35 comments/ 50369 views/ 25 favorites Fat Chance Ch. 01 By: Spencerfiction This story is about a cheating wife and an unusual punishment by a desperate husband. Although the subject matter is cheating, adultery, cuckoldery, pornography and more, there is no actual sex in this story, so if you want something to top up your wank bank, pass this one on by. I wrote this story purely for my own amusement, but, somebody else might like it, so I'm sharing it. Hey, I'm that kind of person. ***** Ok, I admit it, I was fat and a slob. I'd always carried a few extra pounds, ever since I left school, anyway. But I'd never considered myself a slob until my wife called me that twelve months ago. She must have called me much worse than that just six months ago and, I guess, I could have called her a few names myself, only by then the fight had gone out of me and I had got out of town, a long way out of town. If I am honest, and I am sitting here in the dark by myself tapping this missive into my laptop computer, so I guess if there is any time for me to be truthful, this the time. So, Jerry Cox, that's me by the way, was and always will be a fat slob. There you are, I've said it, accepted it, and moving on gracefully from there. And that's not the only moving on I have done, which is why I'm documenting my sorry tale, so that others might read and weep, or even learn by my experiences. I first met my wife Maisie at school but we weren't exactly childhood sweethearts. We didn't start to date until a couple of years later, by which time I was halfway through my car mechanics apprenticeship (yes, they used to have proper apprenticeships in those days), and she was two-thirds of her way through college, taking qualifications in banking and insurance. She was a lot smarter than I was, while I felt I was better off working with my hands rather than my brain. Horses for courses, you could say. I was already what I would describe as 'comfortably chunky' and Maisie was maybe twenty pounds overweight when we started going out together. We enjoyed typical teenage diets, burgers, chips and beer. I was short and stumpy, about five-six, and always ugly. That was embedded in my genes, my father was an ugly son-of-a-bitch and particularly nasty with it, I never knew my grandfather, but I guess my father had to get his looks and nature from somewhere. I always thought I'd missed my father's nasty gene, as I was usually so easy going, but now I know it was hiding in there somewhere all along and it has really come home to roost in the last few months. I surpassed myself, in fact. I even out-nastied my father, though I'm not proud of what I did, or what I am still doing, I can tell you. It is something I am learning to live with. My excuse is that I was provoked. Oh boy, provoked with knobs on, I was. My mother, though, she was an angel, and she needed to be one, to put up with my violent, womanising father. My mother must be where I got my patience and loyalty genes from. So, in summary, on the surface at least, I was ugly but sweet natured. And I was happy for a long time. Perhaps that natural cheerfulness made me more attractive for a limited period of time. I was certainly unusually trusting when it came to the love of my life, and that was my downfall. Maisie was only about five-three, quite broad-hipped but with a waspish waist and a rack that was absolutely to die for. While I was easy-going and laid back, she was driven to succeed, but she was lively with it and brim full of life. Although she wasn't classically beautiful, she was sexy, vivacious. I found her attractive, when we met up again in my late teens, and I fell for like a ton of bricks. As I say, she was a tad overweight at the time I reacquainted with her but she could carry it. Her skin was pale and translucent, she had shoulder-length thick brown hair with a reddish hint, dark hazel eyes and even white teeth. She was pretty and when she smiled she was simply lovely, well, I always thought so. Although I was also packing a few pounds at that time I was still active playing football at the weekends and training one or two evenings a week. We enjoyed hiking long distances at the weekend, while we were teenagers, but I liked my beer too much and my waistline was slowly losing a one-sided battle. In all honestly, I didn't put up much of a fight. I had only been out with three or four girls before we started going steady and I think that Maisie only had one serious boyfriend before she latched onto me. I thought we made the perfect couple. But damn it, what do I know? I was never ambitious. A comfortable home, a passionate squeeze to come home to or go out with, regular meals and sufficient beer money in my pocket, was all I ever wanted from life. So, for as long as I could remember, life was good, meeting all my expectations. My job, repairing cars at first, progressing later to trucks, was not physically demanding and I enjoyed the work at a small but long-established family firm. I think Trimblett & Son started out doing up bicycles when Queen Vic was on the throne. I wasn't looking for promotion and responsibility at work, I preferred an easy life. Maisie, however, was extremely ambitious and prepared to work hard to climb her way up the greasy pole. They say opposites attract, don't they? Well, I believed it for a while. We married at the registry office, rather than have the whole white wedding thing most girls desire, and I loved Maisie all the more for that concession. Boy, was I blinkered, I never had a clue. We accepted the money both our parents had saved to spend on the wedding, and used it on the deposit for our house. The building society took one look at us and decided we would probably start a family sooner rather than later, so only offered me a fifteen-year mortgage. He was wrong about the family, as it happens, but it meant that we'd owned the place lock, stock and barrel now for about two years. As soon as Maisie left college, she started at our local branch of National Provincial Bank as a clerk. Someone must've made an adverse remark at work because, all of a sudden, she became a little self-conscious about her appearance and started jogging in the evenings several times a week. I joined her in the jogging at first, although we always ended up at the pub afterwards; she would drink sparkling water, with me swallowing a couple or three pints of best bitter. Later, she joined a gym instead of jogging on the road and I decided early doors that I just don't do gyms. I went back to light football training with the boys once a week and rolled home late after a bellyful of beer in the pub afterwards. My play at darts was ten times better than my passing and tackling, which wasn't surprising. So Maisie became svelte-like in her early twenties and I got fatter. She started taking more pride in her appearance, having her hair done more regularly and spending an increasing amount on smart clothes and killer high heels for work. At the same time I grew my hair long, stopped shaving under my nose and developed a dart-player's beer belly. We never had the blessing of children as it happened and, with hindsight, that turned out to be a good thing. Maisie was climbing the promotion ladder at work and wanted to put off starting a family until she had reached as far as she could go. She never really stopped reaching. Me, I was happy to go along with anything she wanted, she really had me bent around her little finger. I enjoyed an easy-going life, too. See, you knew that already, you've come to know me so well in such a short space of time! Besides, my brother and two sisters made up for my laziness in the parental stakes by expanding the Cox gene pool, presenting me with nine nieces and nephews between them. Maisie's brother Colin also did his bit for the Goddards family tree, marrying twice and having two boys with his first wife and a boy and twin daughters with the second, so Maisie's genes were also more than covered descendants-wise. Mind you, Christmas and birthdays began to cost us a small fortune. As the only childless couple in the family, by default we became everybody's favourite uncle and aunt and we had to maintain our generosity to the tykes at an expected high level. Good job that Maisie rapidly achieved promotion after promotion, becoming branch manager about three years or so ago and now seriously in the running, she told me every time I moaned about her evening workload, for a regional post. I hadn't completely stood still in my job. As I said before, I soon moved on from car servicing to trucks but about eight years ago I was asked to help out the front desk after the company had introduced computers and the old hands in the office were simply not up to the task of using them. I managed to get everything up and running and sort out the service diary and invoicing. It was almost idiot-proof; how was I to know that all the guys and girls in the office were complete idiots? Soon I was asked to move over to the office permanently, to deal with the customer service and bookings. As well as ordering parts and materials I had to do the staffing rotas and holiday schedules. Without being asked, I started producing graphs showing turnover, stock levels, production times and, it turned out, the boss absolutely loved it. There was no-one else who was more interested in working the computer than I was, so I asked the company if they would pay for an evening HTML course, which they agreed to. Once I knew what I was doing, I created a website for the company. I got a nice little extra bonus for that. Maisie and I were living our lives very much together back at the beginning. We enjoyed our weekend hikes, although we fitted them around my football matches during the winter months. Eventually we found we were returning to the same stretch of coastal cliffside for our walks and got used to the cafes and pubs in that locality. So, we decided to try and buy a holiday home there. We couldn't afford anything like a flat, of course and, while continuing to look, we put off committing to purchase anything for years. However, with the website bonus I had received, we managed a downpayment to secure a mobile home on a large caravan campsite. The site boasted a clubhouse with cheap booze and provided weekend entertainment during the holiday season. Once we had the mobile home, we started going down every weekend during the season, plus bank holidays and annual holidays, so my football training and playing with the lads soon got knocked on the head. For work, Maisie was groomed to classy perfection during the week but she dressed down to swimwear and flip-flops for the weekends. I had grown my hair so long that I had to tie it into a pony tail and my moustache turned into a full thick ginger beard as I packed up shaving altogether. I wore the same casual gear at work, weekends and home. She was right, of course, I was turning into a fat slob. After pushing 18 years of marriage, we had settled into a routine on the domestic front. Outside the home though, I naturally moved over to truck sales in addition to managing the service office and had to be measured up for a suit, I couldn't buy one straight off the peg, they didn't stock my size. Maisie took on more responsibility at work and had to work late a couple of nights a week, go on residential courses and, once she became branch manager three years ago, had to attend regional quarterly meetings at weekends. When that occurred, I started to go down to the caravan on my own, with Maisie sometimes joining me on Sunday. We became a two-car household, she had a smart company BMW, while I had a succession of old bangers. They were mostly vans or pick-up trucks that I bought cheap and kept running by working on them in the shop in my own time. Because of the extra bank workload, Maisie's visits to the gym became less regular and she started to put on a bit of weight, not too much at first, but she was becoming quite concerned about it. I still thought she looked lovely but my opinion seemed to carry less weight, the longer I continued carrying more weight myself. About the time she was promoted to branch manager, the current recession was in full swing, truck sales dropped off alarmingly and my boss's comfortable old-established family business was taken over and immediately closed down by a huge multinational, who had built a cavernous steel and glass showroom on the outskirts of the town. Some staff were moved to the other facility but I wasn't one of them. Fat and in my late thirties, I was considered too old and not sleek enough for the slick new company. I couldn't get anything career-wise immediately, so did a lot of odd jobs and buying old bangers, doing them up to keep going, and found myself spending more time at home on the computer applying for jobs and consuming loads of sweet tea, biscuits and toast with lashings of marmalade. Eventually I managed to get a job in a backstreet garage doing repairs and slightly dodgy MOTs on any vehicle that came looking for a budget job. They also sold a small number of cheap cars and vans from a plot behind the main building. My work on trucks gave me a slight edge over other applicants, so I got the job at just over half of what my previous salary had been. It wasn't much of a company, hell, they didn't even have a website; I remedied that before the end of my first week. Meanwhile, things at home became strained. At the beginning and end of each day, Maisie would find me hunched over the computer or lounging in my comfortable old lounger. Although I prepared all the evening meals, I was hopeless at the rest of the housekeeping and she became resentful, which made her snappy. Being the slob I am, I didn't even notice the change in atmosphere. She complained about my snoring, which my weight didn't help. She insisted she needed her beauty sleep to concentrate at work, so I was relegated to the lounger at night. I hoped it was a temporary arrangement, but it became permanent. That's when we stopped having sex. I was complacent about it at first but we did have some heated arguments about the subject, and we had never had any of those before. Although I did try every fad diet in the book, I stuck at none of them for more than a few days and my weight continued to balloon. It was a shock when I checked my weight on the bathroom scales just after the Christmas before last and oops! the needle went off the scale! Maisie thought she could do with tightening up again and losing what she had indulged in up to and including Christmas - we both enjoy a good drink, my poison is beer and Maisie's partial to a bottle or two of white wine. So Maisie signed up for the gym, attending a couple of nights a week and started going to slimming classes on a Monday evening. Add those commitments to her pair of late nights at the bank and, damn it, I hardly ever saw her. I could see immediately that the gym work and dieting was working for her. Maisie must have lost six pounds in her first three weeks, so I decided I would sign up for the slimming class and, maybe, consider the gym once I had trimmed down a bit. Honestly, at over 20 stone I don't think I could have jogged more than 30 seconds to save my life. When it was good and dark one evening, I tried a 15-minute jog around the estate. After only about 100 metres, I was reduced to walking and it took me half an hour for the round trip. I didn't bother again. For some reason Maisie didn't seem that keen for me to go along to slimming classes with her. I thought she would be delighted that I was doing something positive about losing weight. To be frank, I didn't feel very confident going to the meetings on my own, as I assumed they'd all be ladies. I was ushered into an upstairs room with all the other beginners, about half a dozen of us. I looked around at the other newbies. All bar me were rather large ladies, trying to lose weight after a indulgent Christmas or three. For the first hour of that initial meeting we were given a lowdown on how food balancing worked, filling up on fat-free food and avoiding carbs and sugars. It all looked pretty straight forward, I thought it should be easy enough to stick to. When I joined my wife and the rest of the main group, I was in for a surprise. Although there were more women than men, they have always seemed more image-conscious than the male of the species, almost a quarter of the members were men, so I didn't feel too out of place. The village hall was crowded and Maisie had reserved an empty seat next to her for me. On the other side of her was a 30-year-old giant, he must've been six foot six and looked pretty lean to me, with not an ounce of fat on him. I later found out the tall man was a 'Target Weight Member', which meant he had reached his optimum weight some time before and was regularly attending to keep his weight in balance. In every former fat person there was an even fatter person trying to take over, I was told. Sitting next to me on my other side was a young woman who was almost as fat as me, she beamed beautifully as I squeezed past her. Between the two of us there wasn't enough room for a cigarette paper. In contrast to the fat woman's warm smile, Maisie just rolled her eyes skyward as I clumsily made my way to the chair, stepping on at least three feet on the way. It is very difficult placing your feet safely when you can't see them properly because your fat gut is in the way. Even the Adonis next to Maisie seemed to sneer in my direction, but maybe that was how the faces of thin people normally look. By default I usually had a smile on my face, I was overweight but I was by inclination a happy fat person. I fully endorsed the dieting regimen and, as I was always home from work first, I did the weekday cooking, and immediately embraced all the new slimming recipes. I loved preparing fresh soups using lean meat, and pasta dishes, fat-free fries and yoghourt, with added fresh fruit for afters. I was soon stacking the fridge with salads and fruit for snacking. The next week at weigh-in, I lost seventeen pounds and felt absolutely great. Maisie lost her usual one pound and looked utterly miserable. Maybe it is me, or perhaps it applies to all red-blooded males, but I don't believe that ugly women exist. It is all about how you perceive your image, opposed to how other people see you. Young girls or old women, they all have their charms and graces no matter how fat or thin they think they are. Weigh-in Monday evenings at the village hall were a revelation to me. All the guys and girls present, wore their lightest and skimpiest clothes for the weigh-in and, as soon as I was weighed, I determinedly steered Maisie and I into a position where we had the best viewpoint of the weigh-in. Among the usual older and middle-aged women that you would expect to see, there were lots of young college girls aiming to get in trim for their summer holidays or weddings or prom dances. Many looked to me as though they didn't need to diet at all. It turns out that a girl's appearance is in the eye of the beholder and I beheld and admired every curve, trying my damnedest not to appear too pervie. Not sure if I managed it, if I am honest. I wasn't getting any sex at home and so I may well have been stacking up fuel for the wank bank. Being a natural smiley person, who enjoyed getting on with everybody, every single babe got a smile and word or two of encouragement or commiseration from me and I got smiling responses and the odd whoop of delight back in return. There were high fives, too, and even the odd cuddle. I loved it! Mondays soon became my