Their Secret Wife (Shadows Between Lies Book 2)

by Nicky Webber

  ‘Jess is a hot-head,’ Mila said. ‘Nothing much can change the outcome when she makes her mind up. Pretty crazy though.’

  ‘What did the husband do when he got home?’ Maddy asked. ‘Imagine the uproar on the domestic front.’

  ‘That’s why I keep Jess at arm’s length. She’s just too over the top for me. It was difficult sitting there listening to her. Life is too short for stuff like this,’ Mila said.

  Mila hugged her friend goodbye. ‘I’m just grateful we are close,’ she said. ‘Who wants stress like that in your life and then hype it up some more by over-reacting.’

  After Maddy arrived home two hours later, she told Fred. He sucked in his breath, which seemed to force his shocked eyebrows alarmingly close to his balding hairline. The wordless atmosphere spoke volumes of disquiet with them both unified in sheer disbelief.

  ‘You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?’ asked Fred, as they sipped a calming red wine before dinner.

  Maddy grew more serious. Her brown eyes focused on Fred’s face. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Fred? Are you having an affair too?’

  He laughed and shrugged. ‘When the hell would I ever have time?’

  Maddy understood his deflection for what it was and tried another tact. ‘Do you really love me?’ she asked.

  She saw a flicker of unease cross his eyes. Not sure what to answer. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he responded.

  Maddy sighed. ‘Yeah. You are Fred. But that could mean anything. We could be siblings or house-mates.’

  ‘We aren’t,’ came his usual economic response.

  She thought about testing another approach. ‘Have you ever slept with anyone else since we’ve been together?’

  After a few moments of brief hesitation, he rearranged his expression, making it more difficult to read. Was he going to play truth or lies?

  ‘No.’ The definitive word hung silently in the dead air between them.

  ‘Would you tell me if you had?’ she persisted. This line of questioning already bored him.

  ‘Of course not!’ he replied.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it would hurt you too much.’ Fred was proud of his answer. It was a pass.

  But Maddy knew she was none the wiser. Their marriage was like a chess game, but which one of them was in checkmate? She realized it was often her and suddenly felt overwhelmed by exhaustion and an inability to pursue the next move. It served her right to tackle him. It never ended well.

  She dished up his dinner and said she was getting an early night after the emotional toll Jess had exacted. She showered and visualized washing all the negative energy from her body, the soapy water swirling down the drain, along with her angst. By the time her head hit the pillow, she was asleep, a thick, velvet sleep of complete abandon.

  She found herself in the university’s exam hall, nervously seated at a single desk and chair amongst rows and rows of fellow university students. Up front on the small stage was a group of middle-aged professors and tutors with a large clock ticking while the eyes of 600 anxious students watched the second-arm move towards the start time. They terrified her. Had she studied enough? Could she remember enough? Was she smart enough?

  Maddy could hear, in the bitter silence, the plodding clock, like heavy, ponderous footsteps, growing louder and louder. Looking around the room, she saw all the other students sitting rigid in their straight-backed chairs, exam papers face down, waiting for the call to start. She glanced down at her own desk and saw her blunt pencil needed sharpening. She panicked. There was no sharpener.

  Then a voice from the stage, an elderly gray bearded professor, stepped to the front of the podium and in a booming voice shouted, ‘YOU MAY BEGIN.’

  She grabbed the wad of photocopied papers and flipped it over. She audibly gasped as a shock wave hit. The top of the exam paper read; ‘Applied Mathematics II.’ She shuddered in disbelief and suddenly woke up, about to have a heart attack. She suffered this same nightmare for over thirty-years. Maddy gave up Math at fifteen and never tackled the subject again, and yet the nightmare always presented her with the full horror of failure.

  Warm relief that her university exams were long gone and there were no terrifying exam papers or unsharpened pencils to undermine her ability washed over her. She grinned in the darkness, relieved at Fred’s heavy breathing, reminding her of the safe rhythm of her life now. Maddy couldn’t believe that PTSD from exams all those years ago still haunted her in times of stress. She sighed and rolled over, basking in her reprieve. Maddy willingly merged into a black, dreamless escape. She didn’t hear another sound until dawn greeted her with birdsong and the pool water called her to early morning meditation.

