The kettle clicks off and I pour water over the tea bag, watching it bloom and darken through the mug. My dressing gown brushes against my thighs, and I feel the ghost of the lace bodysuit I took off an hour ago — the elastic pressure still imprinted on my skin, the memory of Bradley's voice in my ear, calling me his. I wrap my hands around the mug and stand at the kitchen window, staring out at the empty street, at the houses that all look the same, at the life I'm supposed to be grateful for.
Three weeks pass like water through fingers.
Three weeks of stolen moments and hidden phones. Three weeks of typing things I would never say aloud while I sit in the staff room during my lunch break, surrounded by other teaching assistants eating sandwiches and complaining about Ofsted. My phone lives in my pocket like a second heartbeat, always warm, always waiting for his name to appear on the screen.
"You look different," Claire says one Tuesday, tilting her head at me across the table. "Have you changed your shampoo or something?"
I laugh and say no, and she shrugs and goes back to her salad, and I feel the weight of my secret pressing against my ribs like a held breath.
Bradley texts me in the middle of the day, when he knows I'm at work. Photos appear on my phone while I'm helping a child with their reading comprehension — a picture of his hand on his thigh, his wedding ring catching the light. A shot of his empty desk at lunchtime, his coffee mug, the word "Wish you were here" typed underneath. Once, a voice note I have to listen to in the toilet stall with my finger pressed against my other ear, his voice low and warm, telling me exactly what he wants to do to me the next time we're alone. I sit on the closed lid of the toilet and press my thighs together and hate that I can't respond the way I want to.
Two video calls while I'm in the bath. The first one I take on impulse — I'm up to my chin in bubbles, the phone propped on the edge of the bathtub, and he calls just as I'm settling in. I answer without thinking, and his face appears on the screen, his eyebrows lifting.
"Well, this is a nice surprise," he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice.
"I'm in the bath."
"I can see that." He leans closer to his camera. "Shame about the bubbles."
I laugh, and the sound is strange in my own ears — light, easy, the laugh of someone who isn't hiding. We talk for forty minutes while the water cools around me, his face propped against his hand, his eyes moving over the screen like he's trying to memorise every pixel. He tells me about Ben's school play — he played a tree in a production about the rainforest and forgot his one line. He tells me about Lily's new obsession with ducks, how she says "quack" with such fierce seriousness it makes him laugh every time. He tells me these small, ordinary things, and I drink them in like water, and I realise I know his life better than I know my husband's.
The second bath call happens late at night, after Sam has gone to bed. I'm in the bathroom with the door locked, the water steaming around me, and Bradley is in his car, parked at the end of his street, his face lit only by the glow of his phone screen. His voice is rougher that night, his eyes darker.
"I can't stop thinking about you," he says, and the words land somewhere deep in my chest and stay there.
"I know," I whisper back. "Me neither."
The water laps against my skin. The steam curls around the phone. Neither of us says the obvious thing — that this is unsustainable, that it can't go on like this forever, that eventually something will break. We don't say it because we both already know, and saying it aloud would make it real in a way we're not ready for.
Emma's message arrives on a Thursday afternoon.
I'm in the middle of marking reading records when my phone vibrates against the staff room table. I pick it up, expecting Bradley, and instead I see Emma's name on the screen. My stomach does something complicated — guilt and fondness and a low, dull thrum of fear all tangled together.
Emma's name sits at the top of the screen, her profile picture a photo of her and Bradley at Ben's birthday party, both of them holding a cake. I stare at it for a beat too long, my thumb hovering. Then I read.
Her message is characteristically direct — no preamble, no small talk.
"Half term next week. We're going to the caravan in Selsey for the week. Ben's been asking about you. Fancy it?"
I read it three times, my heart doing something strange in my chest. The caravan. I've been to it before — a static model near the coast, parked on a quiet site with a patch of grass out front and the sea within walking distance. Three bedrooms. Thin walls. A single bathroom. The kind of space where privacy is a polite fiction, where everyone knows when someone gets up in the night to use the toilet.
The kind of space where Bradley and I would be under the same roof for days.
I set my phone face-down on the staff room table. Claire is still eating her salad, scrolling through something on her phone, oblivious. The clock on the wall ticks towards the end of lunch. I pick up my phone again. Open the message. Close it. Open it again.
I should say no. I should make an excuse — money, Sam, anything. I should protect the fragile thing we've built by keeping it exactly where it is: in messages and phone calls and stolen moments that exist only in the spaces between my real life.
But I'm already typing before I've decided.
"Yeah, I'd love that. Let me check with Sam that we dont have anything planned."
I press send before I can stop myself. The message vanishes into the ether, and I feel the shift immediately — something tilting, a door opening wider than it was before.
I don't tell Sam that night. I make dinner — pasta, the way he likes it, with mushrooms and cream — and I sit across from him at the table and listen to him talk about his day, about a problem with a client's specs, about a colleague who keeps taking credit for his work. I nod in the right places. I make sympathetic noises. And underneath the table, my phone buzzes in my dressing gown pocket, and I know it's Bradley, and I don't check it until Sam is in the shower.
Then I sit on the edge of the bed, my heart hammering, and open his message.
"Emma says you're coming to the caravan."
No question mark. A statement. A fact he's already processing.
I type back: "She invited me. I said yes."
The three dots appear immediately. Disappear. Appear again. I watch them dance, imagining him sitting somewhere — maybe in his car, maybe in the living room with the TV on mute — trying to find the right words.
His reply comes through: "This is either very stupid or very good."
I laugh out loud, a short, breathless sound that I cover with my hand. I type: "Maybe both."
"Definitely both," he writes back. Then, after a pause: "I need to see you, Laura. Properly. Not through a screen."
The words land in my chest and settle there, warm and heavy. I think about the last time I saw him properly — the kiss in my mother's kitchen, the press of his body against mine, the way his hand had cupped my jaw like I was something precious. Three weeks of messages and calls and photos, and none of it has dimmed the memory of that moment.
"I know," I type. "Me too."
I hear the shower stop. Water rattling through the pipes. Sam will be out in a few minutes, towel around his waist, asking if I've seen his phone charger. I delete the thread — I've gotten good at that, at the quick thumb-swipe that erases evidence — and set my phone on the nightstand, face-down.
When Sam comes in, I'm already under the covers, the light off, my back to his side of the bed. He climbs in beside me, the mattress dipping with his weight, and I feel his hand find my hip.
"Long day?" he asks, his voice already sleepy.
"Mm." I don't turn around. "Yeah."
His hand rests there for a moment, then retreats. He rolls onto his side, and within minutes his breathing evens out, deep and regular. I lie awake in the dark, staring at the wall, thinking about a caravan in Selsey and the week that stretches ahead of me like a dare I'm not sure I'm brave enough to take.
The next few days pass in a blur of arrangements. I tell Sam the caravan trip was Emma's idea, that she wants company during half term while Bradley is working some of the days. It's a lie wrapped in a truth — Bradley will be there, but not every day, and Emma genuinely does want me there. I tell myself that makes it better. I know it doesn't.
Sam doesn't question it. He asks about dates, nods when I tell him, and reminds me to take the good camera because the coast is nice that time of year. He kisses me on the forehead before he leaves for work, and I feel a stab of guilt so sharp I have to turn away.
I pack on the Friday night before I leave. The case sits open on the bed, and I fill it with jeans and jumpers and some summer dresses, sensible shoes for coastal walks. Then I add the black lace bodysuit. The thigh-high stockings. A silk slip I bought online and never showed anyone. I fold them into the bottom of the case, underneath my cardigans, and I don't let myself think about what I'm doing.