Page 19 of The Friend Request

I’m not trying to pressure you. I just think we should talk about what happened.

I read that one, too, and my stomach clenches, and I put the phone in my bag and zip it shut as if that will somehow keep his words from reaching me.

It doesn’t.

By Wednesday, he’s sent four more. They arrive at odd intervals – mid-morning, lunchtime, late afternoon, once at eleven at night when I’m lying in bed next to Alex with the covers pulled up, the room dark and my phone glowing under the duvet like a dirty secret.

I know you’re reading these. I can see the ticks.

He’s right. I am reading them. Every single one. I open them, absorb them, let the guilt churn through my chest, and then I close the app and carry on with my day as if nothing has happened.

But something has happened, and he won’t let me forget it.

His messages aren’t aggressive. That’s what makes them harder to dismiss. He doesn’t demand, doesn’t accuse, doesn’t threaten. He writes the way he talks – quiet, plain, careful – and every message sounds reasonable, which is the worst thing it could sound, because reasonable is difficult to hate.

I’m sorry about the other night. I shouldn’t have kissed you. But I don’t regret it, and I don’t think you do either.

I read that one three times, sitting in the car outside Tesco with a bag of shopping on the passenger seat, the engine running, and my hands shaking so badly I drop the phone into the footwell and have to fish it out from under the pedals.

He’s wrong. I do regret it.

I have to regret it.

On Thursday morning, I block him. I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee going cold beside me, open Facebook and find his profile and press the button. The screen asks me if I’m sure, I press confirm, and just like that, Ross Mercer disappears from my phone as cleanly as he disappeared from my life years ago.

My chest feels hollow.

I close the app, drink my cold coffee, and tell myself this is the right thing. The only thing. Whatever happened between us on that street in Bristol – the kiss, the warmth, the pull of old feelings dragging me somewhere I have no business going – it’s over. I’ve ended it. I’ve drawn a line and stepped back behind it, and now I can get on with my actual life, which involves a husband, a daughter, a mortgage, and a stack of cover briefs I haven’t touched in a week.

The relief lasts about forty minutes.

After that, the guilt arrives, and it doesn’t leave.

I throw myself into the house. Into the marriage. Into the small acts of family life that I’ve been sleepwalking through for months without noticing. I cook dinner every night – proper dinners, not the pasta-and-jar-of-sauce meals I usually manage. I ask Alex about work and actually listen to the answers instead of nodding while I think about something else. I sit on Olivia’s bed and talk to her about school, about her friends, about the boy in her maths class she thinks is annoying but keeps mentioning, and I laugh at her impressions of her teachers and tell her she’s brilliant, because she is, and because saying it out loud feels like a prayer I’m sending up to whoever decides whether bad mothers get second chances.

Alex notices the change. He doesn’t say much about it – that’s not his style – but I catch him watching me across the kitchen with a look that isn’t quite suspicion and isn’t quite gratitude. It’s a look that says, Oh, there you are. As if I’ve been away and he’s glad I’m back.

It makes me want to be sick.

Because the reason I’m trying harder is not because I’ve rediscovered my love for my husband, or because I’ve had some great epiphany about the value of what we’ve built together. It’s because I kissed another man on a dark street in Bristol and the guilt is eating me alive. And every nice dinner I cook, every question I ask about his day, every time I reach across the sofa and put my hand on his arm is just another coat of paint over the crack. The crack is still there, the paint is wet, and if he peers closely enough, he’ll see it.

On Friday evening, we order a takeaway and watch a film with Olivia curled between us on the sofa, her head on my shoulder, her feet in Alex’s lap, and the three of us wrapped in a blanket. The curtains are drawn, the lamp’s on, and the remains of chicken tikka are congealing on the coffee table. Olivia falls asleep before the end. Alex carries her upstairs and I follow, pulling the duvet over her, brushing her hair off her forehead, standing in the doorway of her room and watching her breathe.

‘She’s out cold,’ Alex says, coming up behind me.

‘Must be the fresh air. She had hockey after school.’

‘She’ll be playing for England at this rate.’

‘She’ll be playing for anyone who’ll have her. She’s obsessed.’

He puts his hand on my waist. A light touch, comfortable, habitual. ‘This has been a good week,’ he says.

I lean into him because it’s what I’m supposed to do. Part of me means it, but the other part of me is screaming so loudly, I’m amazed he can’t hear it. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It has.’

We go to bed. Alex falls asleep within minutes, like he always does. I lie there in the dark, listening to him breathe, and think about Ross, and the messages, and the blocked profile, and the kiss, and I tell myself again that it’s over.

It’s done. I’ve closed the door.