  On the weekend they took part in more round-table discussion and quiet hours, with Fred scouring cyberspace for pool heating options while slumped in front of the evening television. He investigated various eco-heating solutions, from the extraordinarily complex and costly, to one that would align with their sustainable budget approach to pool heating. The answer he liked best was putting a dense pile of compost on top of coiled black plastic water pipes. He happily explained that compost naturally heats during the microbial decomposition process, making the piped water hot to almost boiling point. Maddy’s first thoughts were of breathing in rotting air from the stinking composting pool surrounds while swimming in the new pool. None of these environmentally friendly ‘opportunities’ were suitable. By Sunday morning Fred, came up with an affordable and genius solution.

  ‘Let’s buy wetsuits.’ he grinned, pleased with himself. ‘Sounds so obvious. A new wetsuit would do the business during the colder winter months and deliver significant savings on having to heat the entire pool.’

  This was an improvement on the composting plan but Maddy remained unimpressed.

  After several hours online, Fred sourced the best wetsuit sale supplier in the region, and an hour later they strolled through the large glass double doors into the sports department store. The expansive retail floor, overstuffed with all kinds of exercising gear for runners, walkers, rowers, jumpers, horse riders, gridiron players, basketball teams, also displayed racks of gear for swimmers and surfers. As they stood pawing the different black wetsuit brands hanging like lifeless dead skins on circular metal wracks, a young shop assistant moved towards them both. There was a plethora to choose from, with various brightly colored logos emblazoned on the shoulders and chest of each designer wetsuit.

  ‘Good morning, how can I help?’ The tall, tanned young surfer looked from Maddy to Fred, uncertain which one would pay the bill. They didn’t strike him as world class surfers, which was the category of expensive wetsuits they had both been mauling before the bright shiny shop assistant’s arrival.

  Fred kindly shoved Maddy towards the sales assistant, as the primary sacrifice on the capitalist altar of sales and discounted neoprene attire. He was apparently a dedicated outdoor type with a look of a recreational dope smoker, supplementing his downtime with some retail work. His shoulder length sandy blonde hair hung limply around his face in contrast to his startling white teeth and alert blue eyes. He seemed over excited to be at their service. Both Maddy and Fred found it disconcerting. Maddy thought he probably always made sure he was super polite and subservient to middle-aged baby boomers; after all, they are the only customers that spend money on high-end gear and never use it. Everyone knows this, even the middle-aged are the brunt of their own jokes about Lycra and exercise. Maddy knew Mila would pull no punches and laugh out loud at the intrigues of Maddy’s retail experience.

  The shop assistant’s interrogation interrupted Maddy’s thoughts. He turned his tanned torso towards her and shone his perfect smile and bright, even white teeth in her direction. She realized he was asking why she wanted a wetsuit.

  She grinned uneasily. ‘I’m not sure what type of wetsuit I need. It’s just to keep warm in our wintery pool.’

  A fleeting look of disgust mixed with boredom flickered across the retail assist
ant’s face. He quickly masked his irritation, camouflaging it with the indulgence of his three-week intensive customer service training. He already knew this type of customer’s endless desire to appear young and vibrant. He stood up a little straighter, believing himself to be the catalyst to maintaining their middle-aged fantasy. ‘Right!’ was all he verbalized, but the tone of his eyes conveyed his desire to take control of these two novices.

  His blowtorch blue eyes scanned Maddy up and down as if she was a product barcode and he grabbed a wet suit nearby, unceremoniously shoving it at her.

  ‘Try this one for size, and we’ll see if it works.’ He pointed towards the changing rooms.

  Maddy didn’t want to seem like a useless flake, so followed his directions without question. In the small fitting room, she ripped her clothes off and pulled the black neoprene legs over her underwear and struggled into the folds. She was astounded at how difficult it was to get her body inside the confines of the wetsuit. No one told her she needed a complimentary crate of KY to get into the damn thing. It was almost enough to put her off buying one. She wanted to work fast, as she already knew agitation was on the rise in Fred’s contained being.

