“Anytime.” Cora glanced at her watch. “Now, you have my contact number? And the shelter knows how to help you get in touch?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. One last thing: is there anyone else from your family we can contact?”

Jack adamantly shook his head. “No. No one.”

“Friends?”

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Not from school. But I have a couple of friends from a club. I still see them.”

“Good—are you keeping in contact with them okay?”

“One’s in a shelter, like me. She’s only sixteen. Her parents caught her with her friend after soccer training.”

“It must be nice to have someone to look out for you and for you to return the favour.”

“It’s more nice to have someone I can be myself with.”

“That’s important too.”

At thirty-four, that was something that Cora was really just starting to understand.

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

It wasn’t until three months later that Cora picked up her phone and called Doctor Massey.

Three months of sleeping with Frazer and being married to Alec.

Alec, who liked it less and less if she made other plans on the weekends. Who wanted her at home, waiting for him. Who had gotten a little better after those therapy sessions, but then returned to his normal pre-therapy behaviour. Who had no idea she was sleeping with someone else.

Which she still managed to do. Because somehow, with work and the programme and the times he worked late or went to a conference, it was disturbingly easy to sleep with Frazer.

If it weren’t for her friendship with Frazer, Cora worried she would have disappeared into nothingness. Something about being with her made everything else fade away. Since Cora had opened up about her stillbirth, an ease had opened up in turn between them. An ease when they were together, when they spoke. It was nice.

But it was sitting at her desk and looking at her calendar that did it. Her thumb swiped her phone screen easily. Swiped back months. Three, to be exact. And there, on the same date three months ago, were the dates of Alec’s conference.

The first night she’d slept with Frazer.

And if she swiped her thumb over it again three times, there was today’s date.

Three months.

No one had an affair for three months and a healthy marriage at the same time. No one ignored the signs and warnings she’d read, thanks to her couples therapist. No one stayed with a man because they felt guilty for what they’d done. Or because he implied she’d be useless alone.

Or that he would.