Virtual Virgin

My first tale told a divorcee's tale of discovery. Many months later, having anguished over some adverse comments, I have finally finished the second part.

Briefly: The narrator discovered, after nearly twenty years of marriage, that her husband had lived a double life, fathering three children with another woman.

Thanks to all of your comments against the first story - well, the good ones anyway! For a fuller understanding, please read that story first.

I find one thing curious about this site: Judging by many of the comments, the Loving Wives category seems to be a troublesome place to write and some comments indicate my first tale shouldn't be in that category - why? That story, and this follow up, relates to a wife who was a very loving wife but was betrayed by her husband.

It begs the question: what should a story in that category relate to?

The adverse comments made me doubt myself and my writing ability, hence the lengthy period since the first part of the story.

I've now plucked up courage to write again, so have filled that story out a bit by telling how the once loving wife discovered the full story behind her ex husband's other life and manages to move on from the hurt and anger that her husbands betrayal aroused in her.

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Having plucked up courage to tell my tale, I feel confident enough to open up about my life a little more and to rid myself of the anger of my ex husband's betrayal.

I had a strict upbringing, my Irish parents being regular church goers and of the Catholic faith, who loved and cherished me, their only child. Their one fault, if it can be called that, was to be over protective.

That could be said of most parents, I guess, but it didn't allow me to learn from my mistakes as I grew up, as my friends did.

As I matured through my late teens, I realised that having increasingly large breasts was both a blessing and a curse. I stared at them in the mirror, initially excited to watch them swell as the months and years went by until, at eighteen, with an ever increasing bust, I noticed the downside of a voluptuous body: previously uninterested men now stared at me in a way that I didn't always welcome.

My parents obviously realised this too, and became ever more protective of me, pushing away the men I was attracted to and guiding me toward those they thought were good boys; boys who would make good, albeit boring husbands, rather than accepting boyfriends of my own choosing.

They would press me to go out with gentle but slightly dull boys, those who preferred sitting at home listening to music or reading, rather than racing around on motorbikes or playing team sports.

I still fondly remember one boy I met at a friends birthday party in my teens. Ronnie was a good looking eighteen year old, who played football, had a few minor brushes with the law and recklessly drove around in a bright red, rather rusty, Italian sportscar. I instantly fell in love with him and secretly dated him for weeks, before my mother saw me getting into his car one day, after I had watched him play for our local team.

To her credit, she didn't get angry with me that time, despite my lies to her earlier - saying that I was going to the library and then on to meet some friends.

When I got home that night, she told me that she had seen me with a boy and gently chastised me for lying to her. As I waited for the telling off, she calmly went on to suggest that I bring him back to meet her and my father before the relationship went any further.

I can only imagine that she saw that as an alternative tactic, so that she could put Ronnie off rather than pressure me, but I grabbed the opportunity to show off my manly boyfriend.

The next weekend saw us screech to a halt outside the house, in a noisy sportscar driven by my hirsute muscular boyfriend, still in his football kit and caked in mud, hoping to clean up in a warm house rather than the cold and rickety old shed that served as the club's changing room.

My dad laughed, but mum was horrified as Ronnie clambered out, oblivious to his appearance. Mum's face was a picture as she noticed that his shorts were ripped, leaving nothing to the imagination as he unelegantly got out of his car, giving my horrified mother a brief glimpse of a plump pair of hairy testicles.

When she told me about that later, I realised that my mum had a more intimate knowledge of Ronnie than I did, and I felt a little jealous, desperate to ask her what they looked like, but not daring to.

I managed to make that relationship last for a few months, before Ronnie got fed up of being watched over by my parents and of being stopped every time his hands slid up my legs - my upbringing teaching me to save myself for the wedding night.

I mourned the loss of that relationship for months, blaming myself and wishing that I had given in to his advances, and my own urges, and enjoyed a full sexual relationship with him.

