“I can’t imagine what this past year must have been like for you and I’m gutted that you didn’t feel able to talk to me about it, but I understand why you didn’t. You didn’t want to hurt me. You love me. And I didn’t mention it to you because I didn’t want to hurt you. I loved you too much. More evidence right there. If she hadn’t died then I guess we would have had that difficult conversation back then, but she did and so there didn’t seem any value in raising it. Except of course I didn’t know that you knew. Which either makes us both caring, or a pair of idiots. Not sure which.”

He knew? All this time she’d been protecting him and he knew?

“I heard her on the phone. We had a terrible, terrible fight before she went out that night. I thought there’d be time to talk about it again—” She felt the tears rush to her eyes and fought to hold them back, but this time her body refused to cooperate. They fell, poured, and with the tears came the sobs and she couldn’t stop any of it. It was all too much. Something inside her had burst.

She felt him pull her against him, was dimly aware of being held, of his voice soothing and calming her, telling her everything was going to be okay, that she had no need to feel guilty and still she cried, soaking his shirt. She cried until she was empty, and even when her sobs eventually stopped she stayed where she was, utterly drained and exhausted.

“There.” He stroked her hair. “This is my fault, sweetheart, not yours. After she died, it was chaos. And we were all dealing with it, and maybe if we hadn’t been I would have noticed something was worrying you. But every time I saw you behave differently, I assumed it was grief. Bad judgment on my part.”

“No!” Why had they never talked like this before? She didn’t want the train to come, not quite yet. She wanted to have this conversation. “I’m sorry she cheated on you.”

“Oh honey—” He kept his arms wrapped around her. “You don’t have to be sorry. Her decisions weren’t yours. My love for you wasn’t, and isn’t, tied up with my feelings for her.”

She sniffed. “You’re so forgiving.”

“I’m not forgiving.” He paused. “I’m mad with her, if you must know. And that’s been difficult. Grieving someone, and being mad with them—it’s a weird feeling.”

“I know.” She lifted her head to look at him. “I feel the same way.”

“Yeah? We should have shared that. We could have gone to the gym together and thrown a few punches.”