‘You fucked my husband.’

That got her attention.

She looked like the whore everyone said she was. Nice clothes, too expensive for the job she had, too showy for office daywear.

The skirt would have been risky in a nightclub, hemline just brushing the dark line of her stocking-tops when she walked. Great legs. And figure. Men would watch her walk if she wore a bin-liner. Dressed like this, they ogled.

She walked like a girl who’d just been fucked.

No. More than that. She walked like a girl with cock in her pussy, rolling her hips like she was still being fucked by someone.

Any someone.

She was so pretty that everyone wanted her, and she could have anyone she wanted. Cream of the crop. But she set her sights much, much lower and had anyone and everyone instead. Tart.

Most girls like her settle for that one guy, the regular lover with a bit of class and a lot of bedroom prowess, who gives them what they need but keeps them close. She apparently didn’t want that kind of arrangement. She just wanted every man in the room. Every husband.

‘I really don’t remember him. Sorry.’

She was trying to get away, but I had her backed into a corner and the only way to escape would have been to physically push me out of the way. I knew she wouldn’t make a scene with her husband just over there. Her ignorant, unaware husband. She wanted to keep him that way. So she had to listen to what I was saying.

‘He’s nothing special. Dark hair starting to go grey, middle height, middle age, bit of a tummy, Answers to the name of…’

‘I’m afraid that’s really not much help. Half the men in this room look like that.’

She’d broken up a marriage and changed the lives of four people for ever just by having a dirty fuck in the car park just outside these very windows and she couldn’t even remember doing it.

‘Everything people say about you is true then.’

‘I really don’t know. What do people say about me?’

‘That you’re nothing but a cheap whore and you can’t turn down a fuck.’

‘I’ve never charged for it my life,’ she said, ‘but if I ever did I certainly wouldn’t be cheap. Now if you’ll excuse me…’

I raised my hand to stop her escape, but I was very careful not to lay a finger on her.

‘Not every whore gets paid,’ I said, ‘but it doesn’t change what they are.’

She nodded appreciatively, as if it was some kind of compliment.

‘That’s true, I suppose. But it really doesn’t alter anything and I really don’t remember your husband. And now, I really must be going…’

That seemed wrong. Surely it must have meant something to her, for it to have all those consequences to others. But apparently not. She’d turned my husband into a helpless idiot with the promise of her pussy, and then when she finally let him have it she couldn’t even remember doing it.

‘Don’t you even want to know? Who and where.’

‘Oh. go on then if you must.’

‘Then maybe you can tell me why.’

‘I can do that anyway, without all this fuss. No need for where were you on the 17th ult. and so on. It was his turn. That was why.’

‘You have a schedule?’

‘No, just a lot of men who all want the same thing. And I do my best to let them have it. That’s why I fucked your husband. Because he wanted me, and when the opportunity arose, I gave him what he wanted..

‘Without a thought? No regard for consequences?’

‘I’m sorry. You seem to have mistaken me for some kind of moral adjudicator. Men want to fuck me, I let them. It’s not up to me to check if they’re married, or have an understanding with their wife. Or really are divorced like some of them say.’

I was too slow withy my riposte, so her words kept coming, flowing past me like she’d rehearsed the whole speech. Or used it before.

‘It’s not my fault if your husband can’t keep his cock in his trousers, and not my job to put it back for him. Or for you. He’s your husband. It’s your job to keep him under control.’

‘He said you made him do it.’

‘Don’t they all. But I haven’t raped anyone yet, so whoever he was he must have been a volunteer. I’d ask him about that bit again, if I was you.’

She was right, of course. But it was too late for that. He was long gone. Out on his ear and good riddance.

This was the first time I’d seen her since that night. Just bumped into her like this, I mean, I wasn’t going to go looking for her. But a year later his firm’s mailing system sent him an invitation to the summer ball as usual even though he no longer lived there. When I opened the envelope and saw it I knew I was meant to be here, and why.

‘Anyway, you still haven’t established that I even met him, still less fucked him.’

‘I saw you.’

Now she was listening to me a bit more carefully.

