Eva Mazza - Sex, Lies & Stellenbosch

“Where are you going, Lee?”

He ignored her as he walked past her to the front door.

“It’s late. Please don’t go,” she begged, running after him, pulling at his shirt. “You spent last night away! Please, don’t go, Lee. I love you. Don’t leave me alone. Stay. Let’s talk things through, please.” He shrugged her off, but she grabbed onto him again.

“Don’t, Frankie. Don’t cause a scene. I’m out of here. I’m giving you time to think about the kind of wife and friend, and in fact, mother, you’ve been over the last, what’s it, two and a half years?”

“I’ll sleep in another room. Please, Lee, don’t leave me!”

But he had already closed the car door and was reversing down the driveway. She couldn’t run after him; the staff would see her. They must have already heard the fighting. Lee hated a scene and tonight had been so out of character. She shut the front door, ran to her phone and tried calling him, but his phone diverted to voicemail.

Frankie’s sobbing was guttural, uncontrollable. She couldn’t conceive being without him. She knew she had pushed him too far. She had crossed that non-negotiable line, and there was no turning back. Where was he going? Was he checking in to a hotel or did he have someone to go to? She wished she had someone to phone. She didn’t want to be alone. She couldn’t stand to be alone.

It dawned on her that this is how Jen must’ve felt so late at night. Jen had phoned her while she was probably having sex with John. The guilt and shame were all consuming. What had she been thinking? What kind of a friend compounds the agony of a husband’s betrayal by sleeping with that same husband? Why hadn’t she at least done the right thing for just one night? Even if she was screwing John, she could have shown her commitment to her friend by being at her side.

There was no way she was going to make it through the night without help.

She opened the medicine cabinet and took out her “rescue pills” as she liked to refer to them; she swallowed two Xanors. She needed to knock herself out so that she didn’t have to think or feel; she didn’t want to face what she had done and the potential repercussions of those actions. Frankie could hear her mother’s voice echoing as drowsiness replaced anxiety: “Only you will be to blame for your downfall, Frankie. You just don’t know when to stop, do you?”

Lee was furious. Furious he had allowed himself to lose control. But then again , he thought, there’s pent up anger that had to be vented . He had been cautious about having his wife followed and had hired a firm known for discretion and professionalism, and they had charged accordingly. It was easy to uncover her brief affair with the diplomat. Frankie had been reckless in London; he could only assume that she thought that the chances of them being seen together were slim. The two were captured on camera sharing intimate dinners, walking through Hyde Park hand in hand and even kissing at an outdoor concert. The love fest had ended abruptly after Lee had sent (anonymously) incriminating evidence to the diplomat’s wife, knowing full well that she would ensure the affair ended without exposing her husband or his lover. She, like Lee, would avoid a scandal at all costs◦– in her case, for her husband’s career. Lee had said nothing of the affair to Frankie. It was in his nature to wait for the right moment. And his gut had told him that it was not quite the right time.

His private investigator had stumbled upon Frankie’s next indiscretion◦– this time with his best friend. After checking that calls between the diplomat and his client’s wife had dwindled to zero, he noticed that her account was soon reflecting regular calls to and from an unfamiliar number. Thinking the diplomat may have changed numbers, the mysterious calls were traced to a Mister John Pearce. It took Lee a while to absorb the nasty possibility that Mr John Pearce was his best friend since school.

This had been problematic to prove, as their trysts, it was thought, took place within the privacy and safety of his friends’ farm’s boundaries. Most of the time, Jen was at home when Frankie visited. The question, Was Frankie really visiting her friend or was she fucking his? perplexed Lee.

Although it seemed nothing untoward was happening, Lee’s gut, as always, told him otherwise. By nature, Lee let nothing go, and he soon stumbled upon an ingenious (so he thought) way to uncover the truth, yet he still could not prove the affair and was about to give up, until now.

Lee vented his anger on his accelerator as he drove at an ungodly speed at an ungodly hour. Where to go? Where to stay? He had a few options, one being a hotel, but he hated everything about hotels. They were lonely places, especially at times like these. He picked up the phone and looked for Brig’s number. Nah, let’s not complicate things. He decided on another option. She was always awake, and she wouldn’t mind him crashing at her place at such short notice.

It rang for a time and then Patty picked up. “Lee, what’s wrong?”

“I need a place to crash. Can I come over?”

“Of course you can. You know the gate code.”

Lee pressed his foot flat on the accelerator. “Just slow down, Lee. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Lee accelerated as he turned left on to a back road that would take him into the city◦– a road that was desolate at this time. He thought about his so-called best friend. He was over the angst of loss and betrayal; in fact, nothing much shocked him anymore.

Jen’s mother had been right about John all along, Lee mused as he drove. Jen’s parents had had their hearts set on a union between Lee and their daughter, as did Lee’s parents. Both wine farmers in the area, they had often joked that they would be in-laws one day, “Providing my son isn’t seduced by the floozies he loves to hang around with,” Lee’s father had joked.

Unlike the rest of the girls at the time, Jen’s dad had forbidden her to socialise in town, as he knew those girls visited the pubs in the village despite being underage. She wasn’t allowed to hang around with boys unsupervised; he wanted her to remain pure and untarnished. He would not have the whole of Stellenbosch skinner about his child and inadvertently question his parenting skills. This made her a suitable candidate for marriage amongst the parents in Stellenbosch.

It was only when Jen’s father passed away that many of the rules slackened. Jen’s mom did not have the kind of resolve her husband had had. Even Jen’s choice of study would have been vetoed by him if he had lived.

It was in her last year at interior design college that Jen had met John. On paper, he was a good catch: heir to his father’s farm, vice head boy at school, graduated cum laude from agricultural college, with looks and charm in spades. But the rumours about him and his womanising did not go unnoticed by Jen’s mother, Christa.

At the same time, Lee’s parents had met his new love interest, Frankie, and although they never let on to the rest of their family and friends and the town’s gossips that they were unhappy, they had been concerned about the kind of woman Lee was considering marrying. An intervention was planned between the two families, and Lee and his parents were invited to dinner at Christa’s farm in the hope that their two children would fall deeply in love.

The three cohorts mistakenly thought that Lee and Jen were oblivious to their plan and the two young adults had had fun playing along with them. After dinner, Lee’s dad had coaxed him to take Jen to the movies. Only too happy to end the pretence, they drove away laughing at the awkward and archaic situation in which they found themselves.