Choose to Shine

By Breedon Hill

Choose to Shine
– dealing with betrayal

Betrayal is a profoundly shocking and painful thing to experience, and it is a road that many of us have to travel on at some point in our lives. Although each journey is different, there are some common landmarks that we all encounter along the way. This is the true story of one woman’s experience of infidelity – of a gradual realisation that the person she thought she knew and loved was capable of shocking things. It’s a story she wants to share so that whatever dark and desolate places we go through, we know that there can be a light and a place of hope at the end of our travels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781546292814

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© 2020 Breedon Hill. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/25/2020

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9282-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9283-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9281-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

1 Saturday 1 August

2 Sunday 2 August – midnight

3 Monday 3 August

4 Tuesday 4 August

5 Wednesday 5 August

6 Thursday 6 August

7 Friday 7 August

8 Sunday 9 August

9 Sunday 16 August

10 Sunday 30 August

11 Monday 31 August

12 Tuesday 1 September

13 Thursday 3 September

14 Monday 7 September

15 Friday 11 September

16 Saturday 12 September

17 Monday 14 September

18 Tuesday 15 September

19 Wednesday 16 September

20 Thursday 17 September

21 Friday 18 September

22 Sunday 20 September

23 Monday 21 September

24 Tuesday 22 September

25 Wednesday 23 September

26 Thursday 24 September

27 Friday 25 September

28 Monday 27 September

29 Tuesday 28 September

30 Wednesday 29 September

31 Thursday 30 September… a.m.

32 Friday 1 October

33 Saturday 2 October

34 Sunday 3 October

35 Monday 4 October

36 Tuesday 5 October

37 Wednesday 6 October

38 Thursday 7 October

39 Friday 8 October

40 Saturday 9 October

41 Sunday 10 October

42 Tuesday 12 October

43 Wednesday 13 October

44 Thursday 14 October

45 Friday 15 October

46 Sunday 17 October

47 Wednesday 20 October

48 Thursday 21 October

49 Friday 22 October

50 Saturday 23 October

51 Sunday 24 October

52 Monday 25 October

53 Tuesday 26 October

54 Thursday 28 October

55 Friday 29 October

56 Saturday 30 October

57 Sunday 31 October

58 Monday 1 November

59 Tuesday 2 November

60 Wednesday 3 November

61 Thursday 4 November

62 Thursday 11 November

63 Saturday 13 November

64 Friday 19 November

65 Monday 22 November

66 Tuesday 28 December

67 Wednesday 5 January

68 Thursday 6 January

69 Friday 7 January

70 Saturday 8 January

71 Saturday 15 January

72 Sunday 30 January

73 The Beginning…

DEDICATION

For my Children, my saviour’s, with love always, your mommy xx

1

Saturday 1 August

It was just before midnight and I lay waiting in bed. It was a sultry, hot summer night, usual for that time of year in the south of France. I was relaxed and woozily happy from the bottle of red wine we had shared; happy from the pleasant evening around the patio table, eating, drinking and playing family card games in our French home, our second home, a beautiful old water mill. I wondered why Nick hadn’t followed me to bed. I was tired but curious. Where was he? Why was he still up at this time? What could he be doing? I opened the bedroom door. All the lights were out. I listened carefully, there were noises coming from downstairs, even though it was pitch black. Feeling dread in the pit of my stomach, I crept down the stairs and turned the corner to the kitchen.

I paused.

I listened.

I didn’t want to know… I didn’t want to discover… I didn’t want my life to be ruined.

I could hear the fervency of passion – of kissing, of hands running over bodies.

No, NO, NO! I made a slight noise in the back of my throat as if to give warning that I was approaching - a kind of signal to offset the derailing that was about to occur, and the inevitable train crash to follow.

I turned the kitchen light on and saw Nick pull away from her, our twenty-two-year-old French au pair, Madelaine – twenty-two years his junior. He twisted away from me and made a slight, throaty cough as if to clear his throat, lightly touching his lips, bowing his head, and avoiding eye contact. She darted away and leaned downwards to pat the dog who was sleeping in his bed and, as she did this, she wiped her mouth with the back of her right hand.

Nick muttered I’m just locking up. I was bewildered, confused, shocked. I didn’t know how to handle what I’d just seen. What was happening? Was it real? They had behaved so casually, so calm. But there was guilt in her face – written all over it. I saw the initial uncertainty in Nick’s face – had he been caught? It was quickly followed by a caught in the headlights look. He turned away unsure of what to do next, as he knew he’d given himself away.

