So, at the start, at the offset, I took all this car love in my stride - normal
   manly behaviour. And it has to be said, I had previous form: a father
   in love with steam. Years of him being half there, half in the
   loft with his train track. Holidays planned around the last outposts of
   the steam engine.
            
   So how was I to know what was 'normal' and what was not? Although
   to be fair to my father, he did find time to sire five children and put a large
   smile on my mother's face. Even when he asked her to help with his train
   layouts and make those awful, fiddly little trees from that sponge stuff.
         
   How was I to know that this was a step further than my father's
   obsession? That my husband would spend more time lying under cars
   than on top of me?
         
   It took me about four years of marriage to really understand what I
   was up against. In fact, I can remember the date exactly. January 12^th. It
   was my thirty ninth birthday and we'd been out for lunch. A long drive there,
   a quick meal and then a long drive home. We came back here and I made us
   a cup of tea. By the time the tea was in the cups, he was out in the garage.
   Again.  He must have positively raced up the stairs to strip off his clothes
   and get safely into those nasty, snot green overalls of his. Everything
   neatly zipped up out of harm's way.
         
   Out of my way, more like.
         
   I carried his tea to the garage, only to discover him already elbow deep in
   that hideous Jag he had at the time.
         
   'Oh,' I said, 'you're here then?'
         
   He looked at the cup of tea. 'Just put it down over there.' He nodded
   at a space on his workbench. Well, I hadn't spent all those years as a primary
   school teacher not to be able to recognise when somebody was avoiding
   answering a sticky question.
         
   I put the tea down and went and stood by his side. I remember leaning
   against him, for once not really caring if the oil from his overalls rubbed off on
   my clothes. 'Only I was thinking we could just waste the rest of the day
   in bed. You know. As it's my birthday.'
         
   He gave me a look as though I had suggested having sex in front of his
   mother. Or even with his damned mother. Then he dipped his head under the
   bonnet. Not, I believe, because he wanted to see something close-up.
         
   'There's no call for all that,' I heard his muffled voice say, 'It's not a
   special birthday.'
         
   In anybody else's mouth it would have sounded like a very funny joke.
   But it was his mouth, and I was not laughing. That was all he said. Just that.
   End of discussion. I had suggested spending the entire afternoon in bed
   with him as we had once done, right at the start, and that was his response.

   I almost hit him with a wrench. Was I going to have to wait a year for
   the next time he might want to go to bed with me? Until the big four oh?
   I mean, it was my birthday, you would have thought, wouldn't you, that
   he might have wanted to please me; even if he found the whole thing
   distasteful. Sorry, even though he found the whole thing distasteful. You
   would have thought that he could just have made the effort.
         
   Like I always did with his birthdays; steeling myself to attend some
   damned car rally or another. Sitting there in a fold up chair with a paperback
   whilst he preened and buffed the latest ruddy lump of metal to within an inch
   of its life and showed her off like some eager pimp. I would often look around
   at the other wives all sitting in their little fold up chairs and think I should
   run screaming from the place. But you don't do you? All those ideas
   about 'give and take', about accommodating your loved one's interests.
         
   Anyway, I digress (and who doesn't after three glasses of red?)
   So, that was the first sign, having my offer of an afternoon of sex turned
   down. 

   Or was it the culmination of a lot of little first signs? Him staying
   downstairs long after I had gone to bed with his filthy, much pawed
   car magazines. The way he wouldn't let me drive 'his' cars. That time he
   made me walk back from a hospital appointment as it was raining and
   he'd just given the car a special wax? It was as though he was absenting
   himself from more and more of our marriage, as if he had just slipped into the
   garage and was never really, fully, coming back.
         
   I haul myself up from the kitchen table, open the fridge again and
   dig out a block of cheese. I know there are oatcakes somewhere.
         
   Well after that, things got steadily worse. Children might have helped,
   but they were not to be. It would have been something of a miracle
   after all.
         
   Perhaps if we had produced a herd of boys who loved cars our lives
   would have been different. Then again, perhaps it would have made it worse.
   The car seats and the crumbs; the bikes scraping along his paintwork.
   I cannot imagine how he could have coped with that. Or with the bigger
   questions:'Daddy, Daddy, can I pretend to drive?', 'I need some practice
   for my test, can we go in yours?', 'I've got a date, mind if I borrow your car?'
         
   At least they were arguments I never had to watch or referee. 

