that I must have been a bit drunk on the sex because it was a cruel thing to do. That first call I thought it was my pal Emma because she knew what I had planned."

"Why did you tell me at all? To quote your own words, you'd beaten the system; you had got away with it. If you had not more or less confessed there was no way that I could have known what you were doing."

Samantha drained her glass, took a deep breath and said, "I let you know because I am sick of it. I decided that I could not settle for just the possibility of another afternoon of real sex in God knows how many months. I want to go with other men John - my body needs it."

I felt cold. "What about me - are you saying that you intend to leave me."

"I am not saying that at all. You may find it difficult to believe at this moment but I love you just as much as ever. If you look at it the right way, this needn't make any difference to us at all. I could exhaust two men and still have more left than you could handle - you know that's true. We can carry on as normal but I will go out one or two times a week by myself. This way I won't be pestering you in bed all the time - but I will be there whenever you want me."

"Without my new job we can't afford for you to go out gallivanting." It was a silly objection.

"Yes we can. Terry is promoting me to supervisor and the extra pay is more than enough for a couple of nights - especially as I doubt I will have to buy many of my own drinks."

I don't know how other men would have reacted to this ultimatum but I felt I had no option to agree, especially as I came to believe more and more that it was my fault this situation had come about. My life outlook changed or at least my ambition disappeared. At work I proceeded at a leisurely pace and stayed on the two hours to complete the work. Afterwards I also often then joined my colleagues in the bar for a pint or two and on the nights that my wife was out, presumably being screwed rotten, I stayed longer returning home almost paralytic.

Samantha seldom spoke about her solo evenings and never about the men that she had met. I never asked. It was as if there was a black hole in the marriage to which neither of us referred but apart from that, things seemed virtually the same as they had been before. Then one Saturday morning at breakfast, Sam's eyes were sparkling and I could see that she was bubbling with news. "You will never guess who I went with last night," she said. "I'll give you a clue, he's tall, he's very rich and he is a farmer."

I shook my head. I did not know any farmers and even if I had, the description was too vague.

"He's got an exceptionally big cock."

She sat there grinning as if expecting that this information should have given me the answer. "I have absolutely no idea," I said.

"He drives a Cherokee," she told me.