favourite day, the rest of the week just went downhill from there. Perhaps it was because I was missing the regular sex, but for me every one of those girls, women, ladies, whatever they thought of themselves, they were merely at marginally different stages of gorgeousness. I tried to appear as casually observant as possible, as I witnessed each beauty gracefully slip off their outer clothes and shoes, elegantly alight the scales and react positively or otherwise to the results. I openly applauded and gave encouragement or commiseration as appropriate to justify my fascinated close observance of the proceedings. Fat Chance Ch. 01 Gavin, the very tall, slim guy we sat close to the previous week, nodded to me with a smirk on his face as he slipped his shoes back on after weighing in, I guessed he'd done well. I nodded back in acknowledgement, with a more natural smile on my part, although I was maintaining a distinct dislike to him. It must be a sixth sense, as it turned out I was completely justified in my opinion that he was trouble. Karen, the fat young girl I had sat next to the previous week, stood patiently in the queue, smiling to all her acquaintances, including me, and then jumped off the scales with a huge grin and holding her hands aloft in joy. I held up both thumbs and grinned with my own pleasure at her success. Emma, the slimming consultant, then went through all the results and offered help and advice to those failing to lose and further bolstering the egos of those who had done well. She emphasised that even target members needed to attend regularly to check their weight. It was a well-known fact, she warned, that those that fell off the wagon tended to end up heavier than before they started. I won slimmer of the week the second week I attended and continued losing four or five pounds a week, sometimes more, while Maisie hovered between losing a pound and gaining a half-pound each week, despite all the extra hours of gym work she was putting in a couple of evenings after work. I felt great, never feeling hungry and was full of energy again. I even started jogging short distances in the evening after prepping the evening meal. By the end of February I had lost three stone, by the end of March nearly five stone and only two weeks away from May Bank Holiday weekend I was six stone lighter and within a few pounds of my optimum weight, my ultimate target. Maisie reached her target of losing 20 pounds in the middle of April, taking her about 16 weeks. In a couple of weeks fewer I had lost four times her loss in weight and was feeling pretty damned chuffed with myself. Everyone at work noticed I had lost weight and thought I looked healthy and glowing. Maisie meanwhile, looked gaunt, drained and worn out, I thought she looked ten years older than her 40 years. She was still rejecting my amorous advances, but I had to admit they had become half-hearted on my part, I wasn't sure if I really fancied the miserable skinny old bitch anymore. Karen, on the other hand, the fat girl with the beautiful smile, who I sat next to on my first day, had also reached her target and looked absolutely stunning. She was happily married with a one-year-old baby who I saw when she booked her rather battered Renault Clio in for an MOT. I changed a couple of duff bulbs and tweaked the mixture a little so it got through without stretching the emissions regulations too much. In thanks I was treated to one of her magic smiles and an introduction to her baby son. I helped strap him into his baby seat for her and adjusted the belt which had become a little too tight. I couldn't help but notice that baby had inherited her mother's gorgeous smile. I'm sure men don't actually get broody, but for the rest of that day I felt deeply resentful that, at Maisie's insistence on building her career, I had missed out on parenthood for what now looked like forever. At home, Maisie continued to rebuff my amorous advances, using excuses that she was tired or I was still too heavy. I had no real concerns, I trusted her completely and I could be patient, oh boy, could I be patient! My middle name should have been Job instead of Andrew. I felt so good and so confident in my new-formed shape, that I thought losing a couple of more pounds would make me irresistible to women or at least the one woman in my life. Well you know me by now, I live in a fantasy world all of my own making! They noticed at work that I was becoming quite trim. I kept my once luxuriant hair close cropped since starting dieting, to help reduce my weight. I shaved almost every day and I was building and rebuilding my wardrobe as my shape evolved. I was looking good and dressing well, and my boss Dick offered me a promotion to the front desk, doing my old job of booking in servicing and invoicing. Back Street Motors had branched out into buying up old bangers from the car auctions and doing them up as cheap as possible and selling them off quickly on a plot of land they rented behind the workshop. Dick, the boss, wanted me to put them up on the company website that I had designed, which I was happy to do and received a big hike in pay, as the website and resultant sales really took off. During the winter we only used to go down to the coast once or twice a month to do essential maintenance on the caravan, repair any storm damage and repaint, spring clean etc. Then Maisie stopped coming down with me as she had too much paperwork she had brought home and, having lost some weight she felt how much colder it was at the campsite in winter. I could appreciate that because I was also suffering from the effects of the lost 'lagging', too. I continued to trundle down to the caravan regularly on my own, getting everything shipshape for our usual week's holiday in the first week of May. Boy, was I looking forward to having Maisie all to myself without any distractions for a week. I thought I might even get lucky. You see, I enjoy looking at women, what man doesn't? But, due to my loyalty genes, I was only sweet on my better half and wasn't the least bit interested in romancing anyone else. I naturally assumed she felt the same about me. I am delusional, obviously. In fact, after losing all that weight and eating more healthily, I found I had so much energy that not only did I prepare all Maisie's weekend meals for her to microwave back at the house, I was able to get all the planned jobs down at the mobile home on the caravan park completed in record time, too. I did so well with these post-winter jobs, that our plot became the best looking one on the site. We had never ever been in the running for the annual spring trophy before. The camp committee even put up a sign in front telling everybody that I won the trophy. I was grateful there was so little left for me to do the last weekend I was there, because I was stopped by so many admiring fellow campers to receive their complimentary comments - and the nice things they had to say weren't all limited to the caravan. A lot of the members immediately saw the difference my weight loss had made to my figure. If I wasn't such a modest person, they may have gone to my head. For the first time since we had the caravan, I worked on the maintenance without a shirt on most of the time and, even though I am rather fair-skinned, I had developed a very healthy tan by the end of April. I was happy with myself and confident that, once the weather warmed up, I would be able to worm my way back into Maisie's affections, as one of the fittest dudes around. OK, I was still ugly, you already know about the genes, but if it was really dark, I believed I could be a god. I told you earlier that I was dumb, so you will not be surprised what happened next, will you? It was Karen that first told me that Maisie was having an affair. I really didn't have a clue. That lovely, formerly fat girl, cared enough for my feelings that she popped down to the garage that last but one Thursday in April, two weeks before the Bank Holiday week I was so looking forward to. This time she didn't bring little Daniel with her. She had left her car in the public car park, so it was a surprise when she walked in and asked if she could have a quiet word with me. We had an office in the showroom area where we could take customers to go through the financing and sales paperwork. Collecting a couple of plastic cups of coffee from the machine on the way, I took her into the office and sat her down. I pulled the chair round to the front so we didn't have the desk between us and sat down in front of her. Karen fidgeted, fiddled with her plastic cup and hesitated before speaking, her usual bright smile replaced by a frown. She wore a simple light blue A-line dress, it being a warm spring day outside. Karen really was a lovely girl, her husband was a very lucky man. In the four months since Christmas she had lost all the weight she had apparently put on during her pregnancy and had blossomed into a very beautiful young woman. Now, believe me when I tell you, I had no designs on her at all. She wasn't quite young enough to be my daughter but she was definitely far too young for a wrinkled middle-age man set in his ways and anyway, I believed, she was very content with her lot. In fact, she had already hinted in an earlier conversation that she and her lucky husband were seriously considering adding to her lovely family. I waited patiently for her to get around to what she wanted to say, while I tried to ease the tension by asking her how the cute baby Daniel was. That brought out her wide smile again and I added: "Go on Karen, spit it out, love," I continued, with as disarming a smile as my ugly face could conjure up, "You haven't come all the way down here to exchange pleasantries now, have you?" She looked into my eyes, her own welling up with tears, and said, "I'm not sure you are going to like this ..." Karen hesitated and dropped her eyes to focus on her coffee. A pair of drips ran down her cute button nose and splashed into the murky brown liquid. I didn't say anything, I think I already knew the way the conversation was headed and wasn't in that much of a hurry to hear it. Karen took another sip from her coffee, I sipped mine too, but it was even more tasteless that it usually was. "You know I started going down the gym a couple of times a week." She looked up at me again. "Yes" I said, "And you look really good on it." I tried to smile. She smiled back and continued, "I often see other group members down there, like Maisie and ... " she concentrated on the contents of her cup again, "... Gavin, among others." She paused again before blurting out, "I saw both of them making out in Gavin's car last night!" I took a deep breath and released the air in my lungs slowly, then drawing in another breath before speaking. I wasn't sure whether my words would come out. "Are you sure it was Maisie and Gavin?" "Yes, I'm sure." Her eyes were welling up with tears. "Maisie was wearing a bright yellow track suit, I think it was new, and left the gym right after Gavin, while I was halfway through my routine. I was parked right over the back of the car park under those trees where it is really dark, because the car park was completely packed when I arrived. I got to my car about half an hour after Maisie left and there was Gavin's car a couple of spaces away from mine, bouncing up and down with someone wearing a bright yellow top pressed up against the window in the back seat. All the windows were too steamed up to see any faces. I think that I have seen Gavin necking with someone in the car before, and had my suspicions who with, but now I am certain it was with your wife. They have been training together on adjacent equipment for months and don't seem concerned about who sees them, especially as you don't go down the gym and ... I don't even know what Gavin's wife looks like. I am so sorry, Jerry, but I thought you should know." I suppose I had suppressed the feeling that something was not quite right with our marriage for a long while. If I wasn't having any loving at home then neither was Maisie. So, it was believable that she was getting her jollies off outside the home. Looks like muggin's here was the only one missing out on the knookie front in this sham of a marriage. I remembered that on Mondays we often seemed to sit near Gavin, or if we were seated first, he would make his way over and join us. Clearly I wasn't the one who was attracting him in our direction. Because of my PC prowess, I often helped out on the computer in the lobby of the village hall, booking people in. I would often find the pair of them in close conversation, sharing a private joke, when I eventually joined the meeting. I sat there in that car sales office, dumbstruck, occupied by my thoughts, not trusting my voice to say anything. Karen reached over and squeezed my hands. Then she got up and quietly let herself out of the office. I looked down and noticed that both of my hands were clenched tight into fists, the coffee cup crushed, the contents on the floor. I was angry and upset and I felt so foolish. What a sap I had been! All the time I had been thinking that all I needed was to get back into trim and I'd be back in my wife's favour! Fat chance of that ever happening! Maisie clearly didn't even want me there at the club at all, I was only cramping her style. No wonder she was always miserable whenever I queued up behind her or sat alongside. All the signs had been there, and not just recently, but I had ignored the obvious for far too long. I tried to think of what she was going to be getting up to this evening. Tonight was Thursday, and Maisie's usual pattern was Monday slim club, Tuesday and Thursday late night meetings at the bank, Wednesday and Friday nights down the gym. In fact, Saturday and Sunday were the only nights she was at home, unless I was down at the caravan on my own, and she would be free to please herself. Bugger! Even when I used to ring her on her mobile from the caravan - if it went to voicemail I assumed she was in the bath or watching something interesting on the box and she would phone me back half an hour or so later. She could have been anywhere. If Gavin wasn't prepared to shell out for a hotel room after the gym, then they were almost certainly using our bed at the weekend! My eyes were not only newly open, they were sticking out like organ-bloody-stops! I was beginning to wonder whether Maisie was having sex more than one night a week, possibly a lot more than that. Rather than just sit at home and accept it, I needed to wake up and smell the blessed roses. My own daily schedule each week was pretty straightforward. OK, it was really boring. I had become disturbingly domesticated in my early middle age. Every day I was home straight after work and preparing the evening meals. Monday night we were both at the slimming club, the rest of the week I was left at home each evening, until Friday and Saturday, during recent months, I spent once a month down the caravan, getting back home by Sunday, early evening. Since I stopped playing football, I hadn't gone down the pub for ages, I didn't even have many of my own friends left, other than workmates. However, my boring schedule meant that, from Tuesday to Friday, I was free to check up on her activities. Take Thursday, tonight, she worked late at the bank until about nine, or did she? I called Maisie at the bank, from that little sales office, and couldn't get through. Nothing but a standard out of hours message from the bank. I tried her mobile and my call went straight to voicemail. That was par for the course though, so left a message that I was seeing Russ and Kev from work for a game of darts and would be back at ten. I added that I would leave her dinner in the microwave for her. That evening, I went down to the bank at about seven and noticed that her car had already vanished from the bank car park and the building in darkness. Damn! Where was she? There was a car still locked in there behind the security fence, a Ford Mondeo with a child seat inside and a "Child Aboard" sticker on the back window, so clearly used by a family man. I couldn't get to the car as there were security cameras covering the car park. There were only two ways out of the High Street. I opted to wait near where my wife should come by on her way home. I parked up close to the end of a side turning leading to the service area behind the shops. I waited for nearly two hours, just after nine o'clock, when saw my wife drive by, seemingly without a care in the world. I started my car and pulled right up to the turning. I didn't have to wait more than a few seconds, before the Mondeo drove past and got in the righthand lane at the junction. Maisie had already turned left towards our home. Tailing a car is tricky for the inexperienced. It looks deceptively easy in movies. I almost got left behind at the second set of lights, squeaking through after they had changed to red. Then, keeping back so I was less obvious, a couple of boy racers filled the gap between us and I almost missed the Ford turning left onto a residential estate three or four miles down the road. I followed him around various twists and turns until he turned into a cul-de-sac, so I drove past the end of his road, parked and casually walked back. Fortunately he didn't park in his garage, he left it in his drive. I couldn't see the number on his door, it was too dark, but counting back from number 18, which was well lit, I calculated that Mr Banker-whoever-he-was lived at number 22 Fairfield Walk. I pulled into the Cock & Pullet on my way home for a quick pint of bitter so that Maisie could smell I'd spent some time up the pub. I needn't have bothered, she'd already had a shower, eaten her meal and was in bed by the time I got in, leaving me to do the washing up. I guess even I still had my uses outside the bedroom. It was the first beer I had had since I started my diet and I no longer cared if it made me put weight on or not. Put weight on? Mmm, that gave me food for thought, as it were. [to be continued...] Fat Chance Ch. 02 Friday was one of Maisie's gym nights, so I wore dark clothing and waited in the bushes at the back of the car park. It wasn't long before I saw Gavin pull up in his flash red BMW with "GAV" as part of the number plate. No wonder Karen knew that it was his car without any mix-up. Sure enough, just over an hour and ten minutes later, Gavin returned to the car alone, but sat in the car waiting rather than drive off. Two minutes later, my loving wife put in an appearance. She walked over to the car and let herself in the back seat. Gavin got out of the front, looked all round and got into the back with her. Within five minutes the car was bouncing up on its springs like Karen had described. Now, why was I still crouching there? Any hot blooded male should be storming over there as soon as she got in the car and bashing their bloody heads together, instead of letting them smack the bases of their torsos together. Oh, yes, I was angry, you can be sure of that, but I didn't want to stop them, well not in the short-term, and I definitely didn't want her back. What I wanted was revenge and I had an idea how I was going to achieve at least part of it. I crept out of the bushes and up to the car on hands and knees. Using a small screwdriver, I always carried in my work shirt pocket, I slowly let the air out of all four of the tyres. Then I crept away on hands and knees a few car lengths before getting up and looking for Maisie's car. I knew if I let her tyres down in the same way that they would know that it was me, so