Lina sits in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a cold mug. In front of her lies a notebook filled with dates. She has been staring at these numbers for twenty minutes and can’t move.
Because too many things line up.
Every call he makes, every message he sends, every sudden “let’s talk” follows the same pattern. Lina didn’t spot it at first. It took the divorce, nearly two years, and one sleepless night with a calculator.
At first, she didn’t even think to count.
They were married for nine years. Lina and Chris met at a mutual friend’s birthday party when they were both twenty-six. Back then, he worked as a manager for a construction firm, and she handled the accounts at a small company. On the surface, an ordinary story. On the surface, ordinary people.
They got married a year later. No big fuss – a small restaurant for twenty people. Lina sewed her own dress because she couldn’t find anything she liked in the shops. Chris laughed and called her a perfectionist.
Then everyday life set in.
Their daughter Molly was born in the second year of the marriage. Lina went on maternity leave, and Chris got promoted. There was money, but he had less and less time for the family. Late nights at work turned into overnight absences. Work parties stretched until morning.
Lina put up with it. She thought that was normal. Her mum always said, “He works, so he feeds the family. What more do you want?”
But by the fifth year, Lina began noticing things she used to overlook. A new aftershave. A password on his phone that wasn’t there before. And that habit of stepping out onto the balcony whenever his phone rang.
She didn’t make a scene. She just asked him directly one day.
Chris paused for about five seconds. Then he said, “Lina, you’re making things up.”
And she believed him. For another four years.
The divorce came when Molly was seven and a half. Not because of the affair – well, not directly. Lina found the messages by accident when Chris left his tablet on the kitchen table. There wasn’t much: a few jokes, some heart emojis, a photo of a woman in a red dress by the sea.
But it was enough.
She didn’t shout. She didn’t cry in front of him. She just said, “I want a divorce.” And Chris, to her surprise, didn’t argue.
Later Lina realised: he didn’t argue not because he respected her decision, but because he had somewhere else to go.
He packed his things over the weekend and rented a flat in the next street.
The first few months were the hardest. Molly asked why Daddy didn’t live at home. Lina searched for words that wouldn’t hurt her daughter but wouldn’t paint Chris as a hero who simply “got tired”. It was like walking through a minefield in the dark.
Then it got easier. Slowly, quietly, as if someone took one stone off her shoulders each day. Lina found a new job, started going to the pool on Tuesdays, got into the habit of drinking coffee on the windowsill every morning.
Life without Chris felt calm. And that scared her.
Because deep down Lina expected everything to fall apart without him. That she wouldn’t cope on her own. That Molly would suffer. But her daughter adapted faster than her mother. She made friends in the neighbourhood, joined a drawing class, stopped asking about Dad every evening.
Chris’s first call came four months after the divorce. His voice was quiet, a little guilty, as if he’d rehearsed that tone in advance.
“Lina, I’ve been thinking. Maybe we rushed into this?”
She was thrown. She didn’t expect it. She muttered something like “not now” and hung up. She spent the whole evening pacing around the flat, restless.
But she didn’t call back.
A week later he texted. A long message about how he missed Molly, missed the house, missed her apple pies. Lina read it twice. The third time she stopped.
Then he vanished. For two months. No calls, no texts. Silence.
And then, at the end of November, another message: “Hi. How’s Molly? Can I come round?”
Later Lina saw a screenshot in Emily’s messages: Chris had just fallen out with that redhead from the park. He hadn’t broken up for good, but had disappeared from her photos for a week.
Lina said yes. He arrived with a giant teddy bear, a box of chocolates, and that face she privately called “good dad mode”. He stayed for an hour, played with Molly, and lingered at the door.
“I miss you, Lina. Genuinely.”
She closed the door and leaned her back against it. Her heart was pounding. But something stopped her from feeling happy about those words.
The second attempt came in February. He called late, around eleven. His voice was different, tense.
“Lina, I need to talk to you. Seriously.”
They met at a café near the tube station. Chris ordered two Americanos and started talking about how he’d made a mistake. That that woman meant nothing. That he now understood family is what matters.
Lina listened. Nodded. Wondered if she should give it another try.
But three days later her friend Emily sent a screenshot. Chris had updated his social media status. “In a relationship.” A photo with a blonde at an ice rink.
The February conversation became meaningless. Lina removed his number from her favourites.
In May, he showed up again. Flowers, apologies, promises – the same set, just a different bouquet.
Fourth time, in September. A six-minute voice note: “I’ve changed, honestly.”
Fifth, just before Christmas. A card for Molly and a note for Lina: “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She even put that note in her document drawer. Not because she fully believed it. But because a part of her still wanted proof that she mattered to him.
And every time between his appearances, there was a gap of two to three months.
Lina didn’t pay it much attention. Or rather, she didn’t want to. Until one night she opened her notebook.
It happened the following spring, in March. Molly fell asleep early, and the flat was silent. Lina scrolled through old messages and started writing down dates. Just out of curiosity.
