Chapter 1

After Daisy was bathed and her two bedtime stories were done, I watched her eyes finally go still and heavy. I tucked her in, turned off the lamp, and went back to our bedroom.

Nathan was propped against the headboard scrolling his phone. The blue light cut across his face. He didn't look up.

Once, I would've sat down beside him. I would've said, softly, "Nathan, can we talk?" And gotten a "talk about what." And then I'd have launched into a long paragraph and he'd have said "hmm" and rolled over and gone to sleep. And then I'd have been lying there staring at the back of his head while my tears soaked into the pillow.

Tonight I didn't sit down.

I grabbed a blanket and went to the study.

The fold-out bed in the study — I bought it last year, thinking it would be somewhere to go if we ever had a proper argument. I never used it, because Nathan and I didn't really argue. Arguing requires two people. He never took the bait.

I lay on the fold-out bed and stared at the ceiling.

My phone lit up. A text from Mum: Hope you had a good day, love.

I typed two words: Fine.

Deleted it. Typed again: Good thanks Mum.

Sent.

Ten years of texts to my mother and they've all sounded more or less like that. Two words. Three at most. But my texts to Nathan — those ran long. Multiple paragraphs. Every day for ten years.

He never replied.

So I'd send another one.

He'd still not reply.

So I'd call.

He'd cut it short and I'd drive to his office and wait in the lobby.

Friends told me I was too much. He told me I was too much. I told myself I must be crazy.

Who chases someone for ten years? How desperate do you have to be?

But that thing Daisy said earlier — it hit me like someone had struck a bell right next to my ear. A low, clear ring. And something cracked. Not my heart. Something harder than that — a shell around a conviction I'd carried for a decade.

That night I slept better than I had in years.

No dreams. No tears. No waking up at two in the morning to check if he'd finally replied.

The next morning — Wednesday — when the alarm went off, I actually blinked in surprise.

So you can fall asleep without waiting for someone.

I only made breakfast for Daisy. I braided her hair while she ate from her little rabbit bowl.

When Nathan came out and saw the table — the small bowl, the pink spoon, nothing else — he didn't say anything. He opened the fridge, took out a carton of milk, picked up his briefcase, and left. The door closed behind him with the exact same sound it had made every morning for the past seven years.

But it was the first morning I hadn't run after him to say be careful on the way.

Daisy looked up at me. "Mummy, you didn't say bye to Daddy."

I smiled and pinched her cheek gently. "Did you say bye to Daddy?"

She shook her head. "He walked too fast."

He always walked too fast.

And I spent ten years trying to keep up, and never once did.

Nathan and I met at university.

He wasn't the best-looking man in our department, but he was clean-cut, quiet, and when he played basketball there was a focus to him that was genuinely compelling. Everyone knew Sophie was chasing Nathan.

I was not subtle about it.

I brought him coffee every morning. If he said he didn't want it, I said I'd bought an extra one by accident. When his student society ran late, I waited outside the lecture hall with a hot Americano — his order, not mine. He told me to stop waiting; it wasn't safe that late. I said I had nothing better to do anyway.

In his final year, he finally agreed to be with me.

I cried for an hour in my room that night. Happy tears.

Later, I understood that "finally agreeing" wasn't the same as wanting to be there. His mother said it once — I heard her say it myself.

"Nathan's always been like this. He doesn't make the first move. You chased him hard enough and he went along with it."

She said it the way you'd say it's cold outside. As if it were simply a fact of nature. I was standing in the kitchen doorway holding a plate of fruit I'd just cut, and I squeezed the edge of the plate so hard my fingers went white.

The first year of marriage was all right. He was quiet, but he'd walk with me on weekends. If I said I wanted to see a film, he'd sigh about it and then go anyway.

The shift came after Daisy was born.