Seeing each other anew
That afternoon Victor Harper left the office early. He usually got home at seven, hearing the hiss of a skillet in the kitchen and smelling dinner mingled with his wife’s faint perfume. Today his boss fell ill, so the meeting was cancelled and Victor was let out at four. He stood before his own flat on Camden Road, feeling an odd awkwardness, like an actor who steps onto the stage a beat too late.
He turned the key. The lock clicked louder than it should have. In the hallway, on the coat rack, hung an unfamiliar mens jacketsoft, expensive woolstill occupying the spot Victors own jacket always did.
A restrained, feminine laugh drifted from the sitting room, low and velvety, the one Victor had always claimed as his own private soundtrack. Then a male voice, murky but confident, rang out, domestic in tone.
Victor didnt move. His feet seemed glued to the oak floorboards he and Emily had chosen together, arguing over the shade of oak. He caught his own pale reflection in the hallway mirror, the crease of a suit worn thin by office life. He felt like an intruder in his own home.
He followed the sound, shoes still onan unforgivable breach of their house rules. Each step thudded in his head. The lounge door stood ajar.
They were on the sofa. Emily, his everfamiliar Emily, wrapped in the turquoise bathrobe hed gifted her for her birthday, curled her legs beneath her in a domestic pose. Beside her sat a man in his forties, wearing pricey suede loafers without socksa detail that gnawed at Victor more than anythinghis shirt perfectly fitted, collar undone, a glass of red wine cradled in his hand.
On the coffee table sat the same crystal vase, an heirloom of Emilys family, now holding a handful of pistachios. Their shells were scattered across the tabletop.
It was a tableau of intimate, homebound betrayalno passion, no rashness, just the dull, unsettling kind.
Both turned at once. Emily flinched; the wine splashed onto her light robe, leaving a crimson stain. Her wide eyes held not terror but a panicked bewilderment, like a child caught in the act.
The stranger placed his glass down with a slow, almost lazy gesture. No fear, no embarrassment crossed his face, only a faint irritation, as if someone had interrupted him at the most interesting part of a story.
Victor Emily began, her voice cracking.
He ignored her. His gaze flicked from the strangers loafers to his own dusty shoes. Two pairs of footwear sharing one space, two worlds that should never have met.
I think Ill be going, the stranger said, rising with a disconcertingly leisurely pace. He walked over to Victor, looked at him not with contempt but with curiosity, as if he were an exhibit in a museum, gave a slight nod, and headed toward the hallway.
Victor stayed frozen. He heard the stranger zip up the jacket, heard the lock click, heard the door close.
The flat fell into a heavy silence, broken only by the ticking clock. The air smelled of wine, expensive mens cologne, and betrayal.
Emily wrapped her arms around her shoulders, murmuring words that never quite reached Victoryou dont understand, its not what you think, we were just talking. They slid past him like they were spoken through thick glass, meaningless.
Victor approached the coffee table, lifted the strangers glass. It carried a foreign scent. He stared at the wine stain on Emilys robe, the pistachio shells, the halfemptied bottle.
He didnt shout. He didnt scream. All he felt was an allconsuming revulsiontoward the house, the sofa, the robe, the perfume, and himself.
He set the glass back, turned, and walked toward the hallway.
Where are you going? Emilys voice trembled, edged with fear.
Victor stopped at the mirror, stared at his reflectionthe man who had just vanished from the room.
I cant stay here, he said quietly, his words crisp. Not until the stink clears out.
He exited the flat, descended the stairs, and sat on the bench outside his block. He fished out his phone, only to find the battery dead.
He stared at his own apartment windows, at that comforting glow hed once loved, and waited. He waited for the scent of foreign perfume, foreign loafers, and the life that had once been his to drift out. He didnt know what would come next, but he knew there was no turning back to the version of reality that existed before four oclock.
He sat on the cold bench, time slipping strangely. Every second burned with sharp clarity. A shadow flickered across his windowEmily, looking at him. He turned away.
After a whilehalf an hour? an hour?the blocks entrance opened. Emily emerged, no robe, just jeans and a sweater, a blanket in her hands.
She crossed the road slowly, sat beside him on the bench, the space between them half a bodys length. She offered the blanket.
Take it, youll freeze, she said.
No, thanks, he replied without looking at her.
Its Artem, Emily said softly, eyes fixed on the pavement. Weve known each other three months. He runs the coffee shop next to my gym.
Victor listened, head still turned away. Names, jobsmere set dressing. The real collapse had not been a bomb, but a quiet, ordinary click.
Im not making excuses, Emilys voice quivered. But you youve just been absent this past year. Youd come home, eat, watch the news, fall asleep. You stopped seeing me. And he he saw.
Saw? Victor finally turned, his voice hoarse from silence. He saw me drinking from my glass? He saw the pistachio shells on my table? Thats what he saw?
