The evidence

I had an early alarm and packed before breakfast, throwing things casually into my bag with no great attention. Knowing Carol was half asleep behind me, I packed trying to look casual and careless. The trip was nothing special. I do freelance work with clients all over; mostly we meet by Skype, but now and then it needs eyeball to eyeball. Tedious, but that's how it goes.

Carol stirred while I was stuffing my bag.

"You don't want to forget something and have to dash home for it," she said, hauling herself out of bed and checking through my bag, apparently caring more than I did that everything was there. To my mind that was confirmation that she didn't want me coming home unexpectedly.

I was busy all day in meetings, trying to pack as much as possible into the first day. It took discipline but I managed to resist the temptation to find time to hook up to the web site where the video feed from all my home cameras was uploading. I worked a couple of extra hours so that I could get away early the next day. I had my last meeting in the hotel bar. I'd made sure to book a hotel with good broadband so I ordered room service and about nine o'clock I settled down to an evening of spying on my own home.

I skimmed though the footage from earlier in the day, half expecting to find Carol at home. All the cameras were on movement and voice activation sensors so if there was nothing happening there was nothing to see. Just as well or there wouldn't have been enough hours in the night to watch all the cameras.

I got a neat test of the system right away because I caught myself on camera early in the morning. Skimming through it at high speed I saw myself get up, have breakfast, kiss Carol goodbye and drive off.

Carol went back to the bedroom and changed the sheets as soon as I'd gone. Not a good sign, but she headed off to work on time as usual.

She came home mid morning and had a shower. That was good to watch and I was glad I'd bugged the bathroom, the camera steamed up a little but if any action happened in that room I knew I'd get enough. I was ready to go back to fast forward when I got a treat; Carol shaved her pussy— that was new— probably for Dean’s benefit but at least I'd got the camera in a great place.

Watching was fun, but sure as hell what she was doing was a bad omen, this sort of preparation was not a working from home activity. I tagged the spot on the film and pressed on. Dean turned up half an hour later. Not yet twelve o'clock, definitely in work time. I was pleased to see that one of the shots caught enough of our wall clock to confirm the time. I wished I'd thought more about the angles and lined up a clock with a visible date in each camera's view.

Watching what happened via a video link is a little weird. I guess I might have been turned on or I might have been really hurt but seeing it like that gave me some distance— mentally as well as physically. There was no way I could rush home and catch them at it.

The distance did something else— I found myself mentally analysing the film. I'm in the design business, so some artistic critiquing is second nature. That shot would have been better at a different angle— damn I can't get a close up— I wish the sound was better— all that sort of stuff went through my head as I watched. Somehow that made it hurt less.

They ordered pizza for a late lunch, boring, predictable, but kind of reassuring that she didn't cook for him; that might have been too domesticated for comfort. He had half her clothes off when the delivery boy arrived so he persuaded her to answer the door and pay the order with her tits out and wearing skimpy knickers. I enjoyed watching the kid's face but it pissed me off. There've been days when I tried to persuade her to do that sort of stunt and she never would.

I've read stories about guys finding out what their cheating wives have been up to and one of the things that always seems to rankle is when the wife does stuff for the lover that they've never done for the husband. Yeah, no question that’s a bad trip; one more thing to hold against her come Wednesday. I tagged those clips.

They had a lot of sex; on the kitchen counter, on the living room floor, and then again upstairs. I sped through it tagging a few places so I could find the juicy bits again.

After that they had a shower and Dean drank some of my whisky. Then I got a surprise, the other guy turned up; Jay, the black kid who took the videos she'd gone on about on her laptop. He must have left work early too. Great, so now I had video evidence on both of them.

I could have sat there and cried but first off I was full of anger. Not against Carol; I actually wished I could be there and join in— Lord knows what that says about me. I could imagine her doing other guys like this and coming to bed with me afterwards. I think that bracelet had put some magic spell inside my head. I was ready for Carol to be a hotwife, if that's what she wanted. Hot and Wife being the operative words, but it was going to be on my terms— some of my terms at least—  after we’d talked about it— if we ever did talk about it.

My plan was to get Dean and Jay fired. You could argue that it wasn't their fault, I mean how was I to know that they had this terrible handicap of not being able to say no. Dean was married, I'd met his wife, maybe I should have asked her if she liked him screwing around. Whatever...they were doing their thing, I was going to do mine.

The black kid was good, I'll admit that. Big, skilful and made Carol come a couple of times. I think she'd exhausted Dean, or drained him, whatever you want to call it. I never knew that Carol had this much stamina.

They both left mid evening, which was a surprise. They left after they’d drunk a little more of my best booze and made smart remarks that even though I must be a wimp, I did have some good taste. Carol made some minor protests but didn't exactly shut them up. I watched Dean's car pull out of the garage and while the door was open I could see Jay walking off down the road.