I just jammed my penknife into the side wall of one of the tyres, so it would look unrelated. Thinking about it, Gavin was getting off bloody lightly, so I crept back to his BMW and this time used my penknife to cut off all four of his tyre valves and chucked them in the undergrowth. Then I went home and lay on my lounger so I looked asleep when Maisie got home about half eleven. She clipped about, showered and stomped off to bed while I appeared steadfastly asleep throughout. Actually, I fitfully slept in that chair all night. When I got up on Saturday morning and checked the microwave, her supper was still in there, untouched. I left for work early, as soon as I heard her get up to go to the toilet. I didn't want to be around her in case I lost my temper. Her car was outside, with the spare non-alloy wheel on the rear nearside. I let out about three-quarters of the air and fetched a couple of nails from our garage and hammered them into the tyre. I hoped she would get halfway to the supermarket before the tyre went down and she'd be stuck on the bypass with no spare. I didn't want to make a noise opening her boot, but I am sure that's where the vandalised flat tyre was. Usually on a Saturday morning, on those weekends when I didn't go down to the coast, I would work overtime from 7am to noon in the garage. Saturday morning was one of our busiest sessions of the week. I had taken this Saturday off. I drove into town and bought several cans of body-building protein powder, a case each of wine and beer and a load of chocolate bars. I guessed that when Maisie got home she'd need a glass or two of wine. The house was empty when I got back. I emptied the protein powder into empty jars of flour and sugar and packed the rest in plain freezer bags which I stored at the top of the cupboards out of normal reach. I started cooking a pasta sauce with loads of olive oil and the protein powder mixed into the sauce. I thought that if Maisie had plenty to drink, she wouldn't notice any taste difference. I went to look at No 22 Fairfield Walk to see if I could get a glimpse of who the guy was, but the car was missing from the short driveway. Next, I called Emma, the slimming consultant, to get hold of Gavin's address. I told her I had arranged to pick up some recipes from him but lost the post-it with his address on. She was happy to supply it to me, knowing we often close to him. I drove over to see him, but there was no sign of his bright red car either. However, I rang the bell while I was there and spoke to his wife, an attractive confident-looking woman in her early thirties. I sat down and introduced myself and told her straight that her husband was having an affair with my wife. She had expected something of the kind as soon as I asked to speak to her privately. She had suspected her husband of other affairs but he always denied them and she had never had concrete proof. Adrienne had three young children and wanted to keep her marriage. I told her she would need to keep Gavin on a short lease if that was the case, perhaps by hinting to him that friends were keeping a check on him and she was hearing some strong rumours. I owned up to her about vandalising his car at the sports centre and that I was now going to concentrate on frustrating the pair of them in future. She thought it was very funny and we laughed about it, agreeing that we would keep in touch and let each other know our respective partners' movements. Adrienne and I exchanged mobile and email addresses and then I got up to go. I had got a missed call from Maisie on my mobile while at Adrienne's. I had an inkling what it was about and called her back on my way out of Adrienne's door. Maisie screamed at me that she was stranded on the bypass with a flat tyre. She blamed it on me for not checking her spare regularly enough. "Honey," I said, "you didn't even tell me you had already had to use the spare." She shut up ranting then, probably unwilling to tell me how she managed to change the old tyre. I said, "I'll pick up a spare BMW wheel from the garage and get to you in thirty minutes and sort you out." I took my leave of the lovely Adrienne at her door. As I turned to say goodbye, I held both her hands and blurted out that I was so sorry that I had brought such bad news of my wife's infidelity, saying it was probably my fault, and my eyes started to well up. Adrienne put her arms around me and pulled me into her shoulder and rubbed and patted my back. I returned the comforting pats and rubs in as neutral a place as I could find, between her shoulder blades. Adrienne was cooing and reassuring me that it will be all right, as if I was a child. After thirty or forty seconds, we released each other and pressed a couple of cheek kisses on each other before I left to collect my soon-to-be-ex-wife Maisie. I thought about my situation on the way, of course I did. I really hadn't thought of anything else since Karen tipped me the wink about my cheating wife. How did I feel about her lovers Gavin and the mystery father of young children from the bank? Well, the common denominator in both these affairs was Maisie. Whose fault it was didn't really matter, she shouldn't be doing what she was doing. It certainly wasn't a one-time mistake due to being drunk or some other excuse, she was having an affair, in fact multiple affairs at the same bloody time, the slut! We had a sworn agreement to be faithful with one another, forsaking all others it said. We weren't just shacked up, we weren't a casual relationship, our commitment was tied, not tenuous, we were married and had a legally binding contract to have and to hold for better or for worse and she should have honoured it. When we agreed to marry, we did so as equals, OK she was better looking than me at the time (who wasn't?) but I made up for my lacking in the looks department by helping to support her through college and providing us a roof over our heads until she had established her career. Since then she had improved herself out of all proportion, not only career wise, but she looked much foxier than when we originally started out. Meanwhile, I had pretty well stayed still career wise and my looks had gone downhill. I had been overweight and even though I had lost most of the surplus weight, my body had a lot of loose skin and I was not exactly as toned as my tanned upper torso implied. It seemed to me that we were no longer in the same league. Maisie had been promoted to the Championship and I had until recently dropped down a couple of divisions to Non-league. Due to my efforts I could say I was back in the game in League Two, but I still had some catching up to do. Could I ever catch up though? Was it in me to make myself attractive to my wife again? More to the point, though, did I want her anymore, now I knew how I was being treated? I certainly didn't like Gavin. Any guy who would have a wife and children at home and still be prepared to play around as if he was single, was a shit. Adrienne was a young and very attractive-looking woman. I couldn't understand why Gavin would be tempted by my wife to be honest. Look, I had loved Maisie exclusively for as long as I can remember and I have always thought she was lovely, even when she wasn't quite as gorgeous as she was now. But my tastes were particular and I had honestly never looked at any other woman with anything other then enjoying feasting my eyes only. Clearly the banker she was also seeing had a young family, like Gavin. I really didn't want to hurt the families of either man, but I did want to hurt Maisie. Now I had forced myself to confront the future, there was no way I would ever want to patch up with her, not following her serial betrayal. By the time I had worked through my feelings on that short drive, I had caught up with Maisie on the bypass. It was pissing down with rain by then and for safety sake the police had forced her to leave the vehicle and was standing behind the barrier. I heard later that the police issued her with a ticket, fining her and adding points to her licence for having a unserviceable spare. She looked pissed and miserable, and I couldn't help smiling. At the end of the day, this was all her fault, if she would go out fucking with other people, than she had only herself to blame if she got fucked with in return. She didn't relish my cheery smile and answered my "Wot's uppppppp!" greeting with a scowl, which made me smile even more, although I had the sense to keep my back to her as I worked on the car. I changed the wheel and chucked the shredded tyre in the back of my van. As I got the original damaged tyre out of her car boot, I saw that she had not bought any groceries or other goods, even though she had been out "shopping" all the morning and was on the way back to our place via the bypass. I assumed she had been somewhere meeting either Gavin or the other jerk. I thought I'd start keeping track of her daily mileage from then on, to at least have some idea of her range. I drove off and she followed me until I turned off to get two new tyres, while she continued home. Once I had replaced the tyres, I scooted over to see if I could catch Mr Banker at his house. His car was home so I assumed that he was too. There was no bell fitted to the door, so I knocked firmly. Soon the garage door opened and a tall, spare young man in his early twenties, with thinning sandy hair, stood there wiping his hands on a rag. "Hello, mate," I began, "My name is Jerry Cox, I'm Maisie's husband. Can I have a quiet word ... in private?" He looked worried, his face went white and he backed up away from me. I followed him into the garage. "I'm here because I've heard a few rumours about you and my wife," I said, "and I want to get a few things straight, direct from the horse's mouth." "There's nothing going on," he said nervously, "Mrs Cox and I just work together, that's all." "If that's all," I said with an edge to my voice, "then you've nothing to worry about, have you, sunshine?" His eyes looked furtive and he wouldn't look me in the eye. I looked around the near-empty garage. In the middle of the floor there was a large doll's house, which he was clearly painting, probably for his daughter. I remembered the child's car seat in his Ford. I heard the front door open behind me and a short, heavily-pregnant young woman poked her head around the door. "Oh, I thought I heard a knock at the door," Mrs Banker said. I think she sensed the tension between us. "Everything all right?" I walked over to her with a big smile on my face and held out my hand. In automatic response, she shook it tentatively. I said, "Hi, I'm Jerry, I just called round to have a quiet word about things going on at the bank. You know, walls have ears at that place, don't they? You look amazing," I added, "when are you due and do you know whether it's a boy or girl?" She smiled sweetly, replying "I'm Josephine, Jerry. Thank you, Gordon and I decided we didn't want to know the sex until the birth, we've got nine weeks to go." "A summer baby, eh? Hope it's not too hot in your last few weeks. Would you think it forward of me if I asked for a cup of tea for us? I had a puncture on the bypass and got soaked." My coat and jeans were pretty wet, I continued, "I must look pretty dishevelled, I don't want to drip on your carpets, so I'll just stay out here with Gordon." I finished my sentence with my cheesiest smile. I may be ugly, but I always look sincere. She smiled back and waddled off to put the kettle on. I turned back to her husband. "Nice family, Gordon, I take it you also have a little girl?" I pointed at the dolls house. "Yes, Kylie will be three next month." Then he was silent. "Look, I'll get to the point, I think you have been putting your family life at risk by playing away from home with my nearest and dearest and I want it to stop before anyone gets hurt." "Nothing is going on, we just meet up and talk that's all, I've got enough on my plate at the moment and can't afford to lose my job." "Talk with your boss all you like, anything more and your feet won't touch the ground. So where do you go for your little talks, because you are not at the bank until all hours as I was led to believe?" Gordon wrung his hands, he was struggling to respond to my straight question with an acceptable answer. Suddenly, the back door to the garage opened and Josephine brought in a tray with teapot, mugs, milk, sugar and a plate of biscuits. That put temporary halt to our conversation. Gordon made a space on the chest freezer in the corner and I took the tray off Josephine and plonked it down. She said she had to get straight back to Kylie who was watching the television. I thanked her and off she went, not without a nervous glance from her to her other half. I poured the tea for us both and took a mug over to look at the doll's house. "I picked it up in the local free ads and trying to do it up in time for Kylie's birthday. I've been working on it all morning an' not getting very far," Gordon said. So, he wasn't my rival today. He was probably a great banker but as a do-it-yourselfer he was a non-starter. I use my van to store all the stuff I needed to paint and repair the mobile home in the caravan park, and I am good with my hands. I fetched my WorkMate, tools and a few offcuts of wood and made a toy washing machine and cooker for the dolls house kitchen and painted them using a wide range of brushes I had with me - Gordon only had a couple of brushes which were far too big for the task. Using a spare sheet of marine ply, I made a new roof for the dolls house to replace the damaged one. From my diddy-box I found some brass hinges so that the new roof could be opened like another door, adding to the playability. I told Gordon that I had a small tin of red paint in my shed at home and would drop it in to him the next day so he could paint the roof. When Josephine collected the tea things half an hour later, she found the pair of us bonding, working away together on the dolls house, discussing things we could use as furniture and fittings. I spent a couple of happy hours there, before taking my leave of the couple, shaking Gordon's hand. Josephine kissed me on the cheek and gave me a hug and murmured thanks for helping make Kylie's present so special. It felt nice to feel wanted by my lover's wife, the irony of the situation didn't escape me. By the time I got home, Maisie had showered and changed and the skinny lazy good for nothing cow was actually waiting for me to cook the evening meal. I could believe it, though, and that was the truth. At least she had already found the wine in the fridge and was on her second glass by then and thoroughly pissed off. When she asked where the hell I had been, I answered that, after getting her new tyres, I had helped a friend with some DIY, which I said I had pre-arranged before her little emergency on the bypass. I told her I would change the wheels over for her the next day. For our evening meal I put together a carbonara for her, with oodles of olive oil and whey protein in the sauce, rather than the usual lo-cal olive oil flavoured spray. For my meal, I had poached eggs on wholemeal toast with steamed vegetables. When I checked the fridge, I did a quick count up and saw that a couple of small bars of chocolate had disappeared. Hee hee, I love it when a plan comes together. Childish, I know, but the way I was feeling inside at the time I'd snatch up any little pleasures that came my way with both hands. Next morning I put a chicken in the oven, changed Maisie's wheel, and popped round to Gordon's with the paint and some sheets of paper I had produced on my colour printer, of wallpaper designs downloaded off the net on Saturday evening. Josephine answered the door. "Jo, you look absolutely radiant this morning," I smooched as I hugged and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled and squeezed me back. She did look absolutely gorgeous. I took the roof off the dolls house with a few twists of the screwdriver, leaving Gordon to give it a couple of coats of red paint, while I cut up the "wallpaper" and started to paste it to the walls of the tiny rooms. Jo brought out a couple of beers, admired what we were both doing and invited me to lunch, but I said I had to get back home in an hour or so and finish off our own roast dinner and would take a rain check on a future meal with them. I'll not forget her comment, "Oooh, a man that cooks, your wife must thank her lucky stars." Yeah, right. As soon as Jo left the garage, Gordon told me quietly and candidly, "We've been shagging most Tuesdays and Thursdays for about three months." He looked me unwaveringly in the eye before continuing. I looked up from sticking some rather odd paper shapes with tiles printed on them in the toy bathroom and nodded for him to carry on. I wasn't angry, I suppose 'resigned' was the best attitude I could muster. "It started on that quarterly area progress briefing at Ferndale Valley conference centre. The managers sometimes take a junior member of staff with them to widen their experience and this time it was my turn, the first time I had been. There are some training meetings during the two days but mostly it is just a jolly for the bosses and an excuse for some extra marital goings on overnight. Everybody is at it apparently and the few not in on it turns a blind eye. Rumour has it that Mrs Cox usually pairs up with Stewart Marshall-Hobbs, the area manager. Apparently he couldn't make that weekend, so I er, got grabbed to fill in for him." Gordon pulled a few gulps from his beer while I let this sink in. I carried on sticking in paper on the dolls house walls, with really nothing to say. "I found it quite exciting that first night," Gordon confessed. "I had never been in that position before, but everyone was doing it. Hardly anyone was discrete, so I thought what the hell, it was a one-off and so long as Josie didn't find out... Then when we got back, your wife wanted to continue and she had me over a barrel. To start with it was still a bit of fun, but the fun doesn't last, it was nerve-wracking keeping up the deceit and I got to hate it. It was just sex, there was no love involved. It wasn't an affair as such, I was just..." Fat Chance Ch. 02 He hesitated about what he was going to say next, so I finished it for him, "Giving her what she wasn't getting at home?" "That's what she told me, yes." "Well, she was right. We stopped talking together about anything long ago and when she stopped wanting to make love to me, then I guess I stopped asking. I just thought she was going through the change and didn't want to be bothered with sex any more. If I had known she wanted sex four times a week, I would have been more than happy to oblige." "Four? We only met up ... Oh! Shit!" "Shit yes! You on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Shithead Gavin on Wednesdays and Fridays and possibly between ten and noon yesterday morning. I hope you used a condom every time?" "Yes, I insist on it, usually, but Mrs Cox prefers it bareback and a couple of times she's got her way. Fuck!" "I think I better get checked out first thing tomorrow, I suggest you do too. You know, until a couple of days ago, I thought we were just going through a rough patch and that Maisie loved me just as much as I loved her. Now, I don't know if my wife ever loved me and I never suspected a thing. It was a friend that told me." "I never wanted this. I wasn't looking for an affair. I love Josie, she was my childhood sweetheart and I want to keep my wife and my family, they are my whole life. I would hate myself if she