The Adulterer's Handbook

by Sam Anthony

  The day after:

  “Jake stayed all weekend! Had sex twice more! In the kitchen and in the shower!!! He only left when Lee’s flight landed. He wants us to get back together! So happy! Lee wanted to have sex, but I was too sore so started an argument. Lee sulking.”

  Three days later:

  “Meeting Jake tomorrow to talk about ‘us’.”

  The next day:

  “Went for a long walk with Jake. Told him I want to marry him instead of Lee. Thought he’d be happy. He said he’s ‘not ready to settle down yet’, but wants to keep having sex with me. Told him to fuck off!”

  At the time, I was oblivious to all of this. Three weeks later, Tamsin and I chose a date for our wedding and sent out invitations.

  The wedding day was a wonderful occasion. All of our closest friends and family attended, including our five best friends from university. Jake was my best man and Nilofer was Tamsin’s chief bridesmaid.

  I locate the relevant day in Tamsin’s diary:

  “Wedding day! I couldn’t be happier. Jake made a lovely speech all about me and so did Lee. I felt really special. Near the end, Jake dragged me into a cloakroom for a snog!!! First one for 8 months and 17 days!”

  I read the next entries very carefully, poring over every word until I find what I’m looking for. Less than three months after Tamsin and I were married, there it is:

  “Jake came round. We had sex! Adultery makes me so horny!!!”

  Three days later:

  “Jake took me out for lunch. He says he can’t bear not making love to me. Poor guy! He wants us to have an affair to see if we’re compatible. If it goes well, he says we’ll get married! Bloody cheek!”

  The following week:

  “Sex with Jake in his car! He begged me to have an affair. I said no, but I’m weakening! It would be rather titillating!”

  The next day:

  “Had a long conversation with Jake. We’ve agreed to a six-month trial affair to see how it goes!!! I really don’t want to hurt Lee, so we must be very careful.”

  I throw the diary at the bedroom wall with all my might. It makes a slight dent in the plasterwork and falls to the floor. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that Tamsin has been in love with Jake since before she met me. I was, and have always been, her second choice.

  ◆◆◆

  It’s time to look at the cell phones. They won’t be fully charged yet, but not far off. I find the newest looking one and switch it on. I’m not surprised to discover that it’s passcode protected. I try a few combinations of numbers which I know Tamsin has used in the past, but none of them work. It’s the same with the next phone. They’re useless to me if I can’t find the passcodes.

  While I’m trying to think of alternative passcodes to attempt, I pick up the most recent diary and flick through it. The final few pages catch my eye. After the end of the calendar year, there are several blank pages for making notes. It’s here I discover some very useful information. At the top of one page, Tamsin has written a secondary email address, one I’ve never seen before, followed by a list of twelve passwords, each one crossed out except the last. On the following page, there’s a list of twelve six-digit numbers, again all crossed out except the final one. My guess is that these are the passcodes to unlock her secret cell phone for that particular month of that particular year. I try the one at the bottom of the list and the phone springs to life. On the home-screen, I see a selfie of Tamsin and Jake on a hilltop, taken sometime in the last twelve months. Arms wrapped around each other and rosy-cheeked, they always appear to be so happy together, and I hate it. Why couldn’t she be happy with me?

  A quick look at the earlier diaries tells me that it’s been Tamsin’s habit to change her email password and cell phone passcode every month for many years. She’s certainly more disciplined than I am.

  The most enlightening entries in Tamsin’s diaries are on the very last page of the notes section. Looking back over several of her diaries, she’s used this page to write down her strategies for having an affair with Jake, without me, the kids or anyone else finding out about it. They’re bullet points. Some of them are similar to my twelve rules, only better and more comprehensive. Her thoroughness is impressive. Nearly twenty years of practice at hiding her illicit relationship with Jake has enabled Tamsin to become highly adept in the art of deception. Here’s a small selection:

  “Delete all suspicious text messages and emails, but leave some innocuous ones. If there aren’t any innocuous ones, then send some.”

  “Flirt with other men to throw Lee off the scent.”

  “Send letters disguised as business correspondence.”

  “Hide all photos and diaries at work in a locked cabinet.”

  “Set up a separate, private email address and change the password every month.”

  “Use a secret, locked, prepaid cell phone for all suspicious communication.”

  “Use work address for all itemised bills.”

  “Switch off Location Services.”

  “If Lee gets suspicious, promise to make an effort to work on trust issues.”

  “Be attentive to Lee’s needs at least once a month.” What a bitch! Just once a month?!

  “Avoid eye contact with Jake if anyone else is present.”

  “No more meeting at home.”

  “Lie as little as possible, there’s less to remember.”

  “Check for suspicious marks before returning home (wrists, ankles, neck).”

  “Don’t leave anything in Jake’s bed or car. Do the HECK check: hosiery, earrings, condoms, knickers!”

  “Use cash or a secret credit card for any purchases using work address for deliveries.”

  “Keep a separate bank account to pay off credit card and for cash withdrawals.”

