9 comments/ 39128 views/ 4 favorites Game of Life Ch. 01-02 By: Denham_Forrest Game Of Life By Denham Forrest Copyright© 2008 by Denham Forrest, The Wanderer This story started out life sometime ago as one of The Wanderer's short Nemesis tales; but as he wrote, he claims that the tale took on a life of its own. Thanks go to a reader and friend from down in the antipodes somewhere, for the basic plot device that was used in the early stages of the tale. It's been well been over a year since he first pitched the idea to DF and but it took him some time to come up with - what DF considered was a not too obvious - way to build it into a story. As always DF thanks his editors and friends who encourage him to continue writing. There is no explicit sex in this story. Because its a longer tale and for ease of the readers navigation, it will be submitted in three parts, each consisting of two chapters. RG for Denham Forrest. Chapter 1: The Memory Card It all started on a Friday evening, I was just arriving home from work; rather later than I'd expected, because I was in the middle of some rather complicated negotiations on a bugger of a contract with some Yanks. They're several hours behind us, and now and again they tend to forget about the time difference; and that we have homes to go to. "Dad, dad, it's gone wrong. I could only take seven photographs and it won't let me take any more, what's wrong with it?" My tearful thirteen-year-old daughter Katie whined at me, before I'd even gotten out of my car. It didn't take me long to discover that someone had removed the memory card from the digital camera she'd been trying to use for her school project. The camera was my old one, and I'd left it in the bureau for anyone in the family to use when they wanted to. Assuming that Jamie had removed the card, either because he wanted to wind his sister up, or —and much more likely for a randy little sixteen-year-old who was quite definitely a chip off the old block - because he - and his friends - had been taking some pictures that he/they'd prefer no one else to be aware of. I smiled to myself wondering just what kind of japes the little bugger was getting up to now. Then I showed Katie where to find and how to put one of the other memory cards into the camera. Technology had moved on and - as is all too usual when you upgrade just about anything electronic nowadays - my new camera used a completely different type of memory card. I suspect that most people have been there at some time or the other, upgrade the main item and all of the little ancillaries that you've carefully accumulated over time are no longer compatible with state of the art technology. Consequently, I'd been left with an assortment of different capacity cards that didn't fit my new camera; I'd put most (but not all, for nefarious reasons) of the spare memory cards for the old camera, in the bureau drawer with it. I went further, we wrote my daughter's name on the chip and I told her it was her personal card and to keep the card safely away from her brother's grubby little hands. Panic over, I began to get the dinner going. My wife Vivian was up country for the week, visiting her little sister again as she had just dropped her first sprog, so I was playing chef that week. Young Stacie had had a rough old time of it and Vivian had been (busy) running backwards and forwards to her house spending a few days with her every month for most of her pregnancy. Stacie who was ten years younger than Vivian — an afterthought their parents claimed, an accident I should really imagine — had had three miscarriages on the trot and during this fourth one she had been molly-coddled by the rest of her family in the hope that it would go full term. So Vivian and her other sister had been spending one week a month each with her since shortly after the conception. The kids and I were old hands at surviving a week without Vivian by then and as usual we'd worked our way through all the different takeaways in town - well the near-by ones anyway - consequently that evening I was going to have to actually cook. Was I glad that Vivian was due back some time on the Sunday morning? When the kids and I sat down that evening to risk our lives and eat my efforts, I tackled Jamie on the whereabouts of the other memory card. There should have been five altogether in that draw if you included one in the camera, but there was only three left in the bag. "Haven't seen it dad. I borrow Frankie's camera nowadays when I want to take any pictures, it's far better than that old thing and it uses different cards anyway." I wasn't too convinced about Jamie's statement, because I'd actually seen him with the old camera several times in the not too recent past. Although I had to admit that Frankie had been proudly showing off the new, all singing, all dancing technological wonder, that her father brought back from Japan for her some weeks previous. It must have cost her father a bleeding mint; the damned thing could do just about everything, but make coffee. I'd been quite jealous of the girl when she showed it off to me; it put my new camera really in the shade. But then what would you expect? Frankie's parents had been divorced a few years back and like many divorced parents they were both vying for her affections. The little vixen was having a rare old time of it, playing the pair of them — and their respective new spouses - off against each other, the best she knew how. Between them, they had managed to turn the really nice little youngster that I remembered, into a spoilt little brat who could get just about anything that she desired, by playing one of them against the other. Frankie by the way is actually Frances, the fifteen-year-old temptress that Jamie's whole life had revolved around for the previous year or so. Although she'd been living several doors away all her life. God, the girls didn't look like that when I was at school. Frankie was a great kid, if as I said, a little spoilt since her parents had broken up, and had really always been a bit of a tomboy. She'd grown out of the tomboy bit a little as she'd began to mature and was really turning the young men's heads, because she'd developed one hell of a figure - for a fifteen year old - and I foresaw Jamie having the same sort of problems that I had with his mother when we were young in a year or so's time. That's of course assuming that Frankie and Jamie's courtship - that they both adamantly denied was really happening - lasted that long. Frankie and Jamie were still quite shy about admitting to Vivian and me that they spent as much time as I knew they did, snogging. Bit of a chip off the old block was my son Jamie! I had to wonder if my dad worried as much about what I was getting up to, as I did about what Jamie was doing; especially where Frankie was concerned. The card was useless for my new camera, but it had cost me a fair old screw back when I'd bought it; prices have dropped a hell of a lot since then. But, yeah call me a "tight-arsed bastard" if you like, but all the money that was spent in our house had been earned with the sweat of my brow. The other important point about the whole little charade concerning that missing memory card and in particular Jamie - the most likely candidate to have some knowledge as to its whereabouts - claiming that he hadn't taken the thing, was that it had set the "suspicious parent" part of my brain, off a thinking. Quite surprising what kind of scenarios my lecherous