Don’t judge me. You haven’t walked a mile in my shoes. You don’t know what it was like: all those years of guys treating me like I was a good-time girl, just a fun-time fling. Not someone to take seriously.

And then, one Saturday morning, Etienne looked into my eyes for the first time. There across the counter of his IT-support shop. I was having laptop troubles. He saw way beneath the good times and the flings. He saw the real me.

He told me afterwards, “It was a surreal moment, Kaz. It was like looking into a mirror! It was like I had found my twin, my missing half.”

That was how I felt too: like I had found my missing half.

I didn’t know he was married, not in the early days. Not until it was too late. And meanwhile he was fighting against his need for me, fighting with every breath of his body.

But one evening when he was at my flat, trouble-shooting my wi-fi, he finally lost that fight.

He pulled me against him for the first time. He said, “Kaz forgive me, I can’t go on pretending. I need you more than life itself!”

And the smell of him, the strength of his arms around me – I knew I had found the answer to all my own need and longing.

Yes, I suppose you can call me The Other Woman. The Mistress. But in my defence, let me say this: I do not take anything away from his wife. Mary, her name is. Though Etienne sometimes calls her ‘my ball and chain’ – you know, like he is a prisoner of hers.

Sometimes when he must leave me, there is despair in his eyes. “Why did you wait so long to come into my life, Kaz? We should have met back in our school days. Then I would never have married Mary.”

But hey, you have to accept life as it is. What can’t be cured, must be endured – isn’t that what they say? And I make sure I don’t demand or expect more than Etienne is able to give.

I never ask for money. After all, I have my own job, my own income. Sometimes he buys me a gift. But just a small one. Inexpensive. Most of the profits from his IT-support shop go into his home, into supporting his wife and kids. And that is good and right.

And I don’t demand his time. I am happy with whatever moments he is free to share with me. Mostly Saturday afternoons when his wife takes the children to see her parents. Or Sunday morning when she has gone off to church.

Once in a while he will phone and say, “Expect me tonight. I told Mary I’m away in Cape Town on a two-day conference.”

Those nights are wonderful. Whole nights spent beside Etienne, waking up to his face on the pillow next to me.

But those nights don’t happen often, and I always feel guilty afterwards.

Etienne hugs me goodbye at the door and says, “Back I go, back to my ball and chain.” And he looks guilty too.

So mostly I am alone at home in the evening. And that’s why I have started reading again.

Sometimes Gorata still phones. “When I am going to meet that mystery man of yours?”

But I don’t explain about Etienne. Because I know she will judge me. She will say, “Dump him, girl! What kind of life is this for a cute young chick, Kaz?”

But it is too late. My heart no longer belongs to me.

***

Tell us what you think: Kaz tells us, “I do not want to take anything away from his wife.” Is this true?