My husband is cheating on me. He’s good at hiding it, so I can never get my hands on any evidence. But I know it. The Neck-Tie Incident proves it. Let me tell you about the Neck-Tie Incident.

I watch the clock as Friday night turns into Saturday, and he’s still not home. He could at least call, or send a message. Footsteps on the stairs. Is it him, or a neighbour? Some rattling at the door. It’s him. I measure his drunkenness by how long it takes him to unlock the front door. Clang, clang, rattle… he keeps missing the keyhole. Oh, wrong set of keys? Finally, the door swings open. It must have been a good night, he can’t even walk straight. Having to go drinking with his boss and colleagues is his excuse for coming home all sweaty and intoxicated. Dinner’s on the kitchen table, long cold, my half of it already eaten. He’s not hungry.

He goes straight for the bathtub. I wait for him to put his suit on a hanger and enter the tub, then I tiptoe near. I check his clothes for traces of her perfume. Quickly, before the scents disperse! But the suit stinks only of cigarette smoke. He’s too careful to catch anything, or perhaps it’s already gone. I pull his phone from the inside pocket of his blazer, carefully flip it open without a sound and go through the recent mail. No traces. He must delete her messages right away.

“I don’t like coming home so late,” he says later, as he comes back from the bathtub. “And I hate the drinking sprees, honey, but you know I need to build a good relationship to my boss. It’s all for the sake of my career!”

Career as a, womanizer, huh? Being too exhausted after work is his excuse for not sleeping with me more than once a week anymore. “So tired,” he mumbles as he drops into bed. I guess he’s already overspent himself. His well’s run dry.

Of course, I haven’t confronted him about her. For one, he could deny everything and I’d have no evidence to nail him. Revealing your suspicions will only make him more careful. I learned this by doing some internet research on how to catch a cheating spouse. So now I’m taking notes of where he says he went, and when, and cross-reference them with the call records on his phone, ATM and bank account history, the log on his railway fare card and so on. One day, he will slip.

On the train I saw an advertisement for a private investigator who specializes in these kind of things. Miss Sherlock, she called herself. But agencies are costly. Are they expecting me to pay such a large sum all at once without him noticing? So, whenever I shop for groceries my secret wallet grows a little fatter. The rest of the day I split between dirty clothes, the vacuum cleaner, a dusting towel and cleaning-rags. These are my day to day companions, while he spends his time at the office ogling young secretaries in tight skirts. 

Lately, he’s a lot more mindful of his weight. On the net they say a sudden awareness of his physical appearance is a sure sign of cheating. It’s him trying to impress someone. I know he’s cheating. Call it a woman’s intuition.

Oh right, the Neck-Tie Incident! That happened last month and removed all doubt. He came home wearing a different necktie, a new one I’d never seen before. When I asked what was up with that he lowered his eyes and said he’d spilled some tea on his other one during lunch. That’s why he had to get a new one. Now, either he forgot his original tie at a love-hotel and had to come up with that story, or she bought the new one for him and he put it on straight away, throwing away the old tie like he would some day discard me. When I inquired about what happened to the tie he had worn that morning, he said he’d already discarded it. Tea stains were impossible to remove, was his excuse. The tie that I selected for him, in the trash! Replaced by this wine-red-with-white-dots symbol of his unfaithfulness! One that I will have to wash and dry and iron and fold. The realization hit me like a burst of pepper spray and I had to sit down for a moment.

“Honey, it was just a tie.” He feigned ignorance.

But that was only the beginning. End of last month, he got a pair of new shoes. Shoes! I almost lost my composure when I saw them at the doorstep. He was all nonchalant about it, like it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to buy a pair of shoes. He either bought them to impress her, or they’re already past that stage, and she selected them for him.

So you see, that is the kind of man I am married to. But do you think I’d crumble? Do you think I’d lay down and die, as that popular song goes? (I think it was about a cheating husband, too.) No. I cannot confront him with evidence, so I enacted revenge in a different way. I gave him a taste of his own medicine. Last week, the electrician came to fix our air conditioning, to which I had taken a screwdriver beforehand. When the repair man ringed, I opened the door wearing nothing but a bathrobe. I put on an act like I had forgotten the appointment. “So sorry, oh, but please come in Mr. Electrician! Cup of tea?” That made him flustered and probably gave him all kinds of ideas. When he had taken the unit off the wall, I leaned over his shoulder to watch him work. You’re so skilful with your fingers, Mr. Electrician! I rubbed my chest against his backside and he stirred. We did it right there, on the floor, next to the gutted air conditioning unit. While he was doing me, my eyes fell on the new pair of shoes, sitting at the doorstep. And I smiled, and grinned, and then I laughed.