Honesty

April came, and with it the occupation date of the Prof’s house. Guess what – Cream Puff was going to move into the house!

Well, well, well – THAT was interesting information. What had happened to the murderous husband? He was then now aware of the situation? He had to be, his wife had just moved out and taken their 2 little children with her.

The Professor was going to stay on in the garden cottage (he claimed).

There occurred a very funny event soon after this. The children went to visit the Prof in his garden flat, every 2nd weekend or so. On one such visit, Arno decided he wanted to sleep over at his dad’s place. This caused a crisis for the Prof. Why? Well, because there was no bed at the garden cottage.

He told the kids he lent the bed to a friend, and took them post haste to the shops to buy 2 sets of bunk beds, sheets and duvets.

“O dad, where have you been sleeping then“ , they asked very innocently.

On the floor, he told them. Yeah right.

So continued the lies to the children. The little ones were still completely unaware of the existence of Cream Puff.

If there is something I have learnt in this whole process, it is to always tell the truth to the children, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how difficult it is. If they catch you out in a lie, you will have broken a very fragile link called TRUST. We now have a saying in our house which says – the truth always pays you back.

There were other indications of the lies we were being told. There was a weekend when the Prof could not take the children on a certain Monday during school holidays, as had been arranged. When questioning him about it, I stumbled upon the truth by guessing it. He had been with Cream Puff to her mother’s farm in Witbank.

Backtrack with me quickly all the way to where this began. Do you remember the night the Prof got mad and left? He went to “Bronkhorstspruit” – where his gran used to have her farm – to clear his head? Well, Cream Puff’s mom had a farm in Witbank. These 2 places are next door to each other – in a manner of speaking. I would discover later that the night the Prof left in such a temper, he drove through to Cream Puff and her family, on the farm in Witbank. An ever such a slight twist of the truth. Her family – her mother, sister etc, thought the Prof was divorced. So, even her family was being told fibs.

I asked the Prof in sickly sweet tones – o could you not have waited until the divorce went through before getting up to such stuff. O no – I answered myself – I guess not, you are, after all, already living with her.

He vehemently denied this. I just laughed.

I look back at these events and feel sad for the person I was then. At that stage – all these details still mattered so much - and hurt so much....