Did it begin with an egg and spoon race, that hate? Or was it bean bags on the head? Or both perhaps? Or neither. A sports day at the end of the summer term, when the weather was golden soft and not too hot and the day all summer light and trivial chat. The cries of small children mostly excited, some tearful. Little sweaty hands clutching prizes, eyes bright. Now the mums and dads were on.

Bean bags. Ian Caithness was the man who would win the dad’s race. Knife-edge keen. Polluted with ambition, always ready to keep on proving more. More wins, more competition, more of whatever that fuel was that made him. Always and only more, ruthless ambition. His was the tallest building, the most tenants, the biggest of risks, that wealth. That vanity. His power consumed him. Almost, but for her.

And she. She hated him. She hated his greed, his lust, his limitless ego and his killing charm, the feel of his skin damp and warm. Her hate was power and it too was all-consuming. She hated her own ambition, that she believed beauty was enough to midwife her happiness. But who wants to be happy, if they’re rich. She says this a lot. Money matters more. Beauty had taken her far, all the way to this beanbag on the top of a loathesome man’s head. Did it matter?

She told herself daily that Veronica Caithness was born to enthrall, seduce, tempt and please, that she was made to sustain, to be decorative, a woman entitled. She achieved all of that. Beauty and its rewards were enough. She had six children, three miscarriages and one abortion behind her. She had an uncanny ability to ignore reality and forgot too often that sex generally leads to babies. After the last child, Ian had gone for the snip, the ultimate control. But whose?

She watched her husband with his teeth clenched, his fists and elbows tense, as he ran spiderlike up the stretch of lawn, careful not to go too far off horizontal, with that ridiculous bean bag on his head. He won, of course, with a glint in his eye carefully overshadowed by the selfdeprecating charm of an engaging and apparently gentle smile. He won of course.

From inner city redevelopment projects and commercial property to bean bags at the children’s sports day. He won and she simmered. That is until the day after sports day when everything changed, the day the weatherman said rain was coming. 

In the midst of squabbling and toast and cereals, of finding shoes and piano music, of swimming kit and the constant sound of his voice on the phone, she heard his aside to warn her. The garden was littered with the sort of stuff that shouldn’t be out in the rain. She knew it wasn’t the stuff that mattered, it was the instruction, the bossing, the deliberate reminder that she was incapable of managing herself or her family. The diminishing. The children had been building camps, settlements of small carpets and cushions, a muddle of blankets and pillows on the lawn. “Get that stuff in before it starts to rain.” Kissing random heads and reaching for his bag he had shouted to her as he left: “the flight won’t get in until after midnight, so I’ll ring you in the morning from Barcelona”. As if she cared about his day or where he would go that evening. And the door banged shut and final as she shivvied the children to get them into shoes and out of the house and into the car. The journey to school as always noisy and fretful, a host of misrememberings and the forgotten remnants of yesterday. Part of the familiar noise of her day. She could usually shut it off. “Dad won” she heard amidst the babble, and she scowled. Another day like this day the same, the same. But this day was not to be the same.

When she had left the four youngest children at school, a sort of silence embraced her. The car smooth and softly purring and the road a gentle tease to tempt her elsewhere. The unspoken beckoning of possibilities reached closer. But there was the rain coming and yesterday’s cushions to collect, so dismissing the demons of temptation she simply went home. And then straight outside to gather up yesterday’s camps under an overcast sky, chill and detached, despising her obedience, her lazy compliance.

And when the vet came to the door she didn’t hear. Nor did she notice when he came around the side of the house and into the garden. When he spoke she thought it was a voice from somewhere inside her head, and a voice she had heard sometimes before. The reality of it was quite a shock. The unexpected moment held her fixed and entranced as she looked down at the short and rather ugly man standing before her. He said in tones unEnglish: “is this your dog? I found it by the road. It’s hurt, but not very badly.” She stared down at him and at Lolla dazed and panting and whose paw was bleeding bright and shiney red against the grass. Confused thank yous and dropped cushions as she knelt beside the dog to look at the wound. The wound she barely saw as a strange sensation, an awareness that through this man’s ugliness she could feel of something more, something that called her. She frowned as she became aware of his scent, unfamiliar and intriguing. She felt her breath start to seize up. A peculiar warmth tingled at the back of her neck.

