a seventeenth new story ... 'all the best lines'

‘I love you and I want to trust you’, Julie to her husband Giles.  They were lying in bed after a boozy night at the school play – performed by the children, with the teachers (naturally) the stars of the show … all the best lines. Ha!

‘Do you love me?’, mumbled Giles in reply. ‘Yes’ said Julie. And Giles turned over on his side, was fast asleep within minutes, snoring, farting. And Julie tried not to think about their sharing a bed together, sleeping, eating habits, married life, outcomes – decided instead to focus on income. Giles is richer than my wildest dreams thought Julie, nevertheless she stayed awake until morning.

It was three or four weeks later that Julie began to sense Giles might be having an affair.  ‘Darling, I am snowed …’, he would say, calling from the office, ‘I’ll be home late’.  ‘Again?’, Julie would ask. ‘Yes, again!’, Giles would counter irritably.  Julie would then prepare dinner for their five year old, put her to bed, sit in the living room and drink. And in these moments of personal solace she reiterated to herself that she loved Giles and wanted to trust him, yet if he was having an affair, then she was in a chain, waiting for her husband to recover his moral imperative (?) in his own sweet time. As if waiting on a fucking house purchase. But what space would be left to move into if Giles decided his own sweet time was now with someone else? If he was having an affair.

So Julie made a plan, choosing to ignore the hard truth that plans can fall through, so often they do. ‘I’ve bought us tickets to the ballet’, she announced after four gin and tonics when Giles staggered in late from work as ever. ‘And I’ve arranged a baby-sitter’.

Is it me or is he walking funny these days? thought Julie bitterly to herself, though trying to smile, if to Giles it might have looked like she was about to have her wisdom teeth pulled out with rusty pliers. ‘Ohh’, said Giles. And there followed a lot of hmmphing, umming, arraagghing … Open wide! Julie went to sleep wishing she was somewhere, anywhere else … even the back-street dentist.

In the end Giles generously agreed to accompany his wife to the ballet – he told his new partner it was out of pity, sympathy, guilt on ‘a Catholic scale’, not love. And he insisted to his wife on a baby-sitter.  ‘I know someone new, someone more affordable’, he told Julie. ‘How much?’, asked Julie. ‘Free, so long as we provide a bottle of good wine’. ‘Fine by me’, said Julie. My wife is a drunk and a nag Giles had also told his partner … and the way she smiles at me these days!

The ballet was a modern dance interpretation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.  Julie found herself wishing Giles had legs like a Roman praetor, Giles found himself remembering with almost unbearable prescience the ballet’s famous Act III.

When they returned home Giles’ new partner had taken the child and, as agreed, a suitcase full of Giles’ clothes. It was left to Giles to decide whether to play the role of Brutus or Judas. Being a weak and cowardly man he went for Judas.

As Giles kissed his wife for the last time, Julie drove a corkscrew through his jugular. ‘BLEED FOR THE SAKE OF JUSTICE!!’, she screamed over Giles’ twitching body.  And then she ran out of the house into the dead, black night.