The water slapped gently against the hull of our small dinghy as I put up the oars and reached over the edge.  Wow!  Two beauties!  As I hauled in the freshwater cray pots and rowed back to the mooring at the end of our garden I smiled, thinking how pleased Geoff would be.  And it hadn’t cost him a cent!

Thinking in terms of finance cast a shadow across my bright day and I chased it away.  We were so lucky; a dream home by the river, secure jobs, and each other.  Geoff, a science teacher, worked at the local high school.  He had recently been made head of his department, while I was a sales assistant at the local bookshop.  We’d been together for ten years now and really the only problem we ever had was over money.  Geoff was what my mother, in her soft Welsh accent, had always called, “parsimonious”.  The frustration was that if I sometimes longed for a nice meal out at a good restaurant, or a new dress with an expensive price tag, Geoff would always dismiss it as an example of my extravagant nature.

“You did a sensible thing when you agreed to having our two signatures on the savings account” he would say if he ever caught me so much as glancing in a dress shop window.  “We’d never have the house we have, or the fat savings account for our retirement, if you had sole signatory rights.”

Earlier in our marriage, I had tried to point out that we were far from retirement age and still had plenty of living to do, but the arguments that followed were so awful, and his comments about how little money I earned so disparaging, that now I said nothing.

I was being disloyal thinking like this, I thought guiltily.  Well, I’d try to make up for it.  Geoff was working late, as he so often did now that he had taken on his new responsibilities.  I would make a crayfish mornay and take it up to the school to surprise him.  There was a bottle of chilled white wine in the fridge.  We’d eat in one of the science labs – add a bit of fun and romance to that drab place!

Just after dark, I parked carefully outside the school and tiptoed through the back way, my feast-filled basket over my arm.  A bit like Red Riding Hood, I almost giggled to myself.  The building was pre-war with those awful high windows but there was a

glow of light in the corner above the science lab.  I’d make sure he was inside, then I’d tap on the window and he’d come out to see who the intruder was.  Surprise!  Surprise!  Putting the basket carefully on the ground and climbing up on the low wall that ran alongside, I peered in – and my whole world crumbled.  On a mattress on the floor, Geoff and Erica, his top Year 12 student, were making love in the arc light of one of the Bunsen burners.

I relived that moment many times in the agonizing weeks to come.  My habit of staying silent to avoid an argument now stood me in good stead.  Geoff, absorbed not in his job but, as I now realized, in a heady relationship, hardly seemed to notice my silence.  Little by little, I began to see what a farce our marriage really was.  Geoff was a control freak – he controlled me and now he was into another relationship where he had the power.  I desperately wanted to leave – but how?  I had allowed Geoff control over everything – even my wages were paid straight into our savings account.  I simply had no money.

The solution came to me in an unlikely way.  During one of our rare conversations, Geoff told me that a student at the school had been caught for signing his father’s signature on absentee notes.  When pressed, he’d boasted that it was easy: “You put the other person’s signature against the window and a sheet of paper over the top.  The light behind it shines through and you just trace the signature onto the paper.”

Geoff shook his head as he told me the story.  “A criminal in the making”, he’d grimaced, unaware of the escape route he had just given me.

The bank manager was a little taken aback when I handed him the transfer form, neatly signed by both signatories, together with my application for my own account.

Fortunately, I’d rehearsed:

“Geoff’s found some new tax loophole and I’m ‘it’”, I smiled, pretending to sigh.

He laughed and picked up his pen.  “Well, if anyone would find one it would be Geoff.  We’ll open your new account now and transfer the money straight away.”

I’d already resigned from my job, so I packed that morning.  The note in the kitchen was the cowardly way out but I didn’t want to have to listen to Geoff justifying his actions.  I knew I’d be the one to blame.  My note explained, very carefully, that if he pressed criminal charges against me for forging his signature or tried to contact me I’d expose his relationship with a student who was also under 18.  I didn’t have to point out that he would probably go to jail and that he would never get another teaching position.

Six months later I sued for divorce and received not only my freedom but half the proceeds from the sale of the house.  I have never seen Geoff again and that is the way I want it to stay.  I have my own home now, I buy the occasional dress without looking at the price tag, and I eat out often.  My only regret is that, no matter what I do, in one way Geoff still has some power over me – our secrets must stay just that, for a lifetime.