Up to No Good: Lust and Betrayal, a Medical Triangle of Love

By Penelopy Ann Peters

I am just a wife and mother. I am not famous. But I have survived the battlefields of life. This
is a dark and at times despairing tale, tempered with the joy of survival. I am only 32 years
old, but I have lived. It is a wondrous tale, and it needs to be told.

Ultimately it is an enduring love story, mixed with tragic love, and a relationship that couldnt
go anywhere. After all, isnt that the real desire of our lives? Love, births, deaths, marriages,
isnt that what it is interesting for us to read about?
It is a story about the heartbreaking recent loss of an illicit lover, whom I am still mourning
and the enduring love of a husband.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493133352

Penelopy Ann Peters

I am a wife of 14 years to a loving husband. I live in a quiet place with my three beautiful children. Two of these children have high special needs which makes life interesting. Our son is healthy and full of life and helps to care for his sisters. A role that he takes on with aplomb. I first started writing my book while I was grieving the loss of my lover. I had to have an outlet for my emotional journey, and my book was born because of this. I am not ashamed of my ride, but rather include it in my life experiences.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Penelopy Ann Peters.

ISBN:      Softcover         978-1-4931-3334-5

                Ebook               978-1-4931-3335-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 01/24/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

I am just a wife and mother. I am not famous. But I have survived the battlefields of life. This is a dark and at times despairing tale, tempered with the joy of survival. I am only 32 years old, but I have lived. It is a wondrous tale, and it needs to be told.

Ultimately it is an enduring love story, mixed with tragic love, and a relationship that couldn’t go anywhere. After all, isn’t that the real desire of our lives? Love, births, deaths, marriages, isn’t that what it is interesting for us to read about? It is a story about the heartbreaking recent loss of an illicit lover, whom I am still mourning and the enduring love of a husband. Hold onto your hats, you’re in for a stormy ride. There will be a lot of ‘I’s’ in this story of my life, please excuse them.

As a child I had life pretty good. We lived on ten acres of land in… The house backs onto the side of a mountain (it was a rough one) and one of my achievements was to climb this mountain alone when I was ten years old. When I got to the top of this mountain I felt like I was on top of the world. Looking back I am super proud of that, and grateful my mum let me attempt it. I think that adventure kind of typifies what my character is and always has been. I had an inner core strength that was always there, although it was to be tried and tested. Our family dog came with me although he always ran off to chase something.

It was a stable life and my parents had been married forever. I had two brothers and one sister, all older than me. They are all in long term successful marriages as well. I always found it difficult to gain respect in my family, perhaps because I was the youngest, and the others are high achievers as well.

My personality was such that I clung to kindness. I didn’t know it at the time, but I took many things for granted. I never felt hungry, I had the chance of going to school and gaining an education, and all my needs and most of my wants were provided for. I remember also that I sleep walked occasionally which must have driven my parent’s mad.

One night I had a dream that my family was all outside. I actually got up and walked outside and slammed the door. The slamming of the door woke me up and I couldn’t think what I was doing outside. It gave me a bit of a shock to wake up in unfamiliar territory. Fortunately my mum had heard the door slam and came to get me. I also awoke one morning to find all the books emptied out of my bookcase. I must have done that in my sleep, as I had no remembrance of doing this. I found it quite scary to find myself in situations regularly and to have no idea how I got there.

I remember trying to learn how to drive a small motorbike my brothers had. I had unfortunately forgotten how to brake. I can’t remember which brother it was now, but they leapt onto the bike as I was heading into the creek on my parent’s property and stopped the bike. Life was good.

I received a good grounding in how to live my live. I was given the ability to be able to detect right from wrong, and taught what morals actually were. A reasonable standard of living was expected from all of us.

There were never any doubts about what I wanted when I grew up. My own family and a man that would always love me. This was the general fairy tale dream back then. I think most of my friends had the same idea. I was never really focused on being a career woman. Even from as young as twelve years old, I had an eye out for a boyfriend. At thirteen years old, I met someone that was ‘dating’ one of my friends. He was sixteen years old. We were at a get together at my sister’s place. I was immediately physically attracted to him, and enjoyed talking to him. He was really tall and had blue eyes and blondish hair.

