Laura White

My name is Lily. I am a cliché that tastes bitter on the tongue of many women. I am a mistress, the other woman... a marriage wrecker.

I sit at my dressing table, put my lipstick down, and study my reflection in the mirror. My large sapphire eyes, framed by the longest eyelashes, blink back at me. I smile, and straight, white teeth, smile back at me. I see a tiny nose, high cheek-bones and full lips gracing flawless skin. As I brush my long honey-blonde hair I trace a manicured finger around my dainty ears that sit flat against my head. Simple diamond studs glitter on my lobes.

One solitary tear escapes from my eye and I watch as it trickles down my face, forming a path through the make-up I have just applied. I cannot argue with what I see. I am attractive; beautiful even. I don’t feel that way, I feel ugly. Slamming down the brush I turn away from the mirror as repulsion washes over me. A multitude of tears course down my face, spoiling my make-up beyond repair as ugliness fills my mind.

I pull a cleansing wipe from its packet and scrub my tears and make-up away. My reflection now better suits the way I feel. Ridiculous black smudges circle my eyes; my flawless skin is tear stained and puffy and red lipstick bleeds in a ghoulish fashion around my mouth. I feel satisfied as I screw the mud coloured wipe into a ball and aim it at the wicker waste-paper basket in the corner of my room. I undress and slip into my cosy pajamas, a relief from the tight fussy basque now discarded by my feet.

I walk through to my study and flip my laptop open. As it connects to the internet I rush to my Facebook account. The same as every other day my account is swamped by eager male admirers’. They don’t see the ugliness I feel; when they look at my photographs. They see what I saw in the mirror, a vision of beauty, a perfect face and a perfect figure. I don’t look at their flattery, I aren’t interested in all their well-worn chat-up lines, I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve read the words, ‘heaven must be missing an angel’. The thought of such drivel nauseates me.

I type in the name ‘Ben Hall’. His profile appears on my screen. I scan the comments left by his angry, worried, devastated wife, ‘Sharna’. Her ranting sickens me. There must be a hundred pages of comments she has posted over the course of a month; probably the most miserable month of her existence. I read through from the beginning.

‘Ben, where are you? Why didn’t you come home last night? Please answer your phone.’ Underneath is a curt reply.

‘I’m not coming home. I don’t love you anymore. I’m with Lily now.’

 The next ninety-nine pages are full of Sharna’s unanswered rants. As I read each one in order a little piece of ugliness that cocoons me falls away. I decide to have a glass of wine before I get engrossed in my favourite prose.

 Ben is mine now Sharna, I think to myself as I look in on him on my way to the kitchen. He is sleeping, his hands and feet tied to the bedposts in kinky readiness for tonight. I feel butterflies dance in my stomach as I look at his handsome features. His toned, muscley torso ripples in time with his breathing. I continue towards the kitchen, passing room after room in this rambling mansion I reside in. Until my lottery win my humble residence was a one room bed-sit in a building groaning with mould and mildew, products of the damp that seeped through the walls. The kitchen I enter now is a world away from the shared kitchen in my other dwelling; a kitchen I had shared with thieves, drug addicts and cockroaches.

 I shut the memory away as I open my enormous fridge and select a chilled bottle of white wine. I carry it back to my study, collecting a crystal-cut wine glass and today’s newspaper off the granite work-top as I pass. I twist the corkscrew deep into the cork and continue to read Sharna’s rambling words.

‘Ben, what have I done? Who is Lily?’

‘I am pregnant. I hope this changes things, hasn’t it always been our dearest wish to have a child?’