The phone went flying as Eleanor shoved it away, landing with a thud on the carpet beneath the sofa. «Have you taken complete leave of your senses?» Her voice was sharp, disbelieving. «Love? What on earth are you even talking about?»
«Ellie, please, calm down. Let’s talk properly,» Oliver said, reaching for her hand.
She snatched it back as if burned. «Properly?» She turned to face him fully, anger blazing in her eyes. «You spun me lies for a year and a half about being single, free as a bird. And now, suddenly, it’s ‘love’? Especially after I spotted your wife at The Mall, pushing a pram?»
Oliver paled, his gaze dropping to the floor. Silence descended, thick and heavy, broken only by the fridge humming in the kitchen. Eleanor stood rigid in the centre of the room, arms wrapped tightly around herself against a chill that wasn’t there.
«I never meant for you to find out that way,» he mumbled. «I intended to tell you myself.»
«When?» Eleanor’s voice quivered, tears threatening. «Next year? The one after? Or perhaps never at all?»
She paced the small space like a caged animal. Moving to the window, turning back, picking up a small ornament only to set it down immediately. Oliver sat on the sofa’s edge, watching the fragile world he’d inhabited without belief, yet desperately wanted, shatter around him.
«Eleanor, listen,» he stood, trying to close the distance. «Yes, I am married. Yes, I have a son, Henry. But that… that’s just the formal shell. Beatrice and I haven’t been husband and wife in any real sense for ages.»
«Oh, formal shell!» Eleanor let out a brittle, hysterical laugh. «And the child? Formal shell too? The house you go back to every night? Just for show?»
«You don’t understand,» Oliver ran a hand through his hair, messing it. «I stay for Henry. He’s eight. He wouldn’t understand if I left.»
«Wouldn’t understand?» She stopped dead, pinning him with her stare. «And I suppose *I* understand? I understand spending eighteen months as some married man’s mistress while he led me a merry dance?»
She strode to the dresser where their framed photo stood – a summer snap at her friend’s river cottage, happy, entwined, looking towards a shared future. Eleanor picked it up, stared at it hard, then hurled it forcefully against the floor. Glass exploded with a sickening crack.
«Honest now,» she declared, staring at the glittering shards. «Shattered. Like everything else.»
Oliver stepped towards her. Eleanor lifted a warning hand.
«Don’t. Don’t you dare.»
«Ellie, I genuinely love you,» his voice dropped low, pleading. «For the first time in years, I feel alive. With you, I’m different. Can’t you see?»
«I see,» she nodded, tears finally spilling. «I see that I’m an idiot. I believed the fairy tale. The prince charming who was just about to get his divorce and whisk me off to his castle.»
She walked into the kitchen. Oliver trailed behind. Eleanor opened a cupboard, pulling out a bottle of whisky bought for her birthday last month but forgotten. She poured a stiff measure into a tumbler, downed it in one go, grimacing at the burn.
«Know what cuts deepest?» She slammed the glass onto the table. «It’s not that you’re married. It’s that you finally said ‘love me’ only *now*. After you were caught out.»
«I wanted to say it before…»
«Fibs!» Her palm slapped the table sharply. «You never said it because you were scared. Cornered, you played the ‘love’ card?»
Oliver slumped into a chair, burying his head in his hands. The smell of roast chicken Eleanor had prepared earlier hung in the air, now a bitter mockery of their shared meals.
«I *was* frightened,» he admitted. «Frightened saying it meant making changes. And I didn’t know how.»
«Exactly,» Eleanor sat opposite him. «You didn’t know how. Because you never truly intended to change. This setup suited you perfectly. Wife and child at home, mistress down the road for fun.»
«That’s unfair!»
«Then how?»
Oliver stayed silent. Eleanor looked at him, truly seeing him for the first time in eighteen months. Not the charming man bearing flowers and compliments, but a lost soul, adrift in his own indecision.
«Remember,» she said softly, «how we met? In Waterstones. You said you were buying a gift for… your aunt. I believed that. It was really for your wife, wasn’t it?»
«Eleanor…»
«Answer honestly. At least this once.»
«Yes,» he nodded, his head still down. «For Beatrice. Her birthday.»
Eleanor laughed, a sound as bitter as wormwood.
«And I was chuffed! I thought I’d met a man who cared for his auntie. Proof he’d care for me too.»
«I *did* care!»
«You were playing!» Her voice rose sharply. «Playing house, while your real family waited for you at home!»
Eleanor stood and moved to the window. Rain streaked the pane, droplets tracing paths like tears down the ledge. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass.
«Know the worst part?» she asked, back still turned. «I fell for you properly. For the first time since my divorce, I believed I could be happy again. I envisioned our future.»
«I dreamed too,» Oliver stood, approaching her. «Ellie, believe me.»
«What did you dream of?» She turned; her cheeks wet. «Living a double life? Or explaining to your son that Daddy has another lady friend?»
«I thought…» he faltered. «I thought given time, things would just… sort themselves.»
«Sort themselves,» Eleanor repeated. «Magically, with no effort from you. While I waited and hoped on a prayer.»
She walked past him back into the living room, beginning to gather the broken picture frame’s fragments. Oliver knelt beside her, reaching to help. She pushed his hand away firmly.
«Don’t. I can manage. I’m used to managing alone.»
«Ellie, let me make this right,» he spoke rapidly, as if fearing interruption. «I’ll talk to Beatrice. Explain. We’ll divorce cleanly. I’ll see Henry regularly…»
«Stop,» Eleanor held up her hand. «Are you seriously asking me to wait around while you sort your divorce?»
«Why not?»
«Because you still don’t grasp it!» She stood, clutching the shards. «You destroyed my faith in you, in us, in love itself! And now you ask me to wait longer?»
Eleanor dumped the glass into the bin, then washed her hands thoroughly, as if scrubbing away the last year and a half.
«Know what I thought,» she said, drying her hands on a tea towel, «when I first saw your wife at the shopping centre? She looked beautiful. Happy. Choosing toys for a little boy, smiling at him. And I saw she still loves you. Deeply.»
«Eleanor, it’s not…»
«And then I wondered,» she continued, voice steady, «what is it like – loving someone who cheats? Living with them raising your child, utterly in the dark?»
Oliver remained silent. Eleanor walked back into the living room, curled into an armchair hugging her knees.
«That’s when I realised,» she said quietly, «we’re both victims of your cowardice. She doesn’t know you stray. I didn’t know you were wed. And you kept silent, using our ignorance.»
«I wasn’t using…»
«You *were*!» Pain laced her words as she looked at him. «Eighteen months I spent happy with a phantom. A man who
Heavy rain now lashed against her London townhouse windows, mirroring the torrent of tears Sophie finally allowed herself, mourning not the lost affair, but the shattered illusion that love could ever be truly honest. She sat alone on the cold kitchen floor near Earl’s Court, the warm, forgotten scent of Sunday roast lamb a cruel mockery of the life she’d thought they were building together, her black cat Whiskers pressing silently against her leg. Oliver was undoubtedly back at his Kensington flat with his unsuspecting wife Emily and their son Toby, carrying on the charade, the weight of his duplicity eventually crushing their hollow marriage as well, leaving only fractured homes and bitter silence, as the stubborn chill seeped through the old floorboards, marking the true end. Sophie understood now that bright beginnings often pave the roads to familiar, quiet ruin, punishing not just hearts but entire families in the weary aftermath. Real love demands courage, not convenient lies that leave hearts and homes as broken as discarded pottery cast out with the rubbish.
Cracked When He Said ‘I Love You’
