What I Did On My Summer Holiday

This is part of the 'Paul Simon: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover' event. It's a small offering, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

*

"Will you please hurry up? Stop dawdling like a child on his way to school! At this rate, we're going to be late, and believe me - you do not want to make me miss this trip! You would not like me when I'm furious."

This was news? I sighed, trying to keep the three heavy suitcases on their wheels and heading in the same general direction as we were along the quay. We had a good thirty minutes before the gangplank would be lifted. The Tower Harbour Extension, which protruded into the Thames, was a new pier built specifically for cruise ships. It was long, but it wasn't thirty minutes long by any stretch of the imagination.

"I'm trying my best," I muttered.

"Do or don't do! There is no trying!" she misquoted, once again. She tried to be 'down with the kids' and keep up with modern -- or at least faintly recent - memes, but she wasn't very good at it.

"Hmm. 'Don't do' sounds like a comfortably good option right at this moment," I said equably. "I could do with a rest."

She halted and drew herself up to her full 5' 2" height, and took a deep breath. This was always interesting, as it pushed her already prominent breasts out even further. Passers-by slowed down appreciably in order to appreciate the view. Several came to a complete halt.

Mrs Keeley Gateshill, my wife, was a diminutive Venus -- with a mother-earth figure. Artists in primitive cultures would have fought each other to the last rock for the privilege of sculpting her. Admittedly, the sculpture would probably have looked like a lumpy plasticine model of the Michelin Man, and my wife was a lot more attractive than that, but the size of her norks would probably have been in proportion. Her pale blue eyes flashed.

"William Gateshill, you know how much this trip means to me, and I won't have you sabotaging it at the last moment, just because you're in a snit!"

Snit seemed a little harsh.

"I wouldn't call it a snit," I protested mildly. "More like a mild sulk, really."

"We agreed to this cruise, and we're damned well going on it."

"I seem to remember that you agreed on it unilaterally, despite my protestations that I was busy and don't really enjoy cruising. You bought the tickets, you decided on the cabin, and you decided to tell my boss I needed time off work -- again, despite me being busy."

"That's not important. You can just give up playing on your computer for a while. I've worked hard all year, too, you know. It's not just you working. Or is this a case of me being a woman, and therefore my views don't count? That my needs aren't important? That my work is of less value? You think I should be barefoot, pregnant and constantly in your bed to service you and do your bidding?"

She was getting into her strident harridan stride now. I thought about what she'd said.

"Can we talk about the servicing a bit more?" I wondered. "That sounds nice. I mean it has been quite a while since any 'servicing', as you put it, has taken place."

"Am I just a walking vagina to you? What the hell is the matter with you? Life's not all about sex, sex and more sex! Is that all you think about?"

"No dear, most times I think about just having some sex. More sex would require quite a remarkable amount of imagination," I commented thoughtfully. It had been quite a while, and even then it had been almost a local remake of The Grudge -- without all the hair in the face bit.

I was only partially glad about that. I wasn't keen on hair in my mouth, but I hadn't minded it when we first got married seven years before -- that glorious blond mane that we both loved for me to hang onto when we made love doggy style. Then that hair had become too unfashionable for her work, and that was it. One day, shortly after she started at the architectural firm as office manager, that glorious golden waterfall had been replaced by a stylish business cut -- without any warning. I wasn't so keen on the little bob cut, but I knew better than to say so. If I'd wanted to start World War III, it would have been easier to simply point out that the short, tight skirts of the business suits she had carefully chosen online at the same time, made her arse look massive.

It meant there was no more gently pulling her hair as I thrust into her from behind. Then again, that wasn't too much of a thing, as there had also been a dramatic cut off in the number of thrustings as well; as being on all fours when we made love had become too 'animalistic and degrading' for her. I'd been surprised. She'd had a lot of tremendous orgasms from that.

I slipped my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time. Twenty five minutes to go -- excellent, we were right on schedule.

Keeley saw me looking at the phone and turned to march off.

"Hang on," I called. "I want to take a pic of you at the start of the holiday."

It was quite picturesque. She stood beneath a big arching sign welcoming people to the T.H.E. pier, looking charming in her sky-blue dress, her lovely face shadowed by the big, floppy straw hat, its red and white ribbon fluttering gently in the breeze. Behind her was the liner we were due to board,

"Hurry up!" she exhorted, as I took five pictures of her, four of them with her arm in the way of her face as she tried to prevent an errant zephyr from trying to steal her hat and run away it. Her skirt blew up slightly, revealing her shapely thighs, and I sighed. I was going to miss being between those. Then again, not being between them had become the norm, and me not having sex was just how things were. I was hoping this cruise would change that.

She glanced at the watch on her wrist, the expensive one she'd bought online as my gift to her for her birthday two weeks before -- just after she'd chosen and paid for this cruise. It was lucky for her she'd done that, as I hadn't bought her anything at all -- being in something of a 'snit' at the time.

