Tomorrow was Fiona’s, or Fi as we called her, graduation. My daughter seemed to have been studying for longer than the four years she had been at university, and she had been clear that she wanted both her parents to attend the ceremony. It had meant I had to travel up to Liverpool the night before.
I had booked an upscale hotel on the waterside in the dock area of the city. I was tired from travelling and I wanted to enjoy some luxury. I told myself that this was because I wanted to feel good when I saw my daughter. I tried not to admit to myself that it was also because I was due to see Maggie again.
I hadn’t seen Maggie for a while. We had sporadic contact but I still struggled to put her out of my mind, and recently I had been thinking about her more and more. I often found myself going through the events that got us to this stage. I remembered distinctly how I watched Maggie with our friend Simon when they went to the rugby dance together and were unable to keep their hands off each other when they returned. I could have stopped things there, but I didn’t. I even provided them with condoms, which effectively gave my consent for them to have sex.
This started a series of events that changed the course of our marriage. Simon was followed by Michael, then Will and then Lisa. But it was the relationship with Michael that eventually drove a wedge between me and my wife. At every stage I had the chance to stop things and I didn’t. Finally, I arranged for them to meet at the house in Wales, where the consequence of our changed lifestyle came to a head.
I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of those times when Maggie did so many new and different things with her lovers, and that moment a year ago after the weekend in Wales when she told me she was pregnant. I remember feeling like I had been punched in the stomach. I felt paralysed. I didn’t know what to say or how to react.
I remembered that she told me that because the baby inside had defied the odds she couldn’t bring herself to end the pregnancy. As soon as she referred to “her baby”, I knew she would find it impossible not to go through with the pregnancy.
At the time, I couldn’t get my head around everything this would mean. I realised that it could not be my baby. I considered whether there was an outside chance it was Will’s since his sperm had been on her, but I knew he only came in her mouth. It had to be Michael’s. I had been there when he unloaded his seed into her bare pussy. The moment came back to haunt me. The moment he must have made my wife pregnant.
I couldn’t offer the support Maggie wanted because I couldn’t bring myself to say the right thing. I wanted her to decide not to go through with the pregnancy, but I also wanted it to be her choice. She wanted to think about it. Part of her felt it was a gift. Part of her felt she should discuss it with the father. She knew that going ahead with the pregnancy would have a profound impact on the future of our marriage.
At that time I was due to travel to the US on business. I had been negotiating with a company based in Portland, Oregon that wanted to introduce their new technology to Europe via the UK. They wanted to use my business contacts to introduce their software to new customers, and they suggested that they would commission me to research and develop a business plan. It was a big opportunity for me. The trip had taken a lot of preparation. In the end, Maggie and I were hardly talking and we both accepted that I might as well go on the trip while she considered what she would do.
As I left for the US, Maggie told me that she had decided that she would go to Manchester the next weekend and spend some time talking to Michael. I felt that our relationship was broken beyond repair. I couldn’t see how we would have a future together if she went ahead with the baby. The fact that she wanted to talk to Michael made me feel like an outsider.
Even if we stayed together, once the baby was born it would be obvious to everyone that it was not my baby. The shock amongst the family and our wider local friendship groups was difficult to comprehend. We were seen as the perfect family, pillars of the community and the church. How could we stay living where we were? Would that mean moving closer to the child’s father? How would we explain the child that was clearly not mine?
When I was away I tried to work out what we could do. If we moved to another area, we could say that we had adopted the child. Maybe people would assume that it had been born abroad to parents that couldn’t support their child. We had taken on the upbringing of the child to give it a better life. But our own grown-up children would know. We wouldn’t be able to keep the pregnancy secret from our close family.
It felt like our marriage and life together were coming apart. I exchanged the briefest of messages with Maggie while I was away. When I had the chance to stay in Portland for a few more days to meet some more people and visit a facility a few miles outside the city in Hillsboro, I took the opportunity. Maggie responded by saying that she intended to extend her stay in Manchester as well. She took sick leave from work.
When I returned home, Maggie was at work. I wasn’t sure what we would say. The house still seemed to be the same. There was evidence of Maggie’s return from Manchester with clothes waiting to be washed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about seeing her again. Part of me wanted to hug her and just go back to how things were. Part of me wanted to pack another suitcase and stay away until…well, I didn’t know for how long.