He lived in . . .

I didn’t see him again for five years. During this time I thought about him occasionally and wondered how he was going.

From thirteen to eighteen years old, I enjoyed life. I had a circle of friends to socialise with. I dated a boy or two, but none of them really felt right. When it was time to say goodbye I never cried too much. I didn’t experience deep heart wrenching loss. That was too come later in my life, unexpectedly.

Getting my license was a big milestone. Again I was allowed a certain freedom from my mother. When I had my learners she sat in the seat of the car as I drove to work. I managed to hit an expensive car as I was parking. Even though we left our name and number, the lady kindly used her own insurance to pay to get it fixed. That is one of the kindnesses that I have received from strangers that I remember.

I left school early as I gained employment at a store in a large chain of Supermarkets. I completed a six month Business College Course in Administration. I was offered a full-time permanent position at this store and I accepted it. When I was eighteen years old I decided to go on a holiday to… with some friends. Even then, I had a vague feeling I was looking for my man. I didn’t know what my chances were of seeing him.

At a function during my week there, I heard someone say ‘hello’ I turned around, and there he was. We were both single at the time. It turned out that his parents had been married forever as well. He had the same kind of background grounding in how to live well. We came from the same walk in life.

I’m afraid that for the rest of the week I abandoned my friends. Getting to know my first serious boyfriend was an absolute delight. The physical attraction was terrific. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I think even from that age, emotions ran deep with me. Most of my friends couldn’t understand that I couldn’t even eat; I was so much in love. When I love, I love deeply, when I hate, I hate deeply, when I am bitterly hurt, it goes deep. I am deeply loyal to my friends, and would give my life for them. I remember ringing up my mother and telling her I had met someone. I think she was surprised and worried, probably. I guess it made it harder for her that he lived interstate, because she couldn’t meet his family, and didn’t know what he was like.

When it came time for me to go home at the Airport, we both cried. I think I got upgraded to first class for free because of this. That was a great experience. After arriving home I was worried it would turn out to be just a holiday romance. Obviously it didn’t turn out to be this way.

I was an average looking girl, well built with brown colored hair, and hazel eyes. At that age I thought I was fat although when I look at photos then, I can laugh at myself for thinking that. My new boyfriend thought I was extremely attractive. It is nice when we find someone that can think that about ourselves when we can’t see it.

I thought that my worst feature was that I had to wear glasses. My eye condition meant that I could not wear contact lenses. One afternoon I was at work, and I took my glasses off while I was in the lunch room. The guy at work on his break went nuts about how gorgeous I looked with my glasses off. I guess that was a kind of one sided compliment to me, because I knew I had to wear them. Nevertheless I accepted the good out of the compliment, and left the bad. Personality wise, I was generally happy. Being a people person, I enjoyed my job. I soon became promoted to a level two supervisor. I found it difficult to adjust to this level of responsibility and was always having to clear up the mistakes of the other supervisor. It was also difficult for me to take holidays as often as I would have liked to go and see my boyfriend in Tasmania. I always found it hard to leave my personal life behind when I walked in the door to go to work. I think that has always been one of my worst failings. It was so hard and frustrating, when I hadn’t seen him for so long, to concentrate on my job. There followed a year and a half of romantic letter writing and phone calls, with the occasional visit. Although in those days plane fares were expensive. We didn’t have access to Skype either. I guess you could call it patiently waiting and hoping for each other. Also back then interstate romances were not as common as they are now. I remember staff used to say to me, ‘how can you trust him?’ my answer to that was always, ‘I just know I can trust him.’ I believe our phone calls gave us a good grounding in getting to know each other. They also got pretty spicy at times… Our physical attraction to each other has always been immense. Phew, that part is over . . .

