Trying, failing, to end the affair
There was nothing that I could do with the information X had given to me. It was too late. I was in too deep. I had nowhere to go with it, no frame of reference. He told me that his previous affair had been several years ago, that his...
Telling lies, being lied to
Lying was a new thing for me, a dubious skill I had not previously possessed, a worrying skill that I had not wanted and did not know I would ever need to perfect. Who knew that it was such an art? X, it turned out, was a master of...
The lonely void of adultery
All through the winter and into the spring of my 37th year I fell deeper into the yawning chasm of my entanglement with X. I still felt constantly feverish, like I was going mad. On one level, life continued as it ever had; my eldest daughter made applications to...
That was it. I was having an affair.
I was sunk. I was lost. I felt dizzy and suffused with a fizzing panic, all the time. It was sticky and dark but it was so compelling. I felt like I had clicked back into a mould I recognised, the old smug mould of fitting something extra into...
Suddenly, I was cheating on my husband
Oh, yeah, no. Of COURSE it wasn’t harmless. Of COURSE I wasn’t making a fun new friend. Of COURSE, X and I were going to have an affair. It was so pathetically obvious, it now seems, to everyone but me. Certainly it was obvious to him – he knew...