A Strange Day.

Dear Diary,

I was over at Emily's house for morning coffee. She and I do this every Sunday morning while our husbands play a round of golf. I personally find golf to be one of the single most boring sports on this earth and Emily happens to agree. During the summer, forget football widows, we are golf widows. Our husbands might as well not exist as they spend all of their spare time at the course, perfecting their putting technique and seeing who can get the longest drive.

The coffee was percolating and Emily and I were discussing our woebegone status and all of the lovely things Sundays could be filled with, like picnics in the park, long drives or time at the beach. Emily was also checking on her little girl, Clara, who was paddling in an inflatable pool out in the back garden. For a change it was an extremely nice day. Although Clara was ten Emily still watched over her closely, terrified that something bad was going to happen to her. This was probably quite wise considering the world we were living in with the possibility of ‘bad men’ living right next door and accidents at home on the increase. Such a strange world we live in, where we are too afraid to let our children out of our sight. When I was little we could play in the street with no problems at all, the worst thing that would happen was I could fall over and scrape my knee. Emily sighed and commented on how quickly Clara was growing up, that soon she wouldn’t need her mother to watch over her. I poured the coffee and gave some platitude as comfort. I’ve never been very good at platitudes so I don’t know if it had the desired effect.

We both sipped our hot coffee and listened to Clara laughing in the back garden as she ran around in the sunshine. Emily and I chatted about inconsequential things… the price of gas these days, school uniforms and the upcoming dance in the town hall. Some boring little thing the town council throw every summer. Of course everyone has to attend; it would be seen as snobbish if you didn’t. So you put on your nicest summer dress, plaster a fake ‘happy-go-lucky’ smile on your face and make nice to the good and great in the town. I wish we didn’t have to go but because Mike is a prominent businessman in the local community we don’t have much choice. I swear, if I didn’t have Emily to keep me sane during these never ending events I’d scream.

Anyway, I digress. We chatted for a little while and I got up to refill our coffee cups. As I looked out the window onto the back yard I expected to see Clara. She wasn’t there. I turned and said this to Emily who wasn’t too anxious. Emily assumed she had come into the house. She called up the stairs for Clara and checked the living room to no avail. Emily started to panic and started checking under the bushes in the garden, checking the garage and looking around the street. I suggested she might have gone next door to talk to the neighbours and offered to go check. I left the house and walked down the street to knock on the door. The neighbours weren’t home. I went back and found Emily working herself into a complete state. As I have already said, it’s such a dangerous world for little girls.

When she heard that Clara wasn’t with the neighbours she went into a total emotional breakdown. I called the police. They promised to send an officer round and to issue a bulletin with Clara’s details to the local patrols. I then sat a now shaking and crying Emily down with another cup of coffee and phoned the golf club looking to get our husbands back here. I don’t know why I was so calm and controlled. I was screaming on the inside. Emily and I were so close that Clara felt like my daughter too. When I eventually got the golf club reception I was told that our husbands hadn’t appeared today, that they hadn’t been there for weeks. The receptionist girl talked to me in a tone that suggested that I was a stupid woman for not knowing where my husband was. I was more than a little confused. I wondered where they had been spending their Sundays but at that moment I had my hands full with the Clara situation.

A police cruiser drove down the street and stopped at the front door. The houses across the street came alive with curtain twichers. People hiding behind a veil of netting trying to ascertain why the police were visiting the Saunders place on a Sunday morning. Damn curtain twichers. They weren’t watching before and wouldn’t answer the door and now they were gathering gossip like bees gather pollen. How helpful of them. The police duo knocked on the door and I answered to find a woman in her early thirties and a man in his late forties. Both looked very official and capable. I showed them into the kitchen and Emily gave a tearful statement, handed over a recent picture and also some of Clara’s clothes. For the dogs, I could only assume. I remember hoping it wouldn’t get that far.

I called Emily’s mother. For the life of me I couldn’t think of anything better to do in that moment. I couldn’t find either her husband or mine and I needed to go look for them. When her mother appeared Emily ran to the door and straight into her mothers’ arms, just like she would have done as a little girl. I left Emily in her capable hands and walked back to my house. As I walked I mused on where both of our husbands disappeared to. I figured that the best place to start would be at home, checking hubby’s diary for anything that might tell me where they’d gone. With a half a plan formulated I picked up my pace and practically ran to my house. As I turned into our street I noticed that both Mike and Emily’s husband, Jeff’s cars were in the driveway. I remember thinking that they must have doubled back after I’d gone. I couldn’t work out why they would be lying about their activities if all they were doing was sitting in my house. I walked into the house and looked in the living room and kitchen but couldn’t find them. Then I heard a bump from upstairs, it sounded like the bed was creaking. Thinking my hubby had gone up for a nap I went upstairs quietly to ask him where Jeff was.

I opened the door slowly, not wanting to startle him out of sleep and saw… well… Jeff and Mike in bed together. And believe me they weren’t sleeping. I’ve never been so angry, betrayed and disgusted in my entire life. I didn’t know what to do, part of me wanted to smash his head in and the other half wanted to run away. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. I ran. I shut the door quietly, tiptoed down the stairs and out the front door.

I walked around and around thinking about what I was going to do. Should I tell all, should I keep quiet? I wasn’t really walking with a direction, I just walked. After a while I looked up and saw I was walking back down Emily’s street. I saw the police car was back and went to the house, hoping for news. This was better than news, the curtains in the living room twitched then the front door was thrown open with Clara running towards me, crying and apologising. Turns out she’d been up at the farm on the edge of town feeding the chickens. Her parents took her there a lot so she didn’t realise she wasn’t meant to go alone. I sighed with relief, just glad she was back. I walked into the house and by the look of sheer relief on Emily’s face I can guess she was pretty glad too.

Once the police had been apologised to and had left to attend to other matters, Emily and I were back in the kitchen with Clara in her room, grounded for not telling her mum where she was going. More coffee had been poured and I was telling Emily what I had seen. It seemed fair; she had a right to know I guess. Although it was a difficult conversation to have, how do you tell your best friend that her husband has been screwing yours behind your back? Her face went from shocked, to disbelief, to amused (she thought I was joking!) and eventually to the same anger I felt. But what to do?

What to do was the subject of conversation for the rest of the afternoon while the men were away ‘playing golf’. We thought about confronting them but that didn’t seem to be the best idea, they’d either deny it or by confronting them and bringing it out into the open they’d publicly declare their affair and leave us both. We could both carry on as if nothing had happened but that’s living in denial. Besides I know I couldn’t handle Mike touching me again after what I’d seen. I told Emily about my desire to just smash Mike’s skull in and she said that it was probably the only way. Neither of us could live with the prospect of everyone knowing our entire lives were a sham, that our husbands were gay and that they were sleeping with eachother behind our backs. They had to die. The question then was when and how we were going to do it.

They could have an ‘unfortunate accident’ but if it happened to both of them then it’d be suspicious. Unless it happened in one of their cars. That was it! Emily and I looked at eachother in a silent pact. Next Sunday when Jeff came around in his car to go ‘golfing’ I’d wait until they had to leave and make them get into Mike’s car. When they got to the bottom of our hill they wouldn’t be able to stop at the junction and there would indeed be an unfortunate accident. The brakes failed officer?! My husband is dead?! Whatever shall I do now?! I’ll tell you what I’ll do, bury him and dance on his grave. Now I have to go and find the website that’ll teach me how to fiddle with the brakes of Mike’s car so it looks like they failed naturally. So I’ll sign off for now.

Until I write again,
Megan.