old brain conjured up. Later that evening I had the bureau drawer out and emptied its contents onto the floor, but there was no sign of the card. Then I tackled the drawer below to see if it had been dropped over the back of the drawer somehow. Still no sign of it! Jamie was one step ahead of me and promptly volunteered to turn the drawers in his own bedroom out, so that I could see that he didn't have the memory card tucked away anywhere. I knew full well - because he'd volunteered - that should I search his room, the card was not going to be in there; well, nowhere that I would find it in a hurry anyway. So I told him that would not be necessary and the card wasn't that important; thanking him for his offer of assistance, I pretended to give up on the search. Well, I won't say I gave up completely; I just apparently gave up actively looking. If Jamie had the card tucked away somewhere I was wasting my time searching for it when he was aware that I was actually looking. On the Sunday, Vivian came back from her sister's place full of stories of sleepless nights and shitty nappies. Yeah, just the kind of thing you need to hear about whilst eating Sunday dinner. Come on fellas we've all been there, at one time or another; well most of us have. Why is it that women seem to have much stronger stomachs than men when it comes to babies? That first night back Vivian was all over me and demanded that we retired to bed early. Her excuse to the children was that she was tired from her journey, I saw no sign of that tiredness when we got into bed that evening and I could hardly keep my eyes open the following day in the office. We hadn't gone at it like that since the children had been born; or maybe since the last visit Vivian had made to her sister's place. She always seemed to come back from there feeling excessively randy. Anyway, I'd almost forgotten about the memory card for a week or so; then one day when Katie had wanted to use the camera again, for some reason and she asked me what she should do with the card that was already in the camera. I told her to put it back in the camera bag with the other three. "Four" Katie corrected me, "there's four of them in here now, dad!" Not that I didn't believe that my daughter was capable of counting to four, but I broke off from watching the cricket on the TV and went over to check for myself. Sure enough there were four little plastic storage cases for the cards in the camera bag and each one had a memory card in it. Curiouser and curiouser. I thought to myself, now I wonder what kind of pictures Jamie had taken that he hadn't wanted anyone to know about. And ... was there any chance that I could recover them? "Mummy might have found the card in his room somewhere and put it back," Katie suggested, with a wicked smile on her face, "I told her that you were looking for it." Possibly Katie was hoping to get her teasing elder brother into trouble. There was a possibility that she was right about her mother finding the card in his room, but I somehow doubted it; Jamie had been too eager for me to search his room that day. But then again, had the little bugger been playing the infamous double bluff, and figured that I wouldn't bother to waste time searching? Figuring that if Jamie had been, the boy would have deleted any pictures from the card that he didn't want anyone else in the family to see. But then again, I thought, were they safely deleted from his cynical and cunning father's eyes? I knew I had to be careful how I reacted then. So I just shrugged my shoulders and told Katie not to worry about it; I must have miscounted when I was looking for the missing card the first time. "Oh well they're all there now, so there's nothing to worry about, Kate." Then ostensibly I went back to watching the cricket on the TV. But I'm going to admit that my mind wasn't really on the match. You can call me a dirty old man if you like, but I was curious about what kind of pictures Jamie had stored on that card that he hadn't wanted me to know about. Come on, there's a bit of the voyeur in all of us, and even if Frankie was only just approaching her sixteenth birthday, she had the figure on her of an eighteen or twenty-year-old. And besides that, I had to ensure that my son wasn't breaking any age of consent laws, didn't I? Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! My chance to start the process of checking things out came later that same evening, after everyone else had gone to bed. I took all the memory cards into my study to find out which one of them I wanted - or rather needed - to examine closely. It was relatively easy to work out which one I was interested in, because it was the only one of the four that apparently had nothing on it at all. All of the other cards had the two "finders files" on them. You know, two files, one text and one jpeg that carried our details and a telephone number where we could be contacted should the card get mislaid somewhere. Okay some folks who might find the card or even the camera that the card is in, might just pocket the thing. But you'd be surprised how many honest people there are out there nowadays. Adding those two files, at least gives a finder - or the police if its handed in to them - a chance of tracking the owner down. No charge for that tip by the way, I've been doing that since way back when we used to send photographic films away to be processed; the first picture on any roll of film I sent was always of a piece of card with my name and address on, just in case the film got separated from the paperwork somewhere in the system. Even all of my data CD's carry text and jpeg files with that information on, in case I should mislay them somewhere. Whoever had wiped the card, it was apparent they had done it in a hurry, because they hadn't separated the "finders files" before they cleared the card; I was hoping that they had just highlighted everything on the card and hit the delete button or maybe just reformatted the thing. I wasn't too sure how well I could recover files from a reformatted drive though. Switching the card in question for one of Vivian and my "special cards", that for nefarious reasons I still kept locked in my desk draw. Yeah well, all right, I'll explain, my wife Vivian is a very sexy woman and a bit of an exhibitionist to boot at times. She likes to dress up sexily and pose for me; and then undress even more sexily for the camera as well. If I point a camera at Vivian in the bedroom, she can really get wound up; the best move I ever made was to suggest she posed nude for me a few years back. One of her favourite pastimes - between sessions of lovemaking, whilst I recovered - is watching the videos (CD's nowadays to be precise) that we've made of ourselves engaged in sex play together over the previous couple of years. I first checked that the card I was replacing the "card in question" with, had been safely downloaded to a CD-rom though. Then I ran a scrubber program over the thing — twice - just for safety's sake. I wasn't dumb enough to fall into the same trap that I'd hoped my son had fallen into, so I wasn't taking any chances. I doubted — or rather hoped — that Jamie hadn't thought of running a scrubbing program over the card in question, I figured that kids normally think that they are much cleverer when it comes to computers and things, than their elders. I was hoping that teenage arrogance was going to work in my favour. Then I replaced the cards in the camera case