What Happens When A Secret Affair Becomes A Reign Of Terror?

When you overhear a private phone call in which it sounds like your premature demise is being discussed, it’s time to listen up very intently indeed.

Over the following days, lots of things were clamouring my mind space. For example, there were lots and lots of late-night telephone calls when as soon as I answered the phone the line would be cut. Strangely, this never happened to Alice. I presumed it was lover boy until I inadvertently gave Alice the seed of an idea, an excuse as to why that was happening to cover up the real reason.

At one point I let slip to Alice that only people out on the prowl in the hours of darkness, even if it was only a prowl on a mobile telephone, were secret lovers or itinerant ne’er-do-wells. During the coming weeks, Alice and her lover and a few cohorts conspired to convince me that it was the latter and that somebody who intended me harm was out to get me. All they needed to do now was to get creative to embellish this idea and I would go down like a pile of bricks, which is pretty much what happened.

One day, when Alice was out ‘visiting a friend’ late at night, a dead mutilated cat was placed on our doorstep. Attached to the animal’s limp dead body was a scribbled note ‘This is you, a dead cat.’

Another time, again when Alice was out visiting, there was a knock on the door. As I gingerly opened the door I suddenly saw a piece of bloody rotting meat with my name on it.

And yet another night when Alice and I were in bed about to go to sleep she got out of bed and went to the window to look down on our drive where my car was parked. I pretended to be asleep. The next morning I discovered that my car had been broken into. What was strange was that the car had been ransacked but nothing was missing. There was a little money in the car and one or two things of value, but it was all present and correct.

When I went into the kitchen to tell Alice about what had happened she seemed totally unalarmed, almost as if she already knew all about it. I said I would call the police and this made her very nervous to say the least. “What for?” she whinged “If nothing is missing then there’s nothing to report.” Yet I had not mentioned that nothing was missing!

It was true nothing was missing, but the driver’s door lock had been smashed apart and the contents of the car were strewn all over the interior. Clearly, there was a campaign of terror in force and the worst was yet to come.

As I went to call the police to see if they could come and get some fingerprints Alice had set about cleaning the car door handle and the inside of the car. When I saw her wiping the steering wheel, realising what she was doing, I got angry with her, but it was too late, the car was clean.

One more event I distinctly remember was when one day I left home to go into town for a little shopping. Alice was at work for the day (or so I thought) and the children were at school. As I left, due to already being on high alert, I made sure I closed and locked the front door as I left. About an hour later I returned home to find the from door open. I called Alice and asked her if she had been home and she said no. So I asked her why the front door was wide ajar. Alice seemed totally unphased by this and gave me the pathetic explanation that perhaps the previous owners of our house had been back and let themselves in. I called the police before going in and they said not to enter, just in case somebody was still in there. In a short time, the police arrived and we went in together. Not a single thing was missing or out of place. It was a complete mystery, almost.

I saw a neighbour across the street doing some gardening and asked him if he had seen anybody going into my house. He said he had seen Alice come out about half an hour before I got home. So of course I challenged Alice when she got home. Alice got really angry with the neighbour and ran across to his house to have it out with him. She angrily told him to mind his own business and that he was wrong, he had not seen her. The poor man backed down and later told me he didn’t want to get involved and that he had seen nothing. He had been bullied into changing his story.

It wasn’t too long after this that the grand finale came to be. At this point, I was and still am convinced that two other players were participating in this farce. The two twisted minds are very well-known people in their field and what I knew of these two sick individuals and what had happened so far was more than enough to convince me that they were very much a part of it all.

The male one of this dynamic duo had a previous form. At one time he took to hating a neighbour’s dog so much that he sprinkled a mysterious white powder all over the neighbour’s garden and left a scribbled note saying that it was animal poison. For that misdemeanour, he was reported to the police, but all he got was a warning.

Finally, my lovely wife decided to go for a night of total and utter terror, a night that I am still not convinced was not intended to harm or even kill me.
Alice had told me that she was going out for an evening swim at the local leisure centre about a ten-minute drive away. Just before she left for the evening she began to act very strangely, not to say suspiciously, indeed.

As I came down the stairs from putting the children to bed I had just got past the half-landing when I stopped dead in my tracks and stepped back up two steps to see if I had in fact seen what I thought I had seen.

Underneath the hall radiator was a fixed-line telephone point. The line had for some reason been disconnected. I went down to the hall and ever so quietly bent down to plug it back in. As I did so my hackles began to rise. Why would somebody about to go out for the evening disconnect the telephone line? Hmmmmm, I felt very uneasy about that I can tell you.