I grabbed Nick’s shoulder pulling him around to face me so I could see his eyes. He knew for sure then the game was up, but he decided in those precious seconds that he wouldn’t let go of his story that he was just locking up and so said he was just coming to bed.

I grabbed his shirt and pulled him after me. As I tried to make an exit from the kitchen, he resisted slightly and said What? What!

I turned towards him and said What were you doing?

He answered Nothing, nothing… But I knew what I’d heard, I knew what I’d seen. I couldn’t believe this – I didn’t want to believe it. I dragged him up the stairs to our bedroom, shut the door, and so started an enormous row.

2

Sunday 2 August – midnight

Whilst Nick undressed as if nothing had happened, I sat on the bed, and, in a hurl of anger threw a thousand and one questions at him. He brushed them away, like they didn’t matter. I couldn’t understand it – I’d just witnessed him in the kitchen, in the dark with Madelaine, and he wasn’t admitting to it.

It was just a hug goodnight.

It was more than just a hug, I argued.

She was upset.

She certainly hadn’t seemed upset when we’d all gone to bed happy and laughing after a wonderful evening….

It was just a hug as she was upset because she’s going home in a few days.

She hadn’t looked upset, she’d looked guilty….

I don’t know, maybe I was a bit drunk, he placated.

We’d only had a bottle of wine between us - he wasn’t drunk!

For a full hour, we argued – me accusing him and him defending himself… and her! I couldn’t believe the words, the lies, the excuses that were coming from his mouth; such deception and concealment. I didn’t want to believe what had happened, but at the same time I knew it had happened. I didn’t want our picture-perfect marriage and family to be ruined. I thought we had both prized our fidelity and commitment to one another.

The argument was going nowhere as he stood his ground, layering on lie after lie to cover his guilt.

I felt sick and headachy - I wanted a glass of water – I went back down to the kitchen. The light was on, and Madelaine was still there. She was sitting in the middle of floor, her head buried in her knees which were pulled up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them, foetal like. She must have been listening to our argument.

What are you still doing here?

She looked up and I could see excuses racing through her mind, when she finally settled on… I was just saying goodnight to the dog. She was nowhere near Scout, he was curled up asleep in his basket.

I said she should get to bed and that I would talk with her in the morning…

I took my water back to the bedroom, shaken by her lie and childlike posture. This confirmed everything to me. There was something more between them – it was more than just a drunken hug as Nick was claiming. There had to be an emotional and sexual element – I could sense it. But the lies… I couldn’t make sense of it. I trusted Nick; he’d never lied to me before. So, what was going on?

When I returned, he had rolled over in bed and drifted into sleep. How could he sleep at a time like this? I couldn’t sleep. When he started snoring, I gave a sideways kick and said How dare you sleep after what has just happened!

He muttered, Just forget about it and get some sleep.

I nudged him harder with my elbow. He jumped out of bed and immediately started getting dressed. I sat up in bed and watched him, full of anger, hurt, and betrayal. He started throwing things into a bag and said he was leaving me.

I was speechless. What? What was he doing? This couldn’t be real! If he was leaving me then there was certainly more to this than he was letting on. All the lies and concealment he had just thrown my way and now this…? There must be more to it.

I made no effort to stop him; I just sank into a silent state of shock.

He left.

I sat, motionless, my mind racing all over the place, searching for answers whilst at the same time, resisting the hurtful truths which would be so devastating for our marriage and family.

He sent a text message to the children and copied me in…

I replied… You Shit!

I sat all night, images of the event running through my head, and echoes of words said in anger – recalling the lies. I couldn’t move. It was like being in a really bad nightmare loop.

At 6 a.m. I got up to go to the toilet. As I emerged from the bathroom, Nick was standing at the foot of the stairs; he said we needed to talk. Great, he hadn’t left me… but his face was serious.

Oh shit, I thought, now comes the confession – do I really want to hear this? I said we should take our talk outside so as not to disturb the sleeping children. I suggested we sit in the car.

He opened with: I think we should have a trial period of separation – I’ll go back to the UK and get a flat somewhere. Well I wasn’t expecting that. These words bounced around inside my whirling head. What was that? What was he saying?