‘A year ago tonight. Outside in the car park.’

Right between the eyes, that one. She knew she’d fucked someone that night, anyway, even if she didn’t remember who it was.

‘And yet you didn’t say anything at the time.’

She’d recovered fast. I suppose she got lots of practice at conversations like this.

Being strictly accurate, what I saw was a rather fuzzy CCTV image of two people shagging over a car bonnet in the parking area behind the hotel. just outside the windows behind her now. I didn’t recognise either of them at the time, that’s how bad the picture was, didn’t even realise it was my own husband banging away at whoever she was face down over a parked car.

But later, when we got in our own car to drive home, I knew it was him. I could smell her. Perfume, yes, but in among the high notes of the Chanel she always wore, was still wearing tonight, in fact, I caught the unmistakeable, musky aroma of pussy, filling the air with the thick smell of sex as the car warmed up and it rose in waves from his body. And his clothes.

He denied it of course. but he still had a shower as soon as we got in. But next morning the bedroom reeked of her perfume and her pussy. Eventually there was no point denying it. Then there was no point staying together. So we didn’t. A year later the divorce is under way, the children wondering what the hell is happening, all for two minutes of frantic sex in a car park with a woman who doesn’t even remember it.

‘You broke up my marriage for something you don’t care about.’

‘I think you’ll find you did that yourself, getting all hot and bothered about a momentary exchange of body fluids. It was so brief it’s hardly worth having this conversation. And I don’t imagine it’s the only time he’s strayed. All men are the same. Yours included.’

She was right about that. They’re like children if you show them some pussy. But I didn’t agree with her out loud. She was still talking, anyway.

‘He’s bound to have slept with your neighbour or your best friend, or your sister. Goes off at weekends golfing, does he? One of those posh hotels that doesn’t let the real hookers in until after midnight. And you say a few seconds with his cock in my pussy is the reason you’re splitting up? I don’t think so.

‘He was bored with you long before I came along. And you were bored with him. How many of his friends have you been to bed with? Or don’t you do friends? Just work colleagues is it, or strangers in a bar? You can dress it up in fluffy clouds of romance, but you just wanted a fuck, same as he did. He wanted pussy, you wanted cock. Same as I do.’

I never was any good at poker faces, and I needed one now. How did she guess that I’d been unfaithful, almost a year after the wedding? It was a moment of madness, panic really, wondering if I’d done the right thing marrying him, but almost as soon as I put it to the test by giving into the demands of my boss I knew the answer. That was all behind us now and it made us stronger. That’s what I told myself, rehearsing arguments in case I ever got found out. But he didn’t even mention it when we were arguing about the harlot in front of me now, the woman who’s had a thousand cocks up her, so everybody says.

‘Is that what it’s up to now? That’s the trouble with working in an insurance office. They’re all a bit too interested in doing sums. I always think it’s so common, keeping score, don’t you? No? Well I suppose it’s much easier when you only need the fingers of one hand.

‘Ah yes, I can see your air of moral superiority from here.

‘You go on thinking like that and everything will be fine. But when was the last time you had an orgasm that rolled your eyes back in their sockets and made your pussy clench up so tight it almost snapped his cock off?

‘In fact, when was the last time you had one at all?

And I bet it wasn’t even your husband was it? Faithful old Rabbit, I bet. Doesn’t he ever wonder why the batteries in the kitchen clock run out so fast?’

TV remote control, actually, but I wasn’t giving her the pleasure.

‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must be going. So many husbands, so little time.’

I didn’t stop her. I’d said what I’d come to say, I knew she’d remember me, even if she couldn’t remember my husband. And I’d made sure she’d always know it was me who broke up her marriage. Because that’s what I’d come here to do. Not have a petty little squabble with her. Well, that was part of it, the prelude, so she’d remember tonight, remember who I was. And what I did. That was next. The main event.

‘Can’t you keep your wife under control?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

He looked over to where she was chatting, once again surrounded by men as usual.

‘Don’t you know what she’s doing?’

‘She’s always popular with the men. She’s very pretty’. His tone was almost apologetic because he obviously thought I wasn’t.