found out and left me or ended up hating me." Gordon was almost in tears. "Trouble with keeping these things from our spouses, Gordon, is that we do find out eventually," I said quietly, "And it's no fun for the victim and often it is the killer of any relationship. As far as I am concerned I don't have a wife any more, it's over, she has destroyed every feeling I ever had for her. As for you and Jo, well she won't hear any word of this from me. But you better treat her like a princess from now on and be absolutely indispensable to her in case she ever finds out. Otherwise, all this effort in making good this gift for your daughter means nothing if you break both their hearts when you are given your marital marching orders." "The next quarter event at Ferndale Valley is next weekend," Gordon said. "I'm not going, Mrs Cox is taking one of the girls along," Gordon continued, "That means Marshall-Hobbs will certainly be there." "Can you keep up the pretence of my ignorance of this affair when you see Maisie on Tuesday and Thursday?" I said, "so that she doesn't suspect anything? I think the proverbial will hit the fan a week from Monday." I laughed and so did Gordon. He said he would try and act as if nothing had changed. When I had finished the dolls house wallpapering, I took my leave of the little family, after giving Kylie and Jo big hugs, receiving a special invite to Kylie's birthday party. I whistled a merry tune on the way home. I think I had a plan. I had fun this morning too, the first I had since speaking to Karen just a couple of days ago and my world had collapsed around me. From the van, I called Adrienne to tell her that I had just heard that my wife had been having regular unprotected sex with at at least two other lovers going back over the last four months and said I was going to organise my health examination next week. I had never heard such swearwords from a woman before. There were several I meant to look up the meaning of when I got home. Maisie was still in bed enjoying her lay-in when I got back and we barely spoke during the meal on Sunday. Afterwards I lost myself out in the garage working on my van and sorting out the tools that I wanted to take with me when I left this house for good. Monday morning saw me in the proprietor's office at the garage when the boss got in at nine. I told him my marriage had gone down the pan and I needed time off to sort out my problems. I advised him that as soon as everything was settled that I would have to resign as I was selling up house and moving abroad to, as I put it, "find myself again". He had been there, done that, and understood perfectly. He wondered if I could still do his website remotely, which I agreed would not be a problem. I told him I could access the server from anywhere and, provided he had the photos and descriptions on the computer hard drive, I could log in and do the work at any time of the day or night. We agreed a price for the service and I said I would be in contact once I had set up a new bank account. It only took me twenty minutes to show Glenys, the girl in the office, how to use the digital camera and download onto the appropriate folder on the hard drive. I told her to type up the car details on a word processor package and how to tie in the pictures to the text. I reminded her to never turn the hard drive off, to enable my access, and we were set. I shook hands with everyone and walked out of there free to carry out the rest of the plan. Before doing anything else, though, I called the Family Planning Clinic and got an appointment early Wednesday afternoon for tests for sexually transmitted diseases. The house deeds were in my name, fortunately. When we bought the house, I was the only wage earner, as a journeyman car mechanic. At the time Maisie was still a student, with no income, so the mortgage and therefore the house was in my name only. Even though that was what the deeds said, as we were married throughout the repayments, so the proceeds from the house would be split 50/50 when we divorced. This did mean, however, that I could legally sell the house without her requirement to sign any paperwork, thus without her knowledge of the sale. The deeds were in a safety deposit box at the very bank where Maisie worked, so I couldn't really look them out while she was there. I did ring Gordon at the bank though. I couldn't remember his surname, or even if he had ever given it to me, but a quick description of him and the telephonist patched me through. I asked him if he could find out some info for me without getting himself in trouble. He said ask away and he would let me know what he could do. I wanted to find out the registration number of Stewart Marshall-Hobbs' car, or at the very least the make and colour. I also wanted to know if the girl going to the conference centre with my wife was an innocent or not. Gordon knew the woman at head office who controlled the pool cars. He had to speak to her earlier this morning to sort out paying for the two new tyres that Maisie had got over the weekend. He didn't think he'd have any problem with her, so he would have the info either today or tomorrow and would email it to my laptop. As for the girl who would be accompanying Maisie, she was young but had already been divorced once and was one of the worst flirts in the office. She had been telling anyone in the office who would listen how she was looking forward to her dirty weekend. I asked if he could find out what room numbers Maisie and her beau were booked into. Gordon thought that the hotel didn't actually decide that until the last day, but he would try. Gordon added that he had cried off Tuesday and Thursday nights with Maisie, using the excuses that Josie had to go in for a scan Tuesday afternoon and that they had to go back to the maternity wing on Thursday afternoon for the results. He was sorry if it upset my plans but he just couldn't stomach going through with it any longer. I told him that we were cool. He gave me his mobile number and I sent him a voicemail so he had mine. Who would figure it? My wife's lover was fast becoming a friend. I visited a couple of estate agents later on in the morning and arranged for visits on Thursday early and late morning respectively, to value the place for a quick sale. The only other thing I wanted to do that day was check the value of our investments and savings, there wasn't a lot there. The credit cards too, came in for a bit of checking. Again on-line, I was able to increase the limit on three sets of joint credit cards, plus a credit card in Maisie's name from her own bank. She didn't use it very often as the APR wasn't too favourable, so the card was usually kept in the dining room drawer reserved for wallet, purse and cheque book. Although Maisie worked in a bank and I got grease and dirt under my fingers all day, she was hopeless at financial budgeting, so I did all the accounts and therefore I knew all the passwords. I made another visit to the supermarket and bought a joint of hock on the bone for soup and topped up the chocolate bars for the fridge. Then I left the car at the house and wandered down the local pub for a couple of very enjoyable pints. I was enjoying myself, actually. I used the free wifi in the pub to order a laptop charger for the van. I thought that this would come in handy, with me motoring back and forth from the house to conference centre and down to the caravan. I also looked up some on-line divorce lawyers and filled in a form with the one I thought looked good. They weren't the cheapest, but it was all going onto Maisie's credit card anyway, so I didn't care about the cost. I prepared a nice wholesome vegetable soup as a light supper for us to enjoy after the Slimmers' Club weigh-in that Monday evening. Actually, I made two different soups, one with pure tasty vegetables, smoothly blended, nutritious and absolutely delicious. The other concoction used some of the same resultant soup puree, but with added protein powder and grated full-fat cheese and butter. It tasted fine, but I opened another bottle of wine in the fridge just in case, pouring down the sink the equivalent of a small glassful and topping the bottle up with neat vodka. When Maisie came in, I informed her that I would be going down to the holiday caravan for the weekend on Friday night and asked if she would be coming? "Sorry hon," she answered, "the bank's quarterly shin-dig we usually have at Ferndale is happening this weekend, Friday evening to Sunday morning. I'm sure I told you a couple of weeks ago." "In that case," I said, "I'll probably pop down to the caravan on Friday afternoon straight from work, as you'd be having an evening meal at the hotel. Will you be joining me at the caravan on Sunday?" "No," she said, "it's not worthwhile going all the way down late morning and coming back home in the afternoon, especially as I will be tired after working all weekend." Yeah, I thought, 'working' your butt off all weekend. "Never mind," I said, "we have our holiday booked for the first week of May like we have every year and it's less than two weeks away." She didn't say anything and I wondered if she was thinking of breaking up with me before I got a chance to break off with her. I was curious to consider if I would be piqued by that but I realised it didn't make any difference. I just wanted this farce of a marriage ended one way or the other, hopefully on my terms but if not, so be it. The sooner I got everything in place to upstage her the better. The weigh-in at the slimming club on Monday night went well. OK, with the beer treats I had during the week, I only lost a couple of pounds, but took me to within a handful of pounds of my target weight. Maisie was furious. She had put on a couple of pounds and was right at the upper limit of her target range. Also, she was clearly pissed off that Gavin didn't turn up, which was unusual for him. The lovely Karen was weighed and lost a pound and a half and went out of her way to give me a comforting cuddle and, with a whisper, ask how I was holding up. I assured her that I was fine and it was all going to work out for me. Maisie looked daggers at us both but didn't say anything to me. During a quiet spell on the front desk, I sent Adrienne an enquiring text about Gavin. She called me back and said she had decided to keep him under her thumb and he wasn't going anywhere on his own anytime soon. She sounded really cheerful and not stressed at all. I suggested she come down to the club with him next week, not that she needed to lose much weight, but she might find it fun. She laughed and said she'd think about it. Adrienne wondered how Maisie and I were doing. I told her which way our relative weights were moving for each of us and we had a laugh about that too. Adrienne was a delightful girl and it looked like we were becoming friends, too. Relationships, honestly! Then a rush of slimmers came through the door to be booked in, so I reluctantly had to ring off. My dear wife was clearly agitated about something when we got home. She tried texting a couple of times when she thought I wasn't looking but I couldn't hear her receive any replies. I imagine she must've done some texting while I was occupied on the desk, too. I was grinning like a Cheshire cat while she looked like the pedigree pussy handed a bowl of soya milk. She had a couple of glasses of fortified wine while the soup was being heated up and I poured myself a light beer. When I served the soup with a big hunk of bread, I topped up her wine glass to the brim. I was delighted to see that she finished everything up without any bother. She must've been hungry. It made the enjoyment of my own version of the tasty soup even more satisfying. Yoghurt and fruit for afters was also great, full fat for her and non-fat for me, I am sure both versions were delicious and, as a nice bonus, she finished off that bottle of wine. I made a mental note to get in another case at this rate plus another bottle or two of vodka. Next day Tuesday was a workday for Maisie and she had a hangover, nor was she in a very good mood. Still, a bar or two of chocolate after breakfast seemed to help settle her stomach a little. I left the house as if I was heading to work before her as usual, and parked down the road waiting for her to drive by. Then I returned home and went completely through her wardrobe, selecting some everyday clothes and other items I recognised that she wore frequently. I sorted them into different suppliers and packed them into a couple of carrier bags for each store. I drove down to the shopping centre and started with Marks and Spencer, then Next and a number of other high street chain stores. I was trying to get some of the same style and colour but in a size or two bigger. I had mixed success, apparently all these stores seem to change their women's fashions every fortnight or so, while the guys' stuff seems to only change every couple of years. Anyway, I bought what I could on the credit card. At home I packed them back in the wardrobe, having remembered to cut out the size labels. I chucked the small sizes in the Sally Ann charity bin. I felt in a particularly generous mood on Maisie's behalf during that Tuesday. For one thing, I booked and paid up front for a slap up romantic dinner and a room for the night for Adrienne and partner at the swankiest hotel in the district for a couple of weeks' time. It barely made a dent in Maisie's bank credit card. I called Adrienne about it and, of course, she was delighted with Maisie's generous gift, even if Maisie knew nothing about it. After all it's the gift that counts, not the thought. Adrienne said she could easily arrange for her children to go to her mother for the night. I said it was the least that Maisie could do for her. I did think to ask her if she had a suitable frock to wear for the occasion. She was sure that she could manage to find something appropriate. I informed her that simply managing wasn't an option, so I said I'd pick her up on Wednesday morning and re-enact that shopping scene from the 'Pretty Woman' film. She laughed and said I had a date. I arranged the pick up time for after nine, once she had packed the kids off to school. I signed off on our phone conversation but not before I had found out her favourite hairdresser and told her to keep the Saturday afternoon free before she went to the hotel. When I terminated the call to Adrienne, I found I'd received a voicemail from Gordon. He told me he had sent a couple of emails and directed me to check out my laptop. I did, and found Gordon had come up trumps. He had confided in several trusted workmates that he and Mrs Cox's husband were exposing the quarterly sex scandal. His friends came on board and, with their help, Gordon had been able to put together a dossier for me to show who they believed would pair off at the weekend. He had included identity photographs from their personnel files and car index numbers to boot. Another document was a list of all the senior members of the board, who Gordon thought might be interested in what was going on, and their email addresses. I could have kissed him, but my wife had been there, done that; perhaps I could kiss Josephine instead and she could pass it on. I rang Gordon at work. "Can you talk?" I said. "It's lunchtime and most people are out of the office, so go ahead." "I wanted to thank you for the info and also warn you that the S will hit the F on Monday." "I thought so," Gordon chuckled, "do you need any help at the weekend?" "No, I'm good, I just need to organise some photo and security camera equipment on-line." "You can hire everything you need in town. I'm a keen amateur photographer and have a discount card at the store. If you want to go now, I can help you get the right kit." [to be continued...] Fat Chance Ch. 03 I knew where the camera shop was in town, I had bought several cameras from them over the years. However, the last couple of cameras I had bought on the Internet to save money but neither of them turned out quite what I wanted. I learned the hard way that if you didn't quite know enough about what you were buying, it was better going to a specialist. "I am about twenty minutes from the town centre," I told Gordon, "meet you at the shop, the one at the top of the High Street, isn't it?" "That's the one," said Gordon, "See you in twenty." Before I forgot, I booked the appointment for Adrienne at her hairdressers. Maisie's credit card paid for the works: hair cut, colour, nails, full scrub and make-up for the afternoon before her big date with her idiot wayward husband. I didn't do this for him, although he was going to get the benefit, I did it for his lovely wife, who was now guaranteed to be even more knock-out gorgeous than ever on the night. Once we've added the right dress and underwear, she was going to look absolutely fabulous. I wanted her to be so fantastic that she would have a real boost to her confidence, turn every male head in that restaurant and teach Gavin he could easily be losing her if he didn't shape up and take responsibility for his family. I sent Adrienne a quick text giving her the booking times. I got a heart in reply, that was a first for me. I was five minutes late getting to the photography store and Gordon was already checking out what they had available to hire. "How much you wanna spend?" he grinned, after looking up as I entered the musty shop and rang the bell under the welcome mat. "I want the best, so the sky's the limited, Maisie's paying." "Thought as much," Gordon said, spreading his arms to the kit spread out on the counter, "You are going to need all this, my friend". "Gosh!" I said, perhaps rethinking how high the sky was, I had already maxed out one joint credit card and I had a fair idea that shopping with Adrienne would max out the second. "How much does this lot come to?" "£220, for hire for the week, including these lenses and extra memory cards. I worked a special deal with Max here." Behind the shop counter, Max looked like a wrestler, he had visible tattoos on his forehead, neck and arms, so I guess he was covered in them. He smiled, displaying a mouth filled with what looked like an elephants' graveyard, held out a hand and crushed mine - and I had hands that could undo wheel nuts! "Been there myself, man, I caught the bitch red-handed. I'm still making dough from putting her sex video on-line though, so if you need any help there, fella", he growled through his yellow teeth. "I think I've got that covered," I grinned, "But I'll let you know if I have any difficulties." "You do that," growled Max through his ivory tombstones, "I have sommat else to show you over here." Further down the counter he had a sign up saying 'Home Security'. Big Max menaced his way down the counter and turned under the sign. "Here!" Max said. Gordon and I followed his command, recognising the alpha male when we saw him. He reached under the counter and pulled out a medium-sized box. He pointed to the upside down pictures on the box as he explained. "Three pinhole cameras which have limited pan and tilt, and auto focus lenses which work great in low light. They are motion-sensitive so they don't come on until someone comes into the room and they turn off if no activity for a few minutes. Any idiot can easily connect them to lighting circuits for power or use a battery pack connected to this transmitter box. They don't record on tape in situ but send a streaming signal to the HD of your PC," Max explained. "What about a Mac? I don't have a PC." Max stared me in the eye with a look that could melt