Ghosts in the Morning - By Will Thurmann Page 0,2

wretched face every evening, when he drinks a bottle of wine, or more, in an attempt to drown out his pitiful guilt. He won’t tell me about the affair, of course. And he won’t leave me, or ask for a divorce. I’m sure he’s considered it, desired it probably, but even though he’s caught in some sort of mid-life crisis that only appears to afflict men, he’s not that daft. It would cost him too much, he knows that. He would be too scared that I would take him to the cleaners. I’m sure he’s worried that the affair with Nikki the secretary won’t last too, and deep down he’s probably terrified of ending up on his own in some crummy bedsit, cuddling a bottle of vodka. Rightly so...the affair will fizzle out when she gets bored and he gets too needy, or when she meets a younger, more powerful man.

I was annoyed at first. In twenty-four years of marriage, I haven’t cheated on him once. Unless you count a drunken half-snog with a gorgeous surfer when I was on one of Anita’s hen do. And I don’t. Twenty-four years. The old joke says you get less for murder, which seems pretty ironic considering I killed a man tonight. In twenty four years I have given birth and reared three children, I have cleaned the house, made the lunches, cooked the dinners, washed the clothes, ironed the shirts and generally sacrificed most of my life, and then Graham goes and shags his secretary. So it’s only natural for me to be annoyed.

I wasn’t angry for long though. I understand why he’s doing it. He wants to feel young again, to feel that youthful exuberation that gets harder to come by as life enters the final straight. He is suffering the effects of that pendulum of mortality that swings inexorably over a middle-aged man’s head, driving them to irrational impulses. Maybe it’s about the sex too. They say it’s different for men, it’s more of a need. And, for sure, I know I’m not that much to look at these days. My once cheeky little muffin-tops have morphed into full-blown fat love handles. The baby pounds that sat too long on my hips and thighs have got too comfortable. I gave up trying to shift them a few years ago.

I wasn’t always like this. In days gone by I could turn a few heads, used to get the odd wolf whistle too. Bit of a looker in my late twenties, some would say. I think Graham used to think of me as a trophy wife, a pretty bit of eye candy to hold onto his arm at the corporate functions he had to attend. Not now, though, no. Now, it’s all Graham can do to stand next to me at the rare functions we attend together. Most times now, Graham goes alone to the corporate functions. I guess it makes it easier if Nikki’s there, too. No chance of my female intuition picking up on the ‘thing’ between them.

I don’t think Graham enjoys making love to me, we don’t do it very often these days. When we do it’s automatic. Perfunctory. A few minutes of him wheezing away on top of me, whilst I lay back and decide whether to have fish for tea tomorrow, or fret about whether Simon is coping at university, and if I should ring him again on Friday, or would that make me an over-protective mother? I don’t really know why we bother at all, although I think we’re practically at that stage. To be honest, I’ve never really liked sex that much. It was okay with Graham when we were first going out – Graham used to believe he was ‘good in the sack’, he actually said that to me once -though I never really believed in all of that. I mean, what would make someone good in the sack, surely not the speed that they thrust themselves into you, like the women in porn films would have you believe? None of it really made sense to me, most of the expectations surrounding sex were completely unrealistic. T o me, it was all about degrees of tolerance.

Most nights, though, I’m asleep when Graham comes to bed. It’s easier for both of us that way. It means that Graham doesn’t have to feel obliged to talk to me, or wish me goodnight with an accompanying fake goodnight kiss, and also it means I can try and