71 comments/ 153549 views/ 15 favorites Do I Know The Woman I Married? By: The Wanderer I thank my LadyCibelle and Techsan for their patience, proof reading, editing skills and of course encouragement they always give me. As I've been known to fiddle with stories, after they've seen it. I take full responsibility for the content and any cock-ups in this story. While I'm at it, I think from now on I'm going to thank all my friends out there, who write to me and encourage me to continue writing and posting these demented ravings of mine. Your emails are greatly appreciated. This is not a stroke story, so if you were looking for one of those kind-of tales, I would suggest you'd be better served looking elsewhere. * I looked at my watch for the umpteenth time. "Damn, it was still only ten minutes to eight." My mind calculated. Ten minutes to the end of my life, as I knew it. Or would it be? Would she change her mind and not come? I looked down at the manila envelope I held in my hand. Damn, why, how had it come to this? Lindsey and I had been married seven years. Hey, was that it? No, it can't be, I thought. It was guys who were supposed to get the seven-year itch, not wives. Life had been good to us, I had a good job but I was home most of the time. We had three lovely children on whom Lindsey appeared to dote. We had no money worries and she hadn't shown any signs that she didn't love me anymore or was getting bored. So why was she doing this? What was her problem? Let's go back a bit and I'll tell you how this all started. I think I can actually put a date on it: the early part of last January. That was when BT upgraded our local telephone exchange and that enabled us to finally get broadband Internet access. Of course I signed up straight away and spent a good few hours playing around on it. Jesus, what a bleeding change from the old dial-up. Lindsey sat and watched me for a couple of nights. She had never been into computers but decided she'd better bone up on using it, as the children would soon be at an age where they would want to play on it and use it for study. "What with all this in the news about weirdos and the like approaching young girls on the Internet, I'd better know my way around so they can't blind me with science!" Lindsey had said. Lindsey signed up at a local college for a computer starter course. I'm at home with a computer but I've got to admit I'm not much good at teaching other people how to use them. I'm too damned impatient by half, like when the pupil has a problem and I've fixed it before the pupil knows what the hell has happened. "Yeah, great, but what the hell did you do? You did it so fast I couldn't keep up!" The times I heard that one. I know Lindsey got on great with her computer beginner's course, and she even joined a mothers watchdog group that someone advertised down at the local library. All I ever got to know about the group is that they apparently monitored children's chartrooms looking for dodgy characters and the like. I've got to admit that I never did take much notice. I remember Lindsey saying that she wasn't going to have too much time to do anything herself for the time being, as those chat-rooms needed monitoring when the kids were home from school. Whilst ours were so young she just wouldn't have the time. But she said there would come a time when the children got a little older when she could do her fair share. For maybe a month or two Lindsey was on the computer a couple of hours every evening, chatting away to friends she made in this group of hers. I can't say I took too much notice, although I'll admit it did cut into my own computer time. I can remember thinking we'd have to get another set-up if she kept this up. But then the novelty of it appeared to wear off, as quite suddenly Lindsey stopped going on the net and took to having long conversations on the telephone in the kitchen, obviously to other mothers in her awareness group, some of which I knew from the school, others I didn't. Well, time went on and Lindsey must have started using our home set-up during the day whilst I was at work - Lindsey was a stay-at-home mum - because I rarely saw her use it in the evenings anymore. Well, maybe just on a couple of occasions to write the odd letter and the like. Now as far as I knew, things were going along just fine with our marriage. Well, that was until just after my birthday in late May. My mum and dad sent me a nice new digital video camera so that I could film the children growing up and send them copies on disk. Oh, I'd better explain. Once my father had retired, my folks had moved out to New Zealand to live near my brother and sister who had both emigrated with their respective families some years back. No, we didn't emigrate, although I wanted to; Lindsey didn't want to move so far away from her family. I suppose I can't blame her. But, hey, video takes up a damn sight more room on a hard drive than still pictures do, so it called for a bit of an upgrade on my system. Which was going to take the form of a larger hard drive, the maximum memory I