glass, put the box away under the counter and rummaged around for a full minute before pulling up another very similar box. "As I was saying, sends a signal to your ... Mac. You can pan, alter focus and zoom from distance. This should work with your Airport Extreme, range about 500-750 feet, depending on how much ferro-concrete is in the way. I sell a lot of these babies. Take it home and try it out. That'll be £299, or £249 with Gordon's discount." Thank goodness for Maisie's excellent credit rating, I thought. Max had no problem with the name on the card when I told him it was her card. Have you ever heard a grizzly bear laugh? It's funny, yet somehow particularly disturbing at the same time. We were both pretty laden down with photographic goodies on our way back to my van. I needed to talk to Gordon about my intentions. "Time for a coffee before you go back to the bank?" I asked. "Sure, I've taken the rest of the afternoon off, remember?" We went to a small cafe, well off the High Street. It was quiet. I hadn't had anything to eat so far, so I opted for a baked jacket potato with cheese and beans. Gordon was good, he said, he had taken sandwiches to work for lunch. "You know earlier I said the S would hit the F?" "Uh-huh!" "Well, once I release any photos I take and let everyone at the bank's HQ know about the shenanigans at these quarterly bank meetings, Jo's going to know about your attendance and she's a bright as well as beautiful woman, as you well know." "I know," Gordon grinned ruefully, "And I'm in the doghouse already I'm afraid, because she knows!" "She knows? How?" "I guess because I told her Sunday afternoon, just after lunch, after Kylie was down for a sleep and we were doing the washing up. She wanted to know who you were and why you were helping me with the house and I told Josie that your wife was my manager and was a power-hungry, unfaithful bitch who preyed on married men and blackmailed them into doing what she wanted. She looked at me in horror when I added that I was one of them." He paused then and drained his coffee. "Then she smacked me, good and hard," he admitted, unconsciously rubbing his left cheek, "She kept pummelling me in the chest with her fists and crying so hard it made me cry along with her. When she tired of hitting me, she screamed obscenities and woke Kylie up from her afternoon sleep. We both went to her and I lifted her out of her bed to calm her down and we both held her while Josie kissed her and we all held on tight." Gordon raised his head from the fascinating dregs in the bottom of his cup. I had no words to add, so he continued. "She asked me why you and I seemed to get along, considering our relationship, and I told her that we were both victims here. Mrs Cox was cheating on you, she was blackmailing me and she had two other men that we were now aware of in her clutches. We had a common aim to bring her down. I told her I would probably offer to help you with your revenge this weekend. I think it was your attitude to the situation that saved my bacon. OK, I'm sleeping on the couch right now but at least I'm still in the house." "You need to get back home now, instead of wasting time here with me, Gordon. Rebuild your life with your wife and children. Maisie and I? Well, we stopped talking and communicating with each other too long ago to salvage anything from our marriage now. Clearly Maisie had needs which I wasn't given a chance to fill for her. Damn! If I knew she wanted loving four times a week, I could have managed. I thought she didn't want me and I suppose I was right. She didn't and probably still doesn't." "Josie and I have been together forever, she was literally the girl next door. She moved into my street when she was 10 and we went to the same schools. We lost our virginity together and, as far as I know, I have been her only lover. I don't love anyone else, I don't want anyone other than her. I certainly don't want to lose her or my family." "Well you can start by going home, and telling her you love her and only her, along with Kylie, and the new baby when it arrives. And keep on telling her until she lets you hold her close again. Keep communicating, that's what let Maize and me down. Tell Jo that you think she is the most beautiful girl in the world and you know for sure you don't want anyone else. Wear her down enough and hopefully you can repair the damage." "What are you doing tonight?" Gordon asked as he pulled his coat on. "Because we have our photography club meeting in the primary school at seven and I've got an idea how we can help you for the weekend." "Well, I'm free," I said, "Maize has one of her late nights at the bank tonight, so I expect she'll stay late even though you aren't there, although she may get home earlier than usual. I need to prepare a meal for her, I planned on chops, gravy, mashed potatoes and peas for her and a hot chicken salad for me." "I'll pick you up at 6.45pm, then," Gordon said. "Mmm, if you drop me off after the meeting, Maisie might see your car and suspect something. We are not supposed to even know one another. How about I pick you up at six thirty, that way Jo will know you are with me?" "If you come at five thirty, you can have tea with us." "OK, you're on, I'll just do Maize's meal and leave it in the microwave for her." We left, Gordon walked back to the bank to collect his car and I went back to the van and home to prepare the evening meal. I left Maisie a note to say I'd be back about ten. Then I went around to tea with Jo and Gordon. Jo greeted me with a warm embrace and said how sorry she was about Gordon's involvement, staring daggers at her husband as she spoke. I tried my best to put her right about Maisie, what a shark she was and that once she got her teeth in she was relentless. I told her that with Gordon's help I was going to expose her and that Gordon was very brave as he sought to do the right thing. I put all the blame on my wife, and that she was going to pay for what she had done. When we left to go to the meeting, Jo bade us both well with a kiss on the cheek, which Gordon took as a good sign. Perhaps I overdid it a bit calling her beautiful and squeezing her bottom, but then I didn't want to tell any lies and I was trying to set both an example and a benchmark! Gordon didn't take umbrage, he was content with his first kiss in three days and was optimistic that at least he now had something positive on which to rebuild his marriage. Talk about lively meeting. Max had already whet the appetite of the early birds in their individual groups about my little upcoming expedition and hadn't actually expected me to be at the meeting at all. When he noticed me come in, as chairman of the group he called the meeting to order, introduced me as a guest speaker and ripped through the meeting's usual formalities as read in record time. Then Max called me to take the floor. I am usually tongue-tied talking to more than two or three people, I was virtually catatonic at my wedding, although that may partly have been down to the booze. I was determined to be sober and enjoy every single moment of the divorce. The crowd of about thirty photographic enthusiasts listened very carefully as I told my tale. I included no names, no pack drills, but you could hear a pin drop as I described my proposed exposé at the hotel over the coming weekend. I got a standing ovation, followed by a number of comments from the floor, like why not expose all the pairings, some fifteen or so rather than just my own wife? The consensus was that it would appear more noble to the public, as it was clear that I wanted publicity, to expose all who took part, so that the bank couldn't sweep it under the carpet. In fact, if they tried to cover it up, the very survival of the bank would be in question. To do this, we would need all the available members to take part in the photography, the logging of times and identifying the people involved. It could be a joint project that would be a talking point of the club for years to come and could distinguish the club among its peers too. Max said they could pick on exhibitions, showing sanitised photographs of the operation. Max offered to break out every surveillance pack he had in his store and run the control room, with the proviso that he would be permitted to put the results on his porn site. There would be a cut going to the club as an anonymous donation, of course, with a sizeable royalty going to me for setting it up and financing it. I offered, using Maisie's trusty credit card of course, to book one of the expensive suites and three or four of the standard rooms from Thursday to Sunday for what I would describe as a photography convention. I even went on-line there and then on my laptop, using the school's wifi, and was able to book the rooms we required from Wednesday to Sunday. Because the hotel was so empty otherwise, the midweek nights were virtually being given away. Operation Flash was under way. It was early closing Wednesday, so Max and I agreed to go to the hotel as soon as I had finished my check-up for sexually transmitted diseases, so he could scout out the land and negotiate access to the rooms. Apparently he had aided a number of private eyes in doing this sort of photography over the years. "How else do you think I caught my wife on film and got the material for his web site, gotchabanged2rights.com?" he asked. Well, no question now, he could have my footage for his site if he wanted. It would save me the hassle of creating one from scratch, and he already had established referral links with hundreds of other sites. Maisie had scoffed her dinner, mashed potato laced with lashings of mozzarella, high in saturated fats and all, plus half the fresh bottle of vodka-topped up wine left cooling in the fridge. We were down to only three mixed bars of chocolate in the fridge so I rounded it up to the even dozen from my secret store and splashed some more vodka in the half bottle of wine. I left her a note saying as she had gym tonight and late bank night on Thursday before her weekend meeting away, I would take advantage of a lack of servicing jobs at work to go to the coast Wednesday afternoon and would see her on Sunday when we both got back. As far as she was concerned I still had lots of jobs to do to get the caravan fit for occupancy, but all that work was complete. Wednesday morning I scooted out of the house, leaving her to microwave the porridge left for her in the microwave. It was made with full Jersey cream milk, which I had poured into the old skimmed milk bottle. I got to Adrienne's in time for a coffee, before her blue-rinsed mother collected her youngest two for the day. Adrienne didn't introduce me to her mother, who was giving me some funny looks, looking down her long nose. I couldn't resist saying "Fanks fer doin' this fer us, Darlin' - I've bin lookin' forward to takin' yer lass owt fer a treat all week, yer know wot I mean?" When smacked my lips and I winked at her, I thought her false teeth would fall out before her jaw hit the ground! I apologised about it to Adrienne when she got down from getting changed but she said don't worry about it, the whole family were in uproar because Adrienne had kicked Gavin out of the house the previous night. Apparently, once she had told her family that Gavin had been caught putting it about and having an affair, Adrienne's little sister Laura had burst into tears, saying that it was not her fault. It transpired that she'd had an affair with her brother and she guiltily brought it up without thinking it through. So Gavin was tapping my wife two or three times a week and at least occasionally with his sister! Relationships, just how complicated did men and women have to become in the singular pursuit of sexual happiness? Shopping? Now, it will come as no surprise to you that I hate shopping with the missus, it just seems such a waste of time. With Adrienne though, it was a pure act of joy. She tried on half a dozen outfits and looked drop-jaw gorgeous in every one of them. If she was Maisie wearing those dresses, I wouldn't have let her out of the house in any one of them, she'd have looked too contrived, definitely slutty. But Adrienne looked simply sublime, effortlessly beautiful, gracefully sweet and tasty without being tarty at all. If Maisie's credit card would have stood it, I'd have got all six. In the end I persuaded her to take two, plus matching shoes and evening bags. Her smiles will live with me forever and worthy of every single penny that it cost Maisie. We laughed throughout our mid-morning coffee. If I wasn't still in love with my bitch wife I would have been head over heels with this delightful girl by now. I had to keep reminding myself that getting Gavin and Adrienne back together again, but with the girl holding the moral high ground and the upper hand relationship-wise, was really what I wanted. I told her about the weekend showdown and what we planned to do with the assistance of the local camera club. She laughed out loud and asked me, "What do you think my job was before I became a stay-at-home mother?" I guessed the usual, "Ooh, swimsuit model, air hostess, Las Vegas chorus girl, the face of Christian Dior..." I was running them off finger by finger, which rewarded me with the most delicious of giggles. "No, silly man," she relented, "I used to be a film editor at the TV studios, mostly editing news footage. I have kept my hand in with the family videotapes and have all the latest software at home. And, with the current hiatus in my marital arrangements, I can offer my services at the weekend, free of charge." I told her tat the majority of stuff will be on PCs and my stuff on Mac. Could she handle that? She said it would all feed into her MacBook, she would edit everything with no problem and save out to both CD and DVD. "OK," I said, "you are on!" I gave her the details of the hotel and conference centre. Shopping for sexy underwear with her was a giggle too, she offered to model every outfit, but I knew I couldn't possibly take that level of stimulation. By then we were so comfortable in our friendship that she happily let it pass and allowed Maisie's credit card to buy two of the best outfits in the store straight off the peg. After my STD tests at the clinic, I contacted Max and we drove down separately to the hotel. I signed him into the quality suite and I took one of the smaller standard fare rooms that I had booked. Thursday morning I rose early and drove back home, well, nearly all the way. From my vantage point just down the road, I noticed Maisie left more than a little late for work, the lazy fat drunken cow. I let myself back into the house and awaited the appointment with the estate agents. The first one gave me a price of £260,000 for a quick sale, the second £270,000. Both said offers would be in the region of £250,000 for an immediate sale and, if I was prepared to hang on a few months, maybe put the price up to £290,000. I instructed them both to list it at offers in excess of £250,000 but without a board up outside the property for now. I didn't want to sell that high, as it would mean Maisie getting £120,000 plus, out of the deal. I thought I might have to be a little more creative about this sale to push her cut into five figures. I grinned as a couple of ideas came immediately to mind. By the time I had locked up the house, ensuring everything was left as it was, with the breakfast things still congealing in the sink. I did open the other two screw-topped bottles of wine in the fridge, poured away a glassful from each and topped them up with vodka. I could see I was going to need more bottles of vodka. Then I drove back to the conference centre. Max had been busy chatting up housekeeping and had secured skeleton keys to all the rooms. I guess in the daylight he looked less menacing, possibly even irresistible to women of a certain age. Fat Chance Ch. 03 Using the bank name list Gordon had supplied, Max had found out from the hotel staff what rooms had been assigned to each guest. He had already installed all the surveillance cameras in the suites and all of the standard rooms which were expected to be used by the bank staff at the weekend. He had installed the Mac version in Marshall-Hobbs' suite just for my benefit. He had tested all the PC versions and they worked perfectly. He insisted I check my version out on my Mac, I did and it worked also worked perfectly. Max was actually impressed by the marginally better graphics. Max then drove back to his shop, as his assistant had opened first thing in the morning and he wanted to check that his store was running all right. This left me at a bit of a loose end during the rest of Thursday, so I enjoyed a leisurely lunch and then walked around the conference centre, familiarising myself with all the room locations and the assembly points for fire evacuations, which we had planned for Friday night. I also noted the positions of CCTV cameras, but there were very few about, plus all the fire alarm locations. Then I hired a car locally and drove back to park by Maisie's bank late in the afternoon to check on Maisie's movements. Her car was parked in the car park. About seven in the evening, Maisie came out of the building alone, leaving the offices in darkness and I scooted back to the hired car. She drove back towards the area we lived and I followed. She drove through into the town centre and parked by the only decent restaurant there and went inside. I thought about going up to the window and peering in, but didn't want to be recognised by anyone, so I waited. She left alone after about ninety minutes and went home. I drove back to the conference centre and had a late light meal and went to bed. Friday morning I got a call from Adrienne that her STD tests came back negative, although the AIDS test would take up to three months. I checked that they came in a plain envelope and she confirmed that you couldn't identify where it had come from without opening it, so Maisie would probably think it was junk mail. I would have to wait until after Maisie left work to head for the conference centre, I couldn't risk the possibility that she would go home first. Friday early evening I hung around the reception area, hiding behind a succession of large newspapers and kept an eye on the people coming in from the car park and registering. I was near enough to both see and hear them and checked each one off against their photos and names on the list. It was about seven in the evening that Maisie came in alone to check in. She didn't even glance in my direction. It was another half hour before Marshall-Hobbs put in an appearance. Before he arrived, some of the photographic group came in, including Gordon. I helped them sign in, keeping an eye out, in case Maisie was about. Fortunately, I had never had much time for the snooty people at the bank and, although I did go to some bank functions, they were mainly populated by local branch members. I really didn't know any of the regional staff shown on the bank list. I took Gordon up to my room and, as soon as he started unpacking his few changes of clothes, I asked him if he had had a chance to check for STDs. Yes, he had and the all-clear came through that day, which was a lot off his mind. He was still awaiting the Aids test results. We had our evening meal sent up from room service and while we were eating we checked on the early results coming through the cameras. The results were very interesting and we picked up some hot video material for Max's web site before some bankers even went to dinner. Maisie and