  The assistant called out from behind the changing room swing doors. ‘Any progress?’

  Maddy responded breathlessly, ‘Yup, I think so,’ but sounded unconvincing. She had lost ten pounds squeezing herself into the constricted neoprene suit and strode out as an entirely new black rubber’d-up self. Even her husband looked taken aback.

  ‘Howz that feel?’ the surfer salesperson asked with more wide-eyed grinning.

  Before Maddy could answer, he almost skipped towards her and began patting down her body. Pulling at the clinging neoprene on her waist and hips. She was like a stunned black plastic doll in the hands of Pinocchio’s father, unable to move while he pulled up her limbs and his hands ranged over the suit, grabbing the excesses around her thighs and butt. What the hell was he doing? He confidently spun her around, pulling at her armpits and sleeves, too. It all happened so fast that she barely had the blush of embarrassment rising into her face before he stepped back, regarding her entirety.

  On finishing his full body assessment, he gave a disapproving grimace and muttered that she needed a smaller size. Maddy, still reeling from the high-speed pat-down couldnt believe her ears. Surely not? She had already wasted thirty-five years trying to wedge herself into the original black outfit. Before she recovered, he thrust another suffocating, tighter brand and pointed her towards the changing room again for another round of embarrassing humiliation.

  This has got to be insane.

  ‘Hurry!’ commanded Fred in the background, getting agitated with the time the entire process was taking. Maddy was already well over his pre-allocated ten-minute allowance for in-store activities.

  Strangely, this new wetsuit was more comfortable to put on and seemed to fit more snugly, but without the stranglehold on certain extremities. Maddy sprung out of the changing room and onto the showroom floor. It startled the two men into shocked silence.

  She spun around with a pirouette in a magnanimous display of versatile movement, far beyond standard dry land capability. ‘It’s perfect!’ She danced, smiling at them both.

  ‘Done,’ smiled Fred, relieved to escape from the shop.

  Relieved to escape the surfer before he could grab her rubber-coated body again, Maddy grinned to herself, listening to Mila’s voice in her head. ‘Make the most of it, dahhhhling!’

  In the truck on the way home, after extolling the virtues of the new wetsuit, Maddy fooled around. ‘So, what if…?’ she pondered, drifting off into some musings to torment her husband.

  In her outside voice, as the truck drove off, she said, ‘What if we’re swimming in our wetsuits and you fart?’ she taunted Fred, attempting to make him smile. ‘Will the bubbles stay in your suit? Or will they accumulate somewhere under your armpits and escape in batches while you do freestyle laps in the pool?’ Fred greeted none of this ludicrous teasing with any enthusiasm. Fred was on task, focusing on getting the hell out of the city traffic and back to the sanctuary of their suburban home.

  My Dearest Mitch,

  You should write. Your emails make me erupt with laughter and deep amusement. The way you put things—clearly a natural. Get down and write a book!

  I’m not surprised that hotshot wetsuit sales-boy spent the weekend patting you down in your latex ensemble. Damn cheek! After that weekend experience with you, he’s probably got repetitive stress injury to both his wrists! Got the low down from M. on Jess and her foray into domestic revenge. Wow!

  Enjoy a week full of fun and not too much hard work.

  Logyxxxxxxx

  The long dark nights warped into iron gray days as winter winds whipped across the Pacific Ocean and along the Californian coastline. With her feet nestled in warm slippers, Maddy trudged outside in her body-hugging wetsuit to stand at the edge of the pool. Following several defeated attempts, she gently lowered herself into the cold 57°F pool water, and after ten laps she gave up. Afterward, it took over two hours for the warmth to seep into her frozen limbs. Her hands and feet were white with cold even after soaking in a long, welcoming, hot shower. She decided not to let the cold dictate her state of mind. ‘I choose life, love, happiness, and joy,’ she thought, while her somber husband grumbled and complained about nearly everything. Maddy had planned to keep the momentum of life on the up and up, despite Mr. Grumpy.

  She started off in wild abandon, repainting a few walls and choosing exotic wallpaper to enhance the interior of the house. Mila helped her select the right color combination with her interior decorating sense more keenly honed than Maddy’s.

