The Mistress

Jessica Graingers lower back twinged while bending over to lightly kiss the forehead of her sleeping eight year old daughter Haley.

Slowly Jessica stands upright. Gently she raises the pink bordered unicorn duvet up to the sleeping childs shoulders. A broad smile stretches out her chubby cheeks. She has her mothers blond hair. Jessica imagines her dreaming of her two favourite things princesses and unicorns. When she was a kid for her it was princesses and My Little Pony. Jessica wondered if the eight year old her, would have approved of what she became, a forty four year old overweight, overworked partner in an accountancy firm. All the eight year old girls in her class wanted to be princesses or teachers or nurses, none wanted to be a businesswoman. She sometimes wondered if she wanted to be now. Many special moments of motherhood for Haley and her eleven year old son Scott outsourced to an au pair and gone forever.

Jessica moves to exit the room and cautiously shuts the white bedroom door. She monitors the sleeping Haley while the door shuts, her smile now eradicated, She touches the bedroom door sign 'beware of the unicorn' Haley drew. Another project lost to the au pair.

Jessica plods down the stairs. She is thankful that the walk down is easier than the walk up. At two hundred and thirty pounds and five foot five, she recognised her exercise needs, however it and family life, both sacrificial lambs for a well paid demanding career.

She alights the stairwell releasing a deep tired gasp. At the end of the stairwell is an oak table with a telephone and her black leather briefcase. Adjoining the table is a large mirror. Jessica takes a look into the mirror. Thirteen hours earlier she stood before this mirror, as a confident attractive city slicker who buttoned up her two piece red business trouser suit, brushed her hair and finally applied some perfume. Now she didn't see that woman. She saw a fat cat that got all the cream whose husband now cheats on her. She had grown accustomed to his infidelity, but this time it was different. This time it was humiliating. Inside the brief case was photo evidence of his affair. She couldn't bring herself to look at them again, she feared right now it would make her physically sick.

She laboured into the adjoining kitchen. Immediately a tub of Hagen Das ice-cream called out to her in the large refrigerator. She placed the briefcase on a marble counter top and from the refrigerator withdraws a two litre tub of Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. She seats her self at the kitchen table and from a cutlery stand, removes a dessert spoon and starts shovelling the ice cream into her mouth. Her mind raced to her husbands affair. The more she thought about it the faster she ate. She had grown accustomed to his cheating. When Scott was six he had an affair with a nineteen year old nursing student. She threatened to divorce, instead they agreed that he would get therapy. Things were going well for a short while resulting in Haley coming along. Shortly after Haley's birth his cheating started again. She then decided to manage her husband like an awkward client. For her children's sake, she accepted that he will have one night stands and affairs. She tried to please him, she tried fad diets but what she lost, gained back again. The skinny girl that used scream to get out of her body had long since gone. She needed that skinny girl back. Now that she was comfort eating again.

She drops the spoon on the table top and places her soft plump right palm on her forehead as sharp pain from brain freeze shots through. She bites her lower lip to stop herself from crying. The corporate world had her believe female directors don't cry. Most of all she didn't want the children to see her cry or their au pair. How could he!!. Was she really that sexually unappealing. If it was the usual skinny girls she could live with it, but not when its their gardener Clive.