I was thinking both of them were at risk of drunk driving. I hated thinking that, wishing they were caught and feeling guilty that they might hurt someone while over the limit on my whisky. That's one problem with spying, all I could do was watch and think— and too much time let too many thoughts run around in my head.

As I watched Carol clear up the mess downstairs the door bell rang and Jay reappeared. Carol was expecting him. That cheered me up no end because she was cheating on Dean as well as me and the kid was way too young for Carol to be thinking of leaving me to shack up with him. I had expected Dean to stay. I’d seen enough of his wife to know she wouldn’t be easy to fool. Clearly Dean couldn’t make up a good enough excuse to pull an overnight.

That seemed like a good time to call Carol. By then I was seeing the action in real time so I turned the sound off on my laptop— feedback would be embarrassing— and dialled home.

"Hi love," I said. "Sorry to call late, I've had to work harder than I thought and then the service was hellish slow at the restaurant. It would have been better to order pizza in my room."

I couldn't resist throwing in the pizza line but I didn't risk any more provocation. We made idle chit chat as if everything was totally normal. Jay's face was a treat to watch.

"Be sure to get a good night's sleep," she said. "When do you think you'll be back tomorrow?"

"Hard to say exactly, it's gonna depend on weather and traffic and stuff, between four and eight I reckon, three at the earliest. I’ll be as quick as I can."

"Can't you be closer than that," she said. "I wanted to cook for you."

Must be guilt talking, I thought, or a smokescreen. "That's a nice thought but let’s order in, I'll call you when I'm half an hour out." I left it at that. I figured being vague about the time closed down her opportunities for Tuesday afternoon.

Carol and Jay were at it again in my bed before they slept. I left the tape running while I sorted out some of the best clips, checked on them being fast asleep and edited the footage to make a totally incriminating tape of the three of them.

I was awake until gone three editing the best clips. I set up a two new dropbox accounts, one to keep all the dirt and a second one for the work time escapades only. I sent a link to give the big boss a selection of the work time footage and asked him to hold off firing them till Wednesday morning. I told him Carol wouldn't be coming to work that day.

In the morning I was awake before Carol so recorded her and her new lover waking up, and predictably doing it again before having breakfast. They hung around a while, obviously trying to get the energy for one more go before they went to work.

Thanks to my hard work on Monday, Tuesday was easier. I had time to check the video from my phone and then and caught her having another quick one with Dean over lunch.

I cleared all my work before mid day and made it home for three. I figured I had an hour to play with before there was any chance of her being home. I checked where her phone was with a tracking app and made sure to look at it every ten minutes.

I printed out juicy sentences from the material on her laptop and made posters. I enjoyed revelling at my foresight in buying a big sheet printer. As I waited for each poster to roll off I selected a suitable place where it could be stuck on the wall and made a room plan of the exhibition ready for Wednesday morning  

I went through some of the video footage and picked a few great stills that left no doubt as to who was doing what to whom. The pictures of her on the kitchen counter under Dean were especially good, plus a great one of her in her knickers signing for the pizza.

Both of those activities were things she'd never done with me. I packed all the prints safely away and put in a quick call to her boss to check that the material I sent was good enough.

"Thanks for calling," he said. "Don't worry, there's no one listening. I'm sorry this is happening to you. It must be tough. My secretary has given both these guys an appointment to see me in the morning."

As we spoke I checked my account and confirmed that all the cash had come through.

"Thanks for the transfer," I said, not wanting to use the word money over the phone. Don't worry about me. I'll do my best to get through this. It's not good, but it may not be the end. I'll keep you posted, but I doubt if you'll see her tomorrow. It's possible she may be a little upset."

"Take as long as it takes," he said. "I've looked at her calendar, we can cover till the weekend no problem."

Once I had everything cleared up I called her to say I’d be home in half an hour. “See you then,” she said.

That half hour was hell. Until then I'd been obsessively absorbed in planning, picking out pictures, deciding where I was going to stick them on the wall, printing them the right size and making sure I had enough sticky tape and blue-tack. When that was all done I had an empty house and my thoughts.

What if she didn't come home— she might be somewhere with Dean. Maybe Dean had a hint of what would go down tomorrow, maybe they'd got together. All that sort of stuff buzzed through my mind but that wasn't the worst of it.

My head was full of her words to Dean and Jay, enjoying being daring, otherwise called cheating, and full of pictures of her having sex in our house. There wasn't a room in the building that I didn't now have a picture in my head of her with someone else. No matter what I might do to refurnish or redecorate, those images would be stuck in my mind unless we moved house.

Maybe we should go out for the night. I tried to multi task, searching the web in one window while I worked in a different one finishing off my plan. I couldn’t find any gig I thought Carol would like. We could eat out but in my head I knew I wanted to dare her to pay for pizza half naked. I knew she'd say no, but I wanted to prove that.