I sorted out most of my unpacking but left my bags out. When Maggie returned, she told me that Michael was prepared to stay involved in bringing up the baby if it was his. She said that she had concluded that she couldn’t contemplate a termination. She wanted to find a way for it to work for both of us.
At the time I couldn’t see myself sharing Maggie and her baby with Micheal. I couldn’t imagine how we could live together. Maggie said that she didn’t want to leave me, and wanted to find a way to come to some arrangement with Michael. However, I put my bags away and stayed at home. We slept in the same bed, and although I wanted to hug Maggie and be close to her, I didn’t reach out to her and she gave me the space she thought I wanted.
We muddled on for a couple more weeks. I knew I was avoiding confronting the issue, and it would soon be impossible to ignore. With our two children, Maggie had hardly shown her pregnancy. We had a photograph of her in a coat the day before she gave birth for the first time, and she just looked like she was wearing a few extra layers of clothing, and not at the end of a full-term pregnancy. However, this time, it was clear that the pregnancy would be more obvious.
I continued to work on the US project and arranged a further trip to Oregon. It seemed like a convenient escape for me.
One Friday evening when I got home from a couple of days away on business, Maggie sat me down with a glass of wine. She wasn’t drinking alcohol, but she opened a nice bottle for me and asked if we could talk. She told me that she knew that this was proving to be very difficult for me. She wanted to ask me to support her through the pregnancy, and she had a specific request.
Maggie was due to go for her first scan in a week’s time and she wanted me to go with her. I wasn’t sure. It was clear that Michael would find it difficult to get down from Manchester on a school day, but I asked if Kat would go with her. Maggie was clear that she wanted me there with her.
A week later I found myself with Maggie in a dimly lit consulting room while a doctor passed a scan over Maggie’s belly. We all looked at the screen as the doctor pointed out the image of the child inside her. Things had changed in over twenty years since our son was born, and the scan was more advanced. I hadn’t even been with Maggie for the first scans for our children.
The doctor was keen to involve me, and the more reticent to respond I seemed, the harder she tried. She asked us if the baby was a surprise so many years after our first two children. Maggie said that it was a surprise. The doctor asked me if I was excited, and if I wanted to ask any questions. I felt like telling her that it wasn’t my baby but I knew that would upset Maggie, so I just mumbled something about hoping that Maggie and the baby were healthy.
The doctor described some additional tests she might recommend for older mothers. She said that we should consider them carefully, and gave us some information sheets. She said that it can be as daunting for older parents as for younger parents, but she could see that Maggie was well supported by me.
I knew that she was just being nice to us, but I felt numb. I should have been excited and a comfort to Maggie, but I just stared at the screen and couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I was looking at Michael’s baby inside her.
I didn’t say anything as we left. Maggie had hoped that I would feel involved and able to support her. She said that she was sorry that she had asked me to come with her, and we drove home in silence. When we got home, Maggie told me she was going out for a walk. I went to our bedroom, and without particularly thinking of the consequences, I packed a case.
I booked a room in a hotel a few miles away so I could be alone to decide what I wanted to do. I didn’t contact Maggie and I ignored the couple of messages she sent me. A few days turned into a week and then a month. I returned home to collect more clothes when I knew Maggie would be at work. I could smell her presence but I couldn’t bring myself to stay and see her.
Kat and I spoke a few times and we met at her home once when we shared a bottle of wine. As always, she was kind and understanding. But she also reminded me that, although I hadn’t intended things to end this way with Maggie getting pregnant, I had set up the opportunity. If I had not arranged for Maggie to be with Michael again, if I hadn’t consented to her doing whatever she wanted, everything would have been different.
Although we had stayed close and she was very understanding of my distress, Kat was also staying close to Maggie. This made it awkward for me to understand where I stood with her.
She told me that Maggie was upset that I wouldn’t talk to her and had left her all alone. She wanted to find a way forward with me, but she also couldn’t terminate her pregnancy and, having seen the baby when we had the scan, she was more determined than ever to have the baby. Kat told me that I had to speak with Maggie, and I knew she was right.
Maggie called the next evening and we spoke on the phone. It was a difficult conversation. We were both emotional but we agreed to meet outside and walk together. In the past walking and talking had worked well for us.
