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...
Dreading the empty nest, too early
The thought of my empty nest and of a less intense life began to trouble me. Everything was suddenly becoming easier than it had ever been – my children were older and needed less supervision, they were spending more time with friends or doing activities without me. My husband...