The Scorned Wife Novel – My stomach clenches with nausea as my hand covers my trembling lips. The last thing I expected to learn was that Matt was playing away from home. My legs wobble beneath me. I allow myself to plonk down onto the dove grey duvet cover as I read and reread the text before me. I had never checked Matt’s messages before because I have never felt the need to. I trusted him implicitly, or I did. I don’t know what it was that urged me to open the iPhone using the code I knew we both had to unlock our screens. Our daughter’s birthday. A strangled sound escapes my throat at the realisation that her life will be as severely affected by the consequences of Matt’s actions, as mine. Not quite nine months old and already a member of a dysfunctional family.
The notion of sharing her at weekends, being without her when she spends time with her dad brings on an uncontrollable sob as I drop the mobile phone to the bed. Covering my hands over my face, I curl up into the foetal position and cry uncontrollably with the pain that is searing through my chest. My Matt, the love of my life, the boy that stole my heart while we were in our teens, the man that promised me forever. The only man that had smooched me, touched me, loved me. I cry until I am exhausted, nothing but a hiccup emanating from my throat as I gasp for an even breath. The sound of Emily-Jane waking in her cot in the next room brings me back to reality. I must get up. I have a child to care for, a child that we both desperately desired. After eighteen months of trying frantically to fall pregnant, we were ecstatic when it eventually happened. We had then sworn to dedicate our entire lives to our future family. When she was born, you couldn’t have found a more devoted father than Matt.
In the early days, like most new parents, we both sat and gazed at her with wonder and instant love. But as time went by, I found Matt becoming irritated by my total devotion to Emily-Jane. It was almost as if he started to resent the attention she was receiving from me, attention that Matt was used to me providing him. He was still an attentive dad, and I had no doubt that he loved our daughter with a passion, it was me that he seemed to be focusing his displeasure on. It started with him criticising my appearance, encouraging me to make a more of an effort with my hair and makeup. Now, as every new mum knows, in the early days, you walk around like a zombie half of the time and the other you find yourself covered in vomit and other bodily fluids. Initially, I had reasoned that Matt’s moods were down to the adaptation of becoming a parent, not helped by the disrupted sleep that came with our little munchkin.
But, as time went on I found I was walking on eggshells around him, rushing around before he came home from work to ensure everything was in its place and the dinner was in the oven. It became an unhealthy environment, one that left me pining for the man I married. I force myself to stand and move numbly to Emily’s bedroom and lift her smiling face into my arms. ‘Hey, baby girl,’ I soothe, as she snuggles into my neck as she shakes off the grogginess of sleep. I wander around the nursery, looking at the photo frames on the wall. They start with the first scan picture, followed by one of me standing with Matt behind me, his hands wrapped around my front to cup my swollen tummy a look of pride evident on his handsome face. I sniff a tear back, unable to process the predicament I find myself. I allow my mind to drift back to the early days when we were so happy, so excited to be becoming parents after waiting for so long. The delay in her arrival only made her even more precious to us, and us more appreciative of the things you take for granted in life.
You spend so much time in your youth trying not to get pregnant, you expect it to happen spontaneously when the times right. It’s a shock when it doesn’t. Matt and I had married once he had graduated from Nottingham University and qualified as a Solicitor. I was twenty-five years old, and we had been together for all of ten years. What started out as a shy admiration of the blonde haired, gangly lad in the playground had ended up with the two of us becoming inseparable throughout our school years and eventually onto university. Sad as it sounds, I followed Matt to Nottingham to study for my English language degree, not wanting us to experience the complications of a long-distance relationship. My sister had scolded me for being weak, claiming that I had to follow my own path in life and not be distracted by my first time. Isabel believed that if Matt and I were destined, love would find a way. I had a more pragmatic approach, why put something so perfect at risk? Once we graduated, we returned to London and began to plan our future, marriage and then children, in that order.
Traditional, that was Matt, he had it all worked out. I found work as an Executive Assistant for a Practice Principal of an Insurance company, and Matt located a junior position for a notorious legal team in the heart of London. We married, bought our first home together and our lives were stable, it was time to expand our family. I carry Emily through to the kitchen and secure her in her bouncy chair set on the table. I move on autopilot as I prepare her lunch, my mind numb, but at the same time spinning with confusion of how to deal with the information I had recently learned. I wish Sophie were around. Sophie was my best friend, but she had disappeared from Denver a month ago, no one knowing her whereabouts. Much to Matt’s disgust, I had taken our daughter and travelled to Denver three weeks ago, to join in the search for her.