Emily pressed her lips together, tears welling but not falling.
Im not asking forgiveness, nor am I ready to forget everything now. I just didnt know how else to reach you. It seems only by becoming a monster did I become the person you finally noticed.
Im sitting here, and Im repulsed. The smell of his cologne in our home disgusts me. His loafers disgust me. But most of all, the thought that you could do this to me disgusts me.
He shrugged, his back stiff with cold and stillness.
I wont go back there today, he said. I cant. Walking into a flat where everything reminds me of this day breathing that air.
Where will you go? fear, raw and animal, crept into her voice.
To a hotel. I need a place to sleep.
She nodded.
Do you want me to go to a friends? Leave you alone in the flat?
He shook his head.
That wont change what happened inside. The house needs to be aired out, Emily. Maybe it even needs to be sold.
She gasped as if struck. That home had been their shared dream, their fortress.
Victor rose from the bench, movements slow and weary.
Tomorrow, he said, we wont talk. The day after tomorrow, same. We both need silence, apart from each other. Then later well see if theres anything left to say.
He turned and walked down the street, not looking back. He didnt know where he was heading, or if he would ever return. He only knew that the life before that evening was over, and for the first time in years he was stepping into the unknownnot as a husband, not as a partner, but simply as a man exhausted and in pain. And in that pain, paradoxically, he felt alive again.
The city felt foreign. Streetlights cast sharp shadows on the pavement, easy to get lost in. Victor slipped into the nearest hostelnot to save money, but to vanish, to dissolve into a bland room smelling of bleach and strangers lives.
The room resembled a hospital ward: white walls, a narrow bed, a plastic chair. He perched on the edge, and silence hammered his ears. No creak of floorboards, no fridge hum, no breath of his wife behind himonly a ringing in his head and a heaviness in his chest.
He plugged his dead phone into the charger provided at reception. The screen lit up with notificationscolleagues, work chats, ads. An ordinary evening for an ordinary man, as if nothing had happened. That normality was unbearable.
He texted his boss, Sick. Wont be in for a couple of days. He didnt lie. He felt poisoned.
He stripped, stepped into the shower. The water was scalding, yet he didnt feel temperature. He stood with his head down, watching the stream wash away the days grime. He raised his eyes to the cracked mirror above the sink, seeing a tired, crumpled, foreign face. Was that how Emily had seen him today? Was that who hed been all these months?
He climbed into the bed, switched off the light. Darkness offered no peace. In his mind flickered slides like cursed film strips: the jacket on the rack, the wine stain on the robe, the sockless loafers, and the cruelest line: You stopped seeing me.
He tossed, searching for comfort, but found none. Every sensation was wrong. A thought crept into his ear, first dismissed, then returning like a persistent insect: what if his own detachment, his own lazy soul, had pushed her into the arms of that man with the loafers? Not to excuse her, not to lay blame, but to understand.
Emily lay awake, drifting through the flat like a ghost, hands clasped behind her back. She stopped before the sofa, the wine stain now a brown, ugly mark. She crumpled the robe and tossed it into the bin.
She walked to the table, lifted the glass the stranger had used, stared at it long, then carried it to the kitchen sink and shattered it against the basin. Crystal rang, shards scattering, a small relief.
She gathered the evidence of the other: she threw away the pistachios, poured the remaining wine down the drain, wiped the table, discarded the fragments. Yet his cologne clung to the curtains, the upholstery, everywhere. Shame hung in the air, alongside a strange, twisted sense of release. Lies became truth. Pain became palpable.
She sank onto the floor, hugged her knees, and finally allowed herself to crysoftly, without sobbing. Tears rolled unchecked, salty and bitter. She wept not just for the hurt Victor had caused, but for the collapse of the illusion theyd painstakingly built over yearsa fairytale marriage.
She knew she was guilty. He might have been distant, not tender, but the fault was hers.
Morning found Victor broken. He ordered a coffee from the corner shop and sat by the window, watching the city wake. His phone buzzed. Emily.
Dont call, just text if youre okay.
He read the messagesimple, human, no hysteria, no demands. Just care, the very care hed stopped noticing.
He didnt answer. Hed promised to keep silent. Yet for the first time in a day, the anger and revulsion inside him shifted, making room for something elsevague, uncertain, not hope but curiosity.
What if, beyond the nightmare and the pain, they could see each other anew? Not as enemies, but as two exhausted, lonely people who had once loved and perhaps lost their way?
He finished his coffee, set the cup down. Days of silence lay ahead. Then, perhaps, a conversation. And maybe the fear wasnt of that talk, but of the fact that nothing would change.
They no longer believed in fairytales. Their love was wounded, hardwon. Yet in the moment everything collapsed, they glimpsed in the shards not only hatred, but a chanceto piece themselves together anew, not as they once were, but as they might become. Because the strongest love isnt the one that never falls, but the one that finds the strength to rise from the ashes.