I vowed not to be so prudish again and, looking back, that should have taught me a lesson about men. They are all guided by the feelings in their loins and if things don't go their way, they tend to look elsewhere.

Unfortunately, my immaturity and insecurity led me to believe that I had been at fault, vowing to change my behaviour to make me more desirable to men.

My next boyfriend was a boy that I had known since school and somebody who my barrister father thought very highly of, being the son of my fathers legal partner at the time.

So I welcomed into my life, and eventually into my bed, a boy my parents insisted on calling David, but whose friends all knew as Dave.

He seemed a pretty steady boy, had studied hard at school and was then at university, studying law. I liked him and dated him regularly for the next year or so, something which proved increasingly difficult, as his university was an hours drive away and I didn't drive at that time.

When he graduated, there were discussions about his future, as his father had left the joint practice and retired. The options were given to him, of joining a law firm in the north of England, where his father had retired to, or of joining my father's practice. It was however, inevitable that Dave would be accepted into my fathers law firm, with the assumption that he would follow in his father's footsteps and eventually become a partner.

When all that was settled, I did something that initially tried my parents patience. I moved away from home, to live with Dave.

I was nearly twenty one at the time, but very immature and easily influenced by others, so they felt I needed their protection and guidance. They eventually accepted that I was an independent woman, going to live with somebody they trusted, so grudgingly accepted the situation.

They approved of Dave and I think they only objected because they struggled with the thought of finally letting go of their only daughter, knowing that I would finally be losing my virginity - never suspecting that we had been having sex for over a year, my frigidity abandoned after my previous experience - fearful of losing another boyfriend.

Within weeks of hooking up with Dave, I had let him see, touch and fondle my naked breasts, a part of me that he seemed obsessed with at the time. That quickly led to more intimate fondling and, as his hand touched that most sacred part of me, the first feelings of arousal made me gasp with pleasure and I gave in completely, losing my virginity to him.

Every detail of that night remains in my memory to this day and I foolishly imagined that we were the only people to have experienced such pleasure, falling deeply in love as waves of pleasure flooded through me for the first time, assuming that he felt the same as we lay recovering, our naked bodies entwined for ever - or so I thought.

Once our sex life gained pace, it seemed natural that we live together so, a year or so later, I moved into his riverside inner city apartment, overlooking the city of London.

From that point on, our lives followed a path toward marriage, followed by a move to the leafy suburbs. We lived a comfortable life and I busied myself with my own career, leading to us only spending time together at weekends, with me commuting one way and Dave the other, both busy with our individual working lives.

It all seemed quite natural to me that he didn't come home some nights - I naturally assumed that he was busy carving out his legal career.

I now see that his behaviour should have alerted me to what was happening; why he married me and why he spent increasingly more time away from home. He was slowly revealing his real character - that of a devious, manipulative career minded man, who had used me to get accepted into my father's law firm; a well respected legal practice, which wouldn't have looked twice at him if not for our father's business links and my father's obligation to him as my husband.

He repaid that obligation by leaving after a few years, to join a rival practice, leading to a big falling out between the two families, my father accusing him of betrayal when he took a raft of business clients with him.

The daily grind of commuting, the bitterness of the split and the intensity of his work, gave him yet more seemingly valid reasons to stay in town more often, whilst I collapsed wearily into bed after my own draining day, or went alone to visit my parents on most weekends, giving him plenty of time to live his double life unhindered.

Looking back, I don't understand why I thought we were living an idyllic, loving life, always thinking that one day we could start a family, hoping that he and my father would one day settle their differences.

Instead, the years flew by unnoticed, our love and affection for each other diminishing so slowly that it became normal to hardly see each other for weeks, let alone have sex, neither of us seeming to miss it.

So I lived a dull but contented life, until the day that I discovered Dave's deceit.

After my divorce came through, I had bouts of self doubt, the thought of how I had been deceived gnawing away at me.