A couple of days later I took the afternoon off work and I met Maggie after school a few miles from home and we did the same walk we took after the weekend in London. It was where we had met a couple that were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary.
Maggie asked me what I had been doing and I described the progress I had made on the project I had been working on for the US company. I found it easier to talk about business. It was much harder to talk about us, and we had been walking for over thirty minutes before the conversation became more personal.
I asked Maggie if she had told anyone that she was pregnant. She said that she had only told her head teacher, because she had to. Apart from Michael and Kat she hadn’t spoken to anyone but she would have to soon. I looked at her and I noticed a small bump. For a moment it was sexy to think of her pregnant, even though I knew it wasn’t mine. I felt excited, but I also felt a gut-wrenching loss as I thought of Michael’s child inside her. The image from the scan continued to haunt me.
Maggie told me that she was considering moving away if I didn’t come back soon. She didn’t want to be where she was well known as it would soon be more obvious to everyone that she was pregnant.
I asked her if she had stopped loving me.
She said that it was hard loving me when I wasn’t with her and wouldn’t talk to her. She felt I just didn’t like her, let alone loved her, anymore. She stopped me and said that she wanted to ask me something. She said that if I couldn’t face staying with her, would I just stay with her until the baby was born She wanted me to be with her as she faced the challenge of telling people, and help her as she was feeling so tired all the time.
I wanted to support her, but I felt cold to her in a way that I’d never experienced. We were starting to live different lives.
I said that it was hard for me after all she did and now she was carrying someone else’s baby inside. Maggie looked upset but with tears in her eyes, she said that she understood.
I wanted to offer some hope, and I didn’t know if I could face life without her, but I also didn’t know how I could be with her when things were like this. I couldn’t think of anything more to say.
So I said, “Sorry, I can’t do this at the moment. Maybe I just need more time to get used to what’s happening.”
Maggie moved forward to hug me and we embraced. She spoke again.
“I really think I need to move away for a while. I was thinking that I could be somewhere close to Michael, and where people don’t know me as I was. Maybe we could rent out the house?”
I felt pain inside but I agreed that it would be sensible. If I wasn’t going to be with her, Maggie would want to go where she felt she needed to be. I said that I would look to find an agent to rent it out and then I could rent somewhere for myself.
I could hardly believe I was agreeing to such a thing, but it just seemed the logical thing to do.
I kissed Maggie’s forehead and we walked back to the cars and I went back to the hotel where I had been staying. My heart ached as it seemed that the gap between Maggie and me was now unbridgeable.
Soon after the walk with Maggie, I found myself an apartment to rent. We told our children that we had decided to live apart for a while, and then they learned that Maggie was pregnant. Our son didn’t seem to react. He was quiet on the phone when I spoke with him and didn’t seem to want to talk. I knew that he had inherited the trait that I had to avoid difficult conversations, particularly when dealing with emotional issues.
Our daughter was more emotional. She had always seen us as perfect parents, rarely arguing and always close. She kept asking me questions. How her mother could be pregnant and rather than celebrating, we were separating? I tried to just explain that it was complicated, and hoped that Maggie would fill in the gap. However, Fi wouldn’t let me off the hook. When I said that the baby wasn’t mine, she wanted to know how Maggie had ended up pregnant with another man’s baby. She asked me directly if I knew the father.
I admitted to knowing the father, but I said that Fi would not know him.
Fi asked if Maggie and I were swingers.
I said that we weren’t swingers, but that we both had done a few things which went beyond our marriage vows. I said that in time we might be able to explain more, but for the time being she would have to make do with what I had said.
Fi asked if we were going to get divorced. I said that I didn’t know, but I wasn’t seeking to divorce Maggie. We’d have to see what happened in the future. Fi reluctantly left it there. I didn’t think she was at all satisfied, and she was clearly still upset, but I handled the conversation as best I could.
I buried myself in my work although at first I thought about Maggie every day.
I managed to rent out our family home easily and split the rent between us so that we could have our own places to live. Our area was popular and so it wasn’t difficult to get an agent to deal with all the issues. Maggie let me make all the key decisions based on the agent’s advice.