could fit on the motherboard and some general tidying up of the computer's installation. You know getting rid of all that junk stuff and programs that you don't really need installed on there. Eventually I decided on a complete reinstall. Look, I do a bit of writing on the side, so I keep all kinds of junk programs on my computer. Whilst installing the new drive I had to decide what to get rid of, and what to keep. One program that I'd picked up somewhere along the line was a key tracker. Did it work? Well, I didn't have the faintest idea? What use was it to me? Well, I got hold of it in the first place because I thought it would be handy to keep an eye on what the children got up to when they were old enough to get on the computer. You know you hear some bloody funny stories. But in the meantime, the disk had been laying around with all the other junk in my desk draw. Anyway, before I installed the new hard drive, I figured it wouldn't do any harm to run the key tracking program and a couple of other odd freebies I had lying around, to see if they were any bottle. As I said I was planning a clean install after I'd fitted the new hard drive so it made sense to check out these programs under the old installation. I installed the key tracker and the other programs, then played around with them for a while. The key tracker I left on the system set to run from start up. I'd see what it had done in a few days. Did I tell Lindsey about the key tracker? Well, no, I didn't, I couldn't see there was much point, as I doubted she would know what a key tracker was anyway. It was on the following Saturday morning Lindsey had gone out shopping with her mother taking the children along. I figured she'd go round her mother's for lunch; that was her normal Saturday routine and it allowed me to get on the computer and play for a while, without any disturbance. I went back to the computer to find out whether the bloody key tracker had recorded anything. To be honest I was highly sceptical that it would have recorded anything. "Well, bugger me!" I thought, when I turned the read back function on it had recorded a whole load of crap. Pages and pages of bloody rubbish that I couldn't really make much sense of. There I was scrolling through an endless list of individual keystrokes, trying to make heads or tails of what I was seeing. Until suddenly I realised that someone had been accessing a strange email account! Well, there was a bloody sign-in name and email address, you know those bloody @ signs stand out like a sore thumb, and then a bleeding password. The email address I didn't recognise but the password definitely rang a bell. HARBEL would mean nothing to most people but it was the first three letters of my wife's father's and mother's Christian names. They'd used it as the name of their canal boat. But I'm afraid it was the email address sexylegs1972@xxxxxxx.xxx that had definitely got my undivided attention, a bit on the lively side. The most annoying thing, or maybe it was the thing that caught my eye in the first place, was that name Sexy-legs. That had been one of my older pet names for Lindsey. But I must add I hadn't used it in years ... well, since our first born started repeating things. Funny how you have to change your vocabulary when the kids come along, isn't it? Pissed off, you bloody bet I was. Lindsey was not only the only other person who used our damned computer, but she was also 33 years old. Take 33 from 2005 and guess what you get? Yeah, you got it; 1972 - the year Lindsey was born. Sexylegs1972! What kind of a bleeding email address is that for a married woman with children to be using? "Just a bleeding minute," I remember thinking, "just who was Lindsey writing to using a name like that?" I'll give you one guess as to what my next action was. Well, of course I logged on to the email host and did some snooping. Fuck the bleeding key tracker. I didn't need that anymore; I was on the warpath and into that bleeding email account quicker than greased bloody lightning. Now if there is one thing that Lindsey has always been, then it's a bloody hoarder. A bit like me really, she hadn't deleted a bloody thing, not one bloody email from the Prat, by the look of it. All stored away nicely, were all of her emails to and from dreamboat@xxxxxxx.xxx. "I'll give the bleeder Dream-fucking-boat!" I thought to myself. I fucking ask you, what kind of a slimy castrated git uses a name like that? Oh, the castrated bit ... well, that's what he was going to be when I got my bloody hands on the bugger. But there was something that I discovered that I thought very odd at the time. All the emails he sent to her and copies of her replies to him had been forwarded to another address, requitalnow@xxxxxx.xxx. I wondered what the hell that was all about and why she had done it. The only idea that I could come up with was that she had another on-line friend, most likely a girlfriend who she was sharing the intrigue with. I read through all of the emails in turn, starting from the first ones. I found there were almost one each way