   I don't really know what I was staying for. Some sign that it was
   over, perhaps? And I am a sticker not a bolter. He wasn't a bad husband.
   There were no bruises and some kindness. You could take him anywhere
   and he would blend in. Perhaps a different woman would have ignited
   his passion and kept it lit. I watched it gutter and spit and finally die.
         
   Sometimes I would get in from work and just yearn, positively yearn for
   someone to scoop me up and give me a long cuddle. I wasn't demanding
   'swinging from the chandelier' passion. Just a bit of warmth, a bit of skin
   against my skin. But you can't pick an orange and then be disappointed it's
   not an apple can you?
         
   Then there came the day.
         
   I walked into the garage and saw him with yet another car and stood
   transfixed. Later, when I registered that I was feeling dizzy, I knew that
   what I saw must have made me hold my breath too.
         
   There he was, making love to his car. This man who, as far as I was
   concerned, might as well be dead from the waist down.
         
   It was not the literal act of course, thank the Lord. I never actually
   caught him doing that. There was no horrible scene involving an open petrol
   tank and a guilty, hasty withdrawal. No, he was caressing the bitch. He was
   running his hand along her sides, down her bonnet, around the edge of her
   wheel arches and the look on his face was one of ecstasy. Well, I supposed
   it was, not that I had ever seen it anywhere near our dull bed. He looked
   overcome by something huge, completely swept away in it. The warmth in
   his eyes as his hand moved over her stabbed me right in the heart. She
   was speaking to him in a language I had never mastered and he was
   listening intently.
         
   I could see his lips moving; I could almost hear the sighs and whispered
   endearments.The overwhelming smell of sweat and oil caught in the back
   of my throat.
         
   I should have left him then, realised it wasn't ever going to get any
   betterfor me.
         
   I look down at the packet of oatcakes in my hand and see they are now
   no more than crumbs. I put the packet down and refill my glass with wine
   one last time.
         
   Not long after that incident, I joined our local walking club.
         
   Yes, I do understand irony.
         
   And there I managed to walk right into John.  A walker and a talker,
   thank goodness.
         
   At first I only saw him as a bulky man in a kagool. Then one day, after a
   particularly long walk, I got cramp in the calf of my right leg. He stayed back
   to help me and the way his hands felt, smoothing out the pain, caressing it
   away, well; it was soft rain on my drought. 

   John and I walked rapidly through companionship and friendship and
   then arrived at the outskirts of lust. John was keen to go further, but I was
   a good girl. Always a good girl. I told him everything, but I could not take
   that final step.
         
   A vow is a vow after all.
         
   I turned my back on John and re-applied myself to my marriage.      
   Determination could be the glue that kept us together. I borrowed
   money, suggested a holiday, a second honeymoon. We discussed where
   we should go and I was firm. Not Le Mans, not the Nuremburg Ring,
   or Monaco or Detroit, but Venice.
         
   'Why?' he asked.
         
   'No roads,' I said.
         
   He gave me his look. He knew it was a test, I knew it was a test.
   He nodded his head and I felt such relief. Everything was going to be
   all right.
         
   But as ever it was what he had not said that I should have listened to.
         
   I get up and throw the broken oatcakes into the bin along with
   the remainder of the jar of olives. I put the cheese back into the fridge. I
   wash up the plate and leave it to dry in the rack.
         
   Of course, it was not a new start. Two weeks ago I went to pay
   the final instalment on the holiday, only to be informed that there were not
   enough funds in our account. I knew before I got home what I would find.
         
   There she was in the garage. Shiny, svelte, expensive looking. He was
   already fiddling under her bonnet. I watched the infinitesimal
   adjustments he made to her. He fumbled and swore and could never locate
   anything with any precision where I was concerned.
         
   I stood there for quite a while. He knew I was there, I could tell. And
   then I left the house and did not stop walking until I reached John.
         
   I have walked over to his house quite a few times since then whilst my
   husband tinkered and fine tuned another. And during those visits I learned
   that John was passionate about many things. India, wine, Mozart, but
   mainly, me. Not me after Mozart, or second to Mumbai, but me up front,
   in front, first, first, first.
         
   I learned that there are many ways to die too. Like John's wife, quickly
   and unexpectedly or like me, over time, unnecessarily.
         
   Today I will not walk to John's. I have too much to carry.
         
   I take the empty wine bottle out into the garage and drop it in
   the box marked 'glass'. Then I say goodbye to his latest; the one
   he finally left me for.
         
   She is quite, quite beautiful. And completely heartless.
         
   He would do well to remember that.