Page 16 of The Friend Request

That’s the first sign something is wrong, because I never beat the alarm. I’m the woman who hits snooze three times, drags herself to the bathroom with her eyes half shut, and stands under the shower until the hot water runs out. Alex is the early riser. Alex is the one who gets up at six-fifteen, makes coffee, checks his emails, and has the kitchen in order before I even come downstairs.

But today I’m standing at the hob at quarter to six, cracking eggs into a pan with hands that won’t hold still. The kitchen smells of butter and toast, and the coffee machine is already gurgling. I’ve laid the table properly – place mats, glasses of juice, a pot of jam instead of the jar – as if a nice breakfast can undo what I did last night.

It can’t. But I’m going to try anyway.

I slept badly. Two, maybe three hours in total, lying on my side with my back to Alex, my eyes open in the dark, replaying the kiss frame by frame until the memory wore grooves into my skull. His hand on my jaw. His mouth against mine. The way my entire body leaned into it for those few seconds before the guilt hit, and the way I pulled away so hard I almost fell. I can still feel it now, standing in my own kitchen in my pyjamas and socks, frying eggs for my husband. A tingling ghost of it, sitting on my lips like something I can’t wash off.

I scrub my mouth with the back of my hand. It doesn’t help.

Olivia appears in the doorway in her school uniform, hair scraped into a ponytail that’s already coming loose, blazer slung over one arm, bag trailing from the other. She stops when she sees the table.

‘What’s all this?’

‘Breakfast,’ I say, as if it’s obvious.

‘We never have proper breakfast.’

‘We do sometimes.’

‘We don’t. We have toast, and you shout at me to hurry up.’ She drops her bag by the door and slides into her chair, eyeing the eggs, the juice, and the place mats with open suspicion. ‘Are you feeling guilty about something?’

My stomach lurches.

‘Don’t be daft,’ I say, and it comes out bright and tight, like a string pulled too far. ‘I just thought it would be nice. Sit down and eat before it goes cold.’

‘I am sitting down.’

‘Then eat.’

She picks up her fork, still watching me, and I turn back to the hob so she can’t see my face. Thirteen-year-olds notice everything. They’re like tiny detectives with bad attitudes and no filter, and Olivia is sharper than most. She knows when I’ve been crying. She knows when Alex and I have had an argument. She once asked me, aged eleven, why I always went quiet after Grandma phoned, and I had to pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about.

She knows me. That’s the problem. She knows me, and I’m standing here trying to cover a lie with eggs.

Alex comes in a few minutes later, dressed for work – shirt tucked in, tie loosened, sleeves not yet rolled up. He pauses in the doorway the same way Olivia did, his gaze moving from the table to me and back again.

‘What’s the occasion?’

‘No occasion. Just breakfast.’

‘You’ve done eggs.’

‘Is that a crime?’

‘It’s unusual.’ He crosses to the coffee machine and pours himself a cup.

I can feel him watching me as I plate up his eggs and set them down at his place.

‘How was the work thing last night?’ he asks.

The question is casual. Light. He asks it the same way he’d ask about the weather or if I’d remembered to put petrol in the car, and that’s what makes it so awful, because the answer should be equally casual and instead it takes every gram of control I have to keep my voice level.

‘It was fine,’ I say. ‘The usual. Drinks, small talk, someone from marketing going on about print costs. You know how it is.’

‘You were back late.’

‘It ran over. I texted you.’

‘I know. I just mean you’re usually home before ten.’