Marshall-Hobbs changed into their evening clothes in their separate rooms. I wondered if they had cooled their relationship? The bankers, mostly already sorted into their pairs, were hardly disguising their relationships as they gathered in the bar and restaurant. Members of the camera club were snapping away, gathering both stills and video evidence. Adrienne then called me to say she had just arrived in the car park, with her video camera and her laptop. I took her to the room she would be sharing with a couple of club members, to drop off her overnight bag, and took her to Max's suite, which was right next door to Marshall-Hobbs' suite. We went up the back stairs to avoid bumping into anyone. I was sure that Marshall-Hobbs wouldn't know me from Adam and Adrienne had no connection with the bank, so there was little risk involved. There was a slim chance I may have bumped into Maisie, if she had gone to Marshall-Hobbs' suite while I was showing Adrienne to our rooms, but she was nowhere to be seen. During the evening, club members brought their cameras to Max's suite and downloaded their images. Adrienne starting putting together short films and connected stills from the early birds that had sex before dinner. Max took the DVDs and started uploading the finished movies and advertising trailers to his website, and set up referral links from other sites. It was fascinating seeing him work. All the new images and videos he was loading up was generating a lot of interest and he showed me the log counters and the money rolling in. Apparently the Internet world never sleeps and money was already flowing in as US dollars. Max's teeth had never had so much exposure as long as this! So, we declared Operation Bang well and truly under way. [to be continued] Fat Chance Ch. 04-05 After cocktails, dinner and dancing afterwards, the bankers and other guests started back to their rooms in pairs. Not only in pairs, there were a couple of other combinations and swap-rounds happening in those hotel rooms, which raised some eyebrows in our suite and encouraged Max to rub his hands together Fagin-like. Apparently, his website was divided up into several different categories and some of the videos would apparently fit more than one area of interest. Sure enough, Maisie and Marshall-Hobbs retired to his suite after dinner and I'm afraid there was nothing I could do to stop them. Adrienne worked my Mac computer for me and the precise moment when the scene reached, what Max termed as the "money shot", then one of the photographers, Barry, broke the fire alarm round the back corridor of the building where there were no CCTV cameras. Everyone was ready in place with their cameras to get stills and movies of couples emerging together from their rooms in various states of undress, without making their capture too obvious. In the panic, the subjects of our attention were too intent on finding safety to notice the cameras. Lots of people ended up milling around in the vicinity of the assembly points. The fact that it was raining heavily was an added bonus. Gordon and I got out of the hotel quickly down the back stairs and along the street to a bus shelter I had scouted out earlier, to avoid being recognised. We sneaked back to the edge of the car park, when the rain eased off, and Gordon took a series of shots of my wife and lover, with their arms around each other, as they waited in the cool and damp night air for the fire service to give the all-clear. After the Fire Brigade had checked the building out thoroughly, everyone was allowed to file back in and once again we all took photos of the couples two by two, or whatever combination they returned in. Looking at the resumed transmissions from the pinhole cameras, showed a number of couples whose ardour had been dampened by the alarm, but others managed to provide feedback as further fodder for Adrienne's editing talents and Max's thorough satisfaction. My Mac worked overtime as my wife and the double-dealing double-surname continued to add to Max's revenue stream. We set the second alarm off about three in the morning, which the camera group were all expecting, and got more movie and still evidence of the barely-clothed couples, multiples, etc. Again, Gordon and I made ourselves scarce while the rest of the guests shivered at the edges of the car park. After filing back into the building we dozed in shifts until first light. It was amazing the footage we got in very good lighting conditions early in the morning. Some of the couples were even hard at it during the day, while the bankers were supposed to be attending the conference and training meetings. Adrienne had managed to grab a few hours' sleep for the latter part of the night and Max scooted back to open the shop with his assistant and to cope with the usual Saturday rush. When Adrienne stirred, I asked her who was looking after the children and she said with a smile that it was Gavin that was staying in the house. He was without transport, as Adrienne used the family car to get to the hotel. She laughed as she said her parents were also keeping her sister on a short leash. "What does Gavin know about this sting operation we are running?" I asked. "Nothing," she said, "he thinks I am having a weekend away with some girl friends, which is what I told him. He also knows that, when I get home on Sunday morning, he'll have to get his butt out of our house again!" Adrienne laughed when she finished saying, "By now, Gavin must have heard from my Mum about the rude man who was at the house on Thursday, because they are both curious about you. Gavin quizzed me about whether I would be seeing any male friends and had got quite heated when I said there was a distinct possibility of that happening." "What did he say to that bombshell?" "Gavin asked straight out if I would be sleeping with anyone, while trying to contain his jealousy. I had replied that I might doze for a while but I wasn't expecting to be doing much sleeping!" We both laughed at that little joke at Gavin's expense. We talked about her marriage and what she wanted for the future of her family. She had three young children with Gavin. She still wanted Gavin back in the family but very much on her terms, to ensure he kept on the straight and narrow. Gavin seemed to be genuine in promising that he would do anything to put his past behind him and be the family man that Adrienne was looking for. But then he was saying all this before his affair with Adrienne's sister came to light. So Gavin seemed to have a chasm to cross as far as honesty was concerned, if Adrienne was going to be confident in allowing his return. Adrienne wondered what my plans were, following Maisie's exposure. I told her, "I've resigned my job and am in the process of selling up all our assets. I'll have to split them between Maisie and myself, of course. Then, I expect I will move abroad, probably to France, somewhere warm and sunny." Adrienne carried on running through editing more videos, which were coming in all the time. She was building up files for each cheating couple, as well as feeding them through to Max to deal with. Gordon had prepared spreadsheets, with a printed copy on a display board, so we were able to tick off whether we had still, films and completed files foe each person, cross-referenced to their respective partner or partners. Gordon was running a slick operation, leaving me more or less as a spectator. Max returned early Saturday evening and he checked through and uploaded the files that Adrienne had provided. From the complimentary comments they were paying each other, it looked like the pair of them had negotiated some rates of pay for the work she had done and for future work. Lucrative business, the porn industry, apparently. Saturday night was much like Friday night, although we didn't bother with the fire alarms any more. Every hotel room taken by the bank staff was an individual studio set for the biggest porn shoot ever. Mind you, no-one for a moment considered contacting the Guinness Book of Records! Mr M-H and Mrs Cox managed to excel their exploits of Friday night and were worthy of star bidding on the web site. They produced three excellent long clips, so they tell me, I couldn't bear to watch. Adrienne worked her magic with piecing the feeds together and started outputting CDs and DVDs of each couple, for labelling up and passing onto their spouses and the bosses at the bank. The majority of the photographers melted away home during Saturday night and Sunday morning, including Gordon, who received heartwarming thanks from me. After all, the fantastic organisation of this massive sting operation was down to him. I wished him all the best with his wife Josephine and promised I would definitely see him at Kylie's birthday, if not before. Yawning madly, drinking black coffee as if it was about to disappear from the shelves, I stuffed CDs and DVDs in pre-addressed padded envelopes for mailing off later. That was Operation Wallop and we were keenly waiting for the inevitable fallout once these were received by the partners of the guilty parties and their bosses on Tuesday. We had a nice file of non-X-rated stills of couples emerging from hotel rooms in dressing gowns or otherwise on Friday night and this was loaded as a slide show on the bank's own website. I hacked into that site on Sunday morning, thanks to some passwords that Gordon had managed to secure earlier in the week. I rigged the slideshow of images as a default to the home page. That was the culmination of the exercise which I had termed Operation What A Picture! Adrienne called it a wrap as far as she was concerned at that point. She hugged Max, now her business partner, and saved a special hug for me, enquiring if I was all right with what we were doing. Of course I said I was, even though I wasn't, and sent her off with a playful smack on her bottom and wishing her well for her coming event next Saturday. For a while she had forgotten all about it, and said now thought that Gavin would be allowed to stay on the sofa for the rest of the week and she would play the outcome of Saturday night by ear. She was looking forward to that night with a positive attitude for rebuilding her marriage. I was looking forward to the coming week being the total destruction of mine. During the morning, the bank contingent started to drift away. Max used his skeleton key to enter the empty rooms and remove his cameras. While he was doing that we called him on the mobile, advising who else was on the move through reception, so he managed to get them all out in a surprisingly short space of time. We checked out, when we were ready to. I settled all the outstanding food, drinks and calls bills using our remaining joint credit card. I noted with some humour that none of the rooms I had rented, for the comfort and refreshment of the camera club, had watched any of the porn channels available! I posted off all the bulky envelopes of CDs and DVDs at several post boxes in the area before heading home. My mobile phone received a call on the way back home, from Maisie. I answered. She was home and opening the mail and was surprised to receive confirmation from the bank that the limit on her credit card had been increased without her knowledge. "Yes," I replied, "that it was my doing, honey. I wasn't expecting the notification to come through yet. I didn't want it to spoil the surprise." "But why increase the limit? We always pay the balance off every month." "OK, it was meant as a surprise for you, sweetheart and I wanted to use one of the cards that we didn't usually use, to ensure that what I'm getting for you, is going to be the surprise of a lifetime." "Ooo," she said, as excitedly as I had heard her recently, although nowhere near the level I understood she regularly peaked during the weekend, according to Adrienne. "I wonder if I can guess what that is?" "If you guess, Maisie, then it won't be a surprise, will it?" "If I can't guess it, can you give me a clue, sweetheart?" "All I can say, dearest," I almost but not quite choked on the last word, "is that you will get everything you deserve, for being my one true wife for twenty years. I am on my way home, now, honey." "See you soon," she replied. "I'm so tired after the conference that I am going to have a long soak and sleep all afternoon. Can we eat later tonight?" "No problem, I'll try and keep quiet and not disturb you when I get home." On the way back, I popped into see Gordon and Josephine and gave him a disk which Adrienne had prepared. It was an edited highlights, which gave an overview of what generally happens at the quarterly seminars. Josephine commiserated with me about Maisie's sex tapes, saying that Gordon had told her that I wasn't able to watch. I said I lacked the backbone to do that and she held me close and said I was the bravest person she knew and that Gordon and she were determined that they would keep each other working towards staying together. I told them I admired them both and wished them every hope for the future. I promised not to be a stranger and was definitely coming to Kylie's birthday party before leaving the country for good and moving to France. When I got home, the house was quiet and Maisie was in bed fast asleep, although I had the evidence that she had not exactly been as angelic as now she looked in repose. Amongst the mail I found the unopened letter from the family planning clinic. I was in the clear infection-wise, which was a relief. I hid the letter away. I put the dinner on, roasted lamb, roast potatoes (half in goose fat and half in fat-free spray), roasted vegetables (again, roasted in two separate trays) and some steamed vegetables. I made one lot of gravy made with all the fat drained from the meat, and had my own dinner dry. I served them up on plates and covered them ready to microwave when Maisie eventually surfaced from her catch-up sleep. I noticed that all the wine had gone from the fridge, but I had another case in the van, along with a couple of bottles of vodka. I topped up the larder and put three bottles in the fridge after twisting the caps, pouring away a generous glassful and topping up with vodka. She woke up in the early evening and had a shower. I served up the dinner, with full-fat yoghurt and fruit for her as afters. She polished off the first bottle of wine and broached the second. I stuck to a non-alcoholic beer, which tasted revolting. Then I showered and went to bed. I was physically and mentally exhausted and knew that I was going to need all my strength come the morning. Chapter 5 - Wallop! I got up early on that Black Monday and was out of the house before Maisie awoke. I drove down to the mobile home and aired the place, doing a bit of general tidying, before shopping at the local store to fill up the larder for the following week or so. I included plenty of wine and chocolate as well as those really big bags of crisps and corn chips. The weather was bright and warm and sunny, and the caravan park deserted, at the beginning of the week, following the activity over the wet weekend. It was the lull before the storm, though, come Friday the place would fill up with people enjoying the first full spring bank holiday weekend, with many staying for the whole of the following week. I was expecting a call from home at some stage and it was shortly after eleven o'clock, as I sat on the sunny deck enjoying a cup of coffee, that the call came through from Maisie. I recognised her number. I answered it brightly, with a cheery, "Hi Honey! What can I do for you on this lovely day?" She hesitated. I think she had intended giving me a blast for ruining her life but I had instantly disarmed her by being so cheery. I could almost hear her brain tick over, wondering if it was me that caused the storm she must be having at work or not. If it had been me blowing the whistle, she must've reasoned, then our marriage would be over and I wouldn't even be on speaking terms, let alone be so cheerful. "I was just wondering if you were at work today?" she said slowly and haltingly, as if she only had a part of her mind doing the talking, the rest of her brain matter scheming how she could safely ride the storm blowing around her ears. "No, I'm not, hon, I'm at the caravan," I replied, keeping my voice as upbeat as possible, "I've loved coming down here at the weekends and it was so quiet at work that I have taken a couple of days off. I was going to call you later and let you know about having to fend for yourself for meals for a couple of days. Anyway, why the call?" "Oh, there's a big enquiry going on at the bank, at area level rather than branch, but it is creating a horrible atmosphere. So, I thought I'd like to take the rest of the week off and come down to the caravan early." She sounded upset, I wasn't at all surprised. She continued, "I'm so upset, I don't even think I can drive myself down, can you come back'n pick me up, sweetie?" "Well, you know I would hon, like a shot," I replied evenly, "but it has been so nice and warm and relaxed down here that I have tied on a few cold beers and a long, cool Laophroag, that I don't think I will be legal to drive again until late this evening, sweetheart." "Perhaps we better leave it until the morning then," she said, "pick me up about eleven?" The post usually arrives by ten to ten-thirty, so I thought she would probably intercept the thick padded envelope I had anonymously posted to myself by then. I had planned for her to find it, open it and hide it from me. "Sure, hon," I agreed, "that'll make sure I miss the morning rush hour down here. So sorry the job is getting you down but big companies like High Street banks are always having regular shakedowns, so don't worry about it. Have a good night's kip and I'll pick you up in the morning. I'll see if I can get the rest of the week off as well, so we can make a fortnight of it. It's so lovely down here at the moment. Hey, maybe we can have some nice romantic walks along the cliffs." Yuk! I thought, I'd rather chuck you off the cliffs, but this thing wasn't over yet between us yet. "Sounds sweet, sugar," Maisie breathed, trying to sound sexy and failing miserably, believing me to be ignorant of the shit storm she was in the midst of, "I am really getting fed up with the time this job is taking up and keeping me away from you. I might even quit. Look forward to seeing you in the morning. Love you!" Yeah, right! I rang Gordon's mobile for an update on what was happening at the bank. "Hi Gordon, has the S hit the F?" I laughed. "Yes, you could say that," he replied, "Mrs Cox and Aoife, the girl that went away this weekend, have both been suspended and were escorted from the building about ten-thirty this morning. I think they must've taken the keys of Mrs Cox's BMW, too, it's a company car. The website has been closed down since about ten past nine. Everyone was looking at it when I came in this morning and the IT boys clearly couldn't do anything about it other than pull the plug. You made a good job of that, Jerry. The photos of the couples came out really well, the photography club members are craftsmen, and the way Adrienne put the videos all together was fantastic." "I'll tell her you said so when I speak to her," I said, "had any problems, yourself?" We had both discussed the possibilities of what this scandal would do to his career, in the days leading up to this. We were both aware that he could be out on his backside. I was pleased he had been so willing to put his arse on the line but I was worried for him, as well as little Kylie, Josephine and the baby on the