First call: 12th October.
Second attempt: late November.
Third: 13th February. No, not Valentine’s Day. The day before it.
Fourth: 8th May.
Fifth: 22nd September.
Sixth: 28th December.
She stared at the dates, trying to find a pattern. Bank holidays? Not really. Birthdays? No.
Then she remembered one detail.
In October, Emily mentioned seeing Chris alone at a pub, looking miserable. In February, he complained about a “rough patch”. In May, he wrote that he was “fed up with everything”. In September, he asked for advice on “how to move forward”.
Lina opened his social media. Scrolled through his posts. And started matching them up.
October. A photo with the redhead in the park. Last post with her: early October. Call to Lina: 12th October.
February. The blonde from the ice rink. Last couple photo: 10th February. Meeting Lina: 13th February.
May. No photos with any woman. But Chris’s mate posted a story with the caption “Chris is single again”. Date: 5th May. Flowers from Chris: 8th May.
September. A new girl, brunette. Photos together from mid-summer. Last one: 18th September. Voice note from Chris: 22nd September.
December. No photos with anyone since November. Card for Molly: 28th December.
Lina put the pen down on the table.
Six times. Six returns after other people’s break-ups, arguments, or failures. Six calls to her. The gap between events: two to several days.
He wasn’t choosing her. He remembered her when others stopped choosing him.
She sat in the kitchen until two in the morning. Her tea had long gone cold. Outside, cars hummed and somewhere a dog barked in the distance.
The worst part wasn’t that Chris lied. She was used to that. The worst part was that she believed him every time. Every time she thought, “What if this time it’s true?”
Because he knew the right words. He knew that “I miss the smell of your pies” would hit the mark. That a six-minute voice note where he nearly cried would soften her. That Molly was a trump card that almost always worked.
And he used it. Maybe he never sat down and planned it out. But habit is sometimes harsher than malice. Like a person who knows there’s always soup in the fridge. Not because they value it. But because they’re used to it.
Lina remembered her mum once saying, “A man goes back where he’s waited for.” Back then it sounded wise. Now it sounded like a verdict.
Because sometimes waiting means becoming a backup landing strip. A place to touch down when you’ve nowhere else to fly.
In the morning, she called Emily.
“Em, I’ve figured something out. About Chris.”
Emily listened without a word. Then she said, “Lina, I saw that a year ago. But you wouldn’t have believed me.”
And Lina didn’t argue. Because Emily was right. A year ago, she wouldn’t have believed it. A year ago, she still had hope.
But now, looking at the notebook of dates, she felt a strange calm. Not anger, not hurt. Just calm. As if someone had finally turned on the light in a room she’d been sitting in, afraid to look into the corners.
She saw it all clearly. No illusions, no hope, no that irritating “what if”.
Chris called in April. Almost like clockwork.
“Lina, hi. Listen, I’ve been thinking…”
She didn’t let him finish.
“Chris, I counted the dates. All your calls to me. And I matched them with your break-ups. You know what I found?”
Silence on the line. One second. Two. Five.
“What are you talking about?”
“About you calling me every time two or three days after another woman leaves you. Five times out of five, Chris. That’s no coincidence.”
He started saying something about “you’ve got it all wrong” and “I really do miss you”. Lina listened to his voice and thought how those tones used to work perfectly. That slight tremor, the pause before “really”, the quiet sigh.
She smiled.
“Chris, don’t call me again. You can talk to Molly – that’s your business. But don’t call me.”
“For anything about Molly, text me on the messaging app. Short and to the point.”
And she hung up.
The phone landed on the table. Lina looked at it as if seeing it for the first time. A small black rectangle that had kept her on a leash for three years.
Molly came out of her bedroom, sleepy, in her dinosaur pyjamas.
“Mum, who were you talking to?”
“Your dad. But we’re finished.”
She picked up her daughter, and Molly wrapped her arms around her neck. She smelled of children’s shampoo and something warm, homely.
Outside, April was beginning. The trees were already turning green. Lina stood in the middle of the kitchen with her daughter in her arms and thought: it’s strange. All this time she’d been waiting for Chris to come back. But all she needed to do was count.
She didn’t throw the notebook away. She put it in the top drawer of the chest, under a stack of towels. Not as a reminder of pain. As proof that figures are sometimes more honest than words.
And when, a month later, her colleague Jenny asked if Lina wanted to meet “a great bloke, divorced, two kids”, Lina laughed.
“Jenny, give me at least six months. I’ve only just learned to count – not other people’s promises, but my own losses.”
She walked home through the park, past the playground where Molly was swinging on the swings. The sun was setting behind the roofs of the five-storey blocks, and tree shadows lay across the pavement in long stripes.
Lina took out her phone. Opened her contacts. Found “Chris” and pressed “block” for personal calls. Then she opened the messaging app and left only the chat about Molly.
Her finger didn’t shake.
It was the best thing she had done since the divorce.
