The Birthday That Changed Everything: Perfect summer holiday reading!. Debbie Johnson
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surgery – she’d have to scrub in, and even then I’m not sure it would be hygienic…
Had Simon and I ever reached those levels of sexual athleticism? Maybe – but if we had, we’d been too drunk to notice. I was only twenty-one when we met, and sex at that age is all about enthusiasm, not expertise. And, in our case, it was also all about the contraception. Or lack thereof. Before long I was puking my guts up on morning rounds at St Sam’s, realising I was pregnant with the blob of cells that would become Lucy. She was a lot less trouble then.
I spent the next four weeks vomiting. Simon spent the next four weeks planning our wedding – or at least his mother did, as soon as she found out what was going on. She was a force to be reckoned with and we weren’t left much choice. Within minutes of peeing on the pregnancy test, she told us when and where we’d be getting married. I was too tired to care really, and Simon – well, he’d come from money, and respectability, and having a bastard child in his twenties was never going to be part of the plan.
Up until now I thought we’d made the right choices. For everything I’d given up, I’d gained tenfold. A good man, two healthy children, a nice home. It was more than most people got, and I’d been content. On the whole.
But maybe I’d got it all wrong. Maybe I should have spent more time getting blow-job lessons at the local College of Sex. Seven times a day? Really, was it possible?
Simon had texted me to say he’d be round at eleven, so he must be taking a break from his BJ schedule for at least an hour. He was always on time for everything; it was a point of pride with him, so I had exactly ten minutes left. Ten minutes left to rehearse speeches I knew wouldn’t come out right, as I didn’t have a clue how his side of the script went. I didn’t know if Diane was right about there being someone else, or how I’d cope with it if there was.
I’d got up early, exhausted after a disjointed and dream-ridden night’s semi-sleep. My eyes were swollen and stinging from fatigue and tears. I’d walked the dog, cried, had a shower, cried, done the ironing, cried, and had a Force Ten row with Lucy, all before calling Diane. I’d also tried on three different outfits and rearranged my hair several times before giving up in disgust. I mean, where are the style guides on How To Look Good Dumped? Or What Not To Wear While Confronting Your Probably Cheating Husband? You never see that on bloody telly, and I bet it’s not just me who needs it.
Physically, I’m not in bad nick considering I am, as my kids charmingly put it, ‘halfway to dead’, but I’m definitely at the stage in life where the perfection of youth is a distant memory.
I’m in a gym, but in all honesty the only pounds I lose are from my bank balance. I had been hopeful that the sheer effort of carrying round a membership card in my purse would reinstate me to my size ten glory days, but apparently not. What a con.
I still fit into a size fourteen, or at least most of me does. But I have a wobbly blancmange tummy that never left after childbirth, and my derrière is, diplomatically speaking, comfortable. My boobs are too big for their own good, and need an awful lot of help from a very strong push-up bra fairy. I’d ‘let myself go’, as my gran might have said.
Eventually, after a load of fretting that did nothing but get me hot and bothered, my hair had ended up in its usual slightly unruly shoulder-length bob, and I stuck with jeans and a T-shirt. I had no idea what to go for – seductive, dignified, aloof? All I felt was shattered and confused. And I knew the fact that I was focusing so hard on clothes and preparations was just a way of avoiding the ugly truth: the fact that my marriage, and life as I knew it, could be over.
I heard the key in the door, accompanied by an inappropriately cheery ‘Hello!’ as Simon arrived and let himself in.
He was wearing a pair of new jeans – at least jeans I’d never seen before. Skin-tight on the thighs and boot cut. His fair hair was styled slightly differently, swept straight back and gelled rather than parted in his traditional ‘trust me I’m a doctor’ look. And he smelled – a lot. Of some quite powerful cologne or aftershave that he’d never used around the house. He looked younger, and cooler, and actually pretty damn handsome. It was him – but not him. It was his sexier evil twin.
‘You’re having an affair with some little tart who gives you seven blow jobs a day and treats you like God, aren’t you?’ I said immediately.
I just knew – from the second he walked into the room, I could tell. It wasn’t only the new style and the new smell – it was the new swagger.
He was trying desperately to hold a serious and sympathetic expression on his face, but I could see it there in his eyes: a newfound confidence, self-belief…happiness, I suppose. The bastard.
He sat down next to me on the sofa, taking my hand in his and looking at me with that same sympathy. The look I’d seen on his professional face so many times over the years. The one that said: ‘I am the bearer of bad news, but don’t worry, I’m here for you.’
‘Don’t lie, Simon – I can see it all over you. There’s somebody else, so don’t deny it. How long has it been going on?’
‘Oh, Sal,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry…I never wanted to hurt you, I really didn’t…I wasn’t looking for this. It just happened. We’ve drifted apart so much in recent years. I honestly don’t think you’re happy either…’
I slapped his hand away and looked straight ahead. I couldn’t bear to see that sparkle he was trying to hide, the way he was sad about destroying me, but unbearably happy for himself. The emotional conundrum of the newly freed male.
‘What do you mean you weren’t looking for it? Did you accidentally fall into another woman’s vagina, then?’
‘There’s no need to be crude about it, Sal; it’s not like that! It’s not just the sex…’ – the never-ending, headboard-pounding, scream-out-loud sex, I added in my own mind’s eye – ‘it’s more than that. I’m in love with her. You have to believe me when I say I’d never do anything to intentionally make you suffer, or the kids. I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t serious. But I just couldn’t go on like we were any more. You must know what I mean!’
Uhm…no, actually. I’d been perfectly happy the way things were. Or, at least, definitely not unhappy. I obviously had a much higher boredom threshold than he did, and significantly lower expectations of how exciting family life in the suburbs was supposed to be. Simon, though, seemed to mean what he was saying, and appeared confused that I didn’t ‘get it’ – he genuinely thought we’d both been unhappy, that this was somehow inevitable or necessary, a natural progression rather than a thunderbolt from the blue.
‘So who’s the lucky woman then?’ I asked, focusing on the mistress straight away. The other issues – the fact that he’d seen our marriage in a totally different way to me – were too complicated to tackle just then. The fact that he was shagging someone else was, in a twisted way, more palatable.
Even as I spoke, I recognised that my tone of voice could curdle milk. I sounded like a bitter old hag, and might as well buy seven cats and stop washing right now.
‘Her name is Monika,’ he replied, intonating the name with such reverence that he could have been talking about the Virgin Mary. Except not in this case, it would seem, unless the Blessed Mother had taken a very unexpected turning in life. ‘We met in a…in a hospitality venue I visited when I was on that Ortho conference in London in March.’
‘The one you said was full of cranky old men talking about hip replacements over their peppered steak? And what’s a “hospitality venue” anyway? Is it double-speak for a pub or a…’
The light slowly dawned as he started to shuffle slightly nervously next to me, casting his eyes down for the first time.
‘A strip club? A strip club. You’re running off with a fucking stripper. My God, Simon – could you be any more predictable? You’re giving up your wife, your home, your kids and your bloody dog, all for the sake of someone who shakes her tits for a living?’
His