Bad Husband

I could have avoided all that trouble if only I'd been willing to admit at the start that I'd forgotten her birthday.

When I drove into the driveway, she was standing at the window - she'd seen me - I couldn't turn around and go back out again in search of a present or a card. She ran to the front door, eyes shining with excitement at the thought of what her birthday present was going to be. I was coming up empty. Bad husband.

I slapped my hand on my forehead. "Damn!" I said with mock self-annoyance. "I left your present at work!"

"Oh," she said, trying and failing to hide her disappointment. Then she brightened a little. "You could go back and get it," she said, looking at me coquettishly through those thick lashes of hers.

"Great idea," I said. I could swing by John Lewis's instead and get something - have them gift wrap it, and bring it back. She wouldn't know the difference.

"I could come with you," she suggested, and my heart sank. "We could go out for a nice meal in that restaurant opposite your office."

"Don't you want to change and put some make up on before going in there, though?" I said, desperately. It wasn't a particularly posh place. What she had on would have been fine, but hopefully she wouldn't pick up on that. "It being a special occasion and all? I don't mind coming back for you."

She wavered for a minute, obviously thinking I was implying she looked a mess or something. Bad husband. "Okay," she said at last, and went indoors.

I got back in the car and drove off in the direction of work but once out of her sight I swung around and doubled back towards John Lewis's.

Time was of the essence. I was competing for car park spaces with the early evening cinema crowd and it took me ages to find one. I got to the door of John Lewis's just as the manager was locking up for the night. "Please!" I mouthed through the glass. "I need a present for my wife! It's urgent!"

He gave an exaggerated shrug and mouthed back, "Sorry. You're too late."

Now what? Where the hell could I get a decent present in the next few minutes? Flowers from the petrol station wouldn't cut it. She'd know I wouldn't keep flowers on my desk all day.

What would be open at this time of day? The cinema - but you can't buy stuff there, only popcorn and nachos. That would be worse than flowers from the petrol station.

My life wasn't going to be worth living if I didn't come up with something and fast.

The all night chemist! I made for that, thinking the biggest gift box of toiletries they had might just be okay, like one of those Yards of Tweed my dad used to buy for my mum. 

When I got there, only the pharmacy counter was open - the aisle with the gifts on it was blocked off with a plastic cone. Only emergency prescriptions on sale after hours.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. It would be easy enough to slip past the barrier and pick something. Surely if the chap behind the counter saw how desperate I was he'd let me pay for it. It was all profit at the end of the day.

The klaxon took me completely by surprise - the wailing and the robotic voice saying "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!"

A stout middle-aged woman in support tights appeared out of nowhere and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at me like my old school teacher used to when she caught me smoking behind the bicycle sheds. "This section of the store is closed, sir," she said, acidly.

"I need to get a birthday present for my wife."

"I'm sorry, you can't. Didn't you read the signs? Emergency prescriptions only after six thirty pm."

If only it had been a bloke. A bloke might have taken pity on me, for let's face it, most of us blokes have forgotten their wife's birthday or their anniversary at least once; but a woman? No way. She'd take the view that it served me right if I'd forgotten. Bad husband.

I was frog-marched out of the shop.

I thought about telling my wife the office had been all locked up, too - but she knows I'm a key holder thanks to all those times the burglar alarm was set off by a mouse at three in the morning and I'd have to go in and re-set it.

I could have admitted I'd lied but my life wouldn't be worth living for weeks if I did that. If only I hadn't told that lie about leaving the present at work. I could have got a card at the petrol station and written something in it like "Your present is a mystery weekend away, destination to be a surprise!" Surely I'd have been able to get a late deal to Paris or somewhere on Lastminute.com. Too late for that, now. Bad husband.

It was staring to get dark. Nothing was open.

Wait a minute. I'm a key holder. Was there anything lying around in the office I could borrow to give her as a present and order a new one tomorrow? A a paperweight, or even one of those motivational prints on the wall - she'd love the one with the seascape - she loved the sea so much. She was always going on about how she'd love to move somewhere nearer the sea and start her own business. Not going to happen, as it's too far for me to commute, but a nice picture of the sea she could look at every day might take the edge off that a bit. What's more, would any of my colleagues even notice if one of those things went missing?

I let myself into my deserted office. Only the cleaner was there and she was just finishing up. I told her I'd forgotten something. "Hardly surprising given how stressed you guys always are," she smiled. "Don't forget to lock up on your way out."

When she'd gone I scouted the office for possible presents. The picture of the seascape was actually in a really cheap and nasty frame. I can't say I'd ever noticed how awful the frame was. Not only that, it had been damaged somehow. I couldn't give my wife a broken frame. Come to think of it, the picture wasn't even that nice.

I looked around in desperation, and then I saw it. Sitting on the side table in the boss's office, a shiny new laptop. I knew she wanted one. Had I remembered her birthday earlier, I could have got one just like it from our suppliers. The boss was away for a few days. I could easily take this one and first thing in the morning, order a new one to replace it. It didn't look as if he'd even used it yet, so it was a perfect solution. Or so I thought.

