My name is Emma, like Madame Bovary.
I have been married for over eight years; they have flown, truth be told: one minute I was in a glamorous job, playing the sexy puss with scores of adoring journalists clamouring for a slice of my time and attention, and the next there I was, walking up the aisle in a froth of cream and orange; I also walked towards two pregnancies, motherhood, shoulders decorated by the ubiquitous sick stain, leaking breasts and puckered tummy. As I walked, I did not notice my job leaving me, and taking with it my high-heel shoes, power miniskirts and fast sportscar.
Small children make an awful audience for someone like me, who thrives in the limelight and slowly shrivels up when cloaked in anonymity. Babies do not listen, or do as the are told; one must start looking around for something or someone who will satisfy one's sense of control freakness.
My husband used to make me feel very good, with those adoring eyes and respectful demeanour. Like most men, he equalled the car I drove with my status in life and my significance in the grander scheme of things. Once I was stripped of my metallic values, I walked into married-and-mother-of-two's land, and a bleak one that is too! In my current universe, delightful as it is and resounding with children's laughter, freedom and spiritual independence are some very rare kinds of currency indeed.
Between household chores and school runs, I have recently started questioning my position in this eight-year-old married world of mine. My body is whispering some rather embarrassing messages, you see, to my steady, stale self. Mostly, it's about sex.
Unfortunately, my body positively sniggers at the thought of sex with my legal partner. 'Eight years of this!', it murmurs. 'I need a change of diet.'
I am not sure as to why and when my new interest in alternative options may have started. I guess that my body has finally caught up with my mind's loneliness, and is trying to provide some tasty morsels of the forbidden fruit.
Can I be an adulterer? Dear reader, let me tell you from the beginning of the men I have so far encountered and with whom, unbeknown to each and every single one of them, I have indulged an intimate connection, down to the occasion, place, the dress I have been wearing and the words I have spoken. All in my mind, so far, but how long is such suspension from reality going to last?
