What exactly was she playing at? Was it worth it?

She studied her lover discreetly from the side. The way he held the wheel with one of his coarse hands while the other hung loosely by one thumb. The superficial veins crisscrossing the back of his hand. The vigilant eyes taking note of everything happening on the road and around them. His chest rising inside the unbuttoned jacket as he breathed.

“Was everything okay?” he asked. “Did anyone say anything?”

“I said I needed to pick out new tiles for the bathroom.”

“And no one questioned that?”

She shook her head.

“Are you doing up your bathroom?”

“Don’t know,” she replied. “Seems like it.”

What did they need a new bathroom for? Her husband thought a new bathroom would change their lives for the better, but she needed something else. Clearly—since she was sitting here risking the entire world that she knew for a moment of love with someone else’s husband.

“I don’t like lying to my workmates either,” he said. “Leaving early under false pretences. But it is what it is.”

The relationship was a month or so old. They could no longer dismiss it as a passing whim. They had been sneaking off like this a couple of times a week, and it dominated every part of her mind.

She didn’t really know him all that well. Their workplaces were next to each other but had nothing to do with the other. She worked in a furniture shop; he ran a garage. They were never seen together, never called each other, never exchanged any secret messages in the car park. Anything that needed to be said was dealt with here in his car, always during the day, and compensated for with overtime on other occasions. No one ought to suspect anything, so they really had nothing to fear. They could simply let themselves be possessed by each other’s lust, the lingering warmth in their bodies and the desire for the next meeting.

“It is how it is,” she repeated. “Is that how it’s going to be?”

He smiled.

“What would you prefer? Is this enough for you, or would you dare to throw yourself into something new?”

She didn’t know what to say. Would he dare to take that step and leave behind the old? Her answer was dependent on his. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing exactly where he had her if he didn’t give her anything to hang on to.

Their love was passionate right now. She was in a state of sickness—she couldn’t sleep at night or concentrate in the day. But would it last if she was honest with her husband, asked for a divorce, and turned their shared home into a war zone? Would this new irrepressible love cope with that? And for how long?

Perhaps it was the validation she needed. The reassurance that she was still worth loving, still worth making love to. Now she had that, and perhaps it was enough. This man had given her so much energy and joie de vivre that it had shaken new life into her deeply soporific existence. But that wasn’t necessarily the same thing as her giving up her home and her finances, turning her back on the man that she had sworn to love. She was conscious that it was novelty’s charm that appealed. It wasn’t impossible to leave it behind, go home and be a good wife instead.