‘Which one of them will she fuck tonight, before she leaves?’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘She always does it. Fucks someone, I mean. She’s famous for it.’

‘I think you’ll find that’s just gossip. Jealous tongues wagging. She’s very attractive. Men are easily infatuated, and a lot of women become very exercised about that for some reason. But that’s all it is.’

‘She’s a cheap tart who fucks around.’

‘Now look….’

‘My husband has fucked her.’

‘I beg your pardon, but I’ve heard this before and it never amounts to anything. Just chit-chat. Not proof.’

‘He’d tell you himself, but he’s not here tonight We’re getting a divorce. And she’s the reason. Seduced him is too polite a word for what she did. Took advantage of him. He was just one of the guys flocking round her with his tongue hanging out waiting for a fuck. Like them.’

Their tongues weren’t actually scraping on the ground but they were all gazing at her, trying to send unspoken signals of intent across the narrow gap that separated them. An eye-to-eye version of sperm competition.

‘They’re just waiting to find out who’s going to be the lucky one tonight.’

‘All pretty girls get hangers-on when they’re out, but it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Except in her case. She gives them all what they want — eventually. She doesn’t have affairs. Just fucks them and moves on. Like a man would do.’

I opened my purse and showed him my wedding ring and engagement ring tucked into a little compartment.

‘You want proof? A broken marriage. Isn’t that proof?’

‘Only of a broken marriage. Not of anything else.’

‘But I know why it’s broken.’

‘Then maybe you should take it up with her. Not me.’

‘I just did.’

‘And?’

‘She laughed at me. I said I’d tell you, and she said you’d just think I was another crazy woman.’

‘She’s right. I do.’

‘Except for this.’

From my purse where it had been nestling beside my rings, I pulled an envelope. This was the reason I came here. It cost me a lot of money, but it was going to be worth it.

‘After I saw him and your wife together in the car park a year ago I sent his boxer shorts to a lab along with hairs from his pillow and a saliva sample of mine. In his shorts they found male DNA belonging to my husband, and female DNA belonging to someone who isn’t me.’

I’d got his attention now.

‘Now it’s your turn. Send a pair of her knickers to the same lab and see if they get a match with the female DNA on my husband’s underwear. I already know they will. I didn’t need the certificate to be certain, but you do. If you really want the truth.’

In his face I could see the doubt. Did he want to know, or would he rather go on pretending not to? But I wanted my revenge. I wanted this to cost her what it had cost me: my marriage, and for that I needed him to act. I needed to goad him into it.

‘Better send some of your own DNA as well, for exclusion purposes. Because there’s a good chance that any pair of knickers she’s been wearing will have some other guy’s spunk in them.’

That worked. He looked like I’d just slapped him. He knew I was telling the truth, knew as I did that my husband had fucked his wife. And if that was true, then so was the rest of it, all the hundreds and thousands of other men she’d had between her legs, however briefly.

‘Hello dear, everything all right?’

I hadn’t seen her leave her adoring fans and come over to where we stood, and I’d been keeping an eye on her. Just goes to show how easy it was to slip away, and get away with so many infidelities.

She kissed him on the cheek, a lover’s familiarity. ‘You two having a nice chat?’ She beamed brightly at me: go on, I dare you. Say something.

‘Science,’ I replied. ‘We were talking about science. I’m a teacher, and science is my subject.’

‘That’s nice,’ she said absently, totally disinterested now she thought I hadn’t told hubby anything after all, or if I had then he hadn’t believed me. ‘Just off to the Ladies,’ she said, and wafted away towards the door, that walk, those hips rolling and her annoyingly perfect little arse just bouncing along behind. Every man in the room watched her go. Except two.

Hubby and I both looked across at the group of men she’d left behind. Three of them were indeed watching her progress through the throng towards the door. The other one was walking purposefully around the edge of the room, a circuitous route that would lead him to the same exit a few seconds after she’d passed through it.

‘I think tonight would be a good night to get that sample,’ I said viciously. ‘While it’s nice and fresh.’