My good friend Ann annoyed me at first, by regularly trying to talk me through the situation at that time, suggesting that I shouldn't let it ruin my life and to take control of the situation. They were trite suggestions from a contented mother of three young children, with a dedicated husband, who could never imagine what I was going through.

At one point, whilst trying to moderate my anger at the other woman in Dave's life, Ann suggested that I shouldn't blame that woman, that she might also have been deceived, maybe suffering herself from Dave's behaviour. At first, I was furious at that thought but, as time went by, I gradually began to wonder about Dave's mysterious lover, trying to put myself in her situation - but failing miserably.

I still hated her for ruining my life.

Those thoughts dogged me for months, as Dave had never told me the full story. After my initial discovery and his admission of his other life, his legal mind quickly realised that the less I knew the better, so he started to deny some of the things he initially told me, twisting words to confuse me, then finally refusing to talk, other than through his lawyer, a friend from his university days.

I therefore decided that the only way to put this stage of my life behind me was to confront the woman who I suspected of being Dave's secret lover; the woman who had borne three children from him.

Only she and Dave would know the full story behind his deceit, so if I wanted to know the truth, she would be the only person who might reveal it to me.

I had relied on rumours and tales from friends as to the woman's identity, stupidly being persuaded by Dave to settle the divorce amicably, meaning that the full story need never be told. With my mind in turmoil and filled with anger and hatred, I agreed to a quick divorce in exchange for the ownership of our house in full, with Dave taking responsibility for the mortgage, something I could never afford on my own.

Now officially on my own, I looked round for friendship, reconnecting with old friends initially. It soon dawned on me that they had all heard rumours of Dave's behaviour, although some of the tales seemed pretty far fetched at first. However, I spoke to somebody who initially knew nothing of the affair, but was more sympathetic than most, a woman called Helen. She and I were close friends when young, but her parents moved into London in our early teens and we lost contact for a few years. A chance meeting at the funeral of an ex schoolteacher put us back in touch, and we picked up our friendship once more.

As I told her my tale, she looked pensive while listening, then finally said that she thought Dave's children might attend the same school as her son, having seen him there occasionally, more recently with a woman she didn't recognise.

When she first saw him there some years ago, before we rekindled our friendship, she recognised him and approached him to say hello. He looked embarrassed she said, using the excuse that he was picking up a friends son to take him to a football match. That tale soon fell apart when she saw him leading two boys to his car, which made Helen wonder why he had told a lie.

More recently, she said that he was a more frequent visitor and occasionally picked up his children with their mother, although she mostly did the school run on her own.

Helen is friendly, incredibly chatty and easy to get along with, and when I told her about Dave, she tried to befriend his lover, hoping to discover the truth. She described her as decidedly cold and unfriendly and the only scrap of information she got out of her was her name - Lesley.

I laughed at that. Dave had routinely mentioned having to stay over as he was working with a man called Les. He must have deliberately fabricated that fictitious colleague, in case he slipped up in his lies.

Helen went on to say that most of the other mum's agreed that she didn't fit in with them and their lifestyles, being distant and avoiding any social occasion. They all also thought the same of her, never referring to her as Lesley, instead secretly referring to her as 'the tart with the boobs'.

Sitting in my friends car, outside the school, I felt guilty stalking this woman, but had to rid myself of the doubts that gnawed away inside me.

A woman walked up with three young children, kissed her youngest son goodbye and watched them cross the road, Helen pointed to the woman in question and I immediately recognised her. She had always been around on my nights out with Dave's university pals, keeping her distance, but always with a wink and a smile for Dave

She was a small busty woman with short mousy hair, a face that might have mingled with the dozens of other mothers waiting for their offspring, if not for the way she was dressed.

I can only describe her as an average looking, thirty something mother, only standing out because she was dressed inappropriately for the school run. Some of the mothers were dressed in casual clothes, whereas others wore expensive designer dresses, their hair and make up perfect, but none were dressed to look overtly sexy, as Dave's lover was.