  “Always be contactable. It’s way too suspicious to be MIA.”

  ◆◆◆

  I’m able to use Tamsin’s passcode lists to access all of her secret emails and text messages on all eight of her cell phones. There are literally thousands of messages and emails on each one, exclusively to and from Jake. She must have stored her second phone at work, safely locked away with her diaries.

  ◆◆◆

  It’s all here.

  Everything I wanted to find out, but dreaded to know.

  Using an amalgamation of the diaries, the letters, the emails, the text messages and the photographs, I’m able to piece together an accurate picture of Tamsin and Jake’s affair from the very beginning until the end of last December.

  What I discover breaks my heart into a billion pieces:

  They’ve been in love with each other for over twenty years. Jake was honest enough to admit from the beginning that he could never be faithful to just one woman for the rest of his life, and that simply wasn’t good enough for Tamsin. She always wanted them to marry, but not until Jake was prepared to commit to her and her alone. After the kids were born they agreed that the status quo was best for all concerned, but they’ve already discussed making a change to these arrangements as soon as Charlie and John have left home. They’ve talked a lot about growing old together. Bastards!

  Deceiving me with ease, they’ve managed to meet in secret multiple times every year. Tamsin has employed several excuses for her absence from home: visits with Nilofer, tennis matches, residential school trips, shopping jaunts and many more. I had no idea she was so inventive. Jake has used work related fabrications to fool his three wives. The first wasn’t convinced by his justification for frequent unexplained absence, and she divorced him acrimoniously, but he’s confident that his current wife, Annie, is still completely in the dark. Perhaps I should give her a call.

  ◆◆◆

  I’ve been putting it off for as long as possible, but I must know for certain if Charlie and John are Jake’s biological progeny or mine. Painstakingly, I piece together the events prior to Charlie’s conception. From my perspective, roughly a year before Charlie was born, Tamsin, and I made the decision t
o have a baby. I remember her bringing up the conversation and I was over the moon at the prospect of becoming a father. Tamsin was using the contraceptive pill at the time and she stopped taking it straight away. Three months later, she was pregnant. Nine months after that, Charlie was born and my life changed forever.

  Now for the real story:

  Thirteen months before Charlie’s birth, Tamsin and Jake began discussing the possibility of ‘creating a child together’. Tamsin was the driving force behind the decision and Jake took some persuading. He was concerned that I would somehow be able to discern that the baby wasn’t mine. Tamsin eventually convinced him by belittling his concerns and spouting some drivel about their child being the ‘physical embodiment of their love for each other’. At this point, Tamsin stopped taking the pill and started tracking her fertility. They made a point of meeting up for sex whenever Tamsin was at the most fertile part of her cycle, and she also avoided having sex with me at those times, secretly using a diaphragm if she absolutely couldn’t avoid my advances. She made up for it when she was least fertile, insisting I make love to her, so we could start a family, but still using her diaphragm as an extra precaution. For all that time, when I’d thought we were making a baby together, Tamsin was in fact taking action to prevent it.

  Tamsin and Jake were successful in their endeavours, and their clandestine communications from that time are effusive with delight.

  I have vivid memories of Charlie’s birth. There was a small television in the maternity ward showing a football match. Keeping track of the game helped distract me from the exquisite pain of Tamsin crushing my hand. She was fine, she had gas and air, but I was in considerable discomfort. After three hours of labour, Charlie was born: a slimy, wailing, adorable baby. And I cried. Later that day, Jake came to the hospital to visit us all. Tamsin handed Charlie to him and he shed a tear too. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Shortly afterwards we asked Jake if he’d be Charlie’s godfather and he said yes.

  Three years later, Tamsin and Jake repeated the same technique and John was conceived and born, while I was again unwittingly left out of the process. They determined that two children was sufficient, and Tamsin had a coil inserted. I had believed that was a mutual decision between Tamsin and me, but apparently not.

  It was even Jake who first suggested the name Charlotte, which surprises me because I thought it had been my idea, but it’s all there in black and white. Days before we agreed on Charlie’s name, Jake had proposed it in a letter to Tamsin, then she had fooled me into believing that it was my choice. They generously allowed me to call their second child John, after my maternal grandfather, despite Jake’s preference being Isaac. Tamsin thought it would be a nice gesture and Jake went along with it. So magnanimous!

  ◆◆◆

  I’m deeply shocked when I read about Tamsin and Jake’s sex life. For all this time, while I’ve been disappointed in Tamsin’s lack of enthusiasm and effort in the bedroom, in reality, she’s been creative, adventurous and permanently horny. They’ve been at it like rabbits at every opportunity. All the things I’d suggested, when Tamsin had practically called me a pervert, she’d done willingly and enthusiastically with Jake. Often she was the instigator of their more adventurous lovemaking. Apparently, Tamsin loves the kinky stuff. The more freaky the better. Every time they meet, she comes up with some new titillating foreplay. I can’t believe how explicit Tamsin is in her emails. She uses words with Jake that I’ve never heard come out of her pretty little mouth. The classy, cool, housewife and mother was a role she played at home, but with Jake, she was a hot, insatiable, crude, lusty, sex machine. I had no idea until just now that my prim and proper wife likes to be tied up and fucked up the arse. No wonder she’s always bereft of energy and ideas when it comes to having sex with her actual husband.