"Come ON!" she shouted.

I glanced at my phone -- another five minutes had gone past. Twenty minutes before the gang planks would be drawn into the ship. Perfect timing.

"Coming dear," I called as she picked up her handbag and I gathered the three suitcases together by their handles.

As we drew close to the nearest gang plank, my phone went off. I stopped and pressed a button.

"Oh, I love your cock, Jim!" Keeley's voice blared out, loud and clear.

My wife froze and turned to stare at me.

"What the fuck?" I said, walking away from the ship to the other side of the broad pier as if to try and see clearly, near another big sign put up by the developers who had built the pier to broadcast to a somewhat dubious nation how wonderful this new addition to the Port of London was. 'Thank you for using THE'. The ad campaign had become a meme.

"Wait!" shouted Keeley. I heard her high heels tapping behind me as I drew close to the edge.

"Is this you, Keeley?" I called, pointing at the screen, drawing her in close to me. "What the hell are you doing with your boss?"

"Wait!" she called. "What is that?"

I turned my back to her as she reached for my phone, trying to snatch it out of my hand. She moved around me, trying to see, as I kept turning. Then I tilted the phone so she couldn't see that the screen was blank. She didn't need to. The volume was on high and her words left little to the imagination.

"Oh, yes. Yes! Harder, Jim. Fuck me harder! Oh YES! Like that! More, more, oooh..."

"You're such a nasty little bitch!" She didn't say that. That would have been weird. I didn't say it either -- although I could have, with complete justification. It was the voice of James McLaughlin, the chief architect at her firm. He was a complete prick in my opinion, who saw himself as the new age Frank Lloyd Wright, and dressed in collarless jackets with purple cravats that matched his overly tight trousers to show off his daring originality. Poncey prick would have been a more appropriate title. He'd even felt entitled enough to make her vow to be faithful to him, cutting me off completely.

"When we have more time ... on this cruise ... I am so going to fuck that ... delicious arse of yours!" he continued, his voice lapsing into panting now and again. "Get your idiot ... husband out of the ... way, and I'll be up ... inside there, like a ... rat up a drainpipe!"

"Oh God, YES!" Keeley squealed. "I love it so much when you do that!"

I paused the sound and looked at her. She had punched me in the face on the one and only occasion I had tried to slip a finger into her bum.

"Really?"

Her eyes were huge. I think they were wet with tears of humiliation rather than guilt or sadness. I mean, this was Keeley. She didn't admit to being wrong -- ever.

"William, I..." She closed her mouth, thank God. I started the sound clip once more, noting there was one minute to go. More words of vile betrayal poured out into the quiet afternoon, punctuated only by the desultory calls of a few gulls, and underlined by the deep, sleepy rumbling of the ship's engines. Finally, I stopped the rant that poured from my phone.

"I loved you, Keeley. Even when you decided that as a manager in such a stylish and prestigious company, you could do so much better than someone who just 'played on a computer all day'. Even then. Even when you turned into hell's personal shrew and happily spent all your time trying to turn my life into a living hell. Even then. But when you started with him, and even agreed to his demand to cut me off from sex altogether, that was the end. He was right. You are really and truly an awful person -- a nasty, disgusting bitch!

"I don't 'play on a computer' all day. I write apps for phones, just like the one you have in your handbag. Two weeks ago, two days before your birthday, when I was just driving past on an errand, I saw you heading into the Sheridan. When you later told me you'd spent the whole day at your desk -- working rather than playing, as you declared I was -- I wrote an app just for you. It's on your phone now. Every time you left your office outside your lunch time, it quietly recorded everything and sent the file to my phone."

I pressed the key once more.

"Come all over me," she exhorted. "Do it, you bastard! I want to feel that lovely juice covering my whole body."

I paused it again. "Good job you refuse to do anything 'animalistic and degrading', otherwise he'd probably have been shitting in your ear-hole while trying to stuff a watermelon up your arse and a marrow in your cunt."

McLaughlin was a loudly self-professed vegan, so I'd tried to make the analogy appropriate. To my mind those watermelons would have been organically grown.

She flushed hugely, her face looking like she'd spent a long time staring at the sun, on a really hot day.

"It isn't... I don't... I'm..."

"Don't you dare apologise!" I interrupted her. "You didn't accidentally get into this. You went into this with a map, a torch, GPS and a herd of Sherpas, like you were hunting for some rare treasure. You planned it, you executed it and you loved doing it -- getting one up on me, once again. Getting that feeling of superiority you seem to crave more than oxygen. So now you get to open the treasure chest and discover the consequences."

The timing was perfect. Ten minutes before boarding closed, the ship always set off its foghorn to alert anyone dawdlers taking an extended farewell to loved ones.

As everyone automatically looked up at the huge fake funnel at the top of the ship when the huge noise started, I gave her a hip check -- a little nudge.

