After my husband left me for my best friend, I ran into them three years later and couldnt stop grinning.
When my marriage started crumbling, I turned to my closest confidante. She insisted I was overthinking itturns out, she was the one I *shouldve* been overthinking. Fate served up the sweetest justice years later.
I used to think infidelity only happened in soap operas or whispered gossip over Sunday roasts. Not to me. Not to *us*.
Five years with Alistair built a lifenot glamorous, but *ours*. Movie nights on the lumpy sofa, Sunday coffee runs, inside jokes only we understood. Through it all, there was Rebeccamy school friend, practically a sister. She stood by me at my wedding, clutching my hands, pretending to cry happy tears.
When I got pregnant, I thought itd be another chapter of our little love story.
Then Alistair changed.
First, it was small thingslate nights at the office, smiles that never reached his eyes. Then came the silence. One-word replies. Nights spent with his back turned, as if I were a ghost.
I didnt understand. Exhausted and heavily pregnant, I called Rebecca, sobbing into the phone while Alistair snored beside me.
“Youre overreacting,” she murmured. “He loves you. Its just stress.”
I *wanted* to believe her.
But the sleepless nights, the loneliness in my own marriage, wore me down. Then, one morning, pain ripped through me. By evening, I was in hospital, watching the doctors lips move but hearing nothing.
No heartbeat.
No baby.
They say grief comes in waves. Mine was a tsunami.
The miscarriage wrecked me. Alistair? He was already gone. Sat stiffly in the hospital chair, cold, silent, never once holding my hand. Like he was waiting for a train, not mourning our child.
A month later, he finally said the words I suspect hed rehearsed:
*”Im not happy anymore, Emily.”*
No explanations. No emotion. Just a hollow exit.
The day he left was eerily quietno shouting, no tears. Just the click of the front door.
Rebecca, my *best friend*, vanished soon after. Calls ignored. Texts left on read. Thenblocked everywhere.
Mum figured it out first. One evening, she rang, tense. *”Love look at this.”* A link to Rebeccas Instagram.
There they were.
Alistair and Rebecca. Grinning on a beach, wrapped around each other like theyd been in love for years. Post after postfancy dinners, ski trips, cosy nights by the fire. Flaunted *publicly* while I was still his *wife*.
The betrayal burned like acid. But if they thought theyd broken me, they were wrong.
I turned my pain into power. Alistair, too busy playing Romeo, left a trail of evidence. In court, his infidelity was my trump card. I kept the house, half his savings, and the satisfaction of knowing he had to start over.
He took my trust. I took what was mine.
Starting fresh wasnt easy. But life rewards the stubborn.
A year later, I met Daniel.
Nothing like Alistairhe was everything Alistair *wasnt*. Kind. Present. Never once made me feel “too much.” We built a real life, not a social media highlight reel. Soon, our daughter arrivedmy mirror image with his grin.
Then fate delivered the perfect finale.
One evening, stopping for petrol, I spotted them.
Alistair and Rebecca.
No designer clothes now. No happy snaps. Just a rust-bucket car, a screaming toddler, and a declined card at the till.
*”We cant even afford *fuel*?”* Rebecca whined.
*”You knew we were struggling,”* Alistair snapped.
Rebecca huffed. *”Guess Emily won this one.”*
I started the engine, smiling all the way home. To my *real* happy ending.
