Prologue. 
Eight months earlier

 

‘Hiya, sweetheart!’

Amanda didn’t look up from the stove. The kitchen was thick with the savoury scent of chicken and mushrooms—the aroma of a reliable Tuesday night. ‘How was your day? I’ve made your favourite. White wine sauce—and enough to feed an army, so I hope you’re hungry.’

She waited. For years, the silence of the room was always broken by the familiar weight of Karen’s arms around her waist, the scratch of a wool coat, and that ritualistic nibble on her neck.

Instead, the air in the room turned thin. Cold.

Amanda turned, a wooden spoon in hand. Karen was standing by the counter; her coat was undone, exposing a beautifully tailored designer blouse, but she had her arms crossed tightly over her chest as if protecting it from the room. 

. She had the flat, detached look of someone who had already left the house.

‘Are you okay? Has something happened?’

Silence was the only response. Karen reached into her bag and placed a thick manila folder on the granite countertop. On top of it, she dropped a heavy jingle of metal.

‘All the paperwork you need to sign is in there,’ Karen said. The voice was a flatline, a fading dial tone. ‘I’m keeping my front door key for now to get my things, but the others are all there.’

The words didn't make sense. They sat between them like a language Amanda hadn't learned yet.

Amanda stared at the keys. The boiling white wine sauce hissed against the glass lid, clouding her vision, but the skin on her arms broke into goosebumps. Her chest felt hollowed out, cold as an unlit oven.

‘I don’t understand. Is this... a joke?’

‘I want a divorce.’

The granite edge of the countertop dug into her hip. She locked her elbows, anchoring herself against the sudden weight of her own body as the kitchen tile blurred beneath her feet. She searched Karen’s face for a flicker of pain, a twitch of regret—anything to prove this was a nightmare she was about to wake from. But the person standing there was a stranger wearing familiar clothes.

A business card for the solicitor across the road poked out from the folder, crisp, white, and clinical.

‘Why? Didn’t I show I love you enough?’ The words were a sandpaper rasp, catching in a throat that had gone bone-dry in seconds. ‘Is it because of the kids? Because I wanted a family?’

The woman in her kitchen wasn’t her wife; she was a stranger hovering over a folder and keys to a life she no longer wanted.

Karen wrinkled her nose and leaned back against the cupboards with arms folded—a posture of total defence. ‘I’ve grown tired of this. It’s all so... mundane. And frankly, you’re always too tired to actually be with me.’

‘I’m tired because I run a business!’ Amanda’s voice cracked, the hurt turning into a jagged edge. ‘I work ten-hour days.’

‘Ha. Playing cats and dogs.’

‘Then I come home and cook and clean, so you don't have to live in a pigsty.’ Amanda’s grip tightened on the wooden spoon until the wood groaned against her palm. ‘When was the last time you even picked up a vacuum, Karen? Only when I begged. And even then, it was such a half-arsed job I had to do it over.’

A single question burned behind her ribs. ‘Did you ever even love me?’

Karen glanced at a photo of them and looked away with total indifference, appearing to give the question more thought than it deserved. ‘No,’ she said finally, her tone as light as if she were checking a weather report. ‘I don’t think I ever did. You were... a convenience.’

The word landed with the weight of a physical blow. Seven years. Five years of marriage. All of it reduced to the status of a toaster or a parking space.

The spoon felt heavy, an extension of the heat radiating from the stove. Without a conscious thought, Amanda’s wrist flicked. The wooden spoon caught Karen square in the shoulder with a satisfying splat, spraying white wine sauce and mushrooms across her designer blouse and the white cabinets. A dollop of garlic cream landed on Karen’s cheek.

Silence reclaimed the room. Karen reached up, wiped the sauce with one finger, and licked it clean. Her lips curled into that cruel, cunning smirk—the one that always made Amanda's blood boil.

‘This,’ Karen whispered, biting her lower lip, ‘I might actually miss.’

‘I don’t understand how you can throw away all those years together. I loved you.’ Amanda cried out. ‘We could have worked something out.’

Karen stood impassively, that half-smirk fixed. ‘Finished?’

‘Is there someone else?’

A flicker in Karen’s eyes—a tell as familiar as her signature. Amanda’s stomach turned.

‘There is.’

Amanda ran her hand through her hair, her mind racing. The changed hours. The sudden weekend work trips to Exeter. The phone flipped face-down on the nightstand. Amanda looked at the sauce splattered across Karen's designer blouse, looking less like her wife and more like a tick that had finally gorged itself full. Her stomach settled into something hard and flat.

‘Get the fuck out of my house.’

The command didn't come from her throat; it came from the gut. Raw. Final.

Karen didn't move, her smirk widening. ‘I’ll just go upstairs and pack a bag—’

‘Oh, no you won’t.’ Amanda stepped forward, ignoring the tremor in her legs. Her voice dropped to a level that was quiet and terrifying. ‘You’ll leave exactly as you arrived. With the clothes on your back—though now you have sauce on your face. I’ll let you know when you can collect your things. They’ll be in bin bags on the kerb. And if you aren't there when I tell you, the bin men can have them.’

‘Amanda, don’t be dramatic—’

‘Key.’ Amanda held out her hand, her palm steady for the first time all evening. ‘The front door key. Now.’

Karen’s smirk finally faltered. She saw the shift—the moment the convenience became a liability. She slammed the final key onto the counter with a muffled curse and swept out of the room.

Amanda stood frozen until the heavy thud of the Victorian door echoed through the hallway. The sound left a ringing silence in its wake.

Only then did the strength evaporate. Amanda slid down the front of the cabinet, her skirt dragging through the spilled sauce on the floor. She pulled her knees to her chest, buried her face in her hands, and let the first sob tear through her.