Chapter 3
Three
I am standing at the kitchen counter, chopping a banana into pieces so small they’d make a paediatrician proud, when Daniel leans against the fridge and says the car needs a service before winter.
I nod, keep my eyes on the knife, and say, “Yeah, probably worth doing,” with the careful warmth of a woman who has not spent the last forty-eight hours lying awake cataloguing how many times her husband has cheated on her.
“Budget’s a bit tight this month with the new tyres,” Daniel continues, taking a sip of coffee from the mug I gave him for our second anniversary, the one that says HUSBAND MATERIAL in cheesy gold letters. “But I can probably move some things around. Maybe skip the gym subscription for a month.”
The knife hits the chopping board with a slightly too forceful thwack.
“Sure,” I say. “Makes sense.”
I’m scarily good at this. This morning, I laughed at his joke about recycling.
I asked whether he wanted scrambled or fried eggs with exactly the right amount of spousal warmth.
I even remembered to grab his phone charger from the bedroom when he couldn’t find it, handing it over with a small eye roll that contained absolutely none of the bile currently climbing my throat.
The performance is seamless. I should get an award.
Across the kitchen, Milo is strapped into his bouncer, making furious noises at a plastic giraffe that clearly offended him by existing. Normally, I’d cross the room and tell him the giraffe is very sorry for whatever it did. Today, I stay at the counter, watching Daniel from the corner of my eye.
He’s scrolling his phone again, the screen tilted slightly away from me.
It’s not an accident. It’s a habit. My stomach turns, wondering how many signs I missed.
Then Daniel laughs, a short, unguarded sound, the kind he makes when something genuinely catches him off guard. It’s the laugh I fell in love with.
The sound pulls me backward into memory.
We met at a house party in a flat with no furniture and a broken speaker.
I was twenty-two, just out of university, starting my first real job at a marketing agency that specialized in making middle-aged men feel good about selling software.
Daniel was twenty-four, working as an assistant editor at a local paper, wearing a shirt with a small coffee stain on the collar and the smile that made my stomach flip.
We were standing in the kitchen, pressed into the corner by the crush of bodies, and he was telling me a story about his boss locking himself in the bathroom with an injured pigeon he’d found in the parking lot.
The story itself wasn’t even that funny, but the way Daniel told it, with his hands moving, his voice changing to imitate his boss’s increasingly panicked text messages, “Daniel, the pigeon is looking at me with anger. What do I do?,” had me bent double, one hand pressed to my mouth to keep from spraying beer all over his shoes.
I failed. The beer went everywhere, down my chin, onto his shoes, even somehow into my hair. I was mortified, already reaching for a paper towel, but Daniel just looked down at his soaking feet and then back at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“That’s the most impressed I’ve been all night,” he said, and then he was laughing too, the sound bright and warm in the stuffy kitchen. “Most women just laugh at my jokes. You’ve elevated it to an art.”
“Art costs extra,” I told him, and he smiled, a real smile, the kind that reached all the way to his eyes, and said, “I think I can manage that.”
And I thought, in that moment with beer dripping from my hair and a stranger’s shoes ruined on my account: this is a person who knows how to be happy.
The flashback dissolves, leaving me standing at the kitchen counter with a half-chopped banana and a chest that feels too tight to hold my lungs. Across the room, Daniel is still laughing at his phone.
For a second, I’m caught between the man who laughed with me on a stranger’s kitchen floor and the man who messaged another woman while our children were in the NICU, asking her to “take his mind off things.”
I should hate him.
I do hate him.
But grief sits close beside it, heavy and impossible to separate. Grief for the person I thought he was. For the life I thought we were building.
“We need more nappy sacks,” Daniel says, tucking his phone into his back pocket. “The ones with the tie handles, not the drawstrings. Those are rubbish.”
“I’ll order some,” I say.
Harper once told me that cheating isn’t always the affair. Sometimes it’s watching someone slowly stop choosing you in real time.
I understood it when she said it.
I understand it differently now.
“I’m heading out in a bit,” Daniel says, rinsing his coffee mug and setting it in the sink. “Meeting about the Henderson account before lunch. Should be home by six.”
I nod, wiping my hands on a dish towel. “I’ve got the twins’ check-up at three,” I tell him. “The one with the new paediatrician.”
“Right,” he says, and there’s a pause, where he’s deciding whether to ask how the appointment works or just assume I’ve got it handled. He opts for the latter, reaching for his keys on the hook by the door. “Text me how it goes?”
“Will do,” I say, and then, because I’m committed to the pretence now, “Drive safe.”
He crosses the kitchen and kisses the top of my head, a casual, habitual gesture that makes my skin crawl, before heading for the door. “Love you,” he calls, already halfway down the hall.
“Love you too,” I answer. The words cause my stomach to twist harshly.
The front door closes, and the house settles into a quiet that happens when you’re the only adult in it. Milo has given up on his assault against the giraffe and is now making soft, experimental sounds at the ceiling. Maisie, on her play mat by the window, watches me with her steady, clinical gaze.
“Your father,” I tell her, my voice low in the empty kitchen, “is a spectacular asshole.”
She blinks at me, once, slowly, like she’s considering this information and finding it both plausible and slightly disappointing.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
The next two days pass in a series of carefully choreographed normal moments. I laugh at the right parts of Daniel’s stories. I hand him coffee in the mornings. I let him kiss my temple without visibly recoiling.
Now I watch myself from somewhere outside my body, cataloguing each smile and nod with the detached interest of an anthropologist studying a particularly complex mating ritual.