and put the whole lot back in the bureau draw. It was the following Saturday morning before I got the opportunity of looking at the card more closely. I hadn't told Vivian about my research, she'd have gone ape-shit at Jamie if there were any questionable images on that card. I figured that if necessary I'd tick the little monkey off myself, and Vivian need never know about it. For a woman who was as liberated as Vivian could be in the bedroom; she could be very narrow-minded sometimes, especially where the children were concerned. Jesus, if she saw some of those mucky mags' that Jamie had hidden away down the garden shed he used as a den, she'd have thrown a bleeding pink fit. Oh yeah, well, as a concerned parent I felt it was my duty, to be ... recognisant, of my son's literary interests. But I thought that it was better not to remove or destroy any of them - or even let on to him that I knew of their existence - because he might then find a new hiding place; or to be more precise, he might find a new hiding place where I wouldn't be able to vet his reading matter. That's my cover story and there's no hope in hell that you'll get me to admit otherwise. That Saturday Vivian had taken Katie into town shopping. Jamie - with Frankie in tow - as usual had conned a lift into town with her also. We wouldn't see them for the rest of the day; they were planning on taking in a movie later. Then they'd tap Frankie's father for a lift home; the poor sob had a flat right in the town centre and his daughter was always tapping him up for a lift home to her mother's house late in the day. Kinda saved me running around all bleeding night. I put the memory card into the reader on my computer and set the recovery program running -I'd got it free on a magazine cover disk—then left it to get on and do its thing. It was the first time I'd tried the program out and by the look of the way it was going, I figured that it was going to take some time; so I went out to cut the lawns, although I nipped back in to see how things were going every so often. Why is it that these programs keeping stopping and asking you if you want to continue or what file you want to recover? Shit I wanted everything on the card recovered, all the damned thing was giving me was a list bloody numbers, how the hell did I know what they were until I could at least see them as thumbnails? I had to tell the thing to proceed again several times during the morning. Anyway having set the thing going again, I returned to pushing the lawnmower around the garden. I'd have thought that by then my son should have been cutting my lawns for me, but no, the little bugger was off living it up with his bit of fluff. Mind, every time I looked at Frankie, I thought that I couldn't blame the little sod; at his age I'd have chosen sitting in the back row of the local flea pit with Frankie, over mowing lawns any day. George one of the neighbours, who'd been mowing his lawn as well, came over with a can of beer for me and we chewed the fat for an hour or so. Guess what? His son was off with some bit of candyfloss as well, instead of mowing his father's front lawn like he'd promised he would. I was still chatting to George when Vivian and Katie unexpectedly returned early. Katie had met some school friends — read boys - in town and she was also heading for the movies that afternoon; she had to come home first to make the necessary changes to her appearance i.e. put on a tighter sweater and pair of tighter jeans, not forgetting several layers of make-up. "He's a nice boy Jim, don't worry so much!" Vivian had assured me when I questioned who this boy was. "Oh yeah, your mother thought I was a nice boy, once!" I replied with a grin, after Katie had run inside the house to perform the transformation from thirteen-year-old out shopping with mummy, into a thirteen-year-old going on twenty-year-old temptress, who I knew would re-emerge from her room half an hour later. "You can drive her back into town and look him over and to see if he passes muster." Vivian laughed back at me. Funny how they do that, isn't it? Wives I'm talking about, how they set you up for playing chauffeur so easily. I was just about to tell Vivian that she must have volunteered to drive Katie back into town in the first place, when I remembered that the recovery program was still running on the computer in the study. Damn that would set Vivian's radar off; I normally used my laptop at home. I only used the family machine for stuff like downloading photographs from the cameras', because the remote card reader I'd originally had, died. There had seemed little point in spending money on replacing the remote one, because our new Dell had a card reader built into the case when we'd upgraded the home system. The old thing couldn't play the latest games, according to the kids. Game of Life Ch. 01-02 I made some incredulous excuse and dashed inside to shut down the program. Luckily I set the recovery program to store the recovered files on one of my pen-drives. All I had to do was hit the shut-down tag and then pull both the memory card and the pen-drive from the machine. Then kill the PC as well. Luckily it was all shut down by the time Vivian appeared after putting her shopping away in our bedroom and asked me how I'd wasted my morning. As if she hadn't been able to see the lawn mower outside the garage door and the grass all neatly cut? Damn it women get me sometimes. Us guys are supposed to be able to tell that the vacuum cleaner cupboard door being slightly ajar, means that the wife has been busy cleaning house all day and someone else should volunteer to get dinner or possibly take her out for a meal. An empty washing basket on the landing at the top of the stairs, means that she's spent he whole day washing and ironing, and should lead to similar conclusions. But the lawn mower outside the garage door and the front and rear lawns having taken on the look of Crown Bowling greens, does not tell her anything at all about what I'd been doing all morning. Anyway I was informed that Katie would be ready to leave in about twenty minutes and the hint was made that a cup of tea would go down very nicely. Then Vivian dropped the hint that we were going to have the house to ourselves for a few hours. "I think I'll go soak in the Jacuzzi for a while, I've had a heavy week. Perhaps you can join when you get back, lover?" She grinned at me. Katie's admirer got a cursory look over and the "Don't you dare try any hanky panky with my little angel!" stare when she introduced him to me. I'd got out of the car, better to give the little bugger the evil eye. Several of Katie's school friends and their boyfriends were going to the cinema as well, so I had relaxed a little. Back at the house I found Vivian sitting naked in the Jacuzzi and watching one of our home videos at the same time. I knew that I was in for a harder afternoon than I'd had that morning. Oh, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to explain that our Jacuzzi is inside a conservatory that we'd had built on the back of the house. That way we had the best of both worlds. Open the conservatory's sliding doors and we were virtually outside in the summer. Close all of the blinds and it could be blowing a gale or pouring down with rain on a cold winter's day; but in the Jacuzzi you'd never know the difference. It was a very tired Jim who had to get dressed and drive into town to collect Katie later that day. Jamie's curfew was a