That wasn’t a good itch to scratch. The more I thought about that fantasy the more I realised that I'd never gotten near first base with it in the past so what were the chances of doing it tonight without making her wonder why it had gotten into my head?

I guess I was feeling some guilt along with my anger at Dean and Jay because I knew I was plotting to turn Carol’s life upside down. As the minutes ticked by I could feel myself getting paranoid about being found out too soon.

It suddenly occurred to me that my car was outside and it was snowing a little. By then my tracker showed that her phone was on the move and I figured I had fifteen minutes. I dashed out and set the engine running. Five minutes got the hood warm enough to melt the snow.

For the last ten minutes before she arrived my head was filled with the idea that I needed to up my game. Blowing her world to pieces was all very well and maybe it would end everything, but if she stayed then what? There was no way that I was going to suddenly become a sex god capable of sweeping her off her feet. If I was going to keep her, if she was going to stay, I had to offer more than I had so far.

I still had no idea what to do when I heard her car pull up outside. As she got out she saw my car and she smiled. I suddenly felt like the first time I'd seen that smile— it went right through me back then, lit up my life and I realised how much I'd missed that. We'd been too busy, buying houses, getting jobs, working, getting promotions, her more than me, and that magic had gone somewhere and I missed it.

I opened the door just as she had her key out. I pulled her close for a hug and held her there on the doorstep for way too long. Feeling her body close to mine lifted my spirit. She was tense, her muscles on edge, full of doubt and guilt, I guessed. I hung on, holding her close until I felt her relax into me. I needed that feeling and I was desperate to put her at ease, have her suspect nothing.

"God I've missed you," I said eventually.

"It's only been two days."

"It feels like forever."

She kissed me and hugged me back and I felt something in that kiss, or maybe I was imagining it. Was there some regret, some guilt? The kiss went on too long, not that I'm complaining, but I knew she was giving me back something.

I was still going through with my plan, but right then, holding her like that I thought there might be some hope. We did eventually disengage enough to get the front door closed.

"How long have you been home?.

"Not long," I said. "I didn't look at the time. The car's still warm." She turned and looked with me and sure enough there was no snow on the hood but some on the roof.

"Was it a tough drive?"

"No," I said. "I think I was ahead of the weather. I'm glad to be back."

"So you don't fancy going out for a meal?"

I had to think fast. That would ditch my trying to tempt her into a naked pizza order, but I had the pictures and I'd gotten nowhere with that stunt in the past.

"Sure," I said. "Why not." So that settled it. I let her choose but I think she was trying to keep me on side because she picked my favourite steak house. I was driving, so I had one small glass of wine and made it last.

Carol hit the sauce a bit harder. I guessed what the game was, she was going to get drunk enough that she could fob me off in bed; or maybe she couldn't stand me anymore and needed to be drunk to go to bed with me at all, or maybe she needed to deaden the guilt. One way or another when we made it to bed she was bound to compare me with Jay and Dean. I knew I had to keep my cool, the blow up was going to happen in the morning and on my terms.

I enjoyed the steak. I asked her how things were going at work and I couldn't resist a little teasing.

"Do you put your success down to being the sexiest woman in the place?" I know it sounds like a crummy line from a cheap TV movie, but what the hell.

"What are you implying?" she said.

I laughed and grinned. "Well yeah, I'm teasing," I said, "but there must be guys who'd find you hard to resist. I know I would. Don't you have to fight them off sometimes."

For a second there was a flash of something across her face, anger, guilt, suspicion, I'm not sure what, I'm biased anyway, but there was something there. She put her fork down with an audible thud. The sound surprised her and she almost lost the thread, disturbed for a second by her loss of control.

"Yeah," she said, breathing out slowly. "Sometimes it is a pain. You have no idea."

"I can imagine," I said, "but I guess my imagining doesn't get close to what it must be like for you. I'm so glad I'm the one married to you, not some poor schmuck working with you who has a hard on all day and gets nowhere with it."

I poured her some more wine which finished the bottle. I ordered another one. "You're safe with me," I said. "You know you can say no to me anytime." I kind of hoped that stung a little.

"Sorry darling," she said and I knew it had hit home. Mean of me to kill the mood like that but she’d been flying, courtesy of thirty six hours of solid fucking.

"Sometimes I get tired of it,” she said, “It's a tough job, you know. I know yours has its rough moments but you do have more freedom."

She's right in a way; I'm self employed so I can work at my pace, apart from when half the world wants everything yesterday.

I took her hand and gave her the warmest smile I could. I figured I'd done enough damage for one night. I kept her glass full and sure enough when we got to bed I didn’t have to worry about catching anything. I knew that in the morning she'd have a headache and I knew that my nice new Apple watch was gonna wake me up at five, in plenty of time to do everything I had in mind.