I found another wedding planner; a young, energetic woman who smiled and kept conversation flowing. She helped us plan a fantastic wedding, and friends and family joined us for a weekend of celebrations. The weather was dark and rainy, but the memories we gathered during those days were the perfect start to our marriage. Linda’s father, a wealthy shipping magnate insufferably protective of his daughter, sponsored a fairy-tale honeymoon in East Asia.

After we returned home, we settled into what I would consider a near-blissful existence while we awaited our first child. Linda was doing very well as an architect in a well-known firm, and I was enjoying a rewarding, but undistinguished, service as a lawyer for the local council. I was happy, and I think Linda was, too.

I returned home from work one afternoon and found the mail Linda had left on the kitchen table. There were some bills, a letter from my doctor and an envelope addressed to “Mr. Markus”. I turned it over. Sender: Mr. Goebel. No return address.

It took a second before I remembered the name. I smiled to myself. Now what, is he going to peddle his services again, cheekily assuming we are having marital problems?

Inside the envelope was a crisp, white card, with a note written in thick, black ink from a fountain pen:

Remember, Mr. Markus, they key to a happy marriage is to love and cherish one another selflessly, without regard for your own pride. Treat your loved one better than you would ever treat yourself, and this might all still turn out for the best.

How bizarre. Is this what a marriage consultant does — provide platitudes and awkwardly-formulated advice? There was no other information, no contact details. If Mr. Goebel was hoping to gain my business, he wasn’t being very effective. I still appreciated the gesture, though, he had clearly remembered me and seemed to wish us the best.

I showed the note to Linda later in the evening. She was probably having some kind of pre-natal mood swing, because she thought the note was creepy and was surprisingly repelled by it. Who would send someone something like that? And the wording was just strange, almost threatening.

I explained that he was foreign; she should be more tolerant. Not everyone had her schooling and intellectual ability, I added, just a little too acidly. She told me to throw the note away. I put it in my desk drawer instead, to spite her.

Little Jon was born shortly thereafter, and two years later came Mathilda. We both loved being parents and doted on our children with all our hearts. But it was also the end of the carefree era we had previously known. We were more stressed, and the carefully ordered life we liked to live was continuously disrupted. We argued more, but we always patched up: in my opinion, the true sign of a successful relationship. Linda’s career had hit a bump because of the kids, but had recovered and was once more on the up. That meant I had to work fewer hours at the council in order to spend more time at home with the kids.

One Friday afternoon I had picked up the children from the kindergarten and met Linda at the supermarket for our weekly pre-weekend shopping. I was pushing the cart and trying to handle the kids simultaneously. Linda was going on about how a colleague at work had tried to sideline her in a project, and how hurt she felt. She was oblivious to the wrestling match being conducted on four wheels next to her. I had been trying to find orange juice for the past five minutes and my irritation was rising. When Jon managed to fling himself off the shopping cart and into a stack of toilet paper, I lost my patience. I grabbed Jon and jerked him back into the cart, then I shouted at Linda.

“Get your head out of your arse and start focusing! Handling this crap by myself is tough enough — having to listen to your droning on about your office soap-opera at the same time is insufferable!”

All three looked at me, stunned. The silence was broken by Mathilda crying. Linda picked her up and walked away. I felt stupid, but I also felt I had been right to get annoyed. But perhaps not that angry.

Linda helped fill the cart, but didn’t say a word for the rest of the shopping trip.

We didn’t exactly patch up, but the next day all was seemingly forgotten. The Saturday was sunny and beautiful and we spent the day by the nearby lake. The children were happy, and we had a great family day out. As the sun began to set, we got in the car and drove back home. I carried Mathilda from the driveway and Linda followed with Jon. When I reached the door, I saw that a white card was lying on the doormat. I picked it up and read the hand-written text:

Mr. Markus, I thought my advice to you was very clear. Cherish and love, self-effacement; this is how to have a happy marriage. I must strongly dissuade you from losing your temper and frightening your family again. They put all their trust in you and must be allowed to feel safe.

Mr. Goebel

I felt myself go cold. Jesus. What the hell was this?

“What’s wrong Markus?” Linda looked concerned. Jon looked worried.

I said nothing and took the children up to their rooms and told them to play. Then I went down and showed Linda the note.

“Oh, my god.”

“Has he been watching us? Is he talking about yesterday in the shop?”

Linda sat down, looking frightened.