  The rain was relentless and driving to and from work in gridlock just added to her level of frustration and annoyance. She used these décor projects to distract her from her wintery existence. Contrary to television advertising, Maddy’s imagination had no limits, but her restricted budget definitely held her back. In a mad rush of excitable blood to the brain and cheered on by Mila, she wallpapered the bathroom, so it replicated a padded cell. Mila in her brilliance suggested calling it The Throne Room. Maddy loved it. They shrieked with laughter as they chose the exotic Italian leather buttoned down looking wallpaper. Mila also suggested a small crystal chandelier and gold-framed mirror in keeping with the royal theme! The planning options were endless. But it was a lot of fun trapped at home while their husbands undertook indoor winter cycle training or extra spin classes at the local gym.

  Forward planning was the first requirement. Maddy wanted to surprise Fred and elicit some laughter and excitement from him, too. She knew it was unlikely, but she kept on trying. Maddy wanted to amuse Fred, if she could swing the toilet transformation to a throne room in one day. Like ‘Changing Rooms’ and many other DIY home renovation programs on TV. She set the spare bedroom up as a production line and struggled with lengths of laboriously pasted wallpaper. It was like trying to spread cold lumpy porridge onto resistant cling-wrap, which refused to lie still or flat for the duration. Aligning and re-aligning the wet paper, with her slimy glue covered hands, took up most of the day.

  She began installing the accessories and even a short Latin explanation about what a ‘Throne Room’ meant. At the end of the two typed paragraphs, she had lifted from the Internet she added, ‘A padded cell for quiet reflection!!’ Pleased with herself, she quickly placed it in a gold picture frame and hung it on the hook on the bathroom wall. It was 4.12pm and Fred would be home from work in an hour. She had to screw the new black and gold toilet roll holder onto the wall, replacing the old tacky pink one. She was almost hyperventilating, worrying about not making the bathroom a complete ‘Throne Room’ before her husband’s return home. He did not suspect a thing.

  The last lick of paint around the tiled skirting was drying, and a few tweaks of the accessories completed the powder room at 4.56pm. Fred would be home in ten minutes. He was a real stickler for routine and punctuality. He hated surp
rises. All the more reason to surprise him, thought the two friends.

  Maddy carefully washed the bathroom floor and ensured the new toilet roll holder was secure and closed the door with a satisfied grin. After a brief discussion with Mila, she waited and not say a word. Usually, Fred went into that bathroom at the end of the hall before 7.00pm. She could barely contain her excitement, determined to keep her antics under wraps.

  At exactly 6.37pm, Fred was a creature of regimental habits and routine. He stood up from his armchair and walked into the hallway. Maddy pretended not to notice and kept her eyes focused on the tail-end of the television news. She sat still, not daring to get up and peer down the hallway, in case he turned around and said ‘What?’ That maneuver would blow the complete surprise. There was a long period of silence. She could hear the toilet being flushed and Fred washing his hands before walking back into the lounge.

  He looked at his wife, brimming with pride and anticipation at having done something he would never have thought of. ‘Wow,’ he grinned, mildly amused. That’s quite something coming from him. Maddy knew she could magnify that reaction by about 100 percent if you compared his response to the average man. He was a lot of things, but certainly not the average man.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Maddy asked, wanting to coax out a few more words.

  ‘It’s different. I can’t believe you did this in one day? Who helped?’

  ‘No one,’ she lied. It had taken about three weeks of planning with Mila, though. She had ordered the accessories and the Italian wallpaper.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Maddy asked Fred, still trying to elicit the maximum kudos out of her folly.

  Fred could tell she wanted more reaction, so he smiled and said, ‘Yes, well done you,’ and pulled his laptop closer, concentrating on some new online search.

  ‘It was just a lark,’ Maddy explained. ‘It was fun to make you laugh.’

  ‘Yeah, I got that,’ he said. There was never any guile or grace in him. He always said exactly how it was. Maddy in some ways liked this aspect of her husband. She never had to second guess what he felt or thought. He was a man of few words, but they were always logical and exacting.