Observe the female human discussing dishwasher settings.
Observe how she does not flinch when the male human brushes against her while passing the salt.
On the third day, I’m standing in the doorway of the living room, watching Daniel sit on the floor with Milo propped against his knees.
It’s late afternoon, the light coming through the windows in long golden bars that catch the dust motes floating in the air.
Milo is gripping Daniel’s finger with both fists, his tiny face lit with the particular delight he reserves for moments when he’s the absolute centre of attention.
He’s babbling, a stream of nonsensical syllables interspersed with the occasional recognizable sound, and Daniel is grinning down at him, his free hand supporting Milo’s back with practiced ease.
“Yeah, mate, I know,” Daniel says, his voice soft with the particular tone he uses only with the babies. “Very important point you’re making. Groundbreaking stuff.”
Milo responds with a sound that’s half-laugh, half-shout, his whole body vibrating with excitement. He kicks his legs, nearly losing his balance, and Daniel’s hand moves to steady him without interrupting the flow of conversation.
“And then what happened?” Daniel prompts, leaning forward slightly. “After the giraffe committed that terrible crime against your personal dignity?”
Milo makes an indignant noise that sounds remarkably like “exactly!” and Daniel laughs, his whole face transforming with it.
For a second, just a second, I’m caught by the sight of them, my husband, my son, the easy affection between them as natural as breathing.
From the outside, it would look perfect.
From the outside, you’d never guess that the man on the floor sending his son into fits of delighted laughter had been arranging hookups with other women.
My phone is in my hand. The screen recordings are in a locked folder I haven’t opened since the night I made them.
I stand in the doorway, watching my husband hold our son, and I do not move.
I do not speak. I do not throw the phone at his head or pour boiling water on his shoes or say any of the forty-seven things currently queued in my imagination, waiting for their turn.
I consider this a personal achievement. I am, I think, nearing god-like status in keeping my shit together.
Then I turn and walk to the kitchen.
The kettle is on the counter, still half-full from Daniel’s morning coffee.
I fill it at the sink, watching the water swirl and rise, then set it on the base and press the button.
The quiet hum fills the kitchen, a sound that matches the static in my head.
I stand at the counter, one hand braced against the edge, and wait.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, expecting a text from my mother-in-law about weekend plans or a notification from the baby app telling me the twins are due for their next round of shots.
Instead, Liv’s name appears on the screen, along with a voice note, eighteen seconds long, the little red bar already counting down.
I press play.
“…absolutely zero concept of what a logo actually is or does,” Liv’s voice fills the kitchen, already three sentences into what is clearly a rant that started before she remembered to hit record.
“Like, I’m sorry, Barbara, but a single graphic element cannot simultaneously communicate disruption AND warmth AND authority AND approachability AND ‘a bit coastal’, which, by the way, is not actually a brand attribute, it’s a vague geographical reference that makes me want to drown myself in the actual ocean. ”
There’s a pause, the sound of Liv taking a deep breath, and then:
“She literally wrote, and I quote, ‘Can we make it feel a bit more like a lighthouse that’s also a person’s face? But friendly, not creepy.’” Another pause. “I’m going to commit a crime, and I need you to know I considered alternatives.”
I press my lips together. Then I laugh, short and slightly startled, the kind that escapes before you can decide whether you’re allowed to have it. The sound bounces off the kitchen cabinets, too loud in the quiet kitchen, and I press a hand to my mouth as if I can push it back in.
The kettle clicks off, the water inside still bubbling slightly.
I stand there with Liv’s voice note still playing on repeat in my head and think, not for the first time, that they would have my back if I told them.
Harper, with her quiet understanding and perfect one-liners.
Luca, who would probably show up at Daniel’s office with a baseball bat and threats.
Liv, who would start researching divorce lawyers before I’d finished the first sentence.
They would believe me. They would help me. They would make sure I wasn’t doing this alone.
I’m just not ready yet. Not ready to say it out loud. Not ready to watch Daniel’s face when he realizes I know. Not ready for whatever comes after, the conversations, the decisions, the careful unwinding of a life built around the wrong story.
So, I make the tea instead, two mugs, milk in Daniel’s, nothing in mine, and carry them back to the living room.
Daniel is still on the floor with Milo, though they’ve moved on to a different game now, Daniel making exaggerated faces while Milo attempts to grab his nose, both of them dissolving into laughter every time Milo’s tiny fingers actually connect with their target.
“He’s in a good mood tonight,” I say, setting Daniel’s mug on the coffee table within easy reach.
“Yeah,” Daniel says, glancing up with a smile. “He’s been brilliant all afternoon. Hardly any fussing at all.”
I smile back, the expression settling onto my face like it belongs there. “That’s good,” I say. “Maybe we’ll actually get some sleep.”
Daniel laughs, the sound warm and familiar in the quiet room. “Fingers crossed,” he says, and turns back to Milo, who’s now attempting to stuff his entire fist into his mouth with his full focus.
I sit down on the couch, my tea steaming gently beside me, and watch my family from a careful distance.
Daniel bounces Milo on his knee, making airplane noises that send our son into fresh peals of laughter.
In the bassinet by the window, Maisie sleeps peacefully, one tiny hand curled around the edge of her blanket.
The late afternoon light turns everything golden, Daniel’s hair, Milo’s delighted face, the worn carpet where Daniel’s sitting cross-legged with our son balanced on his knee.
It looks perfect. From the outside, you’d never guess that anything was wrong.
I take a sip of my tea and hold my brittle smile in place.