CHAPTER 1

One day over the phone he told me that he had landed a job in… with a major Airline company in their call center. It was a huge company and had been around for years. It had been a hard task to get the job requiring three interviews. I squealed down the phone when he told me he had been successful, I was so happy.

He then asked if I would marry him and transfer through my work to live in… Of course, I said yes. I had just turned 20 years old.

He wanted a quick engagement because that would mean we could have a honeymoon before he started work. Naturally I agreed.

After the phone call, I went and told mum I was engaged and planning to be married in three months’ time. She nearly passed out. To give her her due she recovered quickly and started planning straight away. Mum also pulled it off and I had a beautiful wedding. She offered to make my wedding dress, and I said where I wanted the reception to be held. I only had my closest friend as a bridesmaid, and he had his best mate, as the groomsmen. An ironic part of that was that I had had a crush on his groomsman, which he had known about. Today we are good friends with him and his wife.

It was a traditional white wedding in a church and it was also a very happy occasion. I didn’t cry until the end when I realized I was moving interstate away from my family. We got many comments on how well suited we were for each other in looks and personalities. My Dad had asked me what my most important character was in a friendship, and my reply was loyalty and integrity. I feel ultimately that I did walk away without anything too disastrous happening, but maybe others will think differently. I so very nearly did not stick to my own principles that I have always lived my life by.

I also remember feeling frustrated at the wedding, because every time I went to eat something which was a particular favourite, someone would come up wanting a photo. The first thing we did after getting to our hotel was to actually have a hot meal. Well, maybe that was the second thing we did . . .

With money we had saved, we decided to go to Phuket for our honeymoon. I was so uptight about my wedding that I had forgotten to pack any luggage and my passport for our honeymoon. I had to be driven back to my parents place to pack the few things I needed. On our honeymoon, George told me how beautiful I had looked to him walking down the aisle. He was very good at saying really romantic things at the right time, and he still hasn’t lost that touch. Every now and then even today, he can come out with absolute pearlers. It was interesting learning to be together, after our romance had been interstate. We went for a canoeing expedition, which was a lot of fun. We kind of just spent the golden days doing whatever we happened to feel like. It was a wonderfully free holiday. The days slipped by with us just enjoying being together, and enjoying the sunshine. It was a memorably happy time. There are only a few times in life where you can look back and say, I was joyfully happy then, and I didn’t know it. That was one of those times. We felt like we couldn’t get enough of each other, because we had been apart for so long. We had a good future to look forward to, and both of us had a job.

I remember feeling unnerved by all the topless women that were sun baking on the beach. I was kind of annoyed they were there, because I only wanted my new husband to look at me. I think he tried his best… but being a man… mind you, I couldn’t help looking myself, and I just wasn’t used to it. He told me afterwards he tried not to look at them.

We managed to find a KFC over there, but it just wasn’t the same. We ate a lot of rice based meals, which were delicious. Both of us contracted the ‘Bali belly’ while we were away. The beaches were superb. We went for a couple of days to an Island retreat with other couples and did snorkeling there. There were about three other couples, and we came to know them a bit as we shared meals with them. The accommodation was quite basic, but we enjoyed our stay there. We found out we were offered this as a free extra because the hotel had overbooked itself because of the Chinese New Year celebrations that were going on. One thing that struck us when we came back to the hotel was the traffic. We were told to only cross any roads with locals. Most people drove scooters, and it was not uncommon to see whole families scrunched up together on a scooter. Often there was as many as five on one scooter. I don’t think they had any road rules. When we took a taxi, we closed our eyes. It has often made me appreciative of the common sense driving that is generally abundant at home.

When we came home, we settled down to our new working and married life. Having plenty of money, we would go out to the movies, ten pin bowling and out for tea on the weekends, having worked hard during the week. My happiness was obvious to my colleagues and many commented on that continual glow I had when I came to work. It was a pleasure to do the housework in our tiny flat, and we were both satisfied with each other. It is strange how you can look back on parts of your life and say, "I was happy then, but I didn’t know it.’ Happiness is the day to day