You’d Know If Your Closest Friend Was Having an Affair, Right?

Not if that friend keeps secrets well hidden. You won’t know a thing. Let’s face it, you can’t know what you’re not told.

Here’s the truth. Even best friends withhold information from each other. Sure, not all of us can keep our private lives private. We burst at the seams to tell the world what no one else knows. But for those who do manage their secrets well, they keep some fantastic ones hidden from view. They really do.

And they have logical reasons to remain silent.

During my teenage years, one of my closest girlfriends was extremely secretive about dating. She was highly superstitious about breaking that kind of news. Nina believed that if she made an announcement too soon, it’d spoil things, ruining the chance for the relationship to blossom into something wonderful. I’d never hear about one until it was long over.

In truth, she was fearful of failure. Keeping quiet saved face if things suddenly went wrong.

There was another close friend who kept good secrets too.

Linda entered my life in my thirties. She came through a chance meeting at a convention. We soon became the best of friends. Our souring marriages unified us. We’d sip coffee on Wednesdays and bitch about our partners until we felt better. I came to know everything about her.

Including what she didn’t say to me.

A year later, she calls me in tears. She confesses to a long-term affair she’d been having with a married man. Unlike Nina, she’d kept her secrets close because she didn’t want to admit she was an adulteress. She worked on the principle that if she didn’t talk about it, then it wasn’t really happening.

Funny things occur when people tell lies. Little gaps appear in their stories. It’s when they can’t remember all the details in their lie in the second telling of it. The timing of an event is altered. Someone’s name slips. A trip’s purpose has a shaky foundation. They repeat seemingly useless bits of information over and over.

Others might call these red flags. I call them grey zones.

These are both wonderful and dangerous places to discover. Anything can happen at this junction of grey indifference. The opposing forces of lies provide opportunities for someone like me to take advantage of. I don’t say anything. I don’t ask questions. I nod, collect the data from what’s not being said, and wait for the right time to use it.

The police questioned Linda’s husband about her unexplained and lengthy absence. Statistically speaking, spouses are likely to be the perpetrators of crime. There were already cracks in their marriage, and the police would’ve found them immediately. She hated being married to Steve. She told anyone who listened that their marriage was a mistake.

Investigators might’ve discovered Linda’s other life if they had looked for it. Fortunately, they didn’t. It didn’t exist… and so didn’t I.

And then I got back in touch with my old school friend Nina. I hadn’t spoken to her for years. Her life had taken a strange twist, and not for the better.

I found out Nina’s grey zones were much larger than Linda’s. That’s because she no longer had to answer to a spouse and lived like a hermit at home. Her time and space were hers to do what she liked.

As a recent divorcee, she had to reestablish her independence. She rebuilt her life in a safe routine, cosy place away from the disaster she’d left behind. But threats of retribution had followed her. That’s why she rarely ventured outside her safe, orderly life-bubble. She went to work, did what she had to do, and went home.

Anxiety is what she traded for poisoning a man in her former life.

Her wish to start a new relationship was anticipated. She wanted happiness, and she was young enough to start over again. She was wary and superstitious about telling family or colleagues about her romantic connections. She didn’t want them to see her fail.

Grey zones appeared.

Opportunities were taken.

She too disappeared unexpectedly.

The trick is to keep calm and let natural history take charge of the narrative. She poisoned a man. He survived but he was angry. That’s a fact. He said he would return the favour. That is also a fact.

Someone will pay for her death, but I know it won’t be me. I wasn’t there. The evidence proves it.

As I said, lies produce grey areas that are both wonderful and dangerous.

If the fizz and sparkle of an intense, new relationship keeps secretive lovers coming back for more of what glitters, more lies and omitted truths will be required to keep them shining bright. It’s a win-win extravaganza… for everyone.

When I’m around, people die. It’s part of the deal, but I can assure you that there is nothing dull or cheap about what I do or how I do it. To me, my romantic investments have just as many bright, shiny outcomes as anyone else’s.

Each liaison is wonderfully sensational. They burn bright for all the right reasons at the right times. But each love story has an inevitable conclusion. No fire burns forever.

No. You won’t know for sure if a close friend of yours is having an affair — not even if their body shows up on the news broadcast late tonight.

–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)