  Tamsin acknowledged in her diaries that she has to be very drunk to initiate sex with me, but Jake is a surprisingly jealous man, so together they came up with techniques to reduce the duration and the frequency of Tamsin’s lovemaking with me. I take cold comfort from discovering that Tamsin has lied to Jake on many occasions, claiming she wasn’t having any sex with me for long periods when I knew that, in fact, she was.

  ◆◆◆

  My phone rings again. DS Khan is obviously very keen to speak to me. I wonder if the police have discovered Sophia’s body and are already on the way here to arrest me. Once more I choose not to answer, and it stops ringing fairly quickly. If they’ve fished Sophia’s corpse out of the canal, then it will be all over the news before long. However, I’m past caring about the publicity. I now realise that Tamsin must have known about my affair for many months. Jake would have told her about it straight after I’d told him, when I requested that he lie for me. She didn’t let on she knew because she simply didn’t care. If I was sleeping with Sophia, then at least I’d be requesting sex less frequently with her. No wonder my pathetic attempts to hide my affair appeared to be successful. Tamsin was simply pretending not to notice.

  ◆◆◆

  How dare she cheat on me for all these years? How could she pretend to have so little interest in sex when she absolutely loved it, but only with another man? How could she let me believe that the children I adore are mine, when in fact they were fathered by her lover, my supposed friend?

  ◆◆◆

  What have I done?

  A few days ago, I murdered the only woman who ever loved me unconditionally, and my unborn child, only to discover that my wife is now, and has always been, in love with another man, and I’ve been bringing up his children for all these years.

  My marriage is a sham.

  I have nothing.

  I have no one.

  ◆◆◆

  In my imagination, I picture Tamsin and Jake in bed together, naked and basking in a post-coital glow.

  Then they’re both laughing.

  At me.

  At my twenty years of ignorance.

  At the lie I’ve been unknowingly living since the day I met them.

  At my humiliation.

  I walk downstairs to the kitchen.

  I select the longest, sharpest knife I can find in the kitchen drawer.

  I sit down at the dining table and wait for Tamsin to return home.

  Epilogue

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, Jake.”

  “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  “Me first. Lee just told me he was with you last Saturday night.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you balls deep inside me last Saturday night about two hundred miles away?”

  “I was indeed, and very pleasant it was too.”

  “Agreed. So he’s fucking lying to me. One of our Teaching Assistants saw him leaving a local hotel, but he certainly wasn’t visiting you like he claims.”

  “Well, that brings us to my news …”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ve just hung up on Lee to take your call. He rang to ask me to lie to you about his whereabouts last Saturday. It seems he’s having an affair with someone from work.”

  “Told you! I bloody knew it!”

  “You were right again, my dear.”

  “I’ve known about it since the day it started. He was so fucking smug that evening; acting all weird. He could barely look me in the eye at first and then he was all affectionate. I knew something was up straight away.”

  “But that was months ago.”

  “It’s that fat cunt Sophia from his office. They couldn’t keep their eyes off each other at the Christmas party. I heard she’s already fucked her way around most of the managers there.”

  “Well, I think he’s a complete idiot. Why would he do that? There’s no way she could be as hot as you.”

  “I know, right? He certainly wasn’t very careful. It was so obvious! Always surreptitiously checking his phone. One time he sent me a text message he’d meant to send to her, then blamed it on one of his colleagues.
Another time I walked in on him wanking over a nude photo she’d sent him, and he panicked and dropped his phone down the loo. What a dick!”

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  “He was fucking cheating on me!”

  “Have you ever heard the saying about the pot and the kettle?”

  “It’s different with us, Jake. We’re soulmates.”

  “I love you, you know.”

  “I love you too. Always have. Always will.”

  “What do you want me to say to him?”

  “Tell him he’s a complete and utter twat for cheating on the best, sexiest, wife any man ever had. Make it clear you’re extremely disappointed in him. Tell him if he ever does anything to hurt me, you’ll break his fucking legs, pull out his fingernails and stomp on his balls. Then tell him, if I should ask you where he was last Saturday, you’ll, with great reluctance, back him up and lie to me. But just this one time.”

  “Okay. He knows you’ve called me, so should I call him straight back?”

  “No hurry. In fact, don’t call him at all. Let’s make him sweat.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I’ll ignore it. Hopefully, that slag will tire him out and I won’t have to sleep with him as often.”

  “Sounds like a good plan. There’s no way he can find out about us is there?”

  “Absolutely no way. We’ve been too careful.”

  “So we just carry on as normal?”

  “Yeah. We’re fine. There’s nothing to worry about…”

  Dedication

  In loving memory of:

  Sophia

  ... and Tamsin

  ... and Jake.