I was travelling on business a lot of the time and I wasn’t sure where to settle as my new base. I ended up in a small town with easy access to London and Heathrow airport. I felt rootless with work to distract me during weekdays but little to do except feel depressed when I finished work in the evenings and at weekends. I was lonely but I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to Maggie.
I had the chance to spend chunks of time in Oregon as I worked on the potential new business with the US company. I found spending time out of the country helped me come to terms with what had been happening. However, it also made me miss Maggie even more.
One day, a few months later, I was in a hotel room surfing the Internet after completing some work. As I was starting to enter a search, the browser pre-filled previous sites I had visited including Will’s photography company website. I had last looked at this before the fateful weekend in Wales.
I looked again at the portfolios that were online and went straight to the boudoir section. Many of the sets of photos were familiar from the last time I looked. As I went through the different albums, I found a new one labelled “pregnancy” with a note saying that before giving birth a woman’s body changes in miraculous and beautiful ways and many couples want to record. A professional photo shoot was ideal to capture that special time.
When I clicked on the photos, I found myself looking at pictures of Maggie. They were obviously taken very recently when she was heavily pregnant.
The first group was a mix of colour and black and white pictures of Maggie wearing a short black cocktail dress. Her makeup appeared to be professionally applied, and she was wearing plenty of jewellery that I didn’t recognise. Her ‘baby bump’ was prominent as was the fact that her breasts were larger than normal. I remembered how this had been true when she had been pregnant before with our children.
Maggie seemed to be relaxed and was caught in motion in many pictures. They didn’t seem at all stiff and posed but rather relaxed. Sometimes her dress was flaring up and showing some lacy stocking tops. It looked very sexy.
The next photos were all in colour. Maggie was still in the same dress and now joined by Lisa in a set of couples photographs. Both women had matching black dresses and jewellery. They looked like a couple in love in a series of pictures with them holding hands, hugging each other and laughing at each other. Again there was a feeling of movement and two women who were very relaxed in each other’s company. The contrast between Lisa’s tall slim body and Maggie’s pregnant state was striking.
The next set had Maggie and Lisa both dressed in identical matching lingerie sets. Although the bras they were wearing showed a lot of cleavage, they were showing less skin than they might show on the beach. However, the images were sexy and again they were hugging close and kissing, looking like a loving couple.
The images were tasteful and exciting, but I wondered at how far they went and what I didn’t see.
The next set was black and white pictures of Maggie and Michael. I was shocked that they were both naked, although carefully placed props and arms meant that they were not explicit. There were three pictures. In the first, Maggie was standing sideways to the camera looking down at her swollen belly. Her arm shielded her naked breast. Michael was kneeling down facing her and kissing her belly. Backlighting meant that the couple were only seen in silhouette.
In the second picture Maggie was facing the camera with her arms under her belly, one hand under her belly while the other hand was covering her pussy. Michael was standing behind her, with his arms around her shielding her breasts from the camera. Michael was smiling like a proud father. I stared at the picture, fascinated by how Maggie’s body was changing and how I wasn’t there to witness it.
I also wondered how Maggie felt with Michael’s naked body against her and his arms around her breasts and touching her nipples. I’m sure they would have been larger and more pointed due to her pregnancy. Obviously Will would have seen her as well.
In the third picture Maggie and Michael were on a bed lying naked together, Michael snuggling up behind Maggie so that he was spooning her. His hand was now covering her pussy and Maggie’s arm crossed her breasts to pull Michael closer. Maggie was turning to look at Michael, who seemed to be closing in to kiss her. Although the picture was carefully posed, they gave every impression of a couple in love.
I found another set of pictures of Maggie in the bedroom section under ‘more explicit photos for your eyes only’. Maggie was now dressed only in a lacy bra with sheer matching panties and black stockings. The pictures were increasingly daring until the final two.
In one she was staring directly at the camera, standing with her arms by her side and her legs slightly apart. She seemed to be daring the viewer to look more closely at her. Her nipples, which were darker than they were before she was pregnant, were clearly visible behind the thin material. The slightly see-through panties showed that she was clean-shaven below. She seemed to be flaunting her body.
In the other, she was on a bed with white sheets. She was on all fours, her bottom towards the camera. Her legs were apart and her back arched, pushing her bottom up. Maggie was looking backwards at the camera, smiling, and the camera was focused on her face with most of the rest of the photo blurred and not in focus. Again, the sheer material hid nothing and her pussy lips and rosebud were visible although out of focus. It seemed that she was inviting the viewer to move forward, pull down the panties and fuck her.
