Page 57 of The Friend Request

I fold another jumper and put it in the bag. I zip the bag shut and carry it downstairs without glancing at him.

Olivia has already gone. Alex drove her to his parents’ place in Leicester this morning while I sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee I couldn’t taste and stared at the wall. He told her it was a last-minute visit – Grandma and Grandad want to spoil you, take some school stuff, you can do your homework there, it’s only a few days. She believed him, or at least she didn’t argue, though she gave me a look on her way out the door that was harder to read than I’d have liked. Thirteen-year-olds notice things. They notice them, then bring them out months later in the middle of an argument about something unrelated, and you realise they saw everything.

I wonder what she saw this time.

The engine is already running when I come out. Alex takes the bag from me and puts it in the boot without speaking. I climb into the passenger seat and buckle my belt. We drive away from the house in silence.

I watch Keynsham disappear in the wing mirror. The school, the high street, the turning for the park where Olivia used to feed the ducks when she was little. All of it sliding backwards, getting smaller, until Alex takes the junction for the M4 westbound and the town is gone.

We drive. The motorway is busy with lorries, the sky is low and white, and Alex has Radio 4 on at a murmur – voices I can’t make out properly discussing something I can’t follow – and the wipers go every few seconds to clear the drizzle. I keep waiting for him to say something. Anything. Even something angry would be better than this compressed quiet, which feels less like silence and more like a wall he’s built between us using the gearstick and the handbrake and the two feet of empty seat.

His face is set and controlled in that way I’ve come to recognise as dangerous. The muscles around his jaw are tight. His attention doesn’t leave the road. He drives the way he always drives – smooth, sensible, indicating properly, checking mirrors – but his hands are too high on the wheel, gripping at ten and two like someone who’s been told to keep them where people can see them.

I last about forty minutes.

‘Alex,’ I say. ‘Where are we going?’

He doesn’t answer straight away. He overtakes a caravan and veers back into the left lane. The indicator ticks three times in the quiet before he speaks.

‘Wales,’ he says.

‘Wales?’

‘A cottage. Near Brecon, up in the hills.’

I stare at him. ‘What cottage? Whose cottage?’

He exhales through his nose – not a sigh, but close. ‘I booked it. Six weeks ago. It was meant to be a surprise.’

Something cold moves through my stomach.

‘A surprise,’ I repeat.

‘For us. For you and me. A long weekend, starting Friday. I’d sorted it all out – Mum and Dad were having Olivia, I’d cleared my diary at work, I’d found this place online with good reviews, a fireplace, and a view of the hills. I was going to tell you on Thursday night.’ He pauses. Swallows. ‘I thought we needed it. Things have been – I knew things were off between us, and I thought if we could just get away somewhere, without work and school and routines and all the stuff that gets in the way, maybe we could talk properly. Not the five minutes before bed when we’re both too knackered to say what we mean.’

I close my eyes.

The guilt hits so hard I have to press my hand flat against my breastbone to keep breathing. Because six weeks ago, while Alex was searching holiday cottages, reading reviews, comparing prices, and checking whether the place had a bath or just a shower – six weeks ago, while my husband was quietly, privately trying to save our marriage in the only way he knows how, which is to research the problem, find a practical solution and book it in the diary – I was reading Ross Mercer’s messages on my phone under the duvet, my pulse racing, telling myself it didn’t mean anything.

Six weeks. He’s been planning this for six weeks, and I didn’t notice. I didn’t see it. I was so wrapped up in my own mess, so tangled in the thing I was hiding, that my husband organised an entire trip to fix what was breaking between us, and I had no idea.

‘Alex,’ I say, and my voice splinters on his name.

‘Don’t,’ he says. Not unkind. Just firm. ‘Not now.’

We drive on. The signs change from English to bilingual, and the landscape opens up – wider fields, rougher hedgerows, hills rising green and grey in the distance. The motorway gives way to A-roads, the A-roads narrow to lanes, and the drizzle thickens to proper rain that hammers the roof and turns the windscreen into a blur between wiper strokes.

‘So we’re staying there together,’ I say. ‘The two of us. Like you planned.’

Alex doesn’t look at me. He slows for a sheep standing in the middle of the lane, waits while it ambles to the verge, and pulls forward again.

‘No,’ he says.

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘I’m dropping you there. And then I’m driving back.’

The words take a second to register. I turn in my seat and see him properly for the first time since we got in the car. His profile is rigid – jaw set, eyes forward, that vein in his neck that I’ve learned to watch for.