“He must have been. But why? Maybe it was a coincidence? He probably lives in the area. He probably means well, he’s just being… inappropriate.”

I wasn’t convinced. I felt a flood of anxiety — this didn’t feel right. I no longer felt so tolerant of his foreign syntax.

I considered going to the police, but decided there was little point. I spent the next few weeks on edge, looking out for shifty foreigners in eccentric suits observing my family, but saw nothing. I gradually settled down, and thought maybe Linda was right. He was just an oddball. If I saw him again, I would ask him to stop and that was that.

Life went on.

It took another two years before I was irrevocably tipped over the edge.

Jon and Mathilda were doing well; they were happy, laughing children. Linda made partner in her firm and we moved to a bigger house down the road. I had been at a stand-still in the council, and my attempts to upgrade to a job in the private sector had failed. Professionally, I felt second-rate. Inexorably, I began feeling the same privately.

The children were sleeping, and Linda and I were watching television with a bottle of wine. As Linda was apt to do, she brought up difficult questions when she was relaxed — the precise moment when I tended to be the least receptive. Interest rates on our mortgage had gone up. We were still paying each our separate share out of our salaries, a symbolic arrangement we had made early on in the relationship to ensure we were both “equals”. I had always tacitly assumed that this was really about making sure she didn’t feel inferior to me. But now, while she could comfortably handle an increase, my freedom of movement was increasingly squeezed. If we were to keep on paying an equal share, I would have to give up my golf club membership.

“I know, Marcus, your hobby is important to you. But don’t worry, we’ll be fine. Between the two of us our finances are good. I can pay a greater share — it’s only right.”

I was irked. “No, we pay equal — we both contribute the same, and that’s that.”

She understood, or so she thought. “Sure, that makes sense. But then let me cover more of some of the other expenses — groceries or expenses for the children — then you can keep on golfing.”

She was taken aback by my reaction. I exploded. Was I a lesser partner in this relationship? Was I some kind of boy-toy, who went out golfing while she made money for food and the kids? What did she take me for?

“I’m fed up with this. I’m fed up being treated like I’m somehow inferior to you!”

Linda didn’t know how to respond. In retrospect, I can’t blame her — I was reacting unreasonably. But some lurking demon had stirred deep inside me.

She shot back. “You’re being ridiculous — I’m not superior to you! I’m just suggesting we split our incomes rationally!”

The suggestion that I was the irrational one triggered me. I slapped the wine bottle hard, and it flew across the room and hit the wall. Linda yelped and covered her face. Red liquid ran down the white wall and seemed to form a jeering face before it pooled on the floor. I ran out.

I returned half an hour later, sobered up and feeling horrible. Linda had cleaned up and was waiting for me. She lectured me like a schoolboy: don’t I dare make a scene out of something trivial like this again, and don’t I dare be physical like that with the children in the house. This time, I felt I deserved to be treated with disdain and accepted it all.

We went to bed, an uneasy tension between us.

The phone rang at three in the morning, a shrill, piercing wail. I reached for it, groggily.

“Hello?”

“Good morning. Zis is Mr. Goebel.”

I froze. Even my breathing stopped. Linda was waking up, sensing something was very wrong.

“I see you are having some problems living according to the good advice. This is very displeasing. If you are going to carry on abusing your family, and throwing items at your wife — ”

“Abusing? What are you talking about?”

“ — then I may perhaps have to become more determined in carrying out my professional duties.”

“Duties? I want you stay the hell out of my life!”

Afraid and angry, I slammed the phone down. Just as I did it, I realised I shouldn’t have hung up. I should have asked him what he wanted. Good god, I should have asked him how he knew what had been happening in our living room.

I looked at the call history — unknown number.

I had begun to sweat. Was he watching the house? Was he eavesdropping? For how long had this been going on? What kind of a madman was this? This was enough. I was going to the police.

“Marcus, what is wrong?” Linda looked frightened.

I jumped out of bed and started putting on my trousers.

“Linda, I want you to take the kids and drive up to your parents right now. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t think you are safe here.”

Linda looked confused, but I was already out the door with a shirt and a pair of socks in my hand.

I sat across the desk from a police officer in his early forties. A big moustache turned his face into a parody of a seventies cop. He finished off his notes, then looked up at me.

“So, Marcus, what you are telling me is that you’ve been stalked for several years by this Goebbels — “

“Goebel. No s. Not like the nazi.”

