Chapter 5

The second month. Nathan's changes were harder to ignore.

He started helping around the flat. Taking out the bins. Wiping down the counters. One evening I came home to find him mopping the kitchen floor. He'd used too much water and not wrung the mop out properly. The floor was wet in streaks, like a fish had been dragged across it. He had no idea that was the wrong way to do it.

I didn't correct him. I left him to it.

He started buying me things.

One evening there was a paper carrier bag inside the front door. I opened it: a scarf. Dark grey, pure cashmere, from a brand I recognised. Over a hundred pounds, easily. No card. No note.

In seven years of marriage, Nathan had given me one gift of his own choosing. A bottle of perfume, first anniversary. I later found the same bottle in Ruth's bathroom cabinet. She'd bought it and asked him to pass it along.

This scarf, I folded and put on the top shelf. I didn't wear it.

The biggest shift was in his texts.

Wednesday evening. I was in the study, working, when my phone lit up with a message. Nathan.

We were in the same flat. He was texting me.

I opened it.

Sophie — walked past your usual coffee shop today. They've taken your favourite caramel latte off the menu. New batch brew or something. Thought I'd let you know.

I counted the words.

Sixty-two words. From Nathan Alderton, who for ten years had sent me texts that averaged four words. Home late. Okay. See you. His longest message to me before this had been a forwarded address for a restaurant booking.

He knew I liked caramel lattes. I hadn't told him. Or maybe I had, years ago — I'd have said it the way I said everything back then, hoping if I shared enough small things about myself he'd eventually feel like he knew me. I thought it hadn't landed.

I looked at the message for a long time.

Then I did the thing he'd been doing to me for a decade: read it. Didn't reply.

He sent another one the next evening.

Daisy did a painting at nursery today. It's supposed to be you. You're wearing round glasses and sitting at a desk. She got it pretty right actually. Do you want to see it?

I opened the photo he'd attached. Daisy had given me a head of hair like a ball of black wool. The glasses took up half my face.

I saved the photo. I didn't reply.

The day after. And the day after that.

He texted every day. Sometimes short. Sometimes longer.

The braised pork at the office canteen today reminded me of yours. It wasn't as good.

I found an old video you posted — do you remember the trip we took to the coast? The wind was ridiculous that day. I'd forgotten how bad it was.

The ginkgo trees in the park have gone gold. I know you used to collect the leaves.

He remembered the wind on that coastal trip. He remembered the ginkgo leaves.

All this time, he'd known. He'd filed it away somewhere and considered it unimportant. Not worth mentioning, not worth responding to. And now that I'd stopped chasing, all of it was coming back to him, surfacing like things do when the noise finally stops.

Too late.

If he'd said any of this five years ago, I'd have wept with relief and held onto him like I was drowning. Two years ago I'd have been overwhelmed. A year ago I might still have softened.

But reading those messages now, I felt something I hadn't expected.

Not moved. Not grateful.

Just tired, in a very quiet way. The way you feel after a long race when someone offers you water at the finish line.

You're not thirsty anymore.

By the third month, the beginnings of Alderton Design were taking shape.

It still wasn't a real studio. It was a fold-out table in the study and an external hard drive and a growing list of emails. But it was real enough. The bakery had become three clients — an artisan soap maker, an independent jewellery label, a small bookshop that had been around for thirty years and wanted to feel like it. My monthly income had more than tripled.

Claire had set me up with a social media account — a simple portfolio page, a few posts showing process and finished work. It had fewer than five hundred followers. But the comments were genuine. Love the colour palette. This is so restrained, I can't stop looking at it. Could you do a tutorial?

I read them and felt something that surprised me with its unfamiliarity.

Not being needed. Being seen.

The difference matters. Being needed means: you are useful to me. Being seen means: you exist, and that existence has value.

Nathan needed me. He'd always needed someone to run the household, cook, manage Daisy's schedule, keep everything moving. But he had never once looked at me and registered that I was a person.

That was the difference.

One night I finished a piece later than planned and came out of the study to find Nathan standing in the hallway outside the door. He was holding a glass of water. He'd clearly been about to knock and then changed his mind, standing there not sure what to do.

"You're still up," I said.

"Waiting for you," he said.

Two words I'd never heard from him.

I walked past him to the kitchen. He followed.

That, too, was new. He used to move in the opposite direction from wherever I was going.

In the kitchen, the overhead light was warm and low. He leaned against the fridge and watched me heat some milk for Daisy's flask for the morning.

"Sophie."

"Mm."

"You've barely spoken to me in weeks."

"I answer when you talk to me."

"But you're not — you used to be different."

"That was before."

He was quiet for a while.

The milk began to bubble.

"Do you still love me?" he asked.

The question dropped into the kitchen and stayed there.