From the hall, I went into the TV room at the back of the house. The room had a pair of iron French patio doors with a single slip bolt catch midway up the two doors. As I sat nonchalantly watching the TV Alice sailed in and quietly went over to the patio doors and tried to make it look like she was just gazing out to the garden. Just above the volume of the TV, I could hear her sliding the bolt open. So now things really were beginning to get a little intriguing. As Alice turned and sauntered across the room to go out I spoke up.

“Alice, stop. What’s going down tonight then?”

“What do you mean? I’m going for a swim.”

“Really. You have just very slyly slipped the catch on the security door. You have also disconnected the fixed telephone line. Is somebody going to pay me a visit whilst you are out to attack me? The door is open to let them in and the telephone line has been cut to stop me calling for help. Can I remind you that we have three lovely children upstairs in bed asleep?” Alice became totally hysterical.

“I don’t know why I did those things. Why are you watching everything I do?”

“Because I don’t trust you, Alice, that’s why.”

“Well then fuck off if you don’t like it.” she snarled then immediately went out to her car and left.

After I checked that all doors and windows were shut and locked I went and sat quietly in the dark in the TV room. I have to be honest I was a nervous wreck. I went to the kitchen to get a big sharp knife and to the children’s toy room to get a baseball bat.

As I sat there in the dark I thought this is so freekin crazy. Either I am going out of my mind and seeing malintent in the most innocent of things or something really was afoot. It was about an hour later I discovered to my total and utter shock that it was in fact the latter.

I was sitting with my eyes closed trying to relax when suddenly there was an almighty bang on the front door, loud enough to have almost taken the door off its hinges. I resisted the temptation to put any lights on and raced quietly to the front room window which looked out onto the main road. At the bottom of our drive, I saw a non-descript car with several people in it. The car had the engine running and within less than a minute the driver revved the engine and the car sped off at a tyre squealing hell of a lick out of the one-way road.

After about five minutes Alice turned up and sailed in through the front door without a care in the world.

“Ok, so I presume you caught sight of a car racing down the one-way road that leads to our house huh Alice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I saw nothing. I think you need to seek help, Liam.”

“Really Alice? Ok, I have to go out to get some milk and bread for the children’s breakfast. How was your swim?” I asked looking at her still-wet hair.

“It was very good thank you,” she answered.

First I drove to the late shop to get the milk and bread and then I had a hunch and drove to the leisure centre. The doors to the centre were locked closed. A caretaker came to see what I wanted and I asked at what time the centre had closed.

“Been closed all day sir for cleaning.”

“Ah ok, and where is the nearest swimming pool please?”

“Fifty miles away sir, but that was closed today too.”

“Thank you, good night.”

Clearly, Alice had not been for a swim and had called in at her friend’s house to wet her hair on the way home from wherever it was she had really been. And clearly, Alice had not thought this through that well at all. If you put a man in fear for his and his children’s lives, that man will leave no stone unturned to get to the truth of what exactly is going on.

In the end, I didn’t feel at all safe in my own house and decided to call it a day, if not for me then for the well-being of my three kids. It was a move that may well have saved my life.

I not only moved out but I also took it upon myself to be extra careful by changing my appearance and spontaneously changing my route after I set off anywhere, constantly checking my rearview mirror. In a word, I became completely paranoid, but I had to in order to survive.

In the end, survive I did. In fact I took one very important step to ensure my survival. I faced Alice with everything I had. I told her I was on to her and her bad intentions and that I had documented everything and kept several copies in secure places. If anything happened to me the authorities would be informed. She was absolutely furious and screamed at me how disgusting she thought I was. Fine, I can live with that, the other option is not so easy.

And now looking back, I really cannot think of any better way I could have handled any of what happened to me. I did my best to survive and protect our children and in that, I was highly successful and lived to tell the tale. That is what I call a bloody good result.

And now as I sit far removed from all of the events I have recounted, still I find it a little chilling to think that had I not rumbled that something not good for me was afoot, I may well have not been here to tell the tale. Had I committed suicide all would have been brushed under the carpet and nobody would have been any the wiser. Scary huh? Too scary for me, that’s for darn sure.

Postscript:

Many years after the events described I did get to ask my ex why she had behaved towards me in such an awful manner she simply said, quote; “It was just that I wasn’t very happy at that time.” To which I replied “Well I am absolutely certain that if you were to ask any incarcerated killer why they did what they did you would get exactly the same answer, but that I’m afraid does not excuse it. Your happiness is not something that should come at the cost of somebody’s life or well-being.” And with that being said, I calmly walked away never to cross paths with Alice ever again.