I will let her tell the story…….
Glance at the photograph and what do you see — a happily married couple enjoying a birthday meal with friends?
After all, the handsome, silver-haired man has his arm placed protectively around the back of the glamorous blonde’s chair — his hand just grazing her shoulder — while she seems utterly at ease with his proximity and beams directly at the camera.
But all is not what it seems. For while the man is my husband, Malcolm — I’m not the buxom blonde. Rather, I’m the brunette in the background, whose head you can just see poking out behind him, almost as an after-thought.
Tessa, the woman in the chic black-and-white suit, was one of our close friends. And for six years she was also my husband’s mistress. They were together when the photograph was taken. And, while studying their body language now, it seems obvious, I was totally blind to it at the time.
I only discovered their betrayal when Malcolm tearfully confessed all in 2006. Most women would have thrown him out. After all, can you ever really trust a man who is so duplicitous he will spend years sleeping with one of your friends, right under your nose?
But instead — hard as it was — I wrapped my arms around him and said I forgave him. And now, incredible as it sounds, I believe the affair was the best thing that could have happened to our marriage — without it we wouldn’t be celebrating our 30th anniversary, as we are this year.
So what do you say ladies?