way. "I was hauled into the office as soon as I came in. I was interviewed by a couple of goons from head office, people who I'd never seen before. They were speaking to all the staff who had ever been on these quarterly training sessions. I was upfront with them straight away. I got the feeling that the couple of people they spoke to before me had been hedging and not completely honest. I told them that Mrs Cox jumped my bones as soon as we got to the conference centre back in January and that she had blackmailed me to continuing our affair for months afterwards. I told them that I had owned up to my wife a couple of weeks back and had stalled on having any late night meetings for the last week with Mrs Cox. I advised them that Aoife had been blatantly boasting for the last few weeks that she was going to enjoy the fringe benefits of the weekend, so the scandal was common knowledge throughout the branch. I admitted that I had taken some of the photos at the hotel and had enlisted a dozen or so of my camera club friends to help me out. I said that my first thought was that one of them must have put the photos online. I told them I just wanted to expose what Mrs Cox and some of the other managers were doing to corrupt their helpless subordinates. Then I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the CD. I told them that in the post tomorrow everybody, and I pointedly emphasised everybody, would be getting this CD and a DVD for those wives or husbands who perhaps didn't have access to a computer. Then I got up and told them I was going back to my desk and trying my best to keep the customers we have and concentrate on damage limitation and suggested they keep that in mind, because the one person they didn't want as an enemy is me!" "Great, Gordon, I would have enjoyed seeing that!" I said. "You can, actually," he laughed, "Max and I were in the bank all Sunday afternoon putting those same cameras in the meeting rooms and Mrs Cox's room. My PC has been picking them up and uploading them to some private folders on Max's website. You have already been given permission to view them, just add a stroke plus the word 'bank' to the website URL. The password is 'Gerry01' with a Gee instead of a Jay. Sorry, that was just the way that Max set it up." Fat Chance Ch. 04-05 "Not a problem, I will have a look at it shortly," I promised. "Within an hour of me walking out of that office, Mrs Cox and Aoife were escorted from the bank by security guards and were not allowed to take anything with them. Your wife looked defiant but the girl was absolutely inconsolable." "So that's why Maisie needs a lift tomorrow, she hasn't got a car!" I told him. "So, are you still holding on in there?" "Seems like, I was called back in the office and told that a new manager and assistant manager would be down in the next couple of days and I was asked to help him out while they got settled in. It seems our assistant manager, who is in Tenerife this week, had been on this jaunt before and one of the girls at another branch who was caught out this week put the finger on him. It's going to be interesting here for the next couple of weeks, then they will probably get rid of me." I felt sorry for Gordon, none of this was his fault and if he had declined to help me I wouldn't have got as far as I had resolving my little problem. "Sorry to hear that mate, keep in touch, won't you?" "Sure will, if it hadn't been for you I would still be in her clutches and I might never have got my Josie back." "You two good?" "Think so, hope so." "Good, pass on my best to Jo and Kylie, bye." "Will do, bye to you for now, call me tomorrow for another update." I looked at Max's site and accessed the hidden folders. I watched Maisie's interview, particularly when they played her the CD. Max had installed microphones which recorded the sound too, so I could hear what was said at her interview. Maisie was clearly shocked to the core and slumped in her chair at first. When she had recovered somewhat, she demanded to know if this tape had come from me. The interviewers admitted no, the recording had come from someone in the office. She thought of Gordon straight away. She didn't mince words, just called him every foul name under the sun. For the first time since I had met and fallen in love with her, I suddenly realised how ugly, coarse and bitchy my wife really was. For the first time, since I started planning this day, I felt no twinge of loss or remorse. The bitch should pay and I was resolved that she would carry on paying until I'd finished the job. I felt depressed after that and called Adrienne to cheer myself up. Even as I dialled I realised how sad my life had become. The only friends I seemed to be on speaking terms with was one of my wife's lovers and his wife, and the wife of another lover. I wondered whether to call Mrs Marshall-Hobbs and make up a full set. "Hi, Jer!" came the cheerful greeting as she answered her phone, recognising my number, "How are you holding up, honey?" "Feeling OK, I guess, but a little mixed," I replied. "Pleased with the way it has gone so far but sad when I realise my marriage is finally over after twenty wasted years. Enough of my situation, what about yourself, did Gavin behave himself over the weekend?" "Yes, as far as I know, the kids certainly enjoyed having him around," came Adrienne's bright rejoinder, "He slept in my bed while I was at the hotel and was back on the sofa last night. I told him exactly what we had been up to over the weekend and he was shocked. He honestly didn't realise what your wife was up to, and called her a lot of not nice names once he saw the video. He said Maisie had told him that you were no longer able to get it up and was happy for her to take a lover, but that you didn't want to know who it was. Gavin said he thought he was her exclusive lover and was doing both of you a favour. He was pissed off to find out about M-H and even more pissed off to discover that Tuesdays and Thursdays, her boy Gordon was keeping her company!" I laughed at that, but it was a hollow one, the cheater being cheated on didn't bring out my sympathetic feelings at all. "Not sure if he can take any moral high ground here, what with your sister and all." "True, but both of them have now admitted that this was a one-off last Christmas round at Mum's. We were all pissed and Laura woke up with a hangover to find Gavin in her bed fast asleep. He got up in the night for a piss and went back to the wrong room." "So perhaps they didn't have sex at all, then?" "They might not have done before, but they were both horny when they woke up and they did the deed there and then. Afterwards they swore never to repeat it. Gavin was happy with that, but Laura had felt guilty ever since and owned up after Mum told her that Gavin was suspected of having an affair." "Well, I really hope it all works out for you. Must go now, I need to sort out some meals for the week. Bye!" "Bye, hon, keep your chin up!" Good job she said chin and not pecker, or I might have lost it. I concentrated on meal prep for the rest of the week, so I could heat up stuff in the microwave with the minimum of effort. I packed everything with butter and whey powder, olive oil and salt. By this time I didn't worry too much if I got fat again, even though I was only four pounds off my target. I wasn't going all the way home to go to the slimming club so I looked online and found the nearest group that meet on a Monday. I discovered one just seven miles down the coast. Would you believe it, with all that excitement over the weekend I lost five pounds and overshot my target by one pound! I was so chuffed to get my target membership, to the accompaniment of polite but slightly puzzled applause. It was just a shame that Emma and Karen, and all my thinning friends in my home town, couldn't share my triumph. Next day I collected Maisie from our home. She was all packed and ready to go and must have been looking out of the window for me. She didn't even want me in the house. She jumped on me and started kissing and pawing me like she was demented. I told her I wanted to make sure we had emptied the fridge. "Done that!" she said triumphantly. I wanted to sort through the mail. "Done it, all junk." Make sure all the appliances except fridge and freezer were off. "Done it!" By now she had stopped being all lovey dovey and back to her cantankerous foot-tapping annoyed self that I had come to know and hate. Well, not hate, exactly, but not far off. I chucked her bags and the carrier bag of perishables from the fridge and fruit bowl in the back of the van. I noted there was no wine, she must've finished it all off on Sunday and Monday. Plenty more at the caravan, I thought. We stopped for lunch on the way and she asked for a gin and tonic. I made it a triple. I asked how she had got on at the weigh-in the previous night. She didn't go, she said, "too tired" after the weekend. That explained the missing wine. Over the meal, I asked her about the current hassle in the bank. All I got back from her was that it was all about internal politics, like personnel changes at the top and how the male chauvinists were making things difficult for the few female managers. She laid it on pretty thick that none of it was her fault. I pretended that I was sympathetic to her fictitious tale, of course, and mentioned the sex discrimination act would have to be invoked if she was blocked from the area promotion she had been saying was hers for the taking. In the van, as we continued our journey, she mumbled something about the job being too time-consuming and she would prefer to be home a lot more, even if it meant leaving the bank if necessary. She kissed my hand and even held it in both hers pressed, unexpectedly lengthily I thought, into her lap until I had to let go and change gear. She was amazed to see the sign showing we were winners of the best caravan award. I must've forgotten to mention it to her. She said she was so proud of me. She stowed away her gear and I popped up to the shop to get a newspaper. I took the opportunity to drop into the clubhouse for a pint. The chairman of the caravan club introduced me to a nice young couple who were looking to buy a caravan. They weren't expecting to be able to buy one as good as mine of course, but the chairman thought I could give them a few tips about what to look for. We had a nice chat, they were a friendly pair, clearly very much in love. I took a liking to them straight away and they had my undivided attention for well over an hour as we got a few rounds in under our belts. Maisie was asleep on the deck in the unseasonally glorious spring afternoon sunshine when I got back. She was slumped in a deckchair in a two-piece bathing suit which was now at least a size too small for her. Beside her was an empty wine glass and upturned wine bottle alongside a couple of screwed up chocolate bar wrappers. I smiled, I hadn't been as cheerful in her company since I didn't know when. Her skin looked a bit red on one side. I knew that she had hardly been out in the sun at all during the winter and early spring but I thought, hey, she's a big girl, she can look after herself. I found that I had a healthy appetite for the first time for a week, so I enjoyed my early evening meal of cold roast chicken and salad. Then I waited for Maisie to surface from her alcohol-fuelled slumbers. The sun dipped over the caravans in the west of the camp and the temperature dropped before I decided to wake her up. Even in the half-light she looked as if she was burnt to a crisp. I ran the shower for her, not too hot but it did sting her. I rubbed some cream on her crinkled skin, then sat her down in front of the telly, serving her with another glass of extra fortified wine and a nice greasy lasagne. When she went to bed she was so sore that she didn't want to be touched, which suited me fine. I wouldn't touch her with yours. On Wednesday we lazed away the day, with me lounging on the deck, and Maisie staying well indoors put of the sun, trying not to rub up against anything. In between meals she managed to get through two bottles of wine, a big bag of crisps and several bars of chocolate. She looked terrible, her skin candy pink and painful, while I looked bronzed and serene. I thought I might have to do more shopping. "Got to go into work tomorrow, baby," I informed her late in the day, maintaining my present pose of loving husband, "They tell me they have a rush on. I'll leave at five in the morning for an early start and try and get back as soon as poss." "Uh huh." She was so tired, I don't think she quite took it in. The next morning I was back home early before seven and, with my cordless screwdriver, I took off all the internal doors and stacked them out on the decking in the garden. At nine I called a third estate agency and asked them to price up the house for a quick sale. Then I broke up our marital bed and piled that on top of the doors. I poured some petrol on top and flicked a lit match match into the pile. It went up like a Roman candle. Then I started to remove all the back double-glazed window units and chucked them onto the roaring fire. The glass crazed, cracked and melted, the PVC coating smoked like a bitch. The acrid smoke from the bedding, plastic and wood blew straight into the house, ash and all. The sitting room suite went on the fire next, joined by the dining room set, all her clothes, the doors from the fitted wardrobes, and finally the bedside cabinets, before sitting back and admired my handiwork. I reckon you could see the pall of smoke from outer space. Flights from the airport had to be re-routed. I was pulling the heavy oak sideboard, from the dining room towards where the patio doors used to be, when the estate agent I called arrived. He was only a young lad and I could see the fear in his eyes as he walked around the house, so he daren't turn down my request for a hand with the sideboard. I told him to price the house on the basis of no carpets as they were going on the bonfire next, and he came up with a price of up to £160,000. I told him to put it on the market for £140,000 or near offer, for immediate sale. He scarpered, pleased to have got away unscathed. Mind you, he'd have to get his suit dry-cleaned - the smoke from that burning furniture was absolutely toxic. With the carpets and underlay smoking and smouldering away nicely, I was exhausted and called it a day. I drove down to the coast with all the van windows open to blow away the smoke from my hair and clothes. A good day's work, I thought. On the way home my mobile phone chirped. It was the young estate agent speaking. I had to wind up the windows for a moment to hear what he was saying. He was still coughing slightly, but an offer from a local builder had come through for £120,000 cash in my hand by the end of the week. I told him the deal was done, and when did he want me back to sign the contracts and hand over the deeds? I agreed to see him Friday, he had a sale. [to be continued, one last chapter to go] Fat Chance Ch. 06 The final episode. There is no sex in this story. And before you ask for a follow-up to the story, no, the end is intentionally how this story ends, make of it what you will. Enjoy or well you know the rest. ***** Today was an interesting day. Although I had moved to the south of France initially, I never really warmed to the place, or got on with the people there. So, after a couple of weeks, I went further south and now I'm more than happily settled in Spain. The folks around here, and I am twenty miles from the coast, are friendly and unaffected by tourists. I've found that there are enough Brits living permanently or overwintering in the general area that I am not too lonely for company and understandable conversation. I bought outright a small studio flat in a street just off the market square. Within a short walk, this tiny town boasts a couple of cafes and a supermarket. I work in a small garage on the edge of town which services just about anything with an engine. It is relaxed, no-one works too hard and is well, compared to my previous existence, fun to work there, to be honest. My needs are as simple as they ever were. It is just that there is no current squeeze to share my otherwise relaxed and contented existence. I was just enjoying my lunchtime siesta, on the shaded lower balcony of my two story studio flat, when I was roused by a loud banging on my street door. Who could it be at this hour with the whole town asleep or making love in the shade? There she was, Maisie, standing at my door, large as a house and loud as a regimental sergeant major, her raucous voice echoing down the narrow alley. "Tracked you down at last, you bastard!" "Hello, Maize," I said, surprisingly calmly, "To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?" "Aren't you going to invite me in out of this hot sun?" "No, I'm not," I replied, noticing the two wheeled suitcases on either side of her bloated frame, "There's no room at the inn, I'm afraid. I only have one room, one bed, so you are not staying." She pushed past me. I am such a bloody wimp. Why is it that some guys beat up women, who keep on coming back begging for more, while someone like me, who has never struck a woman in his life, and would never, gets treated like a bloody doormat? God, I thought, she was the fattest I'd ever seen her, she positively wobbled up the stairs to my studio on the first floor. "Get my bags, hon," Maisie puffed as she climbed the steep stairs. She didn't ascend exactly, every step was laboured, her voluminous printed cotton frock swishing back and forth across her huge arse. Good, I thought with a hint of a smile, revenge is so sweet. "My bags, hon!" the harridan panted again as she looked back from near the top. I sighed, even divorced I seem to be at my ex's beck and call. Damn, those bags were heavy. I couldn't leave them outside, nor dump them at the bottom of the stairs, I wouldn't be able to open or close the front door. "Oh, this is nice!" I heard from the summit. "Yes ... It ... Is. ... You ... Are ... Not ... Stay ... Ing." I panted, loaded as I was with what must have been the complete Paris Collection including the prefabricated fucking walkway. "Nonsense, you wouldn't put your wife out on the streets would you?" floated down the disembodied voice. "Ex ... fuc ... king ... wife!" I panted. I needed to make a point forcefully here, but found myself at a disadvantage. I was only halfway up the stairs and thinking of setting up a base camp there to gather my strength before driving for the summit. It was far too hot at this time of the day for this kind of physical exertion and I was beginning to lose the will to continue. "And yes I would, I will!" "Nice balcony," the female voice felt fainter now, or was I beginning to lose consciousness? Oxygen, I badly needed oxygen. "No pool?!" the voice louder again, shaking me from my indolence. "Right! ... No ... pool" I started climbing again. "It's ... a ... one ... bed ... flat, noth ... ing ... more, ... noth ... ing ... less, ... I ... told ... you ... ear ... lier, ex- ... wife!" I thought it important to labour the point. I mean, who was supposed to be in charge here in my flat? (Reader, please don't answer that, I can only take so many negative vibes at once.) "Not ex-wife, not technically, anyway, hon," she said, in a way that sounded like she was gloating. "What?! ... I ... filled ... in ... all ... the ... papers ... and ..." I was at the top of the stairs at last, released the bags and stood sucking relatively coolish air into my labouring