couple of hours later and Frankie's father would transport them home. I'm not quite sure how I stayed awake on the drive home with Katie; Vivian had done a pretty good job on me during the afternoon. And by the time we got (back) to bed that night she'd got her second wind, if you understand where I'm coming from. ------------------------------------------------ Chapter 2: Curiosity Kills the Cat Tuesday lunchtime had come around before I got a chance to look at the files that I'd recovered from the memory card on the Saturday, and what I discovered was to be one hell of a shock to the old system. The program had put the recovered files into several folders. One of Jpeg's, one of mpegs and one of bits and pieces of recovered files; at first sight, I somehow doubted that I'd be able to make much out of them. I opened the Jpeg folder first and from the thumbnails it soon became pretty obvious that Jamie had little to do with the memory card's short disappearing act. The first six thumbs that I could see were of Vivian, and she had taken them herself; her arm stretched out holding the camera was plainly visible. After getting over my initial shock, I switched the window to slide show view and slowly began to scroll through the recovered files. I found the pictures confusing at first though, I couldn't figure out why Vivian would want to take self-images? Then as I scrolled through the images I got a real shock, the first shots had been of Vivian's face smiling at the camera. A couple of images further on and the camera had been inexpertly tilted down and her ample cleavage appeared to be the highlight of the picture. In the following shots Vivian had slowly undone the buttons of her blouse and eventually her bra was the centre of attention and Vivian had pulled a cup back to display one of her nipples. I honestly couldn't understand what she was playing at, or why. The sequence began again almost back to repeats of the first pictures. Only the shots had obviously been taken on a separate occasion, because Vivian was wearing a different blouse and bra; this time one of several she had that fastened at the front. By the end of the sequence, her naked breasts were displayed in their full glory. And what's more, she was playing with one of her nipples with her free hand. Quite suddenly my brain went into overdrive and I began to put a few things together. Charlie Crum had pictures like these plastered all over the inside of his locker door at the gym and at the golf club. Jesus he was always telling anyone and everyone who'd listen - and who might believe him - that they were of the women he had cyber-sex with on the Internet. "Jesus F Christ," I said to myself out loud "Vivian has found herself an Internet lover!" I quickly scrolled through a lot more of the pictures at high speed, remembering — with hindsight — as I did so that when Jamie had asked that we get a web-cam some months back, Vivian - who usually showed little interest in the computer - had taken his corner when I'd said I didn't want the associated software clogging up and slowing down the system. There's always a penalty of some kind to be paid for adding all that unnecessary junk. Shit, further along the list of files were some images of Vivian's legs and then bugger me, if there weren't some — what are euphemistically termed - up-skirt shots where the gusset of her ... Shit, she was wearing that bloody thong I'd bought her; she would only ever put that on for me, in our bedroom. Then, Holy cow! She had her knickers completely off in some of the shots ... and she was playing with some of her toys. There must have been over a hundred self-taken images of Vivian — mostly sitting in the study at the computer desk, well on the computer chair anyway — in various stages of undress and playing with herself. Then finally and quite suddenly there were several images of Vivian - dressed in her lowest cut blouse — sitting at a table in a restaurant somewhere. These last three shots were not self-taken and I couldn't recognise the restaurant in question either. Vivian was smiling at the camera provocatively. I knew that expression I'd seen it on her face many times over the years. There were three more pictures, but they were indistinct and at first I was a little confused as to what they were supposed to be of. But then I realised that whoever had taken those pictures of Vivian smiling at him — I was assuming it was a him, I somehow doubted that Vivian would smile at a woman that way — had tried to take an up-skirt picture of Vivian's privates, under the restaurant table. Vivian had her knees just about as far apart as she could get away with in a public place like that, and her skirt pulled up someway to display that bleeding thong! By that time, I was beside myself with anger. I had to slam the screen of my laptop down and I stormed out of my office. My destination was the tobacconist on the corner at the end of the road. I'd stopped smoking - at Vivian's insistence - three years before; but it had always been a battle to keep off of the bleeding things; suddenly that battle was suddenly lost. From the tobacconist, I headed to the pub over the road; avoiding the lounge bar that the guys from the office would be in, I hit the public bar and sat there in a corner brooding. Just what the hell was I going to do? You know it was a real shock to the system to find your wife stepping out on you after nearly seventeen years. After all that time it's not like you can kid yourself that you got married too young or anything; although we had been forced to move the marriage up a year or so because Vivian had been expecting Jamie. But it wasn't like a shotgun wedding or anything; Vivian and I had planned to get married, just not quite as soon as we did. And it wasn't like our marriage could be described as iffy either. There never had been any arguments, well not big ones anyway. There'd never been any extended periods of being uppity with each other either, sending each other to Coventry or anything like that. Vivian didn't get all out of shape about the time I spent doing my own thing, like golf and she came to the gym with me most of the time. And - not that I went that often - she'd always been enthusiastic about coming to the odd test match with me, as well. The same as I was suitably enthusiastic when I took her to Badminton for the horse trials every year, and all the other horse shows that she and Katie liked to go to. So, had I missed something completely; what the hell was so wrong with our marriage that Vivian would find herself a boyfriend? Come to that who the hell was he, and exactly when was she meeting him? I'd downed half a dozen whiskies before I came to my senses — well, to be honest, they rang the last orders bell — and I thought I'd better make my way — a little unsteadily on the old feet - back to my office. "Jesus wept Jim, what the hell have you been getting up to?" Grace -my secretary come PA - demanded the moment she clapped eyes on me. I was over an hour late back from lunch and it was pretty obvious that Grace had been worried. Grace followed me into my office and stood there staring at me as I slumped into my chair. "I do believe you've been drinking Jim! Is something wrong, what's brought this on? You don't drink like that." "I don't find that my wife's been running round behind my back with some tosser everyday either, Grace." "Oh my god Jim. Are you sure?" I didn't have to tell her that I was, my facial expression