every weekday since early March. I discovered from their contents that they'd obviously met in a chat-room somewhere, and I gathered he'd persuaded Lindsey to set up this email address, so they could keep in touch with a little more privacy. Apparently he was using a computer at his office and he had to watch how much time he spent in the chat-room. From what I could make of it, he'd suggested she use the name Sexylegs. Lindsey must have told him that it was one of old my pet names for her in the chat room. His name - or so he claimed - was Gordon Merit and he was supposed to live about eighty miles away. There was no doubt in my mind what his ultimate intention was, right from the very outset. Of course I had no way of knowing what he had said to Lindsey in that chat-room, or what she had said to him, come to that. In his early emails it looked to all the world like he was a sad guy looking for sympathy. He said little about her, other than complain about how his wife was treating him so badly. Mind you, he never was what you might call specific about what she was supposed to have done to him. Christ, you know the routine. "My wife doesn't understand me!" He just told Lindsey how he needed someone he could pour his heart out to and it looked like Lindsey, being the softy she was, fell for it, hook, line and bleeding sinker. I must say I liked the nice touch he had of telling Lindsey how lucky she was to have a nice guy like me as a husband. The bleeding arsehole! But then slowly as the weeks progressed, and Lindsey opened up her heart and soul to him, more and more of our personal details were relayed to him. I noticed a subtle change in what he was saying to her. It appeared that our Mr Gordon Merit was an old hand at this seduction lark. He'd pick out little things that, if taken out of context, could really make me sound like a right arsehole. Slowly these came to the fore, in the emails and it appeared that with them came a change in Lindsey's attitude towards me, in the emails that is. I had discerned no change in our home life whatsoever. By the time early June came along, if you read those emails you'd have thought Lindsey and I were two steps away from the divorce court. Well, to be honest if what I assumed was going to happen did actually happen, we'd be two steps through the bloody divorce court door. Sure enough in late June, this Gordon prick had told Lindsey he would probably have to come to our town on business before very long. Now why did I find that so bloody unsurprising? A few days later he said he would be visiting sometime in the middle of July. He even told her what hotel he was going to be staying in and he asked her if she would have lunch with him. At first she was saying that wasn't a good idea. But he went on about how they could talk about their mutual problems and very slowly at first Lindsey started saying that she might do it. Christ, I was hopping mad by the time I read that and I had to force myself to read on. Christ, it was lucky Lindsey was out with the kids or I think I would have been up before the Beak in the morning. Then all of a sudden, there it was. Next Wednesday Lindsey was going to meet him. But not for lunch, but for bloody dinner at seven o'clock in the evening, in the restaurant of his hotel. They were gong to meet and show each other photographs of their respective families, my bleeding arse. "Fucking hell!" I thought to myself "On that particular Thursday I was due to be at seminar on the south coast." I didn't have those bleeding seminars very often and when I did I'd usually go the day before. It saved me making too early a start on the day of the seminar. Lindsey had worked that one out a bleeding treat. She'd even told me she was going to one of her Mother's watch - or whatever it was called - meetings on the Wednesday. There it was! It took three hours to read those emails that Saturday morning, three hours for my nice cosy little life to fall apart. "Damn it," I thought to myself, "I knew where Lindsey was going to finish up on Wednesday night - in this arsehole's bed, that I was sure of. When Lindsey and the children came home that afternoon I had the greatest difficulty in not losing my rag. I still don't know how I didn't confront Lindsey, but one thing I had learnt from my writing and reading of stories on the Internet was that I had to stay ahead in the game; i.e. I had to be the one who got to the solicitor first. I had to move our/my savings into an account that Lindsey couldn't get at before she persuaded some bleeding judge to lock me out of our joint accounts. Ah, some folks might be asking why didn't I just confront Lindsey; after all, from the emails, nothing untoward had taken place so far. Well, let's just think that one out, to its final conclusion, shall we? I tell Lindsey I know about her cyber boyfriend and their planned liaison on Wednesday evening. Lindsey has two options. She can deny it completely, or she can hold her hands up, beg my forgiveness and swear that she will do nothing like it again. If she denies it, what proof do I