The Passengers(70)
‘I’m sorry but I think you have the wrong number, mate.’
‘I saved it from your profile into my phone.’
‘I don’t know what Guy 2 Guy is. I think someone’s messing you around.’
‘Time-waster,’ Don muttered and the line went dead.
A text arrived as he slipped his phone in his pocket. ‘Sexy pics m8,’ it read. ‘Want 2 trade?’ Three photographs of what appeared to be the same erect penis taken from different angles followed it. Two more texts of a similar nature arrived so he turned off his phone, perturbed.
Sam waited until they returned home and Josie and the kids were in bed before switching it back on. Dozens and dozens of similar texts and emails flooded his inboxes. A link took him to a gay dating website for men who wanted to cheat on their partners, and a page accredited to him and his number, but with some else’s photos and genitalia. ‘Sam Cole, 40, Halifax, Sheffield, Dunstable and Luton, looking for no strings phone, cam and in-person good times. Can’t accom. Willing to do groups. Nothing out of bounds.’
‘What the hell?’ he said aloud and followed another link to try and shut the profile down. But without a password, he was out of luck. Suddenly, his heart leaped into his throat – this was much more than a prank.
Halifax, Sheffield, Dunstable and Luton.
Friends who knew him and Heidi from Luton had been told he was working in Sheffield. Those who knew him and Josie in Sheffield thought his company was based in Dunstable. If someone knew about Halifax and Luton, then they knew about his double life.
Over the following weeks, more texts and calls appeared from both men and women, all claiming to have been directed from other dating websites specialising in extramarital affairs. Sam scrolled through them all looking for clues. Some were straight hook-up sites, others gay or bisexual, along with those catering for eye-opening extreme fetishes. In the end, he stopped answering phone numbers he didn’t recognise and eventually the calls faded away. But his concern remained as to who knew his truth.
It was only now as a Passenger that he recalled how at around the same time, Heidi had begun putting pressure on him financially.
‘What do you think of these?’ she’d asked, sliding a brochure under his nose while he made breakfast. It contained kitchen designs, and high-end ones from what he could determine by the option of materials.
‘They’re nice,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you think? We need a new kitchen.’
‘What’s wrong with this one?’
‘It’s at least twenty years old. Two of the cupboard doors are falling off their hinges, one of the hobs doesn’t work and the layout is impractical. Let’s start enjoying some of this money you’re working all hours to earn.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ he replied. Sam was anxious to change the subject. Had his salary only been allocated to their household, he could easily have afforded a top-of-the-range kitchen. But every penny was accounted for and split evenly between the needs of two homes. Heidi, however, wasn’t ready to be fobbed off.
‘You’ll think about it, will you?’ she said. ‘And who made you the master of the house?’
‘That’s not what I meant …’
‘Sam, you’re barely here while me and the kids spend all our time under this roof. And as well as a new kitchen, we need to start thinking about the family bathroom because the shower’s leaking again, the window frames are rotting and the conservatory needs replacing. This house is falling apart and you haven’t even noticed. This weekend I’m going to start sifting through all our accounts to see where we can move some money around.’
Sam panicked. ‘No, no,’ he said a little too quickly. He didn’t want his wife poking around his secret finances or she would likely discover the joint bank account, mortgage and other two credit cards he had in his and Josie’s names. But carrying out all the work she was listing would break him financially. ‘Let’s take it one step at a time,’ he conceded and reluctantly took another look at the kitchen brochure.
A week passed before an email arrived. ‘Your Wives,’ read the subject heading. Sam wanted the ground to swallow him whole as he raced to open it. It contained two embedded images, one of Heidi and their children on holiday in Blackpool and the other of Josie and their offspring playing with water pistols in the garden. Everything Sam had worked so hard to conceal was hanging by a thread.
‘Who are you?’ he typed quickly, his heart caught in his throat. ‘What do you want?’
A week later, a second email arrived. ‘I can make this go away,’ it read.
‘How?’ he replied instantly.
Another seven days passed before he received a reply. ‘It will cost you ￡100,000.’
The wait between emails was crippling but there was nothing he could do to speed the process up.
‘I don’t have that kind of money!’ he typed.
‘You own a construction business.’
‘I can’t just take money out of it. That’s fraud.’
‘So is bigamy.’
Sam imagined both wives’ reactions if they discovered the truth. Heidi hated liars – so much of her job was spent trying to decipher fact from fiction that she had no time for it when she left the office. Sam imagined her flying into a rage, then having him arrested for knowingly marrying two women. Meanwhile when Josie found out, she would be devastated and crumble. The pressure was already upon her looking after two children and a mother with dementia. It would kill him to cause her more misery.