must have said all that Grace needed to know. She disappeared out of the office and said something that I couldn't hear clearly to one of the other girls — I assume she told them that we weren't to be disturbed "By anyone!" Then she returned, locking the door behind her; poured out a couple coffees and placing one of them on my desk, took the seat opposite me. "Right let's have it all, chapter and verse. What makes you think that Vivian would run around on you?" "I don't think Gracie, I know! Look at this?" I lifted the screen on my laptop and punched in my password. By chance the picture that I'd left showing in the window was of Vivian smiling across the restaurant table at the camera. "But she's just having a meal with a friend Jim, what does that prove ... Oh shit!" Grace exclaimed. I'd scrolled the pictures through to the under table shots as she spoke. "Oh my, what's the silly cow been up to?" "Doesn't take a genius to work that out Grace, take a gander at these." I scrolled back through the image files. "Crike's where did you get these. The silly cow didn't leave them on your home computer, did she?" "You know what they are?" "Oh my, unfortunately I do, I'd say they are evidence that Vivian's been having cyber sex with someone. Well, I'm assuming that's what she's doing there; I have no personal knowledge of how you go about having cyber sex with anyone. Always thought it sounded a bit ... pointless, to me anyway. Mind, she could have just been chatting to someone on line and got carried away, isn't that what those paedophiles do to the kids, chat them up and then get them to send mucky pictures?" "Except for those pictures in that restaurant!" "Except for those yes, they sort of put the kibosh on the idea that Vivian just got carried away one day, don't they. But then again Vivian might well have been buggering about with an old girlfriend from school or something, what has Vivian got to say for herself?" "Dunno, I haven't challenged her. I haven't had a chance to work out what I'm going to do about any of this yet. Anyway I very much doubt that it was a female, Vivian would never behave like that with another woman." "Why-ever not? My school friends and I got really out of hand sometimes, when we were young. Especially when our figures began to develop. Dowdy old gymslips they might have been, but if you knew how to strut your thing you could drive the boys wild, in them." "Too much information Grace, you're supposed to be everyone's mother around here, remember?" "Yeah sorry, but what I'm trying to say is that there could be an ... Well ... maybe not an entirely innocent explanation. But ... Oh God you know what I mean. Don't declare Vivian guilty until you know all the facts. And don't go off half bloody cocked either, make sure you know as much as you can before you challenge her; remember what happened to Martin Banks. He accused his wife of cheating on him and when it came down to brass tacks, he couldn't prove a bloody thing." "Oh shit, yeah!" "Yeah, in the end, she divorced him for what she claimed was his unreasonable behaviour and took him to the bloody cleaners in the process. Then the next thing you know, the bitch marries her fancy man and they are living the high life on Martin's dough. Banksie should have made sure he had all his ducks lined up in a row before he opened fire. Just make sure that you are completely sure of your facts, before you say anything about this to Vivian. Oh and make sure that you are sober as well, how much have you drunk by the way; you smell like a damned distillery?" "Too much Gracie, and I've started smoking again." "Yeah I know; I can smell the cigarettes as well. For now, we'd better do a little damage control; we don't need every bugger in the place to know that you've tied-one-on, they will want to know why. You stay in here for the rest of the afternoon; get your head down and try to sleep it off and I'll head off any visitors at the pass. We'll wait until they've all gone home this evening and then I'll drive you back to my place; you can stay there tonight. I'll call Vivian and tell her you've been called down to the factory in Eastleigh at short notice to sort out some problem or the other." "What's the point in doing that Grace?" "Jesus Jim, Vivian is going to smell that booze on you the moment you walk in the door; and those damned fags as well. She'd go bleeding loopy and want to know why you were drinking. And that would probably lead to the pair of you going at it like hammer and tongs. How long do you reckon it would be before you lost it and let fly with the only ammunition you've got?" "Good point Grace, what would I do without you to watch my arse for me?" "Probably enjoy having one of those silly little girls out there sitting on your knee, taking dictation. Funny isn't it, how when you guys get a pretty young secretary or PA, suddenly you don't seem to be able to type very fast any more. Now, keep quiet and lock this door behind me." Grace woke me from my drunken stupor after everyone else had left the office that evening and led me down to my car, in which she drove me to her place; declaring that I was still too drunk to risk driving myself. She'd added that her little Honda parked in the company car park wouldn't raise any eyebrows, because she often left it there when one of her dates picked her up from the office. But if anyone saw my car parked there and it got back to Vivian, it would be pretty obvious that I wasn't down in Eastleigh. She stashed my car in her block's underground car park and then we went up to her flat where after throwing me a pair of her ex husband's jeans and a tee shirt she told me to get showered and changed whilst she fixed us something to eat. She'd wash my shirt and get the smell of cigarettes out of my suit later. I suppose I'd better tell you something about Grace, or Gracie as she was often called. Of indeterminate age, probably her late forties or early fifties, she was still a fine looking woman. I have no idea why her marriage had broken up just before she became my secretary; rumour has it that her husband had a cute little assistant. But anyway after working for me for a year or so, Grace had made some very drastic changes to her own lifestyle and appearance. She had taken to going to the gym several times a week and going out dancing with some of the younger girls from the office in the evenings. Although playing the matronly part with the other females around the office - because she was the eldest by a good few years - I'd gathered that Grace had let her hair down a bit and turned into quite a girl on the quiet. She'd found herself a whole string of handsome and I believe very rich suitors; but for some reason she didn't hook up permanently with any of them, well not at that time anyway. Gracie even reconciled with her ex-husband for a little while at one time, but I heard rumours — and reading between the lines — that he no longer cut the mustard in the bed department. The word was that the poor bugger found he couldn't keep up with Gracie any more and she kicked him out again. I have to wonder whether Gracie reconciled with the bugger in the first place just so's she could take the piss. Maybe he should have taken that old saying about a woman scorned, a little more seriously. I'd better point out that Grace must have been at least ten or maybe fifteen — damned hard to judge some women's age sometimes - years older than me, and besides the fact that plenty