Over the past three months, Cora had spent a lot of time with Jack and with one other client she was now involved with mentoring. It was good to be busy with something that wasn’t for work. It was rewarding to get people settled into long-term accommodation, to make sure they had some form of income and access to food—basics most people took for granted—and to give them someone who would listen to them.

And when she was with them, she didn’t think about Alec or Frazer, about how she still woke up feeling like she was suffocating, then the next second drowning in the guilt of what she was doing.

In the last few months, she’d barely seen Lisa. Alec got mad when she did and said that this programme was taking up enough of her time.

But now wasn’t the time to think about that. She focussed on Jack in front of her. “So, what are your options?”

“There’s three I like. One is a single parent; she seems really nice. She’s a kindergarten teacher. Another is a family who has two kids already but wants a third. The other two are adopted too—one from Kenya, another from China. I like that.” His hands rubbed his belly over his jumper, and Cora wondered if he realised he was doing that.

“And the third?”

“Two dads who are trying to adopt. They’ve been waiting five years.”

Nodding, Cora cocked her head. “Who do you lean to first?”

Jack threw his hands up miserably. “I don’t know.”

“Hey.” When he looked up, Cora asked, “What’s going on?”

“I’ve given over those questions we played with ages ago, but what if, even with the answers, I still can’t tell who to pick? I mean, look at how Tom turned out. Maybe I’m a shitty judge of character.”

“Jack…”

His brow scrunched together tightly, and he swallowed visibly. “What if you help me? I get the answers soon. Can you meet me afterwards to talk about what they all say? I want to get this right, if nothing else.”

If nothing else.

“Of course I’ll help.”

* * *

Being in pyjamas with a glass of wine at seven o’clock in the evening was probably sad to some people. But to Frazer, it was heaven.

All day, she’d skulked around, avoiding her boss and Cora and feeling a renewed guilt that had somehow subsided over three months, settled deep in her belly.

What was she doing?

She’d been so content not dating. Especially at work. And then she fell into bed with her boss’s wife and didn’t look back. She’d just made some vague attempts in her mind to end it that had failed miserably. If Frazer was honest with herself, she hadn’t tried that hard to see those attempts through.

Cora was married. What they were doing was not okay.