Sofia found the second phone on a Tuesday, in the pocket of a jacket she was taking to the dry cleaner.
She sat on the edge of the bed and read every message. A woman called Mel. Hotel names. Can't wait to see you. Her hands were completely steady, which surprised her. She had always thought that if this happened she would scream.
Instead she put the phone back in the jacket, took the jacket to the dry cleaner, and started thinking.
Friday
On Friday she cooked his favourite dinner. When Marco sat down, the phone was lying next to his plate.
He went white. He started to talk – it's not what you think, it meant nothing, I was going to end it – and she let him talk until he ran out of words.
"I'm not going to scream," she said. "And I'm not leaving. Not yet. Here's what's going to happen."
He stared at her. In twelve years he had never heard her voice like this.
"You end it tonight. In front of me. And then, for the first time in this marriage, I make the rules. You've had your secret. Now I'll have my freedom. I'll go out when I want, with whom I want. You'll know about it – I'm not a liar. And you'll wait up for me."
"Sofia—"
"That's the deal. Or the door is over there."
He ended it. In front of her.
The first Saturday
The first Saturday she put on the red dress she had never dared to wear and went out with her friends. She danced. She let a man buy her a drink and flirted with him for an hour, because she could, and then took a taxi home alone.
Marco was waiting on the sofa, exactly as she had told him. He looked wrecked. He also looked at her as if he had never seen her before.
"Did you…?"
"That's not your business tonight," she said, and walked past him to the bedroom. At the door she turned. "Are you coming?"
After
It has been a year. Sometimes she goes out and comes home early; sometimes she doesn't, and tells him about it the next morning over coffee while he listens, red-faced and silent. The strange thing – the thing neither of them expected – is that the marriage is better. More honest. More charged. He brings her flowers for no reason. He asks before he assumes.
She kept the second phone. It sits in her bedside drawer, switched off. Every now and then she takes it out and looks at it, just to remind them both who holds the cards now.