of innuendos flew around in our conversations; neither of us had any intention of buggering up our fantastic working relationship. I hope that's understood, so nothing untoward should be read into my spending the night at Gracie's flat. After we'd eaten we went through the images again, and Grace was the first to spot that whatever had been going on it had lasted at least four months and probably longer. Grace had thought to check the dates on the files, buggered if I know why I never thought of doing that. Eventually we got around to the other folder, the one containing mpegs. Well actually there was only one file in there, it had been made about two months previous. When clicked upon it opened in Media player. The picture started very dark and at first, neither of us could make out what it was of. "Oh god he's tried to film under the table." Grace suddenly realised, "look there's the table leg and that whiter area must be the table cloth hanging down." Then the screen went very bright as the camera was pulled up into the light above the table. The auto focus and iris controls, doing their utmost to get the exposure correct. Then the image stabilised and all that could be seen was a cruet set on the table. But on turning up the volume Vivian could be heard ordering her meal. "Oh shit, that bloody camera!" I exclaimed, "The silly buggers gone to take another photograph under the table and hit the wrong button; he's set it to video mode by accident. It'll record until the card fills up, or the battery goes flat." "Quiet, I can't hear what he's saying." Grace admonished me. "Turn the volume right up?" Grace was right we could only just hear his voice; the microphone on that camera was directional and had a very narrow beam of sensitivity. Although we couldn't see her, the camera was obviously pointing in Vivian's general direction. However the guy's voice must have been bouncing back off the glass containers of the cruet set. I turned the volume as high as it would go so we could make out almost everything that was being said. "About time you showed me a bit of the high life, do you bring Stacie here?" Vivian asked. Game of Life Ch. 01-02 "What do you think I am, bloody mad! No one we know comes to this place, too damned expensive." A man's voice replied. I'm not sure what expression came over my face, but Grace's hand shot out, grabbed the mouse and hit the pause button. "You know who he is?" "Jesus Christ that's William, her bloody brother. Her sister Stacie's husband." "What, the one who's just had the baby?" "Yeah!" "Are you sure?" "Of course I'm bloody sure, I'd know that little tosspot's voice anywhere. Fuck, they are always sodding around together, but never in a million years did I think that they'd ever..." my voice must have faded to nothing as I remembered Vivian and the little shit flirting together so many times over the previous few years. Funny how you always think that kind of behaviour is innocent fun when it's with a family member. "Hold on Jimmy, don't go jumping the gun; lets see what they say to each other?" Grace hit the play button. Generally the conversation was pretty unintelligible. There was a lot of background noise from the restaurant and often Vivian and Bill were lowering their voices so they wouldn't be overheard by the other dinners. Eventually Grace went off and found some earphones; she was adept at taking shorthand notes at meetings and although we hadn't used them at our office for years, she was used to transcribing Dictaphone recordings as well. Grace sat there and listened to the recording several times taking shorthand notes as she went. Then she was going to type them up so that I could read them. I made copious cups of coffee for us both and sat and brooded. Right from the first time I'd met him, I'd never been a fan of Bill Banks. Well, he was an Estate Agent so that should tell most folks that he was a slime ball; or maybe that's my personal opinion of the profession. He was a dapper looking bloke, always smart and with a pretty smart mouth on him as well. But he had been Vivian's sister's intended (and later her husband), so I'd cut the bugger some slack and tried not to show my natural dislike of the guy. The few times that I saw him at family dos and the like — I tended to avoid the bugger and the do's, if I could get away with it - he was pleasant enough; maybe a little on the loud side. And he had the annoying habit of flirting with Vivian and her other sister Janice most of the time. But then again, I flirted with both Janice and Stacie at those family do's as well, so I'd never read anything into it. Maybe I just hadn't been cynical enough? "Yeah well, none of this makes much sense to me, Christ alone knows what Vivian and her sister thought they were playing at?" Grace said, eventually taking the earphones off, after going through the recording several times. "This is going to sound completely bonkers Jim, but it is plainly apparent that both Vivian and Janice have been shagging him regularly so that he'll leave Stacie alone during her pregnancy." "Do f-ing what?" "You heard me! I take it that there's been a consensus of opinion that Stacie's miscarriages were down to the idiot's constant demands for sex whilst she was heavily pregnant." "That doesn't make sense Vivian and I were still at it. Almost until the kids were born." "That's my opinion as well, but it seems that this Bill guy, is a bit of an arsehole..." "You can say that again!" "Yeah well, I'm reading between the lines, but I gather this Bill guy thinks he's something special in bed, but he goes at it like a bull in a china bloody shop. Listen to some of this." Grace began to read back snippets from her shorthand notes. "Vivian. Jesus you know that you hurt me sometimes going at it like you do. It's no wonder Stacie never went full term." "Him. Give over Viv, you enjoy every minute of it and so does Stacie. I know you can't wait to feel my monster in you again." "Vivian. You overrate yourself Bill. I let you shag me for one reason, and one reason only; so that you leave Stacie alone until after the baby is born. But you know, you'll never win any prizes as a stud." "I think he got a little annoyed with her here." Grace commented and then read on. "Him. I'm a damned sight better than your old man and that little dick of his anyway. You told me that yourself." "Vivian. Don't kid yourself Bill, I was just stroking your ego. Jim's a better lover than you'll ever be. And what's more, he's bigger than you as well." "Him. Balls, you told me that it was my big..." Grace looked up at me. "The rest of what he said there is unintelligible." "Vivian. Christ Bill, it's got little to do with size anyway. It's what you do with it that counts; and Jim has more sensitivity in his little finger than you have in your whole body or that bleeding dick of yours. Just to make a point though I'll tell you that he is bigger, quite a bit bigger actually. He's a damned sight more sensitive to a woman's needs and very gentle when we make love. All you seem to be able to do is rut like a bull in the matting season." "Him. Well Janice has never complained. And you're never reticent to come back for another session." "Vivian. You do nothing to make a woman feel she's anything other than a blow-up sex toy Bill. Damn it you've spent too much time shagging those damned pro's, you have no idea how to make a woman feel really good. You know that those pro's will tell you how good you are, just to get