CHAPTER ONE

"You know what?" I screamed at my husband, oh sorry, estranged husband as he walked down our driveway toward his girlfriends idling car. "Screw you buddy. We don't need your cheating arse anyway."

Darren got into the car and his girlfriend made a hasty exit, probably afraid that if they stuck around any longer my head would separate from my neck and explode.

I sat down heavily on the door step, thanking god or whoever was overseeing my life, for the small mercy of my kids being at school, while their Wanker, I mean Father, left us for his bloody 21 year old secretary.

I mean shit he wasn't even original.

I ran the through the scene again in my head.

"I'm sorry Eve, but well you know how it is?" he had paused looking at me and willing me to understand so he wouldn't have say it out loud. And me, being the obliging wife that I am, took up the challenge.

"What do you mean? I'm supposed to know how I have given birth to three children for you, raise said kids, given up my fucking life to run around after you, clean your house, and do god knows what else for you, only to have you come home and shit on me from a great height and throw 17 years of marriage away? And for what? Your god damn secretary?"

I blew out a heavy breath at that point, and just stared at him, trying to decide if I could actually get away with murdering the idiot and not have to do time for it.

After about 30 silent seconds I opened my mouth to start another barrage of verbal abuse (seeing as I didn't think I could in fact get away with murder), but he beat me to the punch.

"Look, I know you're upset right now, so I'll come over on Saturday morning to see the kids and we can discuss visitation with them, okay?" Darren said sheepishly.

All previous thought of hurling more abuse at him went out of me then.

I couldn't believe that the man I had been married to for 17 years was just going to walk out of my house telling me he would see me in the weekend to sort out the kids and that was it.

I just kept staring, until he started to walk toward the front door and then I got my good sense back and told him exactly what he could do with his weekend separation meeting.

Beethoven's Fur Elis sounded from my kitchen phone, bringing me out of my flash back.

"Hello?" I answered trying to keep my voice even.

"Hello, this is Mrs Brown from the high school; can I talk to Mrs Johanson please?"

"Yes, you're speaking with her." I responded through gritted teeth at the Mrs part.

"I'm just ring to ask if someone could please come and pick up Alexis. She's not feeling the best and with the stomach flu that has been doing the rounds at the school we thought it best not to take any chances."

I didn't reply for a second, because all of a sudden I was cursing the heavens that I had only just finished thanking because now I had to go pick up my 16 year old daughter, a daughter that I was very close to and for some reason she always saw right through my "I'm fine" comments.

Shit, I would have to try and improve my acting or pick up all of the kids early, because there was just no way in hell that I was going to be telling the kids separately and keep myself together the whole time, multi-tasker I am, heartless I am not.

"Hello, Mrs Johanson, are you still there?"

"Oh sorry, sorry, totally distracted by a couple of things going on here." I said. "Um, would you please be able to get Lily, my other daughter, out of her classes as well, we are having a bit of a family emergency at the moment and to be honest its better I talk to the children all together."

There was another long pause, but this time not from me. The high school office lady was probably putting two and two together. Damn.

"Yes absolutely Mrs Johanson we can have the girls waiting outside for you, lets say . . . . 15 minutes." She said getting herself together.

"That would be great thank you very much." I said and hung up before Mrs Brown could say anything else. She was a very well meaning old woman but everybody knew she might as well be running a gossip magazine out of the school office with all the information that passed through our small towns' only high school.

Before I headed out the door I rung Michael's school, one of only 4 primary schools in the town and told them the same as the high school, family emergency, so I would need Mikey to be ready by the gate in about 10 minutes.

Then I hung up the phone in its cradle and grabbed my hand bag and keys and headed out to my car.

Before I drove out of the drive I plugged in my USB radio transmitter and cranked up my sounds. I maybe older these days but my entire life I have always been regarded by my friends and family as the D.J. of the family, always having a great stereo in the house and my cars. Nothing over the top, but just right to pump out what music fit my mood or the event that I was going to. Today it was a mood thing and even with the short amount of time that had passed since Darren had driven off with his floozy, I was moving from shocked and stunned to pissed off.

So by time I hit the road to get the kids, Nickelbacks 'Burn it to the Ground' was slamming out of my car stereo speakers loud enough that mikey heard me coming around the corner and had moved up the curb ready to hope in the car.

A couple of minutes late the song finished and before I choose the next song I hit the pause button and smiled over and the baby of my little family and my only son.

"Hey dude, how's it going?"

Mikey looked over at me and had what is commonly know in our house as a 'WTF look' on his face.

"Sorry to pull you out of school early but some stuff has gone down and I kind of need to tell you guys before someone else does."

"Huh, Mum, what is it coz you like never let me skip school unless I'm like totally sick?" Mikey looked completely confused, which for my son was a state that maybe happened once a year, because having two older sisters he was quick of the mark and didn't miss much, add that to a killer intellect and he never missed much.

My smile thinned and looked at him briefly again.

"Well dude, I want to wait until Lil and Lex are with us before I tell you." I told him and quickly seeing the looked on his face finished off with, "but don't worry no one has died."

Michael visible relaxed.

Only another couple of minutes and we were pulling up outside the high school and the girls jumped in the car with Lily bitching about the fact that Michael was sitting in the front seat and Alexis looking at me in the rear vision mirror with a worried look on her face.

Shit, I really couldn't hide a thing from that girl I didn't even say anything other than a quick 'hey guys'.

"Mum. . . . . . Mum . . . . . MUM!" Lil yelled getting my attention back off the mirror.

"Sorry darling, what's wrong?" I answered with a fake smile.

"Why does Michael get the front seat again, he had it this morning. Seriously mum, he always gets his own way." Lily finished with the ultimate middle child pout, the one says, I know you love me but I'm always competing and for once I would just like to not fight to get something as simple as a front seat.

I sighed, trying to keep it together as I tried to think how to tell my beautiful children that there life was about to be flipped upside down, all because there dad was sick of having sex with the same woman.

"Lil, it's not like that." I replied to her. "You know it's not like that, it's just that I picked Mikey up first today."

"Whatever." She threw back and slammed back on the seat.