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mid-week dancing classes she went to who she'd caught looking in her direction too many times for it to have just been coincidence. The idea of seeing someone else tempted her, but she knew she'd be putting a lot at risk if she ever actually did it. She was worried that she might end up losing everything she'd worked for with Charlie just for a little short-term excitement and adventure. She loved her grand house and her expensive clothes and all the associated trimmings. She loved the elevated social status it gave her and she didn't want to let any of it go. But what if the man at the dance class could give her all that and sex too...?

'Cup of tea?'

That was how Charlie started every day. No 'good morning' or 'how are you today?' or 'I love you' or anything like that anymore. Just a short, unemotional, truncated question. Should she answer or should she stay silent and pretend to still be asleep?

'Yes please,' she grunted, still with her back to her husband. She felt him throw back the covers and then slide out of bed before neatly tucking the bedding back into place again as he always did. Everything he did was predictable and safe. She could anticipate every move he was going to make. She knew he'd go to the bathroom next where he'd use the toilet, break wind, apologise to himself and then wash and shave humming the same damn tune he hummed under his breath every bloody morning. Then he'd put on his dressing gown, come back to the bedroom to fetch his slippers from under the foot of the bed where he'd put them last night, and go down to the kitchen. She knew he'd stop on the fifth step down to open the curtains and blow the dust off the top of the employee of the year trophy his employers had awarded him almost fifteen years ago...

She screwed her eyes tightly shut, buried her face in the duvet and thought of the man from the dance class again. She felt empty and depressed, trapped and angry. Sometimes she wanted to kill her husband. That, she decided, would be the answer to all her problems.

'Lovely day today,' Charlie said brightly as he returned to the bedroom with two cups of tea.

'It's always a bloody lovely day,' Susan silently screamed to herself. 'Even when it's raining and there's a force ten gale outside he says it's a bloody lovely day.'

'Here's your tea, dear.'

She cringed under the bedclothes and readied herself to face him. Saddest thing of all, she thought, was that he didn't have the faintest idea how unhappy she was. In his rose-tinted little world everything was just fine and dandy. He didn't know how old and worthless he made her feel and he probably never would. She took a deep breath and rolled over onto her back before shuffling up the bed and taking her tea from him.

'I had a lousy night's sleep,' she complained, looking up at him. 'I was freezing cold all night. I kept waking up because you kept pulling the covers off me.'

'Sorry about that, my love. I didn't realise.'

'And if it wasn't the cold keeping me awake it was your snoring.'

'I can't help that. If there was something I could do to...'

He stopped talking. In silence he stared down at his wife who scowled back at him.

'What's the matter with you?' she demanded as she sipped her tea.

Charlie continued to stare.

'For crying out loud, find something else to look at will you?' she cursed before taking another sip.

With a single sudden swipe Charlie slapped the cup out of his wife's hands. It smashed against the wall opposite sending countless dribbles of tea dripping down the pale pink anaglypta wallpaper. Bemused, Susan watched the drips of hot brown liquid trickling down the wall. What the hell's got into him, she wondered? In a bizarre way she was actually excited by this sudden display of unexpected forcefulness and spontaneity.

Behind her Charlie quickly yanked the waist belt free from his towelling dressing gown. Shoving her forward and gripping her shoulder tight with one hand he looped the belt twice round her neck in a single spiralling movement and then pulled it tight. Panicking, and with her eyes bulging and throat burning, Susan struggled to breathe. She kicked and squirmed under the bedclothes and scraped at her neck, desperately trying to force her fingers under the belt. Her strength was no