D-DAY- A year ago

The shoe was undoubtedly the cause of all the problems that day. It was the shoes fault that I came home early, and the shoes fault I was fired.

I suppose I can’t blame the shoe for making me late though- that was the alarm clocks fault for rudely deciding not to do it’s job.

And when finally, through the thick haze of sleepiness, I realized that it hadn’t gone off, it was too later. I was already late for work. And when I say work, I mean my brand new job- job of my dreams- as an intern at ‘Glamorous Girl’ mag.

It was still early days, so I was desperately trying to impress by being perfect, polite and oh-so obliging. Whether it was the request for the Latte to be served at 36 degrees with no sugar, soya milk froth and a sprinkling of organic Cocoa powder flown in directly from the foot hills of the Andes Mountains, or whether it was for the Jasmine and Lavender scented candles to be burnt in the office for ten minutes before my boss arrived--that was me.

Little Miss. Annie Obliging.  

Because lets be honest, the word ‘intern’ is really just a polite synonym for impoverished slave girl.

So when I realized I wouldn’t be able to attend to the scented candles, or fetch the Latte, I panicked. So much so, that I left the house without the said trouble- making, life- ruining, world-annihilating shoes.

Lets take a moment to talk about the shoes. Because they weren’t ordinary shoes, oh no, they were none other than the - just- off- the- Paris- catwalk- and- not- for- sale- to- mere- mortals yet, Christain Louboutins that were the center pieces for that days shoot. That same rushed panic that caused me to forget the shoes, had also left me with barely enough time to scrape my hair back into a casual bun and slip on a slightly creased t-shirt from my floor and the first pair of jeans I could find.

The latter is a bigger sin than you think. Because where I work, wearing anything other than the most fashionable apparel, is sacrilege. People practically throw holy water at you and start wailing in Latin, for fear that you’ve been possessed by the demon of bad fashion. In fact, a real demon possession, complete with a backwards rolling head and the ability to speak in tongues, would be preferable to the demon of last season’s handbag, and Croc sandals.

So when I finally got to work, underdressed, out of breath, without the shoes and over an hour late, I was in serious trouble.

My boss was throwing a cadenza, due to lack of flowery scented office and her gay PA Sedric was in the throws of dramatic caffeine withdrawal due to lack of Latte.

And it kept getting worse.

Two hours later the panicky fashion director summoned the Louboutins. Those shoes had been troublemakers from the start; it had been an absolute trauma getting them in the first place, they’d been flown in to South Africa late last night and I’d been tasked with collecting them. Everyone was virtually holding their breath for the grand arrival. So when I was forced to confess to their absence….well, you can only imagine.

So when lunch finally arrived, I jumped into my car and sped home. I had exactly one hour to get in and out before the photo-shoot.

I pulled into my driveway, grabbed my house keys, ran for the front door, slipped them into the lock, and turned--

But…

Something made me stop.

Something told me not to go inside.

Something was very wrong.

I looked around nervously; everything seemed normal. Peter across the road was blasting his TV as usual, the rat bag Chihuahua from number 45 was running up and down the garden perimeter yapping at an unseen force, and Mildred my neighbor was outside watering her hydrangeas.

So why was I hesitating?

I took a deep breath, and inched the door open.

Nothing looked out of place.

Everything was exactly the way I’d left it.

But everything felt wrong.

I slunk down the corridor towards the kitchen, where I knew I’d find the shoes perched next to the coffee pot. But once inside, I was hit by a terribly eerie sensation…someone was in the house. A shiver licked the length of my spine when my suspicions were confirmed.

Creeeeaaackkk……a noise coming from my bedroom directly above me.

Shit, shit, shit there was an intruder in the house! 

I launched myself at the cutlery drawer, grabbing the largest knife I could find while simultaneously dialing the police and still managing to hold onto the shoes.

 “Police! Help, there’s an intruder in my house. 47 Meldelsohn Road, Oaklands. Quick.”

 Now what?  I’d never been in a situation like this before. What was the correct protocol? Should I hide, evacuate the house, attack the intruder, scream loudly? Or perhaps a combination of the above?

I thought for a second before deciding to get the FUCK out of there! But just as I had one foot safely out the front door, I heard another noise. This time it was different. It was…

It sounded like…

My blood ran cold. But it couldn’t be? Trev was at work. Trev had a very important day in court. He told me. His client’s final hearing was today, right now in fact. I’d called him from my office about an hour ago and he’d told me he was in court.  

