When I told the police, the part they found hardest to believe was that I got away with such a close-quarters deception for so long. I assured them that I did, that Gabe, Liam and I had all survived unscathed – because in real life, contrary to every book and movie and Netflix drama you can think of, the loved ones of depraved adulteresses sometimes don’t die in tragic accidents or come down with fatal illnesses. I know! Pretty surprising, isn’t it, after what we’ve been led to believe? You really can have sex with a man who isn’t your husband without prompting a victim-blaming deity to have him clipped purely to spite you.

Still, maybe the reason Gabe’s still alive is because I mainly only cheated on him while he was asleep. When he was awake, I was faithful to him. That ought to count for something. That’s a reasonable compromise. I said all this to the police, who couldn’t tell if I was joking.

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

I return from the hospital to an empty house; hardly surprising since I live alone. It feels strange and predictable at the same time. Normally I love turning my key in the front door and knowing that everything will be exactly as I left it. I used to dread coming home when I lived with Gabe, and not only because of Gabe himself. There were all the tiny irritations to contend with: the bin liner attached only to one side of the kitchen bin, drooping down low on the other; the jar of Nescafé with the gold foil seal only half torn away, because why waste time tearing off the whole thing when you can shake the coffee powder out of one side of the jar forever?

Today, because I am now officially someone with No-Grandmother-Not-Even-A-Shit-Grandmother, the emptiness feels too much. I would quite like, I think, to walk into the kitchen and see two discarded pairs of shoes under the table and a pair of balled-up socks on the dresser shelf, stuffed between the cereal bowls and the dinner plates.

There are other men. Perhaps I could get the strewn shoes and the balled-up socks without the accompaniment of a drug addict – that would be good.

I make myself a coffee, trying not to notice the Nescafé jar’s clean circumference, absent of all foil, and take it through to the lounge. I turn on the TV to break the silence and sit down on the sofa, aware of myself doing both. This is what a pretentious art-house film about a lonely woman would look like.

Aimlessly, I flick through the channels. Everything looks unappealing, but anything’s better than thinking. As of today, my brother Drew is the only family I have. I’d be better off with no one at all.