“ — by this Goebbels, who is a relationship therapist.”

“A marriage consultant. I’m not really sure what that is.” The officer amended something in his notes.

“Right. And now you’re saying that he’s been monitoring your house and made a threatening phone call a few hours ago.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“What exactly did he threaten you with?”

“He, uh, said he would get more ‘determined’ in his professional approach.”

The officer looked at me and squinted slightly.

“Right. And what exactly did you say he had observed in the house?”

“A minor spat with my wife. We argued.”

The officer scribbled a few sentences, a bit longer than it should take to summarise my already brief sentence.

“A minor spat, Mr. Marcus? Nothing more?”

I shook my head.

“And where are your wife and children now?”

“They’re with her parents, safe and sound.”

“Safe and sound from what, exactly, Mr. Marcus?”

His use of my first name as my last name was beginning to annoy me.

“From Mr. Goebel of course.”

“Safe from his marriage therapy, then?”

I was getting annoyed with this moustachioed public servant. I shrugged a whatever.

Mr. Moustache leaned back in his chair and observed me, like I was a rare yet contemptible specimen.

“Mr. Marcus, here is the thing. Ten minutes before you got here, we received a phone call from someone claiming to be your family therapist — or something along those lines. He said he had observed a pattern of abuse over several years, and that he now felt compelled to intervene. You had had a violent fit earlier in the evening, throwing a glass bottle at your spouse and shortly afterwards she and the kids fled the house.”

He paused, and squinted again.

I was stunned.

“But this is nonsense, the man is a madman — I have never abused my wife. Just ask her yourself!” I was pulling my phone out to get her number. Mr. Moustache held up his hand dismissively.

“Let me explain something to you, Mr. Marcus. In domestic abuse cases we are not dependent on the wife actually making a complaint. We can act on suspicion of wrongdoing alone. Now, we don’t have enough to nail you for this, but let me put it this way, Mr. Marcus: we are on to you.” He jabbed a finger at me.

“If there is anything I hate, it’s violent losers who act out their inadequacies on their wives and then try to cover it up. May I also remind you that placing a false complaint — in this case against someone blowing the whistle on you — is also a criminal offence.”

My head was reeling. What in the name of god was going on. I staggered to my feet.

“I suggest you go home and sleep this off. If I hear of you laying a finger on your wife or your kids again, I swear to god, I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks, you little bastard.”

The last words were flung at me through the doorway as I stumbled outside into the cold night.

Things spun out of control from there. I’m not really sure how. It was as if every underlying tension in the marriage was magnified by some malignant force that finally had found a crack in which to wedge itself, the crack of my own low self-esteem.

Someone — Mr. Goebel or Mr. Moustache, who knows — let Linda’s parents know the supposedly real reason she’d fled our home that night. Her father — a vindictive man of power who had always thought me a loser — used his contacts in the council to have me put first in line to be laid off, which happened three months later.

Linda pleaded for me and tried to explain to him what had happened, but as mutterings of “battered wife”-syndrome spread in the neighbourhood, I was beginning to feel that even Linda wasn’t entirely sure what had happened that night. My story of Mr. Goebel’s phone call was bizarre, and my violent outburst had been a legitimate cause for concern.

As I was looking for a new job, my anxiety and irritation increased. We argued more and more, and my temper showed itself regularly. I hated her parents; they hated me, and our marital bliss was now one sordid mess. There were no notes with good advice from sinister Teutons this time.

The marriage ended a year after that fateful night. It wasn’t working anymore, and I had become a bitter loser. I moved into a small flat on the other side of town, and got a job in a call centre selling overpriced insurance. I was terrible at it, and my self-regard deteriorated further.

I had a few tentative relationships with women, all of which ended suddenly. I wish I could say it was because of my increasingly abrasive personality, but the break-ups were usually too sudden and one-sided to have such a natural explanation. Was someone reaching out to them, telling them something about me?

As my relationships became shorter and the women more dubious, I felt the eyes of Mr. Goebel upon me everywhere: in expensive restaurants, during romantic walks in the park, in bed. I became twitchy and unfocused. Was I losing my mind? I gradually lost faith in getting my life back on track.

As I became more careless with personal hygiene, I became increasingly isolated. I roamed the streets of the city, looking for answers, looking for an evil boyish face whose features were etched into my memory.

I found nothing but an increasing intimacy with my inner demons of anger and self-contempt, old friends that had always been there, just out of sight.