The Christening and its aftermath

After the first initial shock and the realisation of how it must have happened I had to tell him. I told him that he needed to come home after work and he did. I sat him down on the sofa and gave it to him simply and directly.

And that's when he uttered those words. Firstly "there goes our lifestyle" and then "of course, if its a boy it will be called x and if its a girl it will be called y". No consultation and no consideration.

Appalling, sickening and only partially comprehensible in the context. It was difficult enough for me to believe and I knew that I'd not had sexual contact with anyone since our marriage four years earlier. How much more difficult might it be for a man to believe when there had been so little sexual activity within the marriage that the child was his.

Was the insistence on the names his revenge? If it was he got his fill for I can barely bring myself to utter my child's name without feeling sick.

I had little time in which to prepare for motherhood. January came around all too rapidly and the nursery was filled with gifts and hand-me-downs through family and friends. The delivery was uncomplicated and we were home just a little more than 24 hours after I went in. And then I was pretty much on my own after the initial flurry of interest. We, the two of us, would go for walks in the parkland along the river and I would talk to her, promise her that I would get us one day out of the mess I had landed us in.

At the time of her arrival our financial situation was as good as it had ever been. We had money in the bank, some savings but not a lot. I was not sure how much and concerned about taking unpaid leave to extend my four months of maternity leave to six. I asked him one evening if we still had the shares his parents had given us, if we still had that financial resource upon which to fall if, in the event of some unforeseen problem arising, we needed to dip into savings beyond the cash.

He assured me repeatedly that we did still have them, that he hadn't sold them, that the certificates 'were in the house somewhere' and he looked me in the eye as he told me this and I believed him.

I had to.

It was either that or return to work when my daughter was less than four months old something I wanted desperately to avoid.

So I took the chance that he might be telling me the truth and extended my maternity leave to six months including two months on no pay.

Then there came the matter of the Christening. I agreed to it and to a particular selection of Godparents from among friends. None were particularly suitable but they were the best available. I made it abundantly clear that if family were to be included then there must be reasonable equity, some balance in the represenation of the two sides.

The day itself, in early May, was unseasonably warm and the robe already on the small side. From the moment it went on my normally easy going baby fretted. We walked around to where the service was to take, gathering friends and family members along the way. And we arrived to the jaw dropping sight of the priest we expected to conduct the service halfway up the front porch in overalls giving the painted weatherboard facade a fresh coat.

He was deeply apologetic for double booking himself in this way and scurried off. In fact the service began only slightly behind time. But the worst of it for me was to come. As those chosen to stand stepped forward they were joined by a cousin of his and her husband. The bastard, the complete bastard. Crossed again, without the decency to openly and honestly argue his corner he'd simply gone behind my back. I cried inside through the service as loudly as my daughter did on the outside and wanted nothing more than to retreat to a room upstairs and hide from the gathered clan below.

We had the reception afterwards at our house, a three story town house I'd spent the best part of a month getting ready for the day. In the course of preparations I delved into the deepest darkest recesses of the garage on the ground floor looking for household items long since packed away given how little entertaining we did.

The house was rented accommodation that came fully furnished so the garage contained our furniture and the cars had to park up on the forecourt. I dragged out serving platters, good cutlery and glassware, the damask table cloths, washed and pressed as necessary and in the course of so doing other things came to light.

I got my revenge on him for his act of treachery, one day shortly after the Christening when his parents called over. His mother was hardly through telling me how pleased she was that we were making a go of things, when I gave them a dose of reality.

I showed them the sale of share documentation that proved conclusively not only that the shares were no longer ours but that they'd been sold long ago, long before the baby was conceived and that when he'd stood there and looked me in the eye and told me he hadn't sold them he'd been lying through his fucking teeth.

He's an only child and I know they made huge sacrifices to give him a good start in life, a home in a very good part of London and education at a (minor) public school. Quite how he turned out the way he did is beyond me; that day his parents were forced to confront reality only briefly and see for perhaps the first time in almost twenty years the true character of the only child they brought into this world.

I regretted a little forcing this on them, but it became clear pretty soon that they had a vast capacity for self deception, perhaps essential for their own protection, and life returned to normal for them and their precious blue eyed boy. I remain to this day typecast as the wicked wife in all of this.