I was shocked that Maggie would display herself so blatantly. It was exciting to see her, but it was also painful to see her naked, pregnant body, with another man’s child inside. To see her with Lisa and Michael emphasised how she had her new family. I was no longer part of her life.
Maggie had told me in the past that Lisa and she would never be lovers. That, like so much else, seemed to have changed. She looked more relaxed with Lisa, but the intimate photos with Michael were more shocking because they were available for all to see. My head was swimming. I couldn’t get the images out of my head as I tried to go to sleep that night.
I tried to contact Maggie the next day but she didn’t respond. I sent her messages and then called her a couple of times but she didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what I would say to Maggie but I wanted to find out why she had let these pictures be published. Anyone, including our children and other family members, could see them. I was cross and frustrated that she didn’t respond to my messages, and I think my final voicemail betrayed my anger.
I contacted Kat to help me contact Maggie. I told her about the photographs, but when Kat went to look at them, she couldn’t find the most daring photos. They seemed to have been removed, and only the first set were still there with a couple where Maggie was in lingerie with her baby bulge showing but her arms covering her breasts and the front of her panties out of shot. There were no pictures of Maggie with Lisa or Maggie and Michael.
Kat told me that she phoned Maggie and learned that Will had used some pictures without her agreement. She had seen them and had them taken down. Will had told Maggie it was a mistake. I found that hard to believe.
I asked Kat how Maggie was when they spoke. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to know, but I had to ask.
She told me that Maggie was finding the pregnancy difficult as it was coming towards nine months. She had been tired and struggling with keeping active. She was living alone just outside of Manchester, and hadn’t been able to work. The baby was due in a few weeks’ time and Kat was intending to see her the following weekend.
I asked what had happened with Michael, but Kat said that she would leave Maggie to tell me what she wanted in her own time. She did know that they weren’t together as a couple. She didn’t mention Lisa.
I was starting to miss Maggie so much. I thought about her alone and pregnant. The pictures on the website reminded me of how lovely Maggie looked and how attracted to her I was. Despite everything, I wanted her back.
I drafted a longer message to Maggie telling her that I wanted to meet up and find a way forward for us. I accepted my share of blame and how I made many mistakes. I didn’t want us to be unable to speak. In the end I didn’t send it. I just sent a short message to say that I would always be happy to meet up with her, and I apologised that the last time we met ended badly and I had rejected her request. I said I was very sorry for that.
I got a short reply from Maggie telling me that she appreciated the different tone of the message, and that things were complicated for her. She was focussed on the upcoming birth, and thought it might be best that we leave trying to arrange to meet until after then. She mentioned that it would give me an opportunity to meet the baby.
I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to hear. I didn’t know how I would cope with meeting the baby my wife had with a different father.
I found a distraction by starting to write down my experience since the first time Maggie had sex with Simon. I found it cathartic to write my story.
I started having to travel to other parts of Europe to explore the market for the new business adventure I was planning. I still missed Maggie but I didn’t know how to approach her.
I was talking to our daughter when she told me that the baby had been safely born and was healthy. Maggie was fine although exhausted. Fi wanted me to go and see Maggie, and I said I would like to, but I needed to hear from Maggie that she wanted to see me.
Fi took it on herself to try and broker a meeting.
Fi was finishing her university course. Her graduation was coming up in a few weeks and she told me that she wanted me and Maggie to attend together as her parents. She said that Maggie had agreed to come and was very happy for me to be there too. She was ready to talk, and had shown some enthusiasm for us all to meet together. Unfortunately our son couldn’t get there, he said, because of work commitments. I wondered if he found the prospect of meeting up with us all and the new baby too much.
When I heard from Fi that Maggie was going to meet up with me, my heart lifted. I knew it would be difficult, but I hoped meeting at Fi’s graduation would give us a chance to start rebuilding. I was just about to leave for another trip to the US and for the first time in a very long time I felt sorry to be leaving.
I wanted to try and meet up with Kat and plan how I could get back together with my wife. We had not divorced and the fact that neither of us had suggested that we do gave me hope. I became determined to find a way that Maggie and I could be together again.