lungs, "I ... paid ... the ... bloody ... court ... fees." Standing in front of me with her back to the open doors to the balcony, Maisie appeared as a menacing silhouette, her hands on her hips. By golly, she was bloody huge. "Oh, you filled in the petition all right, Jerry, and the court awarded the decree nisi a couple of months ago, but you haven't applied for the decree absolute yet, so we are still technically man and wife." "No shit!" "Yes, shit! You didn't give your online lawyer your change of address, so I got all your mail forwarded on from our old house. Oh, nice fucking job on that house by the way, you bastard! Also, I had to get home from the coast by train. Lucky I had a bit of cash on me, as all our credit cards were completely maxed out. Nice surprise that as well, you evil sod!" "Oh! Impressed with the house, then, were you, hon?" I grinned, noticing my natural inclusion of the unmerited endearment far too late to stop it coming out. I was hoping she would regard its use as ironic rather than a slip. That house was a piece of work, though, I was quite proud of it, in my own little way. "Yeah, some builder was doing some preliminary demolition and clearing work when I got there and allowed me to take anything I wanted, I think it amounted to two carrier bags-full." She laughed at that, moving away from the window and sat her wobbly bloated body on my sofa and looked around my comfortable little flat. "You are not staying," I said, "There's no room for you, still married or not, I can apply for that decree absolute any time I want." "Course you can, sweetie," she cooed, "No telly?" "On the mezzanine," I indicated the set of steps in front of the kitchen area leading up to the open-plan bed and separate bathroom, before looking back at her, making herself comfortable on the sofa. "There are more stairs onto the roof, too. I often take breakfast up there, but too hot at this time of day. Ohh! You're blond!" I only just noticed her change of hair colour, I'm very observant, me. "That's not very convenient, Jer, all these stairs, we'll have to move, hon." "Oh, no! You are not dictating anything to me, there is no 'we' in this relationship, darling, only me. You are not staying. Definitely not staying." "So, you'd kick your virtually still-married wife out, without a second thought would you, my dear heart? After all this time that I've spent trying to track you down." "Yes I would, in an instant. And, anyway, just how did you manage to track me down?" "I still have friends at the bank, hon, and I found out that you get your monthly bank statements posted to you out here. You could get them sent to you on-line you know, sweetie." "We have a poor internet reception down here, I have to travel halfway to the coast to get a decent connection. Anyway, I didn't think you'd be on speaking terms with Gordon down at the bank." "It wasn't Gordon, as it happens. That little shit still won't talk to me. How he managed to be confirmed in my job as manager at the bank I don't know." "When your shit hit the fan, Maize, he was the only staff member left that the customers were prepared to deal with. The branch managers right across your area were decimated in the fall out, and the replacements sent from head office were too arrogant or simply weren't up to the job. The customers refused to deal with them. Gordon was their choice and the bank had no option but to offer him the position. I think he deserved his chance and has done very well since, Josephine tells me he is highly regarded." "I saw him in town last weekend with his pair of brats, and that mousey little wife of his in tow. He completely ignored me." "One of those 'brats' you refer to, is my beautiful god-daughter, Hazel. I would have you know that his wife Jo and daughter Kylie are also very beautiful. Gordon's a great bloke and he is the only reason I still bank at your branch. His help and investment advice is invaluable." "I might have known you'd be in league with him, he was the bloody whistle-blower wasn't he?" "He helped, I couldn't done it as well without him." "What!?" she exploded, "He helped YOU? I didn't think you even knew anything about it. I intercepted Gordon's disks that he sent you in the post. You petitioned for unreasonable behaviour in the divorce papers, not adultery." "That was because it was the easy option, I would only have used the tapes in extremis. It was me that sent the tapes to our house, not Gordon. I knew you would intercept them and then come down to the caravan, acting as though nothing happened. That left me free to sell the house for a song." "And you sold the bloody caravan while I was still sleeping it as well, didn't you? You utter bastard!" "Yes, and sold it to such a nice young couple, too." "Actually, they were very nice about it. All the paperwork was in order, on the basis of vacant possession. They gave me until the end of the week to get my arse out of there. I couldn't hire a car as there wasn't enough money left in the current account. I had to get a cab and the train home. Then I found I had no place to stay, as you had wrecked and sold our fuckin' house for next to nothing, you shit!" I laughed at that, revenge is so sweet. Maisie laughed too, which surprised me and I started to look at her in a different light. She regarded me, too. "I like your clean-shaven look, Jer, you always looked scruffy with that beard and the 'tache," she said, interrupting my thoughts. "Yeah, far too hot here in Spain for facial hair." "Suits you, looks very neat with the shaven head, too." She was still smiling, evaluating me. She probably noticed I remained slim. I didn't want to bring up the fact she was not only fat, but obese. Her face was still pretty though, but there was something about her that I couldn't quite put my finger on. She was different, Maisie was, very different. I had never thought of her as a blond before, it was very well done, a subtle blend of light and darker shades rather than an all-over flat bleached-out effect, it looked natural. It must have been expensive. "Your hair's nice, Maize, looks very er ... very natural," I mumbled. What a wanker! I wanted to kick this horrible fat woman out of my little adobe and now here I am giving her bloody compliments. I could kick myself but I know I would certainly fall arse over tit if I did. "You really are a dumb bastard aren't you? This dirty blond is my natural colour, I have used a chestnut hair dye ever since I started college, I wanted to get on in banking and didn't want to be labelled as the dizzy dumb blond," she tutted. "I thought you'd know that from the dye bottles in the bathroom. And, the dead giveaway was the hair colour down ... here!" She indicated her lap area by pointing where it was. "Thanks for pointing it out, dear," now I was being positively obstreperous, "It's been so long I'd need a bloody map to find it!" "You've always been in need of a map to find what makes this girl tick!" she snarled back. "What makes you tick is a different fuckin' cock every night! Anyone except me was getting the guided tour, while I was left back on the bus." "And you didn't seem to want to get off the bus, did you? You certainly didn't do anything about getting me off. I assumed you weren't interested in me any more." I was surprised about her hair colour, she must've been blond when I knew her at school. She had begun dyeing it before we started going out. She must've always had the stuff in the bathroom, but she had so many cans and jars, to make herself beautiful, that I never really looked closely at them. I used her deodorant a couple of times when she'd forgotten to buy me any, but it only provoked wolf whistles down the garage, so it was only used as a last resort. "Now you know, I may have been interested in getting you off once upon a time but not any longer. Now I just want you off my property. Still, I will say, your hair looks nice." "What do you think about the rest of me, then Jer?" She stood up and did a twirl. My first thought was where's the carnival carousel music? She was a big lady. "Your hair's shorter, an' you've put on a few pounds." I was trying to be diplomatic, I could have said 'stone'. I continued, "And you appear to be happy." She was happy, in fact her face positively glowed. Last time I saw her she had a glowing face and torso, well, all down one side it was glowing bright pink and in one or two places she was just starting to peel. But that was then, now she looked, I really hated to say it ... fabulous. Fat as fuck, but fab with it. "Of course I am happy and so will you be," she grinned, slapping her hands together for emphasis, "WE, you and I, my husband, are having a happy event!" With that she lifted up her dress. My first thought was ugh, her fat belly, but her huge belly bulge was very low, a large pair of functional white elasticated underpants straining around her waist about belly button high. Her hugely enlarged rounded breasts were also being kept in check by elastic in the form of a large white bra. She was ... Fuck! "You're ... " I couldn't even get my brain to even think the unthinkable, let alone voice it. "I'm pregnant, Jer, you can say it. Seven months gone actually, thank you for noticing and offering to let me use your toilet, you moron!" "Oh, sorry, the loo's upstairs, in the bathroom if you need it." I stuttered. "I always need it at the moment. I was afraid it might be upstairs," she said, "We are going to have to move, honey. I have to go to the loo every five minutes now and I need one on the same level as the kitchen and sofa." "You are not thinking of having your bastard sprog here. That ... is not going to happen." She was a quarter of the way up the flight when she turned and smiled sweetly at me. She had become so used to twisting me around her little finger for twenty years, she was still trying to push my buttons. She was pushing some now all right, not the ones she intended, though. "OUR sprog, dear and not a bastard, WE're still married just about, remember?" her sweet smile still on her chubby cherubic face. "You are not having one of your lover's lovechild here and expecting to put MY name down as the father are you? Because that is an offence. I won't have it and you are definitely not having the bloody thing here!" I exploded. "I bet you don't even know who the father is, do you?" I accused. "I give you that, Jerry, there is an element of doubt, granted," she smiled benignly at me from the top of the staircase, she was infuriatingly smug for a woman in her situation. "But a mother knows," she continued, "And of course you're right, the baby can't be born here, we need a separate nursery, and ..." "No, absolutely no way that is happening. Get out of my fucking house!" By now she had disappeared from view and probably already in my toilet. Haha! Living on my own, I always leave the seat up nowadays, that'll annoy her! Good! "Uh huh! You owe me big time, buster!" came her disembodied voice. It sounded echoey. Damn, she was peeing into my toilet and she didn't even bother to close the door! "You left me without a home or any visible means of support, you bastard, and we're still married!" she snapped. "I didn't think there would be any point chasing you for any alimony but I considered it was worth checking anyway, just in case you had left any money in the bank. So I had an old pal look you up. And guess what? She told me, although she wasn't allowed to give me any specific details, she did tell me that you had an active account and it was among the top dozen incomes in the branch!" "Oh shit!" I thought. "I bet you're thinking 'Oh shit!' aren't you, honey?" "Whah?!" "So, as I was still your wife, technically speaking, I got a court order to have a print out of the account from day one plus a sequestration order, as of this morning, to freeze it until I got my share of your, our assets," she said triumphantly, flushing the toilet as she did so. "And the court allowed me to take out sufficient finds in the meantime to settle our debts and join you out here." "Bugger!" OK not as dynamic as "Oh shit!" but Maisie had already said that. I hated being so predictable in front of my wife, as she apparently still appears to be. That's the last time I bloody well get a divorce on-line. "You probably didn't notice the court order as it only started this morning and your Internet connection's shit. I've checked it out. There's money going in from a single unknown source, in American dollars, and a regular amount then going out into your bank deposit account. However, there are no drawings to you, which means you must be self-sufficient over here. So I got a court order putting a hold on your deposit account as well." She reappeared at the top of the stairs just as I was mouthing the words "Oh shit!" "Did I not lipread you mouthing, 'Oh shit!' again, honey?" "Whah?!" "You are so predictable, my sweet." I am so predictable, she's right, of course. "So now all your money is tied up, honey, and only I have the means to release it." Her face looked like the smiling Cheshire cat without the fur but it didn't look like it was going to fucking-well disappear soon, unfortunately. "So, clever clogs," I asked, "a mother knows the father, does she? Who is it, Gordon?" "Not Gordon, that skinny pissant, his heart simply wasn't in it, the back-stabbing lucky little shit." "Well, I know that he doesn't fire blanks, he's got two lovely girls and he told me you liked doing it bareback." "Yes, well, that was clearly a mistake. How do you know him anyway? And didn't I hear you say you were a godparent to one of his precious little freaks?" "I followed him home from one of your trysts and he owned up to the affair. He's got two lovely daughters that he dotes on and his wife Josephine is a knockout." "So that's how you two got together, I have been wondering what was behind it all." "So, this baby could it be Gavin's? He has three children, so he is more than likely in the frame as a possibility." "Gavin was all flash and pop, that long streak of piss was all take, take, take, hopeless as a lover. Definitely not the daddy in this case. Nice bod but shit in the sack. How do you know Gavin's children, anyway? I didn't even know he had any." "I don't know the children, to be honest, I never met them," I replied, "but Gavin's wife Adrienne talks about them all the time and I make sure I speak to her at least once a week, she's absolutely lovely. Gavin's still a dick but he is trying to be the model husband for her. So it must be Mr M-H's the father-to-be then. I never actually watched the video but those that did tell me that he rang the bell seven times on that last weekend." "No, definitely not him, he had his nuts defused years ago. Apparently his wife insisted that two children were enough." "Annette will be happy to hear that, they are still negotiating the settlement and any paternity case could have delayed or affected the outcome." "Who the fuck's Annette?" "Annette Marshall-Hobbs." Fat Chance Ch. 06 "Shit! Do you know all my ex-lover's wives?" "Well, Annette's villa is just down the coast so I give her classic MGB sports car a regular service and tune-up. But I don't know her all that well, we keep in touch every couple of weeks or so." "Fuck! I guess you do know all my ex-lover's wives!" "They are pretty well my only friends, except family. They are all on my Christmas card list anyway, unless of course you tell me I need to add to it?" "Well, I'm not going to looking like this, am I?" "So, who do you think is the father then?" "You are, smarty pants." "Oh no, you're not pinning that one on me, we were married twenty years and we never got a bite, my little sperm must be dead in the water. You will have to find some other fall guy or even better ... get a bloody DNA test done!" "Can't get that arranged now until after the baby is born. Then I can prove it's yours. Anyway, if it isn't, then you are off the hook and I'll get out of your hair. But I know it's you for two very good reasons." "Only two?" I groaned, "from what fantasy world have you conjured up these reasons?" "Reason you are the Daddy number One. Your tests from the family planning clinic came through, the ones testing you for diseases after hearing about my ... habits. You went for the complete package, didn't you? Anyway, you left your clean bill of health as far as STDs go; I found it when I packed up the caravan. Then a few weeks later your Aids tests came through, forwarded to my address. They were negative as far as the Aids test is concerned and ..." and this is where she grinned maniacally and added, "your fertility test was enclosed in the same envelope and they came out positive. So your little swimmers must be determined little devils and they clearly hit the jackpot. Hence, I was put well and truly up the duff by you, you clever little boy!" "But we haven't made love in well over a year ... " I stuttered, my voice falling away at the single, sudden, terrifying thought. "You are forgetting, naughty lad, that last night we spent at the caravan. You know, when you plied me with lots of drink and had your wicked way with me. That is reason number two why you are The Daddy." "But I ..." "Yes, while on the subject of butts, I know for a fact you took my anal cherry that night, because my arse really ached that morning and I had to sit on a cushion for two whole days." "But-" "And as for my front bottom, you always used to be so gentle and considerate, but you must have been so rough and I was really sore there too. I couldn't even masterbate for another week. And don't blame anyone else because I definitely remember waking up briefly in the early morning and knowing it was you that was fucking me." She got up from the sofa then, no mean feat for a woman that size, and waddled across to plant a long lingering kiss on my lips, with added tongue as well. Revolting! "But I forgive you babe." she continued, "Now, what have you got to drink? I'm off wine and spirits, so any soft drink'll do. So, shall we retire to the bedroom for our little siesta, then hon?" "Sure babes, just give me a moment to sort out some refreshments and I'll join you." I could have told her that I used three condoms, one inside the other, for our last night together. I am ashamed to say I took advantage of the situation back then, but then she was fucking everyone else except me. Having just got the all-clear on the STDs, there was no way I was risking going bareback with her. I didn't realise I had taken her anal cherry, I just assumed she had been free and easy with everyone else and I was angry and well, I wanted my turn ... I never did look at the hotel tapes. Usually I am a gentle lover. Remember, that for twenty years I thought was the only one making love to my wife, the woman I loved. That last night in the caravan I was having angry sex and I didn't even enjoy it all that much, I was just trying to work out all my frustrations. I wasn't expecting or wanted any follow up. I would have been quite happy if I never saw Maisie again. Still, we'll find out who is responsible for the child support after the birth, in the meantime I need to resort out my finances. Tomorrow I'll get Gordon to open new accounts at the bank under a false name and for Max to reroute the payments from Overnite Deposit Investments Inc. Good job I still have those pinhole cameras connected up to my Mac. I will reposition them to cover the bed from three angles. I'm sure that Max has told me before that there is a ready market for fresh pregnant porn. Perhaps I will let Maisie stay for another eight weeks or so... The end.