Sophie’s boyfriend, who was a handsome, hot detective, was beside himself with worry as was I, she was like a sister to me. I had stayed at Nate’s loft in Denver and helped any way that I could, without success. It had seemed that Sophie had vanished from the universe and right now I needed her, she would know what to do. I recall how Matt had demanded, yep demanded, after two weeks of me being in Denver, that I fly home and continue my duties as a wife, rather than gallivant around the world searching for someone that has probably wrapped herself around her next victim. As you can tell, Matt wasn’t a fan of Sophie. He was polite and courteous to her when she visited, he knew I wouldn’t have had it any other way, and agreed, begrudgingly, to invite her to become godmother to our daughter, but deep down inside I knew he thought she was a cold, promiscuous, screwed up individual. Sure, Sophie had her problems, but Sophie and I had connected while at school.
She was the one person that I would entrust my life. In school, she was popular with the boys, being stunningly beautiful, not so much with the girls. The girls were threatened by her pretty face and ability to wrap the boys around her finger at an early age with her huge hazel eyes. Up until Nate, she was never interested in settling down, she took what she wanted from life without regret and never allowed herself to rely on another human being for anything. I loved Sophie’s free spirit, and although I was eventually the one exception to her dependence, I knew that deep down inside she held something back from even me. I knew that she had experienced a lot of sadness in her life, but you never actually saw her broken or emotional.
She was a pillow of strength at every eventuality and when I was in her company, I absorbed that force. Just being around her made me a better person. Sometimes, I wonder whether that was why Matt took an instant dislike to her. I feed and change Emily-Jane and put her in her pushchair for our afternoon walk. As we stroll the pavements of the park, my mind runs over possible ways to approach my husband’s betrayal. Why did I open that text? I scold myself, before I question whether I could have honestly carried on my marriage knowing my husband was screwing another woman? No, there is no way I could live a lie. When Matt had called me from work this morning to ask whether I had come across his mobile phone as he couldn’t find it, I had cheerfully notified him that he had left it on the bathroom vanity unit.
I listened as he then instructed, with a strange stutter, that I switch it off and leave it in his bedside cabinet. I knew something was off by the way he had reiterated that I turn the phone off. Why would it matter whether it was on or off? I could leave it on charge for him, and he could return any missed calls when he arrived home later tonight. My stomach had churned with unease at his insistence. That’s when I had decided to open the messages only to discover the texts from a woman identified by only a letter. ‘L’. Need to feel you inside me. That’s all it said, what else was there to say? I had scrolled through the rest of the messages, but this one was the only one from ‘L’. I had then delved further into the deleted messages to find a whole barrage of intercourse-based texts. He had clearly been deleting them after reading them, to cover his tracks. This one had evidently arrived this morning at just before ten o’clock. That’s why Matt had sounded uneasy, he realised his phone wasn’t on him and must have known that there was a text message from the person in question.
The other messages ranged from. I can still taste you. To, when can I see you? To, I’m wet for you. How long it had been going on, I can’t say, but I do know that things between me and Matt had changed drastically after the birth of our daughter. Admittedly, we hadn’t been indulging in as much intercourse as we did pre-baby, but that was normal, wasn’t it? Jesus, I had only just weaned Emily-Jane off the chest, that alone was time-consuming. But, we had been having intercourse. Maybe only a couple of times a week, but Matt had been working late on a sensitive case, or so he said. I scoff at my naivety.
Knowing what I do now, he had probably been working on ‘L’. I take a deep breath to prevent the emotion from spilling out at the thought of my husband sleeping with another woman. No, I should bide my time, not knee jerk and expose my hand immediately. Matt is a solicitor, which means I should get all my cards in order before I make my next move. I stop and sit on a bench overlooking the pond, Emily-Jane is asleep, zapped out by the fresh air and full tummy. I sigh, I know that I am stalling the inevitable. I need to accept that my marriage is over.