The very ugly little man knelt beside her inadvertently touching her, knee to knee. He reached out to gently probe the edges of the wound on the dog’s pad, in case there was a splinter or shard. “It looks like she’s caught it on a nail or something, maybe trying to get back into the garden. It’s not deep, just a cut.” Their knees and her sudden realisation of touch as Lolla struggled to get up but was held fast. Veronica stood up suddenly, feeling slightly anxious and shaking back her hair. Sandalwood floating. Clearing her throat she said again an unsteady thank you. Then she tried to say “I’ll take it from here,” but instead heard some other voice trying hard not to be flirty, “I’m Veronica and this is Lolla. Thanks so much for bringing her in. I’ll ring the vet’s. Can I get you a cup of tea or coffee perhaps?” The words all came out in a rush and hanging in the air sounded so banal. She blushed and let her hair drop over her face. It got worse when he said, “no thanks, but if you’ve some gauze and tape I can dress this wound for you. I’m a vet. I’m from Italy, here on a driving holiday to see your lovely country. I have time.” Those words and she caught her breath hearing her heart pounding as her blood pressure rose. That strange warmth at the back of her neck was spreading. She put her hand under her hair and flicked it up, forgetting the power of the gesture. More sandalwood wafting. But the vet did not seem to notice, instead gently cradling the dog in his arms and smiling up at her. Eye to eye. And she wondered how ridiculous this all was, and then unbidden an image of how far it might go.

Behind them an empty house called, above them a frowning sky filled its face with greys and chrome-edged clouds; billowing winds pushed curious whispers across the garden. Leaves danced and birds headed for cover from the approaching storm. The Italian vet’s accent was mellow and soft and kind. His small sharp eyes peered out from under a heavy brow and his facial hair reached almost to his eye sockets. He was slightly balding. His ears were large and also hairy, but his hands were unexpectedly smooth, with short fat fingers and thick wrists. He wore no rings. He in turn saw the honied slender hands with their long fingers and the large white gold and diamond cluster. He noted the slightly tatty ethic skirt and the bangles, the curve of her shoulder. And he wondered. Laden with cushions she bustled into the kitchen, dog and vet in tow, hearing herself squeak out an awkward “Are you really? How convenient”. She dropped the cushions then pulled on a drawer to find gauze and tape, as he sat gently down beside the dog, one hand holding her still and the other reaching up to Veronica. 

And so it began. An ordinary encounter, small talk and storm clouds, an empty space in two peoples’ days. Then no more chit chat. There were a couple of return visits to check the wounds. No more than a brief affair that after those first tingling moments under a passionate sky, meant nothing to her or to him. He went on his way, far away. She enjoyed the memory of her deceit. The thrill had been in it’s unexpectedness, the suddenness, the shallow shared secrecy. No one ever knew. It was not sordid or sleazy, just the casual release two strangers shared.

It only became sleazy and sordid some four months later in a hotel room, with Ian and Veronica on holiday. Quite gracelessly she told Ian she needed an abortion. She had watched him with the eyes of a cobra before it strikes, wide, focused, cold. As she uttered the words she watched his glinting eye, and saw his mammoth ego, his everything start to splinter into lethal sharp shards. She could almost hear the cracks. And she waited, silent. Then senseless and impotent his mouth formed, the word “how” and from a long way away he heard her say “I fucked the vet”. A love he never really understood but recognised as his only weakness was slowly cracking like ice under too much weight, its chill rendering his every sense numb. He was a blank, a man humiliated, a man who didn’t even know there had been a vet to fuck. His world spun out, she fell from his heaven to demolish the flawless perfection of his love for her. This man whom she had grown so to hate, she destroyed utterly with one small and trivial act, so meaningless and pointless, so tiny and so deadly. Yet so vicious and terrible, its destruction irretrievable. The ultimate power.