I stared at the photographs.
Different places.
Different days.
Same two people.
Sasha and Callan.
Callan finally spoke.
“I was going to tell her.”
Bram looked at him.
“You’ve been saying that for nine years?”
Silence.
Bram’s voice remained strangely calm.
“You know what I kept asking myself?”
Nobody answered.
“Why?”
He looked at Sasha.
“Why would you marry me if you loved him?”
Sasha’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because I loved you too.”
Bram stared at her.
“You don’t get to say that.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“No.”
His voice finally cracked.
“You loved what I gave you.”
Sasha wiped her face.
“That isn’t fair.”
“Fair?”
He laughed bitterly.
“You kissed my wife’s husband in front of me.”
Nobody moved.
He looked at Callan.
“And you stood there while she did it.”
Callan lowered his head.
I finally spoke.
“The kiss wasn’t the secret.”
Everyone looked at me.
“The kiss was the part they finally stopped hiding.”
PART 3 — THE OTHER PHONE
I couldn’t stay in the garden.
I couldn’t breathe.
I walked back into the house.
Nobody stopped me.
I went upstairs.
My son was watching cartoons.
My daughter was drawing at the desk.
Neither knew anything.
Neither knew that their father’s life had just exploded downstairs.
I stood in the doorway for several seconds.
My daughter looked up.
“Mum?”
I smiled.
“I’m fine.”
She went back to drawing.
I walked over and kissed her forehead.
Then I kissed my son.
I stayed there longer than I needed to.
I memorised the sound of the television.
The smell of their room.
The little marks on the wall beside my son’s bed.
Normal things.
Because downstairs, everything had stopped being normal.
I went back down.
Callan was waiting in the hallway.
“Bryony.”
I walked past him.
“Please.”
I stopped.
Turned around.
“Give me your phone.”
He froze.
“What?”
“Your phone.”
“Why?”
“Because if there’s nothing there, you have nothing to worry about.”
He looked at Sasha.
She was standing near the kitchen doorway.