He was in court damit!

I started climbing the stairs.

More noises.

Two voices???

But that was impossible… wasn’t it?

The noises grew louder and louder the further up the stairs I went. I’m not really sure at what point I knew what the noises were, or knew what I was going to see when I opened the door. But I just knew.

It’s one thing walking in on your boyfriend having sex with another woman, but it’s another thing entirely walking in on him the second the other woman is coming. She was facing the door straddling him, furnishing me with a full frontal view that has been permanently burnt into my visual cortex. She threw her head back, arched her back, opened her mouth and let out a high-pitched wail. As if that wasn’t self-explanatory enough, she decided to toss in a few words for good measure;

“Yes Trevy, Yes. Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh Trevy. Yes! Yes!   Ah, Ah, Ah, (Pant, pant, pant) I’m coming (Long high pitched scream)”

Now…there were obviously several things wrong with this picture, aside from the obvious. Firstly, who the hell screams like that in bed? No one does! Sex is not so good, that you have to cause a sonic boom by breaking the sound barrier with your high-pitched squealing dolphin sounds. Secondly, what the hell was she wearing? She was clad in some kind of leather-y studded number, that looked liked it had been worn by a Village person. And to make matters worse, Trev was blindfolded with the tie that I’d had brought him two Christmases ago and… OH MY GOD… were those, were those…. Nipple clamps?  

 I felt sick to my stomach. 

And thirdly, who was this woman without an ounce of cellulite or a smidge of fat? Which woman can be that damn perfect…

 …and then the answer came to me.

She can.

Tess.

Tess Blackman.

My husbands work “colleague”. The woman I’d invited into my home on several occasions for dinner. The woman that I always phoned when I couldn’t get hold of Trev, because I knew they were probably together working on a case, tired and exhausted and burning the midnight oil when they’d rather be at home with their significant others, she had a fiancé after all.

Shame, poor them. Poor overworked Trev and Tess.

God I was naïve.

But the show didn’t end there. Tess' eyes were still closed when Trev started making some delightful sounds. His sweaty hands reached up and grabbed at her hungrily. 

Faster. 

Harder. 

Louder. 

I was frozen. It’s hard to know what to do when you watch your partner of three years with his penis somewhere you wouldn’t even like to imagine, let alone witness in full blinding daylight.

Once all their post-coital panting had tapered off, Tess opened her eyes and saw me standing in the doorway. The look on her face was indescribable. She stared at me with a mixture of shock and fear before starting to scream. Trev then turned- once he realized she wasn’t having a sudden spontaneous orgasm- and looked directly at me. 

And then he did something very unexpected. He grabbed Tess by the hand and dragged her to the other side of the bed.

 “Anne please... You don’t want to do this.” Trev threw his hands in the air defensively.  He looked terrified. She was bleating hysterically.   

What the hell was going on? Wasn’t I the jilted one? Wasn’t I the one that was supposed to be upset? I started walking towards them, which only seemed to make matters worse.

“Anne please. Please.” He seemed to be begging now, “Think about what you’re doing. I know this is bad, but this isn’t the way to handle it. Please don’t do this.”

Things happened pretty quickly after that. Suddenly, the room was filled with armed policeman. I was about to tell them they could all go home when Trev cut me off-

“She has a knife. She’d going to kill us!” He shouted pointing at me.

What knife? I glanced at my hands and that’s when I realized I was still holding the large knife, and it was pointed in their direction.

I quickly turned to explain, “I wasn’t going to-”

"Mam…" One of the policeman cut me off and started creeping towards me as if I was a feral pit-bull that hadn’t eaten in a week, "Put down your weapon."

"I swear, this isn't what you think, I was just trying to-"

BAM! Face on floor, handcuffs around wrists.

Two really painful things happed at that point; one, the knife slipped and cut the entire length of my palm and two, the crystal encrusted, six-inch heel of the priceless Louboutin snapped off, rolled across the floor lifelessly and disappeared under the bed. As I was being dragged out I glanced up and saw that Trev was clutching Tess in his arms. He gently planted a kiss on her forehead.

 “It’s going to be okay baby, it’s going to be okay.”