She wore a simple but very short dress, low cut and revealing, her breasts spilling out alarmingly. She teetered on tall stiletto heels which she presumably wore to overcome short legs, but which gave her the appearance of a teenager on a drunken night out or, as I saw her, a cheap street whore.

She seemed to be on foot so, as the mothers began to drift away, I thanked my friend, asking her to drop me off in a nearby residential street.

Feeling a little foolish, I watched as Lesley disappeared into the nearest underground station and, using all my skills from watching TV detective shows, decided to follow her home.

I watched her alight, three stops later, but lost her in the crowds at the station. I was now in familiar territory though, having lived in this part of town when first moving in with Dave and, riding the escalator to the street, a thought popped into my mind as I automatically scanned my card at the electronic barrier and made my way through the all too familiar station and up to the street. I had a sense of déjà vu.

Scanning the busy street, watching people rush in different directions, I looked for those stiletto clad feet and bare legs amongst the black trouser clad legs of numerous men hurrying to their office, but she had disappeared.

Without thinking, I headed off toward Dave's old apartment, the thought growing in my mind - she probably lived there.

Ducking into a familiar alleyway and heading off along the river, I instinctively knew that she would be heading for my old home and, as I punched in the code to the riverside security gate, unchanged after all those years, I saw her disappear into the same high end apartment building that I had moved into with Dave all those years before.

Clearly, Dave had decided to keep this as a pied à terre for his other woman, lying about selling it to a friend during the property downturn, telling me that he had made only enough money to clear the mortgage.

At that point, I doubted every word Dave had ever said and wondered how much money he had put aside to finance her lifestyle. I began to realise why I always had to run a fifteen year old car and spend holidays with my parents - holidays which invariably coincided with an important case, requiring him to stay in London, or fly to Zurich or Paris to see clients. My father would back him up at first, confirming his commitments, but would later shrug and change the subject when asked about Dave's work commitments. Once he left the practice of course, he needed no excuses and would presumably jump for joy as he dropped me off at the airport, heading off to impregnate his mousy little whore once more.

Once I realised where they now lived, the rest was easy. Back at home, I rummaged through a drawer and found a key to our old apartment, so went back a week later, watching as she took her youngest son to school, intending to let myself in.

I stood at the door, wondering if Dave had changed the locks, but the key slipped in easily and turned with a familiar sound, so I slid in, closing the door behind me, feeling the thrill that I imagined a burglar might feel.

The apartment had hardly changed, I thought, taking in the familiar view and the same old furniture which, along with the carpets, were looking very shabby. The wine stain by the windows was still there, the one that Dave told me was caused by a drunken friend - a story which I now doubted, like just about everything he had told me over the years.

I lingered in the bedroom, staring at the bed, wondering how many times he had screwed her on there, and why he had chosen that horrendous bedding.

Dave's suits hung alongside her dresses in the walk in wardrobe, his razor and toothbrush in the bathroom, alongside an array of sex toys, washed and lined up, ready for him to pleasure his tart with.

The fear of discovery overcame me and I realised that being here was wrong, but couldn't resist blunting his razor on the sink, taking a shit and dipping the sex toys in the water, then wiping my backside with the pink toothbrush.

I then guiltily fled the apartment to watch the entrance from the safety of the deli across the road.

An hour or so later I saw her return alone, so finished my coffee and walked across, intending to speak through the intercom, but suddenly wondered if the old landline was still connected. The old number was still in my phone so I dialled it. After a few rings a woman answered and I calmly explained who I was, asking if we could meet up for a chat.

She immediately put the phone down without speaking, but a few minutes later, as I was walking away, she rang back. Despite her initial shock, Lesley now appeared only too willing to meet up and discuss things and invited me up to their apartment. She looked scared when she opened the door, her foot solidly against me pushing it fully open but, after a few uncomfortable minutes of conversation, she pulled the door open and nodded me in.