She was right on the edge of the pier. Trying to regain her balance, her arms swung wildly and one leg seemed to be feeling for support in mid-air.

Then she was gone. I peered over the edge as she surfaced.

"Oops. Sorry dear. That was an unfortunate accident. Oh dear. I guess you'll need dry clothes. Here!"

I dropped her suitcases in the river alongside her, making sure they wouldn't actually land on top of her. I didn't want her dead -- not anymore, not like I had when the app had sent that first sound file through. Now I just wanted her gone. I wasn't worried about her drowning -- she had her Water Safety 3 award stashed away somewhere in the house we rented. To get that, you have to swim a quarter of a kilometre, fully dressed. Besides that, she had her own built in flotation device on her chest. She could easily get back to the shore safely, and she could even run back to the ship.

But she couldn't do it in ten minutes.

I gave her a little finger wave and a big smile as she coughed and spluttered curses at me. Whistling to myself, I grabbed my suitcase and made the short run to the gangplank.

"Sorry I'm late, domestic crisis." I explained to the pretty woman in her spotless white uniform, when it was my turn in the queue. She ticked me off on her list, and then put a cross alongside Keeley's name when I explained that she wouldn't be able to make the trip because of that crisis.

There was a crackle from her walkie-talkie and she listened to it for a moment.

"Up you go, sir," she said with a smile. "You just made it in time."

It seemed that the moment my foot hit the deck on the other side of the door in the hull, the door was closed and dogged, and the gangplank drawn in on smooth, quiet motors. The pretty woman gave my suitcase to another uniform and told him my cabin number. Man and suitcase disappeared as I checked in at the reception. I didn't really notice the sound of the engines until they suddenly boosted up and the whole ship seemed to quiver into life.

I made my way up to the observation deck and looked back at the wet figure that limped along the quay with one shoe missing, handbag dragging along the floor behind her, to where the ship had been just minutes before. I drew out my phone, zoomed in and took a few pics of her. Fond memories.

Other passengers were pointing and laughing as they made up scenarios between themselves to account for Keeley's appearance. I gave her a final wave. I wasn't worried about her calling the ship, the shipping agents, the police or anyone else. After her swim, her expensive phone and that damned expensive watch were now no more than jewellery.

Her cards would work, although funds to cover them were now severely diminished after I had taken a fair share of them. The rent was paid for the month, and if everything worked out as planned, a removal company was right at that moment taking everything that I'd marked from the house, to transfer to a nice little flat quite far away that I'd rented for myself. To avoid her noticing, I had x-marked everything I wanted with a black light pen, and the movers knew to simply turn on all the lights in the house and those marks would show up clearly.

I hadn't just changed the bulbs from plain to ultra violet; I'd added little drops of solder which now linked every bulb firmly to its socket. Her taking them out would mean breaking them, so to change them back, she would have to have an electrician heat up and loosen every drop of solder, or change every light fitting.

Why would she bother? Well, because I'd taken the time to use that remarkably useful black light pen to detail her dalliances, with extensive quotes from the sound files my little app had faithfully forwarded to me, to cover every surface in that house -- including the walls, floors and ceilings -- as well as the television, fridge, cupboards, mirrors, her clothes, sheets, towels -- everything I didn't want. The removal guys were going to have a ball reading the history of her cheating ways.

It was permanent ink, so every night she spent there, unless she sat in the dark, she would be faced with the fact that she had been caught out -- that she wasn't some superior being who deserved to be on top, just another cheating slut who couldn't keep her sense of entitlement in check, or her legs together.

It would drive her crazy. So she would either have to scrub everything with sugar soap -- a long and unpleasant job, which wouldn't work on fabrics -- or arrange to have the whole place repainted, as well as sorting out the lights. It wouldn't take her long to do that, but while those words were there -- staring at her, accusing her -- it would drive her absolutely crazy. A small revenge, but mine own.

I gave one last wave as the ship turned to the east to leave the estuary, and sighed.

Now I had to seek out Mrs. McLaughlin and give her the copies of the sound files I had promised her. She had been most interested in them when I had phoned her a week before to explain the situation our spouses had put us in, and in return she'd promised me whatever I wanted of her on the cruise, no matter whether her husband was near or not -- which was a very interesting prospect. I had no idea what she looked like, but her husband wasn't the type of man to have a dog on his arm. Besides, she had sounded interestingly intelligent in her vehemence towards her cheating spouse and, with her agreement, I was going to fuck her throughout the whole week, no matter what she looked like. After all, he had made my wife cut me off, so I was going to make sure he experienced my full measure of revenge. It was going to be a most interesting week -- and possibly even wonderful.

I took one last look at the drooping figure on the quay.

"You screwed up our lives," I whispered. "You screwed him, you screwed me, you screwed up. You made me leave you, my lover. That's why I made you drop off THE, Keeley. I set myself free."

You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free