Then came a succession of blows, one after another, after another. He occasionally paused, waiting for me to fill the empty spaces, presumably with some expected words of retaliation – like he wanted me to have something to say. I didn’t know what to say; I was in shock. I did occasionally utter a few words in these pregnant pauses – maybe the things he was expecting me to say. It felt like a comedian setting up a joke for the punchline, but I didn’t mean the words. I said them because he needed to hear me say them – to help him out, to lend some weight towards justifying what he was doing. I was in a state of shock and disbelief and everything felt utterly surreal. For an hour, he talked; I listened, occasionally saying things, but mostly he did all the talking. I tried to absorb what he was saying. I somehow knew that it was important to try to remember everything so that I could write everything down later, whilst it was fresh in my mind – I knew that I would need to re-read it in the future. And anyway, the words that he said were so painful – it was like they were engraved on my heart with a branding iron. These are the things I remember him saying:

I’m not in love with you anymore.

My thoughts were: Well of course you’re not in love with me, we’ve been together twenty-five years and the being in love as in the first flushes of love we experienced in our youth as childhood sweethearts when we met at sixteen has long since passed. That type of love is not sustainable, but we do love each other – just like in all long-term relationships, love grows and deepens to be more meaningful. I said that I still loved him. Nick had never stopped telling me how much he loved me and I never had concerns about his love for me, and so I found this statement very confusing. At this point it didn’t occur to me that he could have actually fallen in love with Madelaine – I mean, how could he? How could he destroy a twenty-five year, happy relationship, and a precious family for a girl – yes a girl; her immaturity didn’t qualify her yet as a woman.

I’ve not been happy for several years.

I was dumbfounded… I had felt the opposite – that life had never been better. I asked him to say what he meant. Apparently, he felt that over the last couple of years we’d grown apart; that our lives had taken different directions; that I had changed. This didn’t make sense to me. We’d laughed and loved all the time, and the last couple of years in particular had been a real romp of an adventure. We were living in a beautiful, four-hundred-year-old family home in the English countryside, we’d bought an idyllic second home in the south of France; we were living the dream. Surely we’d never been so happy! Why was he saying this? I was so wounded by his comments. I was utterly numb and bewildered.

You’re nasty and controlling.

Nick talked about how short fused I was. I knew that I’d been under a lot of stress with my job recently, and of course I was very tired from all the effort I was putting in with work and at home. It had been tough on me, to work fulltime and manage two homes and our family, even with the help of Madelaine. It is true that I had been feeling pulled in every direction, that I was frazzled, frayed at the edges. It was also true that I was grumpy and snappy at times. I had very little support from Nick, only criticism. Life had become chaotic, so I had to take more control of it, for the two of us and our family. I felt driven to make everything perfect, just as Nick liked it. He was the one who put the pressure on to have everything just so, otherwise he’d throw a temper tantrum.

You put me down and have to have everything your way.

My thoughts were: How have I put you down…? I worship you. Tell me what I’ve said; what I’ve done that has made you feel this way. He went on to use the example of when I was working away and asked him to pack the car up for the drive down to our French home. I’d had to repack it because he and Madelaine had done such an appalling job of it. I had managed to get three times the luggage on board in the same space as the two of them had done. Their lack of thought and effort in the logistics of packing had frustrated me, especially because I was so tired after working away all week, and to then have to come home and face a long drive down to the south of France – having to repack all their stuff to get it in. Damn right that I had showed them up by redoing it more efficiently. I’d failed to see at that moment in time that the they had become a united front in the hate your wife campaign. I couldn’t believe that such a petty thing could have become so important.

It is true that I’m a perfectionist – I have ideals, standards and expectations. I wasn’t aware that Nick had been feeling a failure because he felt that he wasn’t meeting these. I hadn’t for one minute thought of him as a failure. No, he was my love, and I loved him warts ‘n’ all! It seemed that he resented me for making him feel that he wasn’t good enough.

You’re not a nice person and even the children don’t like you very much.

Well, that blow floored me. At this point I was like a sponge, absorbing all the words he told me as the gospel truth. I caved; I had no armour, and the arrows of hatred kept flying straight into my heart. He had developed such contempt for me. Why? This was the man I loved. Was I really this detestable, bad, person he was describing?

"If you’d been a better wife I wouldn’t have done