Certain.
Her attention drops to her tea.
“You know, I hate that phrase sometimes.”
“What phrase?”
“Good man.”
I wait.
She turns the mug slowly between her hands.
“People call men good for the bare minimum. He doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t hit you. He goes to work. He pays bills. Like that’s romance. Like that’s character.”
Her voice is steady.
Too steady.
“Matty is a good guy,” she says.
The words sit there.
Flat.
Tired.
“He’s not cruel. He’s not a monster. He loves the boys. I know he does.” Her gaze flicks briefly towards the living room. “But loving people isn’t the same as showing up for them.”
Something twists in my gut.
“Soph.”
She shakes her head quickly.
“I’m fine.”
It’s an old lie. Practised. Almost tidy.
She gives me a brittle smile.
“Honestly. I have a house, two children, a husband who doesn’t do anything technically awful. Plenty of people would tell me to be grateful.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“No,” she says softly. “You wouldn’t.”
For a moment neither of us speaks.
The boys thunder past the kitchen doorway, one of them wearing a cape, the other holding a toilet roll tube like a sword.
Sophie doesn’t even turn round.
“I think that’s why I envy you sometimes,” she says.
“Me?”
“You. Your world.” She gives a small shrug. “Not the difficult bits. Obviously not the difficult bits. Not Mum and Dad being spectacularly shit, or strangers deciding they get an opinion, or any of that.”
