**Diary Entry, 3rd November**
*Ten Years of Silence*
“Enough silence!” Helen shouted, slamming her palm on Bristol’s worn kitchen table. “Ten years I endured your behaviour, and now this!”
Across from her, Emma sat without lifting her eyes. Her hands trembled as she raised the teacup to her lips. A crumpled letter from the GP surgery lay between them.
“What do you want from me?” Emma whispered.
“The truth!” Helen sprang up, pacing the small room. “I want the truth! Why did you stay silent? Why didn’t you tell me you knew back then?”
Emma set the cup down heavily, tea sloshing onto the Formica. “Because I was afraid,” she admitted. “Afraid you’d hate me.”
“And you’re not afraid now?” Helen’s voice shook with fury. “Now that I’ve found out myself?”
A thump came from the flat below; the neighbour complaining. Helen slumped back onto her chair, trying to calm herself, though her hands still trembled.
“Tell me everything,” she demanded, voice tight. “From the very start.”
Emma dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief corner. “I didn’t know how to tell you. You were so happy then, just married…”
“Don’t hedge! Say it plainly!”
“I saw Simon with that woman. In that cafe on the high street. They were at the window table, holding hands. She… was pregnant.”
Helen felt the ground fall away beneath her. She knew about her husband’s infidelity now, but not that someone had witnessed it long ago.
“When was this?”
“Six months after your wedding,” Emma whispered. “I was walking home from work and saw them by chance. At first I didn’t believe it was Simon. But they stepped outside, and I recognised him.”
“And then?”
“I meant to approach them, but…” Emma hesitated. “He kissed her. Tenderly, the way you kiss someone truly loved. Then he rested his hand on her stomach.”
Helen closed her eyes. Memories crashed over her like a wave – that time when she dreamt of children, while Simon endlessly postponed it.
“So he already had a child by another woman back then?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. Helen, I truly meant to tell you, but…”
“But you chose silence. For ten years!”
Emma flinched at the sharpness in her friend’s tone.
“I thought it would pass. That he’d come to his senses, return to you. You were so in love, planning children, buying baby grows…”
“Baby grows,” Helen echoed bitterly. “While he was raising somebody else’s child.”
She stood and moved to the window. Children played in the courtyard below, laughing carefree around the swings. Helen had dreamt so long of her own children. Now she was forty-three, her time running short.
“Helen, forgive me,” Emma approached her. “I know it was wrong. But I couldn’t destroy your happiness.”
“What happiness?” Helen spun around. “Happiness living with a liar? A cheat? Wasting my best years on a man who didn’t love me?”
“He did love you! I saw how he looked at you.”
“Saw? When did you see? When he was cheating on me with his pregnant mistress?”
Emma dropped her gaze. The words struck hard, but she knew she deserved them.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” she breathed.
“The right thing?” Helen laughed, the sound hollow and pained. “The right thing would have been telling me the truth back then. Maybe I wouldn’t have wasted ten years of my life on that man.”
The hallway phone rang. Helen went to answer, leaving Emma by the window.
“Hello?” Helen’s voice was weary down the line.
“Hi. Simon here. Working late tonight, love. Don’t wait up for dinner.”
Helen checked the clock. Seven p.m. The workday ended hours ago.
“Right,” she clipped. “Goodbye.”
She slammed the receiver down and returned. Emma sat crumpling her handkerchief.
“Was it him?”
“Yes. Late again.”
“Helen, perhaps it’s different now? Maybe he’s changed?”
Helen pulled several photographs from her handbag and scattered them on the table.
“See for yourself.”
Emma leaned over the images. Simon with the same woman, older now. Beside them stood a boy of about nine.
“That’s his son,” Helen explained flatly. “Hired a private investigator yesterday. Turns out Simon’s been living a double life for ten years. Officially married to me, actually has another family.”
Emma clapped a hand over her mouth. “My God, Helen, I didn’t…”
“Course you didn’t. Because you stayed silent for ten years instead of giving me the truth.”
“But if I’d told you back then… would you even have believed me?”
Helen paused. Would she have? Or dismissed it as jealousy poisoning her friend?
“Don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Maybe not. But I’d have had the chance to find out. Instead, I lived in the dark for a decade.”
Emma stood and went to the cooker, flicking the kettle on unnecessarily.
“What will you do now?”
“Divorce. What choice is left?”
“Does he know you know?”
“Not yet. But he will soon.”
Helen gathered the photos, stowing them away. Her hands trembled less, but the storm of emotion still raged within.
“Know what hurts most?” she asked quietly. “Not just the cheating. It’s losing all that time. Ten years, gone forever.”
“You’re still young. You’ll meet someone else.”
“At forty-three? With my medical history?” Helen gave a grim smile. “Doubt it.”
Emma poured boiling water into fresh mugs. The tea was far too strong, but neither noticed.
“Helen, I know you’re angry with me. You’ve every right. But I genuinely meant well.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Helen quoted flatly. “You tried to preserve my illusion of happiness. Instead, you helped him deceive me for years.”
“I didn’t help him! I just stayed quiet.”
“Silence can be betrayal too.”
Emma lowered her gaze. They’d known each other since university, through first loves and heartbreak. Helen was always the decisive one; Emma cautious, preferring not to meddle.
“Remember meeting our husbands?” Emma asked suddenly.
“At that pub quiz night?”
“You declared you’d marry Simon that very night. I laughed, said it was too soon.”
“And?”
“You were always braver than me. More decisive. Perhaps… if I’d been like you, I’d have told you the truth right away.”
Helen was silent, considering her friend’s words.
“Emma, I don’t want this to end our friendship. But right now… I need time to understand all this.”
“I understand.”
“Ten years,” Helen repeated. “Ten years living a lie. Planning our future, dreaming of children, saving pounds for holidays. While he built another family.”
Emma nodded. She remembered Helen buying tiny baby vests, glowing over every gift from Simon, utterly believing in their shared future.
“What now?” Emma asked. “When will you tell him?”
“Tonight. When he comes home from *her*.”
“Maybe wait till
Heavy footsteps echoed in the staircase outside the door, surprising her with their arrival far sooner than expected. The key fumbled loudly in the lock, twisted, and the door handle turned. She exhaled slowly, her fingers tracing the edge of a photograph showing Sergey smiling with the boy. The door pushed open, revealing his familiar silhouette against the hallway light, shoulders slumped and face etched with a dread that mirrored the weight she’d carried for years; his voice, unnaturally thin, broke the charged silence, “Lena… we need to talk,” but she merely lifted her gaze, met his eyes squarely for the first time in years, and gestured silently towards the damning proof spread deliberately across her worn oak table, the air thick with every unsaid betrayal and the final, simple truth that silence had ended forever. She stayed utterly motionless, her hands resting calmly on the armrests, no longer trembling at all.
