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?’
‘Please just come home, I love you and miss you. We can just forget about the affair.’
I’m quite tipsy as I reach the final entry. It has been a whole week since it was received.
‘Ben, I can’t live without you. For whatever I have done to drive you into the arms of another woman I am sorry. I have seen a photograph of Lily. I can’t compete with her. Remember I love you. I feel I have no choice other than to kill myself. Please forgive me. Sharna xxx’
I remember how amazing I’d felt, large chunks of ugliness falling away as I’d typed a reply.
‘Yes Sharna, do the world a favour. Kill yourself. Put me and you out of our misery!’
I pour the remains of the wine into the glass as I click the laptop shut. Spreading the newspaper on my desk I gulp the wine down as I study the front page article for what must be the tenth time today.
‘Missing Footballer, Ben Hall’s Wife found Dead’ the headline screams from the page. I laugh as I read how Sharna was found hanged; a suicide note beside the body stated that she couldn’t deal with the shame of Ben’s adulterous affair. My mind fills with images of Sharna, hanging from a tree in her enormous garden, the noose tight around her neck. I feel giddy with happiness as I imagine it choking her slowly as she struggles, maybe regretting her decision, but there is nobody to cut her down.
It’s time, I decide. I take the newspaper in my hand and make my way to my lover on unsteady feet. I mustn’t keep him waiting as I was kept waiting. All those years I longed for Ben Hall and now he’s mine. I creep into the bedroom where he’s still sleeping. Sitting on the edge of the bed I shake him awake, eager for our fun to begin.
“Lily, will you untie me please?” he says as his bleary eyes meet mine.
“I thought you would like to read this,” I say as I hold the newspaper up for him to see. I notice tears pool in his eyes. “As you can see, we are free to be together now. Nothing stands in our way. Aren’t you happy?”
“My wife is dead, of course I aren’t happy. I hate you Lily. What do you want with me?”
“I thought that was obvious,” I say as I trail a finger down the contour of his chest. “I want you; I want your body; I want your babies.”
I take the bottle of tablets from the bedside cabinet.
“Come on Ben, be good and take your medicine. Think of the fun we will have after,” I say as I hold the blue, diamond shaped Viagra tablet next to his firmly closed mouth.
“Come on, haven’t we made wild, abandoned love for the past four weeks thanks to these little miracles?”
“Well, no more Lily. You will never have me, never,” he says through his tears as I prod the tablet between his lips. He spits it out and I try again.
“Ouch!” I exclaim as he bites my finger.
“Are you sure that I will never have you, you will never be mine?” I ask as tears prick my eyes.
“Why have you kept me prisoner?” Ben asks as I finally manage to get him to swallow the tablet.
“You haven’t answered my question Ben.”
“No, you are sick, a psycho. I will never be yours,” I feel a stab of sorrow and regret as I make my decision. I feel the time is right to tell him my secret.
“I will just fetch you a glass of wine,” I say as I disappear with the bottle of tablets.
I crush ten Viagra tablets and mix them into a glass of red wine. I pour myself a glass of white wine and carry them to the bedroom being careful not to spill a drop.
“Okay Ben, I will tell you why I have kept you tied up, a prisoner. I will tell you why I have made love to your unwilling body day after day. Do you even know who I am? Did you care who I was when you seduced me on Facebook? I imagine I was just another conquest, one of many.” I watch as his face takes on a haunted look and he replies.
“I was wrong. I should never have cheated on Sharna; but look at you, which man could resist you?”
“Well anyway, my name is not Lily; at least it wasn’t until recently. Here have a drink,” I say as I hold the glass to Ben’s lips. He takes a sip and I take a large gulp of my own. I offer the glass to Ben once more. “Come on, keep up with me. I have already drunk a full bottle while you were sleeping. Have you heard of Laura White?” I say as he empties the glass. A puzzled look crosses his exquisitely handsome face.
“No why?”
“Oh come on Ben, Laura White from school. She had a crush on you, remember? Small and chunky, dirty brown hair, bottle-top glasses, goofy teeth, jug ears and a nose you said you could ski down. Do you remember her now?” I ask as I’m taken back to that time of my life.
I was friendless; a frightened mousy little girl. Sharna, dear departed Sharna, was the leader of my tormentors’. The names that were shouted at me still echoed in my head, day after day. Taunts, vile, hurtful playground taunts: specky four-eyes; parrot nose; goofy; dumbo. Sharna would delight in hitting me with a stick, laughing as she shouted that it was an ugly stick.
Nearly every day I would arrive back to the children’s home where I’d lived since I was orphaned with bleeding knees, torn clothes and an ego that was smashed and ground to dust. Ben Hall had shown me a shred of kindness until the day he had hooked up with Sharna. My crush had remained nonetheless for the only person to have shown me compassion in my cursed childhood.
I emerge from my thoughts as Ben’s voice disturbs me.
“Oh my god, no way! Laura White, the Laura White?” The name rolls off his tongue as his eyes open wide. “How… how can you be Laura White?”
“Why can’t I be? Is it because I am beautiful? Well Ben, let’s just say a healthy lottery win and a few years have helped. I improved quite a lot naturally, without help,” I say as I remove my pajamas, revealing the tiniest waist, longest legs and most glorious breasts. Ben had enjoyed these assets in recent days. I watch him squirm now as his large excitement becomes obvious. It is a shame that it is going to be wasted. “I just had a little surgery to fix the rest,” I say as I reach for the mirror on the bedside cabinet and sit next to Ben. “A vast improvement, wouldn’t you agree?” I ask as I study the face that cost me almost a million pounds.
“Yes, it’s… it’s… it.”
“What Ben? Do you mean to say it’s amazing? It is, yes you are correct. There is one thing all my millions couldn’t fix,” I say as Ben struggles to focus on me.
“Wh… w…,” he slurs.
“What? I will tell you what. They couldn’t fix the ten years of bullying I received off your wife. Then you had to go and join in. You made me feel so worthless and ugly. I still did until now,” I say as the final pieces of the cocoon of ugliness my mind has been trapped in falls away completely. “I crushed ten Viagra tablets in your wine, one for every year of my miserable childhood,” I say as I watch Ben squirm in unadulterated agony. He tries to cry out to me, ask for help but he can’t manage a single word, the poor thing. And then I watch as his eyes close for the last time. Kissing his closed eyelids I creep out of the room. I feel truly beautiful for the first time in my life.