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Authors: Alex Coleman
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as an instruction from on high. I was at the counter before I gave it a thought. The thought was Phew – thank God you brought your purse on this random, not-going- anywhere-in-particular walk .
“Ten Silk Cut blue, please,” I said to the girl .
There was a magazine rack to my left. My eye was caught by a publication called Your Story . Although it featured a number of intriguing headlines: “ Haunted By My Own Dog !”; “ Boozy Surgeon Ruined My Nose!” The one that really sucked me in was this: “ My Cheating Husband Will Never Stray Again!” I grabbed the mag and offered it for scanning.
“Six-forty altogether,” the assistant said .
Peering into my purse, I realised that I had no notes. When I fished around for change, I came up with six euros and forty cents exactly. I took it as a sign from God that he wanted me to inhale poisons and read crap. He had his reasons, no doubt .
Back at the house, I stuck my head into the living room and apologised for taking so long. Melissa nodded and then went back to her book .
Colm said, “That’s okay. Did you go for a stroll?” “Yeah,” I said. “Just a wee one. Clear the head. You know. ”
“Fair enough. ”
“I’m off to bed then.” “Right so. Goodnight.” “Night. ”
Melissa closed her book with some force and looked at me properly. “Sleep well,” she said thinly .
“I’ll try,” I told her. “See you in the morning. ”
Upstairs, I flaked out on the bed and opened Your Story . The cheating husband piece was by “Brenda”, a woman from Manchester who’d found a pair of furry handcuffs in the glove box of her old man’s car. She knew he wasn’t using them on her, so she confronted him. He confessed to an affair, at which point she decided “to teach him a lesson he would never forget!” (Almost every sentence ended with an exclamation mark.) Brenda’s solution to her problem was to e-mail everyone on her husband’s rugby team to let them know that furry handcuffs were nothing compared to some of the gizmos and get-ups he’d employed in the marital bedroom. “Your pal’s favourite game of all,” she revealed in her final paragraph, “is to play naughty schoolgirl and strict headmaster – with him as the schoolgirl!” The plan, if you could call it that, worked like a charm. The husband became a laughing stock among his friends (who forwarded the mail to everyone they knew) and wound up “so depressed he can barely leave the house, let alone find a new mistress!” Brenda seemed to think this was a great victory, but I wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t done anything to ease her own pain, had she? All she’d done was hurt her husband, which was both easy and, in the grand scheme of things, pointless .
I tossed the magazine to the other side of the room and rolled over onto my back. What was Gerry up to now, I wondered? On those rare occasions when I went out alone for the evening, I usually came back to find him sprawled across the sofa in front of an action movie, covered in a thin layer of Pringle crumbs. Tonight would be very different. He wouldn’t be seizing the opportunity to revert to teenagerhood; he was more likely to be curled up in a little ball, cursing himself and wishing he was dead. At least, I presumed he was. There was always the possibility that he was next door, tearing Lisa’s clothes off with his teeth. But I found that unlikely .
The simple truth was this: I believed him. I believed him when he said it was a one-off, and I believed him when he said it would never happen again. It was entirely possible for a spouse to have sex with someone else as a sort of mistake, and then never do it again .
I knew that for a fact, because I had done it myself .
CHAPTER 8
When 2002 gave way to 2003, I dared to hope that the calendar change might do wonders for my state of mind. Although my parents’ accident was still horribly recent, at least now it was something that had happened
“Ten Silk Cut blue, please,” I said to the girl .
There was a magazine rack to my left. My eye was caught by a publication called Your Story . Although it featured a number of intriguing headlines: “ Haunted By My Own Dog !”; “ Boozy Surgeon Ruined My Nose!” The one that really sucked me in was this: “ My Cheating Husband Will Never Stray Again!” I grabbed the mag and offered it for scanning.
“Six-forty altogether,” the assistant said .
Peering into my purse, I realised that I had no notes. When I fished around for change, I came up with six euros and forty cents exactly. I took it as a sign from God that he wanted me to inhale poisons and read crap. He had his reasons, no doubt .
Back at the house, I stuck my head into the living room and apologised for taking so long. Melissa nodded and then went back to her book .
Colm said, “That’s okay. Did you go for a stroll?” “Yeah,” I said. “Just a wee one. Clear the head. You know. ”
“Fair enough. ”
“I’m off to bed then.” “Right so. Goodnight.” “Night. ”
Melissa closed her book with some force and looked at me properly. “Sleep well,” she said thinly .
“I’ll try,” I told her. “See you in the morning. ”
Upstairs, I flaked out on the bed and opened Your Story . The cheating husband piece was by “Brenda”, a woman from Manchester who’d found a pair of furry handcuffs in the glove box of her old man’s car. She knew he wasn’t using them on her, so she confronted him. He confessed to an affair, at which point she decided “to teach him a lesson he would never forget!” (Almost every sentence ended with an exclamation mark.) Brenda’s solution to her problem was to e-mail everyone on her husband’s rugby team to let them know that furry handcuffs were nothing compared to some of the gizmos and get-ups he’d employed in the marital bedroom. “Your pal’s favourite game of all,” she revealed in her final paragraph, “is to play naughty schoolgirl and strict headmaster – with him as the schoolgirl!” The plan, if you could call it that, worked like a charm. The husband became a laughing stock among his friends (who forwarded the mail to everyone they knew) and wound up “so depressed he can barely leave the house, let alone find a new mistress!” Brenda seemed to think this was a great victory, but I wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t done anything to ease her own pain, had she? All she’d done was hurt her husband, which was both easy and, in the grand scheme of things, pointless .
I tossed the magazine to the other side of the room and rolled over onto my back. What was Gerry up to now, I wondered? On those rare occasions when I went out alone for the evening, I usually came back to find him sprawled across the sofa in front of an action movie, covered in a thin layer of Pringle crumbs. Tonight would be very different. He wouldn’t be seizing the opportunity to revert to teenagerhood; he was more likely to be curled up in a little ball, cursing himself and wishing he was dead. At least, I presumed he was. There was always the possibility that he was next door, tearing Lisa’s clothes off with his teeth. But I found that unlikely .
The simple truth was this: I believed him. I believed him when he said it was a one-off, and I believed him when he said it would never happen again. It was entirely possible for a spouse to have sex with someone else as a sort of mistake, and then never do it again .
I knew that for a fact, because I had done it myself .
CHAPTER 8
When 2002 gave way to 2003, I dared to hope that the calendar change might do wonders for my state of mind. Although my parents’ accident was still horribly recent, at least now it was something that had happened
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