“Who are you?”

Casey stared, her thumb poised over her touchscreen. He’d called her bluff, which was bloody annoying. But she’d get her way. She’d wear him down. There was something: a feeling.

Finally, he picked up his phone and started tapping. After a minute or so, the notification appeared: three thousand pounds, just like that, the easiest money she’d ever made. It was time she started taking care of her needs, her desires, instead of pandering to her husband all the time.

What sort of life was it, living as the woman her husband wanted her to be, a projection, not even real? In his eyes, she was a robot, a meal-prep sexbot android with no thoughts or desires of her own.

“I loved you,” Scott said. “I love you.”

“You don’t even know me. But I know you. And I’ve never loved you. I wouldn’t be able to. I think it’s your bedtime, honey. I’ve got some shopping to do.”

Scott glanced at the window, at the autumn sunlight slanting through the glass. “My bedtime?”

“Yes. Stay upstairs for the rest of the night. I can’t stand to look at you any longer.”

He tried to appear tough again, but it didn’t matter. She could see right to the core of him. She’d lived with him since before they were married; she’d been there during the night terrors, waking in a scream, sheets soaked in sweat, tragic ranting as he vomited up all his secrets and his pain at Natalie’s suicide. There was nothing left in Scott. If there had ever been a man there, it was dead now. He was exactly what she needed him to be.

As she predicted, he obeyed. Rising to his feet, he skulked from the room like the coward he was.

Casey picked up her phone and went to the clothes website she’d been browsing a few days earlier. She felt a spree coming on.

3

SCOTT

Scott stood at the window, looking down on the street. A few kids were kicking a football at the opposite end. The sun hadn’t even set.

She’d sent him to bed. He tried to wake up: to stop dreaming. This couldn’t be happening. Casey loved him. They were happy. They had never even had a proper argument, or even a disagreement. It had been perfect.

Maybe it had been too perfect.

He paced up and down the bedroom. Casey’s bedside table had her latest thriller on it; his had a chunky book on Winston Churchill. Her hair straighteners and her hair dryer and her make-up sat on her vanity unit. A set of lacy underwear was on the floor, near a sock. It all looked so offensively normal.

He couldn’t fit it into his head; his whole life had changed. He wondered how a man would react to this, which was a stupid thing to think; he was one, or he was supposed to be. He’d been more of a man in university, before marriage, before life, before Natalie. But he couldn’t summon that fire anymore. He blinked; tears were in his eyes.