Red Button

She looked at the red button…

 Theresa had harboured suspicions for quite some time. All the late evenings at work. The tiredness. The seeming lack of interest in any romance with her.

“In our bed!”, she shouted, although nobody was around to hear her.

The only proof she needed was on the floor in front of her. Just by her side of the bed.

She looked at the red button. It was small.

Looks like it’s off a blouse, she thought, that dirty bastard probably ripped her blouse open there and then and thrust himself at her before getting down to their filthy business on my fucking bed!

She bent down, picked up the button, then stood holding it in the palm of her hand. Her mind was racing with images of her friends and whether she could ever recall any of them wearing a blouse with red buttons. A bit of a long shot. Luckily nobody sprung to mind.

“I bet it was that slut Jemma from his office. She’s always giving him the eye.”, she muttered.

She headed downstairs to the kitchen where she placed the little red button on the kitchen counter. Turning to the fridge, she pulled open the door and reached in for the part-full bottle of Chardonnay she knew lurked within. Placing a glass on the counter next to the all-important little red disc of plastic, she filled it with what remained of the wine.

As she drank from the glass, her eyes didn’t leave the red button. She was wondering how such a small, innocuous piece of plastic could be the key to essentially bringing down her safe little world.

Theresa and James had been married for twelve years. They didn’t have children. It was a conscious decision by both of them. She didn’t want kids because she was scared what it would do to her body. Part of her now wondered whether it wasn’t that James didn’t want kids, but that he didn’t want kids with her.

They married young by today’s standards. They were both twenty-four with a month between them. Everything had seemed fine until a few months ago. She’d noticed that James seemed a little distracted and perhaps a little withdrawn, but attributed it to the long hours at work, though there was always a hint of suspicion. Now she doubted that there were long hours…at work anyway. She shuddered; the implication was he’d been cheating on her for months.

One word was ever-present in her mind : why?

Theresa considered herself attractive and possibly younger-looking than her thirty-six years. She was certainly able to garner attention from the men wherever she went. So it puzzled her about why James would cheat on her. She was affectionate, successful at work and easy to get along with.

What could some home-wrecking slut have that I can’t offer him?, she asked herself.

This was a question she would ask him when he came back from snooker with Steve. He finished a couple of hours earlier than her on Fridays so had recently started spending the time down at the social club with his pal Steve from work, playing snooker and having a couple of pints. Sometimes Steve would come back with James and Steve’s wife Linda would meet them and the two couples would order a takeaway and perhaps watch a DVD or sit, drink and chat. Tonight was one of those nights, so she was wondering how to choose her moment to confront James.

She didn’t have to wait long. She heard his key in the door accompanied by the loud banter of the the two men as they entered the house. They were arguing about whether Steve had hit the yellow whilst trying to pot a red.

The walked into the kitchen.

“Alright, Love!”, said James as he spotted Theresa.

“Hey, Sneezer!”, chirped Steve.

He often used this nickname for her. The first time James had introduced her to Steve she had some kind of allergic reaction to the smell of Steve’s aftershave and she couldn’t stop sneezing. And of course, it sounded a little like Theresa.

She was about to give a measured kind of response, as she was still quite undecided about how to handle the situation.

Then she saw it. Her already confounded brain was running through a list of innocent scenarios, but discounting them almost as quickly as she could think them up.

As incredulous as it may seem, it appeared it could be true.

She’d noticed that Steve was missing a button on his shirt. Dropping her gaze to the counter she looked at the red button, then back at Steve’s shirt.

She was certain the button belonged to Steve………..