you to cum quicker, they don't mean a word they say." "Him. "Balls Vivian, you can't wait until we get up to that room and I give you a good seeing-to. You need me now; both you and Janice can't get enough of me, you'll be back after the baby is born, I guarantee it!" "Vivian. Not a hope in hell Bill. Our deal was that you could have one of us every fortnight, providing that you left Stacie alone until the baby was safely born. And that you stayed away from those bloody pro's. Once Stacie has the child, then Janice and I are cutting you off for good." "Him. Oh no you don't! Come-on, that weren't the deal and you know it. I get one of you every couple of weeks until the doc gives Stacie the all clear for her to resume her wifely duties." "Vivian. Yeah, that was what we promised. Okay, I'll give you until a month after the baby is born and that's the end of it." "him. You think? Nah girl, you'll be back for some more, take my word for it." "Vivian. Not a hope in hell Bill." "Well that's about the gist of it Jim; the camera appears to have shut itself down then." Grace said looking up from her pad. "Yeah, it does that; I'm surprised that the battery lasted that long." "Well I couldn't get it all, some of it was much too faint to hear properly, but I think we can gather what's been going on." "Yeah my wife and her sister have been letting the bastard fuck them so that he leaves Stacie alone whilst she pregnant." "I gather that it isn't just to do with keeping him away from Stacie whilst she pregnant though, Jim. I could only pick out a few words of some of it, but joining the dots. Did you know that he gave Stacie VD at one time?" "No, but I did get the idea that the marriage was on the rocks a year or so back. Stacie lost a baby about the same time. I thought that was what caused it." "Yeah well, this is only supposition, but I believe that him staying away from prostitutes was part of the deal as well. This guy seems like a real arsehole to my way of thinking. And what the Christ, Vivian and her sister thought they were playing at is anyone's guess. If he goes with pro's and the two of them, behind his wife's back; what's to stop him going with a pro or some tart he's picked up when neither sister is around?" "Good point, but I can't see that Vivian or Janice's action can possibly be as altruistic as they would like to pretend. They have both had the habit of flirting with the bugger, ever since he appeared on the scene. And I've got to admit he's a good looking bugger and having a bloke ten years younger than them chasing after them must have stroked their egos a little." "So ... What are you going to do, Jim?" "Well I don't have much choice do I? Mrs Vivian Standing is about to become the ex Mrs Vivian Standing." "What, just like that; you're not going to talk about it with her?" "What's to talk about Gracie? She's my wife and she's been shagging that wanker for god knows how long..." "But only because..." "Because of what, Grace? She's my wife, and wives don't go around shagging arseholes like Billy Banks behind their husband's back; at least mine don't. The first time she climbed into bed with the bastard ended our marriage as far as I'm concerned." "What about the kids Jim, have you thought how they are going to take it?" "Don't ask me Grace. Ask Vivian, she's the one who made this bleeding mess. The children will have to learn to live with their mother's actions. That's assuming that they are mine." "Don't be so bloody stupid Jim, of course they are yours. The family likeness is obvious." "I've got cousins with the same facial features as mine Grace. Or maybe she found herself a man who looked like me." "Now you are being stupid Jim; you know that they are yours. From what I got off that recording Vivian and her sister are just keeping him otherwise occupied, whilst Stacie is pregnant. Probably they will never go near him again. Isn't there some way that you could see your way to forgiving her?" "Grace you saw those photographs. She might say that she started it to keep him away from her sister. But those pictures that she's obviously sent to him ... Jesus Christ, or some other lover that she's found, over the Internet. She could well have another stud kicking around somewhere that I don't know about. Anyway, those pictures tell me that she was having the time of her life. I don't see why you can't see that?" "Oh I can, Jim. But I just want you to think of all the alternatives before the balloon goes up. Once the ball starts rolling, there's sweet FA that can be done to stop it, you know. You've got to have it all worked out in your mind before you start. There's the children and your financial situation to think about. You know that Vivian will get the children and most likely the house as well, don't you?" "Yeah, I had that figured. But the house is almost paid for, and the children will only be around for a few more years. They both intend on going to Uni, and once they've gone, I can insist she sells the house and we split the difference. Or she can have the house as part of her cut of our communal property." "Okay, if you're sure about what you want to do, then I suggest you see a solicitor first thing in the morning. You can use Judy, she handled my divorce and she's shit hot. But first thing I suggest is that you go to the bank and withdraw a hunk of cash to tide you over, just in case Vivian gets smart. If she decides to fight you, then the first thing that will probably happen, is your bank accounts will get frozen. And don't go opening another account in your own name in a hurry, the courts are wise to that and they will freeze that bugger as well." "But I can't run around with twenty grand in cash in my pocket." "You don't have to Jim; you trust me don't you? Christ, I've worked for you long enough." "Of course I do Gracie." "Well in that case we can open an account in my name and you can have full access to it. Damn it, if we put a debit card on the bugger, I'll cut mine up and you'll have almost exclusive access." The next morning Grace and I stuck our noses in the office for a little while, to prove we were both still alive, then hit my bank and followed that with a visit to her bank; before going to see her friendly solicitor. I'm not too sure that friendly was the right way to describe her though. Anyway she went through all the "are you sure that you want to do this" rigmarole. Then informed me that there were arbitrators and counsellors to be seen before we could get a quickie divorce. And that if Vivian put up a fight over just about anything the battle could go on for some time and prove to be expensive. We worked out an outline plan. We weren't talking millions, but I'd do well as far as my salary is concerned and Vivian didn't do too bad either, even if she was only working part time. Our savings, the house, our communal property and how it was going to be divided, were going to be the biggest problem. After dropping Grace back at the office I headed for home, I wanted to be ready for Vivian when she came home from work at one. But Vivian didn't arrive home at one; she didn't turn up until half two. My mind did wonder where she'd been and what she'd been up to? "Hello Jim! What are you doing home at this time of day?" Vivian called as she entered the front door. She'd obviously seen my car in the drive. "I'm in here." I called from the kitchen, "Where have you been until this time?" "Shopping," she said joining me in the room, "I brought that new dress I told you about, for Saturday night. Look at this I'm going to kill them at the Parsons' party." She said, pulling the little black number she'd been raving about for a couple of weeks from her bag and holding it up for me to see. "What's up, Jim; are you all right?" she said when her eyes met mine, expecting to see approval of her purchase in them. Instead she saw anger. I'll give you controlled anger, but I was on the limit and we'd been married long enough for Vivian to be able to recognise the fact. "No, I'm not all right Vivian. Sit down and let's get this little lot sorted, before the children get home." She took a seat opposite me, for a moment I thought she knew that I knew about her adultery with Banksey. But she didn't, she didn't work it out even when I shoved the forms at her and told her to fill it in. "But this is a divorce petition?" She suddenly gasped out after studying the forms for a few seconds. "Yeah, now I think that you should stay here with the children; if you like we can add our net worth up and when we divide it down the middle the house can come in your half." "What are you talking about, why should we divide anything?" "Well, I don't intend to walk away from this marriage with nothing Vivian, although you can if you wish. Oh, but don't go expecting me to pay you any maintenance by the way; I'll of course cough-up my share for the children, but you can earn your own bleeding living." "Jimmy, I don't understand; what's all this about?" I've got to admit Vivian did look like she had no idea what was going on. She's an accomplished actress, but not that good. I really think that she hadn't put two and two together. "Adultery Vivian!" I said sternly, "Your repeated adultery with your sister's husband." I really should have been a little bit quicker in my reactions. But she took me completely by surprise and I had to get right around that bleeding table. So there was no way that I could make it in time to catch her. Vivian had just keeled over and disappeared from view; plus there was an almighty crash as her head hit the cooker before it hit the floor. Vivian had split her head open on the cooker and knocked herself out cold when her head hit the tiled floor. So I made a panicked 999 phone call for an ambulance with one hand, whilst I damped a tea towel to place on her forehead with the other. Another clean tea towel I placed over the large cut on her scalp. Then I gently put her in the recovery position, before rushing out to open front door ready for the medics, when they arrived. But the medics weren't the first to arrive on the scene; the police were! Unfortunately for me, the WPC who was first to show up, was a very observant police officer, and she soon noticed the divorce petition forms lying on the table. From there on in, things spiralled completely out of my control. I suppose that you do have to look at it from the policewoman's perspective. There was Vivian lying on the floor unconscious, bleeding from a wound on her temple, and with a bloody great bump on the back of her head to boot. On the kitchen table were the shiny new divorce papers filled in and all ready to be signed. It stood to reason that any bugger who spends several nights a week watching police crime shows on the telly, is going to figure that quite possibly, Vivian and I had had an argument about the divorce and I had gotten violent with her. Look they dragged my mate away and locked the bugger up, when his wife unfortunately got injured during some over-ambitious sexual gymnastics, and his wife had been fully conscious when the emergency services arrived. Net result was, Vivian - still unconscious - went to the hospital in an ambulance and I took a ride to our local Nick in the back of a police car. There followed several hours of probing questions before Vivian came around long enough to convince the police that she had fainted and injured herself accidentally. I'm not sure that the station sergeant was at all convinced by her story, but eventually he told me that I was free to go. It was forty-eight hours before the hospital released Vivian. I came home from work that evening to find her waiting for me this time. Her sister Janice was sat beside her. Vivian pushed the completed form across the table to me. "You won't change your mind whatever I say, will you?" Vivian asked. "Nope, not a hope in hell." I replied. "Look Jimmy, aren't you being a bit hasty here." Janice butted in. "Tell me Janice what's Graham going to do, is he going to divorce you?" I thought for a moment that Janice was going to do a Vivian and faint as well. But she recovered quite quickly." "What are you talking about?" "Oh Christ, don't you try any of that bullshit with me, Janice. I know all about you and Vivian's little arrangement with your arsehole stud, so don't try to treat me like a bloody idiot." I could see by looking at Vivian that she'd realised that I knew everything. She'd known that when I'd turned up at the hospital with the children and didn't get closer than ten feet from her. The children had been with us all the time so we hadn't had a chance to discuss anything; it was all said and done with our eyes. The children - and the hospital staff - I think were confused as to the reason why Vivian kept bursting into tears all the time, when I was around. "You're not going to tell Graham are you, Jim? We've been married twenty one years." Janice said, with tears welling up in her eyes. "I can't see that there's much point, Janice. After all, he rolled over and took it the last time you stepped out on him." "You knew about that?" "Yeah of course we did, didn't your loving sister here tell you that Graham sat in the same seat as you are sitting in now and cried his eye's out like a little kid. I told him to dump you, but Jezebel here persuaded him to go back home to you. Was that the plan, were you trying to repay the favour to her now?" "No Jim, I know you better than that, Janice would be wasting her time." Vivian had at last decided to speak. "I'm sorry ... things kind-a got out of hand. It was all a big joke, until it wasn't any more; I think both Janice and I got carried away. Neither of us thought of the consequences, we'd been drinking and ... well you know how it is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But once we'd started, we couldn't very well stop because he threatened to tell you about it." "Bollocks, Vivian. You knew exactly what you were doing and don't try to lay the blackmail excuse on me. Jesus that arsehole knew as well as you did that I'd have killed him if he'd tried to tell me some cock and bull story, and so do you. You thought you could pull the wool over my eyes and get away with it, but I'm not as dumb as I look." I took a breath and calmed my temper. "Right there's really no more to be said on the matter, you can explain it all to the children when they get home. I'll see them Saturday when I come for the rest of my things. I'm leaving now." I said, picking up the completed forms. Game of Life Ch. 01-02 "Jim no wait; where are you going to live?" Vivian asked. "Not that it's any of your business any more Vivian; but in an emergency I can be contacted at Grace's place for the time being. I'll have to look for somewhere permanent in the next few weeks." With that, I collected the two cases I'd already packed from the bedroom and left the house. I think Vivian was still sitting at the kitchen table with Janice, possibly in a state of shock. End of Ch. 02