It was just after seven in the morning when I heard the soft thud of a closing suitcase. Still halfasleep I slipped out of the bedroom, assuming Edward was merely packing for a business trip. Instead I found him in the hallway, coat on, a suitcase gripped in his hand, his face drawn tight as if he had been rehearsing the words he was about to utter for weeks.
Im leaving, he said flatly, not even looking at me. For Poppy.
I froze. For a heartbeat the words made no sense.
Then the picture snapped into focus, as clear as a photograph in a family album: Poppy, his colleague from the office, the woman Id shared a table with at countless barbecues, the one Id consoled after her divorce and lent books to. Poppy, the person Id trusted.
It had started months earlier, though I hadnt seen the signs. Edward would come home later, always with an excuse about a mountain of projects. On weekends he suddenly had client meetings. I sometimes caught him slipping his phone into his pocket as I entered the room. I told myself I was overreactingwed been together nearly three decades, I knew him like the back of my hand.
The worst part came when I realised she had been hovering around us all that time. She was at our anniversaries, saw us pick out a new dining table, laughed with our son at Sunday lunch. She knew exactly what I meant to him, and yet
The first weeks after his departure were a waking nightmare. Friends called, asking if the rumours were true. I felt a shame that seemed to blame me for the betrayal. Nights were the hardest; I would wake halfexpecting him to slip into the bedroom and lie beside me as if nothing had changed, only to find a hollow silence.
One afternoon I went to the high street shop and saw them together, unhidden. Poppy wore the coat I had once praised, and Edward held her hand the way hed once held mine. In that moment I thought my humiliation had finally reached its endI had seen everything I needed to see.
Slowly I began to reclaim myself. First the small stepscutting my hair. Then the bigger onesspending a solitary weekend by the sea. Watching the waves, I understood that while I had lost my husband, I had gained something I had not felt in yearsfreedom to choose only for myself.
A chance encounter with Poppy came almost three months later. I walked into a café and found her at a corner table. Our eyes met, and a brief silence settled between us. I wasnt sure what she expectedan outburst, a scene? Instead I went over, looked her straight in the eye and said calmly, You know whats worse? Not that you took him away, but that you lived in my house for years, planning all this in your head.
She gave no reply, turned away, and I left feeling that this time I was the one walking away. Not from Edwardhe had been gone long agobut from everything that had bound me: the shame, the sense of defeat, the delusions.
Now, looking back after twentyseven years, I see that time was not wasted. It gave me a strength I had never valued, taught me that betrayal does not end a life; it merely closes a chapter. The greatest revenge, I have learned, is not hatred but happiness, and I am now writing my own anew.