My wife was delighted with it. "Thank you so much!" she gushed. "It's just what I wanted."

"You dropped enough hints," I said. "Let me set it up for you."

Next day, I ordered the exact same model from our suppliers using my own credit card, and it arrived the very next day. I set it up in the boss's office that evening after everyone else had gone. Nobody would ever know.

Or so I thought.

The boss came back next day. Everything was fine until about eleven o'clock when he burst out of his office with the laptop in his hand. "I put a top secret file on here," he said. "It had information on it that could ruin this company if it got out, but it's gone! Does anybody know what could have happened to it?"

I swallowed, but remained calm, knowing the boss wasn't all that good with computers. "I expect you forgot to save it, like you did with that press release a few weeks ago," I said, trying to sound more calm and confident than I felt.

"I was sure I saved it," the boss said, "just like you showed me." All the same, I could detect some doubt in his voice. He only thought he'd saved it.

"Do you have a back up?" I asked.

"No. I put it on the laptop because it wasn't attached to the mainframe yet. I could write down my thoughts about the situation without any danger of it being hacked and leaked. There was no way anybody could have deleted it apart from me."

"What was it?" I asked, going into his office and closing the door behind us. "Sometimes if things get accidentally deleted it's still possible to recover them. I can have a look."

"I'd appreciate that," he said. "It was my observations on that new drug we've been marketing. I ran a simulation and found something we'd overlooked - that there's a potential fatal reaction with certain other medications. I know I should have withdrawn it immediately but it's the biggest cash cow we've ever developed. I'm sure some tweaking with the formula will solve the problem, and that's what I was working on. I wanted to get my thoughts down before I forgot them, and I have forgotten them, but the file has gone, too!"

"I'll give it a go," I said. "Tell me what you called the file and I'll see if the system can recover it. It will take 24 hours to do the complete scan, though."

"Do it," he said.

I set the machine to do an extensive virus scan, drive de-fragmentation and just about every other routine maintenance programme I could think of. I'd go home, find the file on my wife's computer, put it on a memory stick and transfer it back. The boss wouldn't know what the computer was doing now, and it should take long enough that he'd get bored watching it.

When I'd done it, it would all be fine again, and not only that, I'd get some credit for apparently doing the impossible.

I told my wife I wanted to set up a new anti-virus thing on her laptop and found the file quickly. I moved it onto a memory stick and deleted it from her hard disc. I didn't think my wife would have even noticed that file.

Only she had. Not only had she noticed it, she'd opened it and read it. She knew enough about the industry to know this was serious stuff - we'd met when she was an intern at the company. She'd sent it to the local paper along with a letter signed with her own name. Once it got out, it would be known that I'd unwittingly been the source of the leak.

"Kindly explain this," my boss demanded when I went in to work next day, waving the paper in my face.

"Okay," I said, almost relieved to be able to unburden myself and confess. "I forgot my wife's birthday. I lied to her that I'd left her present in the office. I tried to get something but all the shops were closed. I knew she wanted a laptop; I didn't think your one had even been used - so I took it and ordered you an identical one using my own credit card. I had no idea you had a top secret file on it."

"Well, we are in deep manure now, thanks to you. You're fired. I am calling security right now to escort you from the building. Think yourself lucky I'm not calling the police and having you arrested for theft."

My wife was surprised to see me home so early. Or perhaps she wasn't. She'd blown the whistle on my company. I should have been angry with her. In fact, I had been angry with her as I'd stomped out of the office behind a belligerent security guard who wouldn't even let me go back to my desk to pick up the photo of her I kept there. I was wondering what a divorce lawyer might cost and if I could afford one on Jobseeker's allowance. I might have been a bad husband, but she was an even worse wife.

On the drive home, however, I had plenty of time to think. I hadn't been aware what my boss had been covering up. If I had, I'd have challenged him weeks ago, perhaps even quit and then blown the whistle myself. What my wife had done would quite possibly save lives. I realised I hated that job, anyway, but had felt trapped, because I had to pay the bills. My wife had decided the industry wasn't for her, and had been doing a string of part-time, temp jobs while she made up her mind what she wanted to do.

"What are you doing home?" she asked.

"I have a confession to make," I said. "I've been fired. And I forgot your birthday."

"I know," she said. "I knew the minute you got home and told me you'd left my present at work. I have a confession, too - I wasn't angry, but I decided to mess with you, anyway. I was surprised when the laptop appeared. Kind of impressed, too, that you'd turned things around."

"I was desperate," I said. "I thought my boss hadn't even used it yet. I had no idea that file was on there."

"I expect you're really mad at me, now," she said.

"No," I sighed. "I admit, I was, at first; but it made me realise just what a shitty company I was working for, covering that sort of thing up."

"You know what?" she said, slipping her arms around me. "It's actually the best birthday present you could possibly have got me."

"How so?"

"Well, you know I've always wanted to move to the coast and start up a bed and breakfast, but we could never do it because you were so attached to that office. Now you're unemployed; you won't get a decent reference from that cowboy, so we can do it. We can do it together. I'll actually see something of you instead of you being at the office all the time. You've given me my dream - and yourself. What more could I possibly want?"

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