Six months ago, Emilys husband left her, and I tried my best to be a reassuring friend through the haze of her heartbreak. But for the last month, shed drifted away, distant and evasive, as if I were speaking to her through a thick London fog. Concerned about how she was truly faring, I decided to call on her at her small terraced house in Brighton.
When I arrived, Emily greeted me with the sort of half-smile one gives a stranger at a bus stop. She was busy at the stove, stirring something that filled the room with the wistful scent of thyme and roasting vegetables. Smells lovely, I offered, in hopes of thawing the chill between us. She hurriedly muttered a thanks and dashed back to poke at her saucepan, claiming something was burning.
While I wandered the sitting room lined with the faded portraits of stiff-backed ancestors, my mobile rang. My own husbands voice came through, saying hed be late at the office againthese days, it was as regular as Big Bens chimes. Around the same time, Emily stopped sharing the stories and confessions that used to fill our long walks by the sea.
Just as I hung up, Emilys phone, resting beside me on the mantelpiece, lit up. My husbands name gleamed on the screen, bold and familiar. Without thinking, I answered. His voicegentle, warmasked for Emily, saying he missed her and would be over soon.
In that dreamlike moment, time bent in half. The gloomy English sky seemed to press in. Suddenly, I understood: My friend Emily had been sleeping with my husband. The truth was almost comical in its absurdity, as if a scene from some surreal play on the West End. I stepped outside, the air sharp and freeing, and the world tilted on its axis.
Despite the shock, I felt a great weight dissolve, as though Id finally left behind a suit of armour too heavy to bear. I would no longer have to shoulder the burden of my idle husband, forever reliant on my salary, contributing little but complaints about rain and train delays.
Later, out of a strange curiosity, I watched from afar. Emily and my ex shared her house for six months, a brief and blustery English affair, until she too had enough and tossed him out like year-old newspapers. He thought Id take him back, but I swept him out for good, his suitcase banging down the steps.
Now I live cheerfully, with my days my own at last and not shackled to a cold and damp old relationship. The sky above Brighton seems, at last, a little brighter, and I stroll along the seafront feeling light as a feather on the breeze.
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