have that she has actually done anything? The emails were no kind of proof, besides I'd compromised that account by hacking into it. I can just imagine what a good divorce barrister would make of me trying to bring those emails up in court. If she takes the second option and begs forgiveness? What proof do I have that she won't do the same thing again in the future, only being more careful about it the next time? It was only by pure luck that I had discovered her planned liaison this time. No, I didn't think forgiveness was an option. And I'd need proof that she was an adulteress before I confronted her; otherwise she could just deny that she had done anything wrong. For the rest of the weekend, I struggled with my temper. I know I was a little short with the children a couple of times. And Lindsey and I had words about it. Now that was handy because it put the kibosh on our normal Saturday night exercise. Yes, we had dropped to one or two nights a week by then, normally because of Lindsey's increasingly frequent headaches. Monday morning I took a couple of hours off work and went to see a solicitor. The bugger was all for negotiation and suggested that I talked to Lindsey before the main attraction. What kind of a bleeding wimp did he think I was?" I spent most of rest of the Monday trying to discover who was the best divorce solicitor around and discovered that the woman I needed to see lived in the next town. The trouble was, she couldn't see me until the following Monday, but a cheque in the post secured her services. The rest of the day I spent running errands and getting everything ready. Monday night at home wasn't as bad as it could have been. I was trying my best not to upset the children or Lindsey. I really didn't want Lindsey getting suspicious that I knew what she had planned for Wednesday evening. Tuesday I spent most of the day in my office ringing people for the best advice as to what to do with our savings money. Damn, those bloody ISA's; the money Lindsey had in the one in her name, I could do nothing about. But I could shift mine out of the country at a moment's notice; I could do the same with our savings as well. There was nothing much I could do in the short term about my pension fund. I planned to make the call to set the changes in motion first thing on Thursday morning. I couldn't risk Lindsey using the bloody debit card and the thing being refused. Wednesday I went to the office in the morning to clear a few things up, I didn't want to leave too many loose ends around for others to sort out. I was figuring that I wouldn't be back into the office for a week or so; besides me, the children were going to be pretty upset once the shit hit the fan that evening and I figured I'd have to spend some time with them. Then I went back home around lunchtime to get changed for my trip and to pick up my case. I normally left about three in the afternoon, which gave me plenty of time to get down to Bournemouth for dinner. I couldn't see any point in changing my routine and giving Lindsey any hint that I might be suspicious. Lindsey's mother arrived at the house to collect the children for the night before I left. If Lindsey was just going to one of her mother's union or whatever it was meetings, I would have thought her mother would have just babysat the children. I thought this was really rubbing my face in it a little. Damn it, it was so blatant that I had to say something. Lindsey actually looked surprised that I had asked why her mother was taking the children home for the evening. Surprisingly it was her mother who came up with some nonsense about Lindsey's father not feeling well and she was taking the children home with her rather than leave him on his own. Yeah, I thought that sounded like bullshit to me as well. I said something about if her father was sick, surely Lindsey should give her meeting a miss for the evening. Her father wouldn't get much peace with the children around. Lindsey's mother immediately came right back with some crap about the children taking his mind off of himself. When the old girl said that, I gave up and left the house. Lindsey gave me a kiss goodbye and told me that she was leaving the house around six-thirty, so could I please call before then. "I'll do my best." I replied, "if I get hung up in traffic and run late, I'll call you on your mobile." "No!" Lindsey said quite sharply. Then she caught herself. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound sharp, but I'm running the meeting tonight and it won't look very good if my mobile rings at the wrong time. You know that as chairman I can't just walk out of the room to talk to you when I feel like it. If you can't call me before seven, I'll call you later. Okay?" Do I Know The Woman I Married? "Yeah, okay, Lindsey, if that's the way you want to play it. We mustn't let the committee know that the chairperson loves her husband, must we?" I said, thinking to myself, "You're in for a surprise; I intend to be gate crashing your little meeting tonight my girl," as I said it. "Oh, don't be like that please? I know you don't think what I do is important, but it is. I'm doing something important here, you'll be proud of me one day!" What an amazing thing for Lindsey to say! She's going off for a liaison with her Internet lover and she says that I'm going to be proud of her. Just what did she take me for? I'll tell you now I nearly lost it completely when she said that. I just had to get out of the house before I blew-up. I gave her and the children a quick kiss, said goodbye to the mother and got out of the house as quick as I could. It was a short drive to the station where I buried the car at the back of the car park, making sure it was under a security light and the gaze of a CCTV camera. I was losing a wife that night; I had no intention of losing my car as well. Then I grabbed a cab from the rank and headed over to the hotel. The week's planning was coming to a conclusion. This afternoon I knew was going to be a long one so before booking into my reserved room, I went over to the corner shop opposite and got myself a few cans of beer. Once settled into my room, I dug out the gear that I'd brought with me. To get the timing perfect I'd purchased a cheap little walky-talky set. Nothing spectacular but from my tests they appeared to function okay between the offices at work, so I should be able to make out what was going on in the room across the hotel corridor. Mind I'd had to wire in external batteries, as the little AA's in the things didn't last that long, when left on transmit. All I had to do now was get one of them into that room. Not too difficult either, it had been a simple matter of booking the guy's room for a few hours earlier in the week and having the key copied. If you know where to go to get those security keys copied, isn't that much of a problem. After checking that no one was hanging around in the corridor I let myself into the room opposite and hid the radio on top of a wardrobe. It was only then that I thought to myself that I'd have been clever to have booked the adjoining room. I'd have had the chance to slip the lock whilst I was planting the radio. That would really have taken Lindsey and her lover by surprise, if I entered the room by the connecting door. But then again they might check that the door was locked and I'd have looked like an even bigger Prat that I was going to do. Look, no matter how much of a brave face you put on things, if your wife decides to bed another man, then you are a Prat. A Prat who can't keep his wife satisfied enough in bed. So there we were ten minutes to eight, I figured it wouldn't take them much more than an hour to eat their meal. Through the window I'd watched Lindsey arrive in the car park and walk into the hotel. Yeah, I had been tempted to go down and try to spy on them in the restaurant but I figured that it was too risky. I didn't want to give the game away until I was ready. I spent quit a lot of time staring through that damned little spy hole in the door, through which I could see the door opposite. There seemed to me to be a lot of people going backwards and forwards along the corridor. Damned room service waiter in a white jacket appeared to be busy tonight as well. "Someone must be having one hell of a party in a room further down the corridor," I thought to myself. Then suddenly there was a lot of talking out in the corridor. Through my little spy-hole I could see the waiter talking to some woman; the pair of them walked off to my left away from the lift. Then I heard a door close somewhere. I checked my watch it was ten past eight now. "Christ that twenty minutes went quickly!" I thought to myself. Shortly afterward, two men walked passed, laughing and joking with each other. I figured they were going to join the party, wherever it was, because although I couldn't really hear what they were saying, I just caught a couple of words. I'm damned sure that one of them said, "It'll be a hot time in the old town tonight." I didn't hear all of the phrase ... I think my mind finished it for me. After that there was complete silence for a little while. Then suddenly there she was. My Lindsey hanging onto some guy's arm. Damn, I wished I could hear what they were saying to each other. The guy unlocked the door and Lindsey - somewhat reluctantly, I thought - followed him inside. As quickly as I could I went over to the table, turned on the walky-talky and hit the record button on the cassette recorder lying there. "What would you like to drink?" the guy's voice came out of the radio. "No, thank you. I thought you were just picking up those photographs," Lindsey replied. "Oh, we've got time for a quick drink," he insisted. "Just a minute. What's going on here?" I thought "Collecting photographs? What's all that about?" Suddenly I heard Lindsey saying, "No! Get off me!" Whatever I had thought Lindsey had planned for the evening, it apparently wasn't what I or the guy thought. No matter how Lindsey had come to get into this situation, the protective husband side of me switched into gear; in two strides I was at the door and flung it open. Only to be confronted by the waiter and the woman I'd seen him talking to earlier. The waiter pushed me back into the room. "Police officers, Mr Shingle. Not yet; we need the other two in the room before we hit them." he cryptically said to me. "But that man's attacking...!" I tried to shout. But the man in the waiter's uniform put his hand over my mouth to silence me. "That's what he thinks." The woman commented. "But Lin will kill the bastard, once the other two show their hand." I was completely confused and I think very frightened at that moment. The man and woman appeared completely relaxed but alert. I got the feeling that they thought they were completely in control of the situation, but I wasn't convinced. "Interesting set-up." The man said looking down at my recorder and radio. "Crude but adequate. I assume you planted a sister to that radio when you entered the room earlier." I didn't even think about replying I could still hear Lindsey protesting. But suddenly I realised that there was more than one man's voice coming from the radio. As I did so, someone in the corridor shouted. "GO, go, go!" Then all hell broke loose. Through the still open door to my room, I caught sight of at least half a dozen men charging into the room opposite. "Police! Stay where you are!" yet another voice shouted. There were sounds of a pretty nasty struggle going on in the other room. "I've got this bastard. He ain't going anywhere!" I heard Lindsey's voice come from my own radio." "You all right, Lin?" a voice asked. I couldn't make out Lindsey's reply, there were too many people talking and shouting to understand what anyone was saying. The next thing, three men are marched out of the room in handcuffs and led away down the corridor. "Lin, you've got a problem, girl." I heard a man say through my radio. "Jean thinks it's your husband in the room opposite." "Oh, Christ, what's Gary doing here?" I heard Lindsey ask. "I hate to think," the mail voice replied. But before he could say anymore, the woman who'd entered my room had joined them. "He's got this room bugged," I heard her say. "Oh, Shit! Well, It stood to reason I'd have to face the music sometime. Where is he, Jean?" I heard Lindsey say in a surprisingly calm and relaxed tone of voice. "Do you want me to talk to him?" a male voice asked. "No, thanks, Roger. Maybe I should have told him years ago." "What? He doesn't know you were in the service?" I heard Jean ask with a shocked tone to her voice. "No reason to ever tell him. I was invalided out of active service before we ever met," Lindsey replied. Then Lindsey - looking only slightly dishevelled - appeared in the doorway of the room opposite. She had a very contrite expression on her face as she crossed the corridor and entered my room. It was only then that I realised the guy in the waiter's jacket was still hanging onto me. He disentangled himself from me, gave me a kind of embarrassed look, and left the room without a word as Lindsey entered. "Am I in trouble?" Lindsey asked, at the same time a coy smile coming over her face. "Well, I thought we were in real deep trouble. But now, I haven't got the foggiest idea of what the hell's going on, or why you are involved," I replied. "Sorry, Gary, it was a sting operation. The short explanation is that those guys had been meeting married women on the net, and then gang raping them," Lindsey said in a rather nonchalant tone. "So! What the hell are you mixed up in it for?" I demanded. "Well, I'd heard some reports about their activities; then one day I was monitoring a chat-room on the net and I spotted this guy talking to a woman. I just had a hunch about the guy. We tracked the woman down quite easily, but tracking him was a different kettle of fish completely and that appeared to confirm my suspicions. I took over the woman's on-line persona and I've been playing him like a fish for the last few months waiting for him to bite." "Lindsey, who's the we and why you?" "Ah, I'm sorry but there we are going to get into uncharted territory." Lindsey said sitting herself down on the bed and patting the bed beside her, in an invitation for me to join her. "Close the door on your way out, Jean. He might be angry with me, but I don't think he'll do any harm," she said to the other woman who, I hadn't realised, had followed Lindsey into the room. "Jesus, Lin, I'm not worried about him hurting you. I've seen you in action, remember? But that's one good-looking fella you've got yourself there. I wouldn't want you to mess him up too much." "You keep your hands to yourself. I found him first," Lindsey replied as Jean closed the door. To be honest this was an extremely confident Lindsey, one that I'd rarely seen before. "Darling, when we met, what did you think I did for a living?" she asked turning her attention to me. "You weren't working. You were convalescing, recovering from a road accident. When you were fit, you went back to work as a clerk in Whitehall somewhere, until you had the children." "Not exactly Whitehall, darling. I apologise. I was a little conservative with the truth there. I actually worked at a rather large building on the embankment. You know the one the terrorists had a go at some years ago!" Lindsey had me quite confused for a minute; the only place on the Thames embankment that I could remember the IRA having a go at was MI5's building. They fired a rocket at the place some years back. Then it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. Lindsey had a rather strange shaped scar on her back that she had always claimed was the result of her accident. Now it's not the sort of thing you think about everyday, but she also had a blemish in her skin just bellow her left breast. For some reason now my mind suddenly decided to put the two marks together; suddenly I realised the obvious cause of those two marks and the implications hit me like a brick. "Jesus Christ, Lindsey! You didn't have an accident at work, did you, Lindsey? Someone shot you, didn't they!" I gasped out. "How perceptive of you, darling!" she replied with a smile on her face. "How the hell didn't I realise that before?" I asked myself but out loud. "Because you don't come across gunshot wounds everyday and I wasn't going to give the game away. When I got shot, I thought I'd had my chips at first, but I survived and I was just beginning to think it was time to get out of the business. Then, whilst I was recovering I met you and that convinced me where my future lay. I came off of active service and settled down to a nice cushy little number, sitting behind a desk pushing papers about." "But you never told me. Why?" "Because you didn't need to know, my love. That's how it is in intelligence. We don't advertise what we do. You only needed to know that I was a civil servant. I wasn't doing anything dangerous after we met." "Okay, I think I can understand where you're coming from. But all those police seemed to know you quite well." "Yes, well, we worked together a lot in the old days. With the IRA running around the country we often worked with the local police. When I spotted that guy on the Internet I called up an old friend and we planned it all from there." "But I still don't understand why you never told me about it." "Oh, yeah, after seven years of playing the helpless wife, I could see you standing for me playing bait in what we believed was going to be an attempted rape." "But why you? Surely a policewoman could have done it?" "For a start, I'm better trained in self-defence than your average policewoman, and secondly we weren't sure whether they'd already looked me over. I'd had to develop the guy for some time before I called the troops in; they might have spotted a switch. "Now am I forgiven for not telling you all about it?" "I'm not sure. This is a lot to take in, in a very short time. I'm going to have to think about it." "Well, while you think, I'll take a shower; I assume you've booked this room for the night. It would be a shame to waste all that money. Perhaps when you've had your little think, you'll come and scrub my back. Or I could scrub yours." Lindsey got off the bed and began to remove her dress as she walked towards the bathroom. "Damn it," I thought to myself, "Do I know the woman I married?" But by then she was standing in the bathroom doorway removing her bra and smiling back at me. "I'm buggered if I know her!" I thought, "but she sure knows me." I fell over whilst I tried to remove my trousers and join Lindsey in the bathroom at the same time. --------------------------- I'm not sure what time it was when I woke up. Lindsey was lying in her side with her back to me. In the moonlight I could just make out the odd shaped scar on her back. Slowly I ran my finger around it. "Hmm, that's nice," Lindsey whispered. "Lin, who did shoot you?" I asked. "A bloody Yank. We were after some Irish guys who were smuggling drugs to finance the purchase of weapons for the IRA ... well, that's what they claimed. Personally I think they were just normal villains hiding under the IRA's skirts. That's the biggest trouble with all these so-called freedom fighters. They make nice places for the crooks to hide. "The bloody Americans were after the same guys for smuggling the drugs. Neither of us knew that the others were onto these guys. When the shooting started, the Yanks were on one side and we were on the other, with the bad guys in the middle. I caught a stray bullet from one of the American agent's guns. The Yanks were pretty good; they sneaked in a helicopter and flew me out to one of their aircraft carriers. That saved my life. You see, neither the Americans or us were supposed to be on that island in the first place." "Just like that, you were sneaking around on an island where you weren't supposed to be?" "Part of the job, my love. Someone has to do those kind of things." "So what was your code name - 008? "Don't be silly. James Bond is only in stories. We don't have numbers; we have letters. Mine just happened to be SYG." "Is that where Sexylegs1972 came from?" "You cheeky man, you've been reading my emails." Lucky I did, or I might never have known who I had married. Life goes on.