(Continued from last issue) David and Diane have been married for years; then there is Julie, the young secretary whose axis collides with the couple’s in ways none of them saw coming.
JULIE
Even though it was a Sunday and I did not have to get Junior ready for daycare, or supervise work at the site, I woke up at the crack of dawn the next morning, and careful not to wake either David or Junior, quietly crept from the room, softly closing the bedroom door behind me.
Heading towards the kitchen on the opposite side of the unit, I walked slowly, running my fingers gently along the walls, following the pattern on the floor tiles, noting how precisely they had been laid, and taking it all in before finally pausing at the large window at the end of the corridor.
The sun’s rays glittered on the surface of the lake in the distance, and watching them, it felt like I was in some sort of fairy world dream, and any minute now, I would wake up, and it would all be gone.
At the same time, it all felt incredibly real as well; I knew every inch of the unit intimately; I had chosen the wall colour, tiles and fixtures, I had pushed the contractor and workers to get the job done on time, and done right, and now it finally was, and I was as proud and full of love and gratitude as a new mother holding her baby for the first time.
I was still standing there when David startled me by coming up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me up close against him.
“Good morning, Beautiful,” he murmured against the nape of my neck. “Good morning; what are you doing up so early?” “I should ask you that; after all your hard work yesterday, I thought you’d sleep in today.”
“I tried to, but just couldn’t stay in bed,” I answered as I turned to face him with a soft smile and quick peck on the cheek.
“Same here,” he smiled back, and then went on more seriously, “I’m sorry I didn’t help with the move yesterday but let me make it up to you; today I’m all yours and we’ll do whatever you want to.”
Caught off-guard by this penitent version of David, I instinctively found myself looking for the catch.
“It’s a Sunday; aren’t you going to the house?” “No, I was there yesterday; I mean it, today is all about you,” he repeated insistently.
It might have felt like I was in a dream a minute ago, but in that moment, looking up into David’s eyes and seeing the earnestness and tenderness in them, nothing had ever felt more real.
DAVID
Although it still was not ‘home’, it felt so good to be out of the apartment, and once again in my own property, that I slept more peacefully than I had in a long time that night, and when I woke up the next morning, not only did I feel rejuvenated and well rested, I felt something else that I had not in a long time – confidence and optimism for the future.
It had been a difficult past few months with the death of my father, my problems with Diane, and the financial burden of running two homes, while simultaneously funding an express building project.
But with this move, I could finally say that it felt like I had turned a corner and the worst was behind me.
I had gotten Diane under control for probably the first time in our marriage, and I did not expect any further problems from her; having moved out of the apartment, I no longer had that rental bill to handle, and now that the unit was ready, I no longer had the pressure of trying to rush a building with limited funds, and a limited time-frame in which to complete it. Yes, things were definitely looking up.
As I mused over that, I recognised – not for the first time of late – that I would never have been able to do it all without Julie, and as usual, once I got to thinking of how great she had been, I was inadvertently struck by the guilt of how shabbily I had treated her in comparison.
That would change today, I told myself determinedly as I climbed out of bed and set off to find her. I saw her as soon as I opened the bedroom door; the unit was not big, and she was standing at the end of the corridor, bathed in the early morning light as she stood gazing out of the window, so lost in thought that she was oblivious to the fact that I had woken up, and was now watching her from just a few feet away.
She was beautiful, and the light on her, gave her beauty an ethereal quality, so that she almost looked like an illusion, and I found myself drawn to her like I was under a spell.
DIANE
I hardly got a wink of sleep all night as David’s threats about taking the children to Katosi – to her – kept running through my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I could not let that happen.
Tracy’s advice that I play nice and promise David that he could see the children whenever he wanted to, clearly had not worked; so, when I got up the next morning, I was done playing nice.
I had put up with all of David’s s**t; from him cheating on me, to having a full-blown affair, with a bastard son thrown in to boot, to moving out of the house and in with that whore, but if he thought he could take my children from me, then he had another thing coming!
As for that gold-digging whore, while she was no doubt gloating now, thinking she had won because she had succeeded in taking my husband from his family, and gotten some cosmetic form of recognition by him moving in with her and making her ‘manage’ the Katosi project, she would be well advised not to celebrate just yet; she might have taken my place in David’s life, but I would be dead and buried before her bastard son took my children’s place, or tried to lay claim to any piece of their inheritance.
As soon as that thought struck my mind, another immediately followed on its heels – that she was already doing it. It was a Sunday, a day that had always been reserved for David to spend with the children, but he had not mentioned any plans for the day when he came to the house yesterday, and he had not called this morning to say he was on his way either.
When I tried calling, his phone was off and that only confirmed my suspicions – having edged me out of David’s life, she was now trying to draw him away from his children too.
I could not let that happen, I would not let that happen, I told myself, and then knowing what I needed to do, picked up my car keys and left the house.
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