My Not So Loving Wife

Chapter One First things first. My name’s Harry Madron and yes, I know, I sound like an LA detective from one of those old seventies NBC and CBS productions from across the pond. The truth, however, is a deal more prosaic and I could barely be further away from a “Quincy” or “Baretta” or “Rockford” type with an incident filled past and a trailer-home at Paradise Cove. Though life has become a little more… interesting… recently. You see, and for those of you who haven’t guessed, I’m the Harry of the prologue and at the time of writing I’, about as confused, angry and anguished, as I ever expected to be or wish to be in the future. I live just outside London, I’m fifty-three, and twenty-one years married with two grown up daughters who are no longer at home and are studying at separate universities in the north of the country. I work out of the house that’s now bought and paid for as a freelance and very part-time copywriter. A transition I made with the support of my wife after having taken an early retirement package from the London agency where I’d spent my whole working life. Physically I’m in decent shape but certainly no muscle freak. I weigh-in at 11lbs more than I did when I was married and Terry – short for Theresa – assures me I’m as handsome now as I was then and she loves the silver streaking my still full head of dark hair. Nice to hear but carrying less in the way of cache than it used to when… Excuse me. I’m racing when I need to be considered. I’m the one telling this story so you’ll only be getting the one side of it. The least I can do is be analytical and fair to the others involved so that you can pretty much make your own mind up on the subject. Though I have to say, “fair” is about the last thing I feel like being after… Excuse me once again. Anyway, as I was about to say, I’m not in bad shape even if I eschew the efforts I see a lot of men my age putting in at the gym and elsewhere to try and hold back time’s inexorable tide. Go with what you’ve got and compensate. A heart attack trying to pump iron doesn’t make much appeal to me, so that’s why I walk, mostly with the son of some neighbours who live in the same cul-de-sac as us in the buzzy Kent village of Westerham. Chris is a shy but really bright kid who flunked out of university at about the same time my daughters went in and, at twenty-four, works out of Gayle and Brian’s house designing software for computer-games rather than commit to the nine-to-five and the commuter run. I mention this because Chris and his nous when it came to the computer and other technical issues are instrumental in my story. Suffice to say that we both enjoyed recharging our batteries away from the computer with a daily walk around Westerham and it wasn’t long before we started doing it in each other’s company. Chris is a bit of a loner and I’d yet to see him with a girlfriend, so I got the feeling he enjoyed my company and looked forward to our walks and talks. Even more when we started rounding them off with a glass or two in one of the village bars or licensed cafes to people-watch the tourists who flocked to the birthplace of General Wolfe or stopped off after visiting Churchill’s former home just up the road at Chartwell. And yes, you guess correctly: It was rarely men we people watched. Normal stuff and life was pretty good. No harm in looking, after all, is there? So long as that’s all you do. Then again, I wouldn’t be writing this now if the woman I loved so much it was painful had heeded that advice and… Yes. I know. I’ll calm down. So now we come to Terry. She was only a year out of teacher-training college when we met at a party and I pretty much fell in love with her from the moment she put the moves on me. That’s right. She chased me at that party and by the time we were sharing our second drink out in the garden the ten-year age difference between us was of no account to me. She was smart and quick to humour, with an inclusive laugh and vivid blue eyes below short black hair that could do nothing to hide the depth of her interest. She was no supermodel and that made her all the more attractive to me. Her hourglass figure and womanly curves, even at the age of twenty-three, really hit the spot with me, even if – and despite my only part-deserved reputation at the time for being something of a lady’s man and a beast between the sheets – when we finally got it together physically it felt nothing like the “f*****g” I’d experienced prior to meeting her. Though s****l attraction was obvious, immediate and enduring, I knew what Terry and I did when we had s*x was not simply “f*****g” but “lovemaking”. Pure, simple, and delightful. That difference being a big factor in what was to come. Within months she had met my family and had taken me to visit hers. I had three sisters, she had three brothers. My parents and sisters took to Terry instantly and hers to me. A month after, we were living with each other and another two after that we were married. She loved her work teaching physics at a private school in Woldingham, and between my agency work and her salary we were soon able to put down a deposit on the home we now live in. The only small drawback with living in Westerham being the absence of a train station for my commute into London and a problem that was solved by Terry dropping me in the next village that did on her way in to work and picking me back up when she finished and my train got me back. Even on the many occasions when I was busy and had to stay late, she would still be outside the station waiting for me when I finished – despite me telling her I’d just get a cab. Life seemed near perfect and became even closer to the ideal when Maria and Deanna came along one after another. My wife is the world to me and remains, after everything, the woman I love who provided me with two amazing daughters and remains the only person in this world or the next I want to wake up and see first thing every morning. She is my soul- mate and I wouldn’t be with someone else if my life depended on making the change. I was a lucky man. Sorry, I should have placed more emphasis on the… “Was”. Anyhow, bear the above in mind as we go forward because it might make behaviour on my part you are likely to find wimp-like and contemptible more… explicable. I was not going to lose the love of my life to someone else without one hell of a fight and despite a betrayal on her part I would have once found it impossible to believe. But, just because I was going to fight for her, it didn’t mean I was going to do so in the usual breast-beating way. Even if I did want to eviscerate her lover and feed him to a mincer. The best results when it comes to women, however, are not always achieved with a club in one hand and a great handful of her hair in the other. Bear this in mind as we go forward. So here we are, bang up to speed with my life at the time it started unravelling and became the nightmare of hurt, self-disgust and impotent anger my own inability to truly face it ensures I live. A nightmare that, as I see it now, began with my wife’s utter lack of any sense of direction. Not that I picked up on it immediately…