The rule of the forum was simple: no photos, no messages, nothing at all until you were verified.
“A handwritten card,” Claire read aloud from the screen, “with your username, the name of the community and today’s date. Held by the woman in the photos.”
Mark looked up from the sofa. “So they want proof we’re real.”
“They want proof I’m real.” She was already looking for a pen.
They had talked about it for a year. It had started as a joke after a wedding, then a confession after a bottle of wine, then a long, careful conversation at the kitchen table at two in the morning. Mark wanted to see his wife wanted by someone else. Claire, to her own surprise, wanted to be seen like that. They had made a list of rules on the back of an envelope. It was still on the fridge.
The photo
She wrote the card in her neatest handwriting. Then she held it up and Mark took the photo – her in his old grey shirt, laughing, the date in blue ink.
“Again,” she said. “I look like a hostage.”
He took twenty. In the end they sent the one where she was not laughing but looking straight at the camera, at him, with an expression he had not seen in a long time.
The approval came the next morning. Verified couple. Two small words. Claire stared at them over her coffee as if they were a diploma.
The rules
They met Tom three times before anything was decided. Once for coffee, once for dinner, once for a long walk along the canal in Castlefield. He was forty, divorced, kind, and very careful to ask Mark questions as well as Claire.
On the third walk Claire took the envelope out of her bag and read the rules to both of them.
“One. Mark is in the room. Two. Anyone can stop it, any time, with one word. The word is Manchester. Three. Afterwards, Tom goes home, and Mark and I talk.”
Tom nodded. “And four?”
“There is no four.” She folded the envelope. “Four is whatever we discover.”
The evening
The hotel was in the Northern Quarter, a high room with a view of wet rooftops. Mark sat in the armchair by the window. Claire stood between the two men in a black dress she had bought specially and had not let him see.
Before anything happened, she walked to the armchair, knelt and kissed her husband. “Still sure?”
“More than ever.”
She went back to Tom. Mark watched her – the confidence in her shoulders, the way she turned to check on him, the private smile she sent across the room that was only for him. What happened next was slow and unhurried and exactly what they had agreed. Nobody said Manchester.
Afterwards
Tom left at midnight with a handshake for Mark and a kiss on the cheek for Claire. Then it was just the two of them, the city lights and an armchair.
“Talk to me,” she said, curling up on his lap. “Honestly.”
“I’ve never been so proud of you,” he said, and meant it.
The next morning she logged in to the forum. Under their verification photo, the moderators had added a small green badge. Claire looked at